Chapter 51: Suddenly Annoyed
"Seriously! You should get Steam! There are so many fun single-player games!"
"St... Steam?"
"Yep, yep! And if you don’t like single-player games, there’s also Dota and CSGO. We can play together when we go home for the weekend!"
"I don’t have a computer at home. What about you, Hu Wei?"
"I don’t have one either."
The two girls looked at each other in confusion, then turned their puzzled gazes toward Chen Cheng.
Seeing their reaction, Chen Cheng gave up on trying to drag her friends into gaming.
Steam users are still few in China. It wasn’t surprising that girls hadn’t heard of it, but even among the guys in their class who liked gaming, probably only a few knew about it.
Chen Cheng had first learned about Steam through Dota 2’s beta test. But it wasn’t until college, when she had more free time and her own money, that she actually started buying games.
"What are you guys talking about? Why aren’t you eating?"
An Yuan sat down next to Chen Cheng with his lunch tray and handed out four bowls of seaweed egg soup that he had brought for the girls.
All of them turned to look at him in unison. He paused, then took a bite of his rice. His expression changed slightly as he chewed, then he spit it out.
"This rice... tastes kinda weird?"
He wasn’t completely sure. The strange taste was faint, you wouldn’t even notice it if you didn’t chew carefully.
"That’s why none of us are eating," Chen Cheng muttered as she picked through her stir-fried tomato with tomato dish, looking for eggs. "The cafeteria’s getting worse. Where are the eggs?"
She was mainly upset about wasting her money. She could tolerate finding the occasional hair or random foreign object in the food, but today’s meal was just inedible.
Chen Shuting nodded in agreement. "I heard someone even found a piece of a dishcloth in their food. No idea how that happened."
"Why don’t we just eat outside?" Hu Wei suggested. "Or we can grab some bread or instant noodles from the shop?"
"Instant noodles sound good, but what about hot water?"
Chen Cheng suddenly got excited at the thought of instant noodles. She hadn’t had them in a while, and now she was craving them. But if she ate too much, she’d probably get sick of them again.
"We can go to my dorm! There’s free hot water in the dorm building!"
The girls' dormitory, huh?
Chen Cheng had never actually been inside one before!
"What about you, An Yuan?"
"I’ll go play basketball. If you need me, just call. It’s not like I can go to the girls' dorm anyway, right?"
Just then, a loud commotion broke out at the cafeteria counter. Chen Cheng turned her head and tugged on An Yuan’s sleeve.
"Are they fighting over there?"
A vague memory suddenly became clear in her mind. It was this exact kind of incident, where the rice had gone bad, that had made An Yuan lose his temper back in high school. He had been so fed up that he led the senior class in storming the cafeteria.
Of course, with her introverted personality, Chen Cheng hadn’t been part of it. She had been sitting in the classroom that day, quietly eating bread while doing homework. By the time she heard about it, it was already the evening study session, and all she could do was listen to An Yuan brag about it.
"Let’s stay out of it. Come on, let’s go."
Not wanting to get dragged into the chaos, An Yuan quickly got up and motioned for the others to leave.
"Oh~ Shuting, Hu Wei, let’s head to the shop!"
The school’s convenience store was actually pretty decent, rumor had it that their math teacher ran it. Prices were only 50 fen (0,5 yuan) higher than outside, and sometimes they even stocked burgers and fried chicken for students craving something different.
After buying seafood-flavored instant noodles, Chen Cheng followed her two friends into the girls' dorm.
The hallway faced the basketball court, and when she turned her head, she could clearly see An Yuan chasing after the ball.
Maybe because they knew they were being watched by the girls in the dorm, the high school boys playing basketball were going all out.
After watching for a while, Chen Cheng noticed that An Yuan was under pressure, he kept getting his rebounds stolen.
"Chengcheng, stop watching your husband play basketball! Over here!"
"Oh, so now he’s my husband? Weren’t you just calling him my boyfriend earlier? How did this rumor get worse?"
Chen Cheng rolled her eyes at Hu Wei, then jogged over and went into the hot water room to prepare her instant noodles.
It was her first time visiting the girls’ dorm, so she was curious about everything. She kept looking around, sniffing the air every now and then.
Once she got to college, she’d be living in a dorm too. Might as well take this chance to check things out.
"Shuting, how many group chats does your dorm have?"
"Just one. Why?"
"Then what do you guys usually do in the dorm? You don’t have computers to play games. Isn’t it boring?"
Shuting thought for a moment. "Wanyi does yoga and practices makeup. Hu Wei and I sing together a lot... Sometimes after evening study, the dormitory students stay in the classroom to watch movies."
"Wanyi?"
"Yeah, don’t you remember? Li Wanyi is in our dorm."
Oh no. Not her again.
Chen Cheng pressed her lips together, furrowing her brows as she mentally prepared for battle. She followed her two friends inside.
The dorm was a cramped eight-person room with metal bunk beds. There were two wardrobes, one on each side, and long benches served as makeshift tables, cluttered with personal belongings. The floor was relatively clean, but the room itself was messy. Clothes hung everywhere, and the balcony had a bucket of murky black water soaking laundry.
"Watch your head."
There was only one power socket for the entire dorm. To charge their phones, they had plugged multiple power strips into each other, with extension cords dangling through the air to the upper bunks.
Technically, boarding students weren’t allowed to have phones, let alone use power strips. But as long as they hid them during inspections, the rules weren’t strictly enforced.
Chen Cheng’s future college dorm was way better than this. She had specifically chosen her university based on its dorm conditions. She was terrified of ending up in a crowded eight-person room with communal showers. Later, she found out that most schools in the south at least had small shower stalls, even if they didn’t have private bathrooms.
"Whose clothes are those?"
Carefully holding her cup of instant noodles, Chen Cheng sat on Hu Wei’s lower bunk and placed her food on the bench in front of her.
"Wanyi’s~"
"Ugh, so messy."
"Who are you calling messy?! I've been enduring you for a long time! Did you follow me here just to talk trash?!"
The blanket on the top bunk suddenly flipped open, and Li Wanyi sat up, glaring furiously at Chen Cheng.
"......"
Chen Cheng shrank back awkwardly. She’d been caught badmouthing someone right in front of them.
"I was just here to eat my noodles..."
"Then eat and get lost!"
Hu Wei’s big eyes darted around mischievously. She leaned in and whispered into Chen Cheng’s ear, "She’s just mad she couldn’t steal your man, so now she’s throwing a tantrum."
"What? Don’t make stuff up. Who’s stealing who’s man?"
Chen Cheng was just trying to rescue An Yuan from this toxic woman, not steal anyone. Besides, they were childhood friends, did she even need to compete?
She stole a quick glance at Li Wanyi. The so-called "bad woman" had probably been napping before they came in. She was now sitting there in nothing but a black lace bra, completely unfazed, back straight, eyes locked onto Chen Cheng.
Her dormmates were clearly used to this, but Chen Cheng wasn’t. She only glanced for a second, yet the sight of that obnoxiously white and jiggling cleavage made her dizzy. Her face heated up, and she hurriedly picked up her noodles.
"I’m gonna eat in the hallway while watching An Yuan play basketball."
"Hah! Feeling insecure, huh?"
Li Wanyi smirked triumphantly, puffing out her chest even more.
Insecure my ass! Who compares boobs with a guy?!
On instinct, Chen Cheng glanced down at her own chest.
Inside her loose school jacket, her curves weren't very visible unless she opened the jacket. They aren't small, but it wasn't massive either. The size was just right to hold in the entire palm. Argh, why did she care about things like this? But... okay, maybe she wasn’t exactly winning in this department.
For some reason, she was suddenly filled with an inexplicable anger towards her.
What's there to be so proud of?