"Asshole! I was dropping so many hints! You sit right by the back door of Class Two, so she can see you on her way to the restroom."
Mei Lili was trembling with rage. Gu Muxue was a perfect goddess in her eyes, and Xue Rui's crass comment had sullied Gu Muxue's image.
Something was off about Xue Rui today. He wasn't just making snide remarks with a grin; he was even using her goddess, Gu Muxue, as the butt of his jokes. It was too much.
"You're saying Gu Muxue was sneaking glances at me?" Xue Rui thought Mei Lili had lost her mind. 'A few trips to the restroom and she's already cooked up an entire romance novel in her head.'
'Girls this age have such wild trains of thought.' He was having a little trouble keeping up.
"We're eating together later, I'll ask her in person," Xue Rui muttered to himself.
Mei Lili, thinking Xue Rui had realized his mistake, crossed her arms. A smug look spread across her face as she said, "Too late! You made Muxue mad. She went home early today."
A nostalgic look flickered in Xue Rui's eyes. He remembered that Gu Muxue was a day student who went home every day after the evening self-study session. For her to skip even that tonight… 'She must be really angry.'
The reason he remembered was simple: after the evening study session, countless couples would use the cover of darkness to secretly hold hands and meet in hidden corners around campus.
Perhaps out of jealousy, Xue Rui often played the part of a teacher from the dean's office, armed with a high-powered flashlight. He delighted in teasing these young couples, and watching them scatter like birds when disaster struck brought him no end of joy.
Seeing Xue Rui lost in thought, Mei Lili assumed he was engaged in deep self-reflection. With her hands behind her back, she began to swagger toward the back door of Class Two, taking large, yet deliberately slow, steps.
Mei Lili was waiting for Xue Rui to stop her and beg her to put in a good word for him with Gu Muxue.
Suddenly, she felt a weight on her head. A large hand had grabbed her braid.
"Heh heh, just wiping my nose." Xue Rui ran his fingers down her thick, braided pigtail, rubbing his nose as if wiping his hand. He hadn't forgotten how Mei Lili had just scared the daylights out of him.
Mei Lili's face visibly reddened.
Of course, it wasn't from shyness—she was seeing red.
She took a deep breath, and Xue Rui scrambled to cover his ears.
"AHHHHH!!!!"
The scream was as sharp, explosive, and deafening as a steam train's whistle.
The explosive shriek silenced the hallway for a full three seconds before the usual cacophony returned. After all, such things were a common occurrence on a high school campus.
"I'm definitely telling Gu Muxue tomorrow!" Mei Lili stormed off, but not before snatching a book from Qiu Mengze's desk and hurling it at Xue Rui.
"Short Melon, you motherf—%...#$&!"
The biggest victim had appeared. With half an English book cover stuck to his face, Qiu Mengze stuck his head out the window and started cursing up a storm, like a virago screeching in the streets.
He'd been sleeping soundly, and Mei Lili's shriek had nearly scared him half to death. His heart was still pounding, and a vein was throbbing wildly on his forehead.
August in Hedong City was exceptionally muggy. Sweat, acting like glue, had pasted the book to Qiu Mengze's acne-scarred face. When he startled awake and lifted his head, he'd torn the cover right off.
He felt his face and peeled off the half-torn book cover.
"Get away from me," Xue Rui said, looking disgusted.
"Would she have shrieked like that if you hadn't provoked her?" Qiu Mengze asked, clearly annoyed. He didn't know the details, but he could guess the gist of it.
He glanced up at the clock on the back wall of the classroom. Suddenly remembering something, he waggled his eyebrows and said:
"So, are we going tonight? A new internet cafe opened up over by the International Trade building. The girl at the front desk is…"
"Is she as pretty as Gu Muxue? Would she even be interested in you?" Xue Rui interrupted.
"There's no fun in saying that. It's the classic case of a full man not knowing a hungry man's suffering. You hang around a goddess of that caliber every day; of course, everyone else seems average to you."
Qiu Mengze scrubbed his face with his hands. Xue Rui always had to shatter his wonderful fantasies.
"You idiot," Xue Rui sneered. "When you're older, you'll understand just how precious, pure, and naturally beautiful high school girls are. They're nothing like those dolled-up tramps out there."
'Men are all the same. When they're young, they like older, more mature women.'
'But once they get old, they suddenly prefer the 'three-years-and-up' kind of girls.'
'A boy never appreciates the girls his age, wasting his youth chasing after all the wrong things.'
"You talk as if you're so experienced. It's not like you've dated anyone either," Qiu Mengze shot back, before his expression softened into a look of longing.
"Whatever. When I get to college, I'm going to have a passionate, whirlwind romance! I'll walk hand-in-hand with the one I love for the rest of my life."
Xue Rui was left speechless. In his past life, under his influence, Qiu Mengze had actually buckled down and studied, and he ended up getting into a second-tier university.
But by the time he graduated, he still hadn't found a girlfriend. Instead, he'd been scammed out of a good chunk of money by various upperclasswomen and underclasswomen.
"A girlfriend in college? Girls in college are far more calculating. The couples that last are usually the ones that got together in high school." Xue Rui was putting it mildly, not wanting to crush Qiu Mengze completely. The whole truth was much harsher.
First, your classmates in college come from all over the country. When you graduate, you'll either have to face a lifelong long-distance relationship or one person will have to give up their hometown. The result? Graduation season becomes breakup season.
But couples who get together in high school are usually from the same city. Even if they fight during college because of long distance or whatever, as long as they both return home after graduation, they already have that history together. Getting married is pretty much a foregone conclusion.
Second, what people are competitive about in high school is completely different from college. In high school, everyone wears a uniform and eats at the cafeteria. There's precious little to show off, other than your shoes or your phone. It's not a huge burden on a family, and very few students care about their partner's family background.
But college students are more pragmatic. You'll have classmates driving BMWs to class. For guys from average families, it's an unwinnable battle.
Qiu Mengze's family was average; his parents sold fish at the market. Sending him to college was no problem, but he had high standards. The girls he fell for were all money pits. For a family like his, trying to keep up with that kind of spending was a losing game.
As for finding a girlfriend based on his charming personality? If Qiu Mengze had a charming personality, would he still be single?
Basically, to put it simply, the people who have relationships in college are the same people who had them in high school.
And those who didn't have relationships in high school will probably spend their four years of college glued to their computer games.
Besides, as girls get older, their intelligence grows exponentially. They're not so easy to fool anymore.
"The gender ratios in popular majors are usually at one extreme or the other. It's either a total sausage fest or a complete hen party."
"How do you know so much?"
"Actually, I'm from the year 2024."
"Oh? That's a new one. I'm all ears."
"Actually, I'm 29 years old."
"Yeah, right. Why not just say you're 92?"
...
The two bickered for a while.
"Also, it's not that I can't find a girlfriend, I just don't want to settle," Xue Rui added calmly.
Qiu Mengze didn't argue with that, because bullshit doesn't cut you. The truth, however, is a sharp knife.
Even though everyone knew Xue Rui was pursuing Gu Muxue, occasionally some girls would still write love letters to Xue Rui.
Every time Qiu Mengze saw a girl approach him, blushing and fidgeting, his heart would leap. He'd think she'd fallen for his dashing charm;
...until she pulled out a love letter and said, "Could you please give this to Xue Rui?" Then his heart would feel like it had been thrown on the ground and stomped on. The pain was indescribable.
But he did everything Xue Rui did! If Xue Rui smoked, he smoked. If Xue Rui played ball, he played ball… They did almost the exact same things, so why did the girls only have eyes for Xue Rui?
Xue Rui was only a little taller and a tiny bit more handsome, that's all.
At this thought, Qiu Mengze was so jealous he could grit his teeth. He gave Xue Rui a long, hard look. "Brother Rui! Please, teach your little brother a few of your tricks!"
"First, quit smoking. Some people look like Leslie Cheung when they smoke. Others look like Liu Huaqiang…"
Qiu Mengze listened intently to the earnest advice from his "senior," but the more he heard, the more he felt something was off. It was all useless platitudes like "read more books and newspapers, eat fewer snacks, get more sleep." There were no killer tips or secret techniques.
"You're holding out on me! So much for being brothers!" Qiu Mengze slammed his hand on the desk. BAM! BAM!
"Finding a girlfriend is a huge deal," Xue Rui said with a completely straight face. "Tell me, when have I ever lied to you about something important?"
Qiu Mengze thought about it. Every time he was in a jam he couldn't get out of, his good brother had been there to help. Seeing the look on Xue Rui's face, he started to have second thoughts.
"Anyway, let's get back to what we were talking about. In ten-plus years, I'm worth tens of millions, and I own…"
Qiu Mengze could tell Xue Rui was about to launch into a long-winded brag, so he cut him off. "What about me first?"
"You? During the day, you're a food delivery guy cursing out security guards. At night, you're a security guard cursing out food delivery guys…"