Xie Ran was given the creeps by Wang Dazhuang’s evaluating gaze. Knowing that his childhood friend’s train of thought was always wonderfully bizarre, he couldn’t help but push the other guy away, saying,
“Wang Dazhuang, what kind of weird things are you daydreaming about?”
Wang Dazhuang wore a subtle smile. “Nothing.”
Xie Ran felt that the other person’s smile was extremely eerie, revealing a look of disbelief. “Then why are you smiling so lewdly?”
Wang Dazhuang said, “I thought of something funny.”
Xie Ran asked, “What thing?”
Wang Dazhuang spouted nonsense, “My roommate raised a chrysanthemum flower, and it grew very pretty, but it ended up being picked by another roommate.”
Xie Ran’s strong sense of keenness told him that Wang Dazhuang was definitely implying something.
“Wang Dazhuang,” he scrutinized the other person, trying to find clues from his facial expression.
Wang Dazhuang chuckled happily.
He coughed twice, reigning in his smile. “Alright, I’m not teasing you anymore. I just feel like Jiang Xu treats you a bit differently. Rumor has it that he is gay, so I think since you’re fair-skinned and handsome, didn’t he fall for you?”
Xie Ran knew that no ivory would ever come out of a dog’s mouth.
He said, “Alright, you can shut up.”
If he hadn’t learned from others that Jiang Xu was homophobic, he would have almost believed Wang Dazhuang’s ghost stories.
In other words, Xie Ran didn’t believe a single version of Jiang Xu circulating on the forums.
After all, a certain saying was exceptionally true: there are a hundred versions of me in the mouths of a hundred people.
Besides, he couldn’t see how Jiang Xu treats him any differently. Wasn’t it just because nobody else took the initiative to strike up a conversation with the guy?
“Also,” Wang Dazhuang raised a protest, “don’t call me Wang Dazhuang anymore. That name is really tacky.”
Xie Ran smiled slightly. “No can do.”
“You chose that name yourself back in the day, saying you needed to be masculine to protect Weiwei.”
Past events were too humiliating to look back on, so Wang Dazhuang chose to mentally check out.
Who didn’t have any social-death dark history in their childhood?
If Xie Ran’s was cross-dressing in kindergarten, then Wang Dazhuang felt his own name sounded a bit girly, so he cried for three days and nights at home until his parents took him to change his name to “Wang Dazhuang”.
As a result, he had been called that by his childhood friend and girlfriend ever since.
How infuriating, but he still had to maintain a smile.
“Alright, stop messing around,” Xie Ran said. “Don’t you have a basketball match? Jiang Xu already went over to get ready, so you hurry up and go change your clothes and do some warm-up exercises before taking the court.”
Wang Dazhuang lowered his head. “Fine, then you go buy me some water.”
“Remember to buy the drink I like, too.”
With that, he gazed deeply at Xie Ran. “The time to test our friendship has arrived. I hope you won’t let me down.”
“Otherwise, the puppy of friendship will die the moment it’s told to.”
Xie Ran: “…”
After saying that, the other person hurried toward the gymnasium.
Xie Ran remembered there was a vending machine nearby, so he turned and walked out to buy water for Wang Dazhuang. When choosing the quantity, he deliberated for a moment, then finally pressed “2” and bought two different drinks.
No matter what, Jiang Xu was his roommate.
Sending a little warmth was fine, too.
In the front row of the gymnasium spectator stands.
Tan Hao, dyed with red hair, was holding a basketball in his arms and chatting with a few others nearby about the afternoon match.
Catching sight of Jiang Xu walking toward them from the corner of his eye, he let out a rogue-like whistle.
In a lazy tone, he jokingly asked, “Ah-Xu, did it take you an hour to walk from your dorm to the gymnasium?”
“Could it be you were held back by some pretty little sister?”
His gaze landed on the camera in the other person’s hand, a hint of playfulness flashing across his handsome face, “How come you even brought a camera along?”
Looking closely, one could tell that today’s Jiang Xu seemed to have given his hairstyle a bit of extra styling, unable to hold back from unleashing his personal charm.
Tan Hao twirled the basketball in the palm of his hand. “Who is our Young Master Jiang trying to charm to death here?”
Then he guessed speculatively, “Could it be you’re meeting up for a face-to-face meet-up with that little girl from your burner account?”
Jiang Xu cast a cold glance at the other person and spat out two words, “Boring.”
“Boring?” Tan Hao said shamelessly, “Then let’s all spend your money together, that way it won’t be boring.”
He Ruizhe arrived fashionably late and happened to catch this sentence, inserting himself into the topic, “Don’t bully my brother.”
“His money can only be spent on me.”
As those words fell, Tan Hao tossed the basketball to He Ruizhe, who agilely caught it, bounced it twice on the ground, and then propped his index finger up to balance the ball on top, spinning it smoothly and steadily.
“You wish.”
“Your brother is going to have a girlfriend sooner or later.”
He Ruizhe let out a couple of muffled snorts and hugged the basketball to his chest.
He said unconcernedly, “Look at him running to the lab every day. He hasn’t been in a relationship from elementary school all the way to university, spending every day looking like the abstinent, aloof Buddhist monk from romance novels. When on earth am I going to have a sister-in-law?”
Then he tilted his head to look at Jiang Xu. “Brother, are you waiting for a home-invasion style romance?”
Tan Hao let out a snort and couldn’t help laughing out loud.
“Who dares to rob Ah-Xu? He doesn’t even bother with little girls, so even if someone breaks into his home, it’s useless.”
“Besides, your brother is way too unromantic.”
“The girls just look at his good looks, good figure, and money. Being able to last thirty minutes hanging out with him is already considered awesome.”
Jiang Xu was long used to being teased by the two of them.
As the saying goes, he had poor taste in friends.
A familiar figure appeared in his peripheral vision, so he tilted his head and looked toward the entrance of the gymnasium.
Xie Ran was walking over carrying a plastic bag.
The other person was looking around, seemingly searching for someone.
As Tan Hao spoke, he noticed that Jiang Xu wasn’t scolding him, but instead staring unblinkingly at the entrance. He followed the direction of the other’s gaze to peek over, wanting to see what was catching his attention.
The first thing he saw was Xie Ran carrying a plastic bag.
The other person was overly famous on campus, and deservingly so. That delicate and striking face stood out exceptionally well in a crowd.
“Isn’t that Xie Ran from the art department?” Tan Hao frequently hung out on forums and major alumni group chats, so he obviously recognized the other person.
Seeming to think of something, he couldn’t help clicking his tongue twice, “I remember quite a few little girls like Xie Ran’s type.”
“Take the freshman from the economics department I chased last month, for instance. She rejected me precisely because of Xie Ran, saying something about how her heart already belonged to someone and she liked guys of Xie Ran’s type.”
Talking about this made him feel depressed; Tan Hao genuinely didn’t understand what was so great about someone with thin arms and legs like Xie Ran.
He was tall, big, and mighty, yet he got rejected?
He had asked that exact question back then, but the little freshman’s face turned dark, and she scolded him for slandering Xie Ran, chewed him out fiercely, and deleted him from her friends list.
“I just don’t get it,” Tan Hao said, clueless. “I didn’t say anything wrong, did I? Didn’t I just ask a question about whether a guy like Xie Ran could give her a sense of security? Was there something wrong with that sentence?”
He Ruizhe mocked him, “Serves you right.”
“People already said they liked Xie Ran, and you just had to ask such a low-EQ question. If she didn’t delete you, who else would she delete?”
“Should she delete me instead?”
Tan Hao was itching to go up and punch He Ruizhe, deliberately pinching his voice to complain, “Brother Jiang Xu, look at him.”
“Get lost.” Jiang Xu frowned coldly.
Why was the way Tan Hao shouted those four words so drastically different from the way Xie Ran shouted them?
Tan Hao deserved to be deleted by the girl he liked.
It was simply too nauseating.
A world where only Tan Hao got hurt had been achieved.
He asked with feigned heartache, “Who on earth is your good friend anyway?”