Wen Qian glanced at the NPC beside her.
Wow, what an extremely average, generic face.
He looked like the kind of character that appears in bulk in games, always wandering around maps as part of the background.
“Uh, because I’m a student here?”
Wen Qian didn’t ignore his question—although she found it strange.
Why was she wearing the school uniform? Obviously because she was a student here. Uniforms were meant to identify students, right?
“Student?” The boy looked surprised. His gaze fell onto Wen Qian’s chest—her student name tag, half hidden by the folded collar earlier, was now visible. The confusion on his face instantly vanished.
A scholarship student, huh? Was she doing work-study?
But wait, did their school even have work-study jobs? He had never seen one.
When the elevator doors opened, Wen Qian pulled her little trolley cart out first. She didn’t wait for the NPC’s second round of dialogue.
It seemed NPCs in this game didn’t always trigger quests. She had slowly realized that most of the time, their attempts at conversation weren’t mission-related.
Probably designed this way to enrich the background world. The immersion was indeed pretty good.
The girl dragging a desk down the hallway became a scenic highlight. Everyone she passed turned their heads to stare, but the player didn’t care at all—she was focused on monitoring her decreasing stamina bar.
She was obsessed with finding a walking speed that would get her home quickly without consuming extra stamina.
At the school gate, the security team stood in formation, maintaining academy safety. The leader’s expression turned odd when he saw Wen Qian dragging a classroom desk.
What in the world?
After working here for so long, he still couldn’t get used to the eccentric behavior of the academy’s rich heirs and heiresses.
This one was a perfect example.
Why was she taking a school desk home after class?!
Though his inner thoughts ran wild, his face remained stern and unreadable. His gaze met Wen Qian’s—after a moment of silence, he gave her a polite nod.
With his hands clasped behind him, he completely ignored her afterward, scanning the entrance with eagle-like sharpness to spot suspicious figures.
As for stopping the student dragging a desk out of school?
Impossible.
She was probably just someone who suddenly developed a unique interest in school furniture and wanted to take it home for research.
It’s not like she was stealing it, right?
Besides, how likely was theft in this academy? And even if someone were to steal something, who would do it so boldly?
Amused by his own imagination, the guard shook his head and looked at the subordinate next to him.
“What did I tell you before? Use your eyes! Go on, help her.” He nodded toward Wen Qian. “And be polite.”
Wen Qian was now even more convinced that taking a desk home to do homework must be some hidden valid solution the game allowed.
Otherwise why wouldn’t even the gate security question her?
He didn’t even ask a single thing.
Clearly, taking desks home was allowed in this academy.
Wen Qian happily nodded back at the guard.
—Then she saw him turn and whisper something to the person beside him. The subordinate nodded with understanding and jogged toward her.
Wen Qian’s smile froze.
What now? Was that friendly nod earlier just a trick to lower her guard so they could apprehend her afterward?!
Such cunning!
Despairing, little Wen prepared to grab her beef noodles from her pocket for stamina recovery in case she needed to run for her life.
“Where are you going? I’ll help you drag this.”
The security guy approached with an honest, sunny smile, though looking slightly nervous.
Why did he feel like this student was staring at him like an enemy? Did he do something wrong?
Remembering that you shouldn’t be rude to friendly people, he smiled even harder.
Wen Qian looked up—and was nearly blinded by his radiance.
Oh… he was here to help.
She thought he was about to arrest her… cough.
She casually withdrew her hand from her pocket, pretending she was never about to pull out beef noodles.
“Then thank you. Just help me drag it to that corner up ahead.” She pointed near the school gate.
“Don’t worry, leave it to me!”
In the back seat of a car, Chu Lingyu cast an impatient glance at the butler driving, who was still earnestly advising him to apologize to his family.
“Apologize? To whom?” His sharp gaze locked onto the butler. “Stop saying useless things.”
He leaned back, tone irritated. “Don’t meddle in my business. If you do it again, don’t bother coming to see me.”
Seeing the hostility on the boy’s face at the mention of his family, the butler sighed and remained silent.
Chu Lingyu tugged at his collar in frustration, cursing his idiotic father internally. He turned to look out the window, trying to distract himself.
Loren?
He frowned, recognizing the owner of a nearby car.
Why was he coming to the academy?
The sleek black vehicle slowly followed a girl on the sidewalk. When she noticed, the driver rolled down his window, resting one hand lazily on the wheel while waving at her with the other.
“Want a ride?” Loren asked casually, ignoring the surprised looks from people nearby.
Wen Qian, who had indeed felt the car following her, stared blankly for a moment when she saw Loren.
Ah! This NPC again!
“It’s you!” Wen Qian brightened—what luck! “Can I—… actually, no, I can’t.”
After getting a proper look at the car, her attitude flipped instantly.
“Can’t?”
“Yeah.” Wen Qian glanced regretfully at the car. “Your car won’t work.”
It was the first time Loren had heard someone say that about his car. The smile on his face paused as he examined her.
Was she serious?
“Why? You don’t like it?” he asked, sounding a little aggrieved—an act that usually worked flawlessly.
But Wen Qian wasn’t listening. Her attention was fixed elsewhere. Loren followed her gaze and saw a guard jogging toward them with the little trolley.
More accurately, the guard was approaching Wen Qian.
Wen Qian accepted the trolley, then remembered she hadn’t answered Loren’s question.
She patted the desk stacked on it. “This is the reason.”
“Huh?”
Wen Qian explained matter-of-factly, “It’s not that I dislike your car. You just don’t have a trunk, right?”
“How am I supposed to bring my desk home without a trunk?”
Loren froze, slightly confused. “…Why are you bringing this?”
“To do homework.” Wen Qian patiently explained to this NPC who had given her a quest before. “You need a desk to do homework. That’s common sense.”
Loren was speechless.
This was the part she focused on?
His silence seemed like the end of the conversation to Wen Qian, so she continued dragging her cart home.
At her apartment door, Wen Qian and her trusty trolley were stuck outside again.
The cursed door verification system was about to drive her insane—new verification every single day, and daily suffering for her.
Unable to pass it, she couldn’t even enter her own home. She stood there in silence, listening to the cheap sound effect looping in her ears.
Again! No way she would fail this time!
【Door Verification – Attempt #4 Initiated】
【Please arrange the following animals from largest to smallest】
Wen Qian stared at the images, expression frozen.
Great. New problem:
Which is bigger, a magpie or a crow?
Jiang Zhi stepped out of the elevator with a cold expression. When he reached his door and entered the code, a soft muttering nearby caught his attention.
He turned to the side and saw his never-before-seen neighbor—blocked by a desk and chair so he couldn’t see her face, but she was probably a girl.
Uninterested, he looked away and entered his home.
The minimalist apartment was spacious, decorated in gray-white tones. With almost no soft furnishings besides the essentials, the place felt even colder.
He shut the door, pulled off his shirt with one hand, revealing faint scars across his abs, then tossed the shirt into the laundry basket and walked into the bathroom.
In contrast, Wen Qian—completely unaware that the unit next door was identical to hers—looked around her tiny home and sighed.
“It’s like playing a home-decor game. Kinda cute.”
It would be perfect if only she didn’t have to live here. Sob.
When would she finally level up enough to expand her house?
She couldn’t stand living in a place where the bathroom was on one side and the kitchen on the other for even one more day!