20、
Anning gazed out at the dim blue sky and white clouds beyond the window. Turning back and seeing no one in the corridor, she cautiously reached out a hand. Just as she was about to touch his shoulder, her wrist was caught and lowered.
“Don’t get handsy,” he said mildly.
A’Miao nearly burst into tears. “Xu Moting…”
“Mm?”
“You weren’t asleep?”
“Mm.”
“…My shoulder’s sore.”
To her surprise, he cooperated immediately, releasing her and sitting upright. Just as Anning breathed a sigh of relief, he said, “Then go lie on the bed.”
In an instant… everything froze.
At that moment someone knocked on the still-open door. Anning immediately looked over with immense gratitude. The guy outside paused in surprise when he saw her, then turned to Xu Moting and pleaded, “Boss, you have to help me this time! Otherwise I’ll have to pack up and leave!”
“It’s not that exaggerated.” His voice still carried traces of fatigue, though his mood sounded fairly good.
Anning suddenly sighed dramatically. He was always so strict with her.
“My cold and arrogant pride collapsed dejectedly onto the ground bearing your footprints…”
She recited a line from some modern poem she vaguely remembered reading somewhere. The moment she finished, A’Miao realized both men were staring at her.
Xu Moting actually laughed softly before turning back to his classmate. “I’ll be on campus these next couple of days. If you run into any problems, feel free to come find me anytime.”
“You’re a god, boss! Thanks!”
The guy cheered, then suddenly remembered something as he left. “Boss, your girlfriend’s really pretty! Beauty, thanks to you too!”
…What did that have to do with her?
A’Miao’s thoughts became even more tangled. Seeing Moting looking at her, she inexplicably grew guilty, so she decided to change to a lighter topic.
“Uh, do you know why gods vanish? My theory is that during the primordial era, the world was unstable, so many gods guarded different regions. But once matter and structure stabilized, the gods gradually disappeared…”
Under his thoughtful gaze, Anning’s voice grew softer and softer.
“Mm… beings like gods are anomalies after all. Even though they’re powerful, both their personalities and powers are unstable…”
(Understand this part? Just substitute a certain someone into the theory… though Anning herself had absolutely no awareness of it.)
Silence.
Awkward silence.
Speechless silence.
But Anning felt her luck was truly good, because someone knocked on the door again.
Xu Chengyu didn’t look especially surprised upon seeing her. Instead, she grinned slyly at her cousin. “Heard you caught a cold, so I came to visit. Looks like I worried for nothing.”
“Either come in or shut the door on your way out.” His tone was soft yet still carried authority.
Xu Chengyu immediately raised both hands. “Leaving, leaving!”
Then she added, “Li Anning, wanna head back too?”
Normally she wouldn’t have dared. But with her cousin weakened for once, and someone capable of influencing him conveniently appearing beside him, she naturally refused to miss such a golden opportunity — even if she might get slapped with a red-card warning afterward.
Meanwhile, what Anning was thinking was… Mm, this girl looked familiar.
So, as usual, she smiled politely and minimized her words to minimize mistakes.
But regarding the question of leaving—
“Yes!”
Xu Chengyu clearly hadn’t expected such a straightforward answer and burst out laughing. Moting rubbed his forehead before finally saying, “Chengyu, trouble you to escort her back. And don’t talk nonsense.”
The last sentence carried a hint of warning.
As Xu Chengyu walked out arm-in-arm with A’Miao, the corners of her mouth remained tilted upward at a perfect forty-five-degree angle.
Being able to snatch something away from Cousin Moting — and something of this level, no less — was definitely unprecedented.
Tilting her head to look at the girl beside her, she muttered to herself, “Doesn’t this feel like: ‘The whole world belongs to you, but you belong to me’?”
Anning considered it before replying, “In a bar, the waiter asks, ‘Sir, would you like anything else?’ He answers, ‘No, please let me be alone for a while.’ The punchline: he forgot to bring his wallet.”
“…Huh?”
“Wasn’t this a joke chain game?”
It was only much later that Chengyu finally realized…
Had she just been insulted?
Either this girl was unfathomably calculating, or her thought process was simply beyond ordinary human comprehension.
After parting ways with Xu Chengyu, Anning entered the dorm building and once again encountered Jiang Xu. He was chatting with the dorm supervisor, his conversational skills apparently effective on every demographic imaginable. The moment he saw her, he stood and walked over.
Anning was surprised. “Qiangwei still hasn’t come back?”
“I’m waiting for you.”
“For me? What for?”
He glanced around before lowering his voice, his tone filled with disbelief.
“You’re really together with Xu Moting?!”
That night, Anning called her cousin.
“I offended someone…”
Her cousin sighed sympathetically. “Same boat here. First day at work today and I already got into a fight with a client. Long story short, because of some ghostly permission settings on the remote server, I had to communicate with a European client living in a timezone six hours behind ours. Then because my spoken English is terrible and his accent was completely bizarre, after twenty minutes we each started arguing in our own language — or rather, dialects!”
Just then Qiangwei burst into the room yelling, “This morning Opera Mini kept throwing 404 errors, and I already had a bad feeling! Damn it! ‘Chinese users please visit mini.opera.com to immediately upgrade to Opera Mini China Edition — faster and more stable.’ Stable my ass! Your whole family is stable!”
Mao Mao jumped off the scale. “Starving is awful! I could tolerate it if I lost weight, but the damn thing says I gained some instead!!”
Uh… were they competing to see who was more miserable?
Compared to them, her own situation didn’t seem quite so tragic.
She’d only offended one famous person on campus…
Honestly, was “Mm… what’s it got to do with you?” really that excessive?
She’d only spoken the truth.
Though he really had stormed off afterward.
Qiangwei cried, “Miao, help me see if this can be fixed!”
Anning: “Isn’t the Chinese version fine?”
Qiangwei: “I have a generation gap with it! Besides, I’m already so used to the English version I can practically blind-type with it. I don’t want to compromise!”
Mao Mao: “How about downloading the international version modified for domestic servers from the OperaChina forums?”
“Mm…” Anning had barely opened her mouth when Mao Mao interrupted:
“Though I retired from the Opera world years ago, you still must not casually provoke a martial artist!”
Anning: “I only wanted to say—”
Mao Mao: “What are you trying to do?! A’Miao, stop! Control your beastly instincts! Restrain your violent impulses… No! This path leads only to sin!”
Qiangwei: “I really want to strangle you!”
Anning sighed. “Mao Mao, I only wanted to say your answer was pretty good.”
“……”