Chapter 16: Online Dating
Luo Jing’s brain short-circuited.
He was silent for a moment, then asked blankly, “Do I have to go now?”
Wasn’t this a bit too sudden?
“No.” Lin Xue chuckled. “You’ll attend an international school in China for high school, and then go abroad for university.”
“Your dad and I think you might prefer this education system. You can look into it.”
“Yes,” Luo Zhang agreed concisely. “We mainly want you to be happy, and going abroad can also broaden your horizons.”
Luo Jing felt conflicted, like he had been living in a dream all day.
“You can take your time to consider it. It’s not urgent. Let’s eat first.” Seeing his son’s dilemma, Luo Zhang tried to ease the tension. “By the way, I bought you a birthday gift. See if you like it…”
This was just a preliminary idea. In fact, the couple hadn’t fully made up their minds yet. Studying abroad required much more consideration than studying domestically.
And they weren’t entirely at ease with Luo Jing being alone abroad.
After dinner, Luo Jing went back to his room and sat for a while.
He felt like he had received too much information today, and his brain couldn’t process it all.
Opening his phone, he didn’t know whether to share the news of potentially studying abroad with his friends first or work on his second sister’s character setting.
After hesitating for a while, he followed his heart and opened Huai Dan’s chat window.
AAA.Homework Wholesaler Xiao Luo: [Brother, my parents want me to study abroad for university.]
Huai Dan seemed busy and replied after a while: [That’s good. What do you think?]
AAA.Homework Wholesaler Xiao Luo: [I don’t know much about it yet, but they said I might like it.]
Brother: [I also think you might like it.]
Brother: [But it’s up to you.]
So Luo Jing spent the entire evening researching online. The next morning, he appeared at school with faint dark circles under his eyes, looking listless.
“Wow,” his deskmate exclaimed upon seeing him, “You stayed up all night? Didn’t you finish your homework?”
“It wasn’t homework,” Luo Jing yawned. “My parents want me to study abroad, so I was looking into it last night.”
His deskmate was stunned for a moment but not too surprised: “Brother Luo, don’t forget about us when you’re rich and famous. By the way, can you buy things for me then…”
“Really?” Wu Li, hearing the commotion, also turned around to join the conversation. “Then did you finish designing your second sister yesterday?”
Luo Jing’s hand, reaching for his water bottle, froze.
Damn, he forgot.
He took out his phone and switched to his alternate account. The friend request was still prominently displayed at the top of his contact list, waiting to be accepted.
His heart tightened, and he instinctively clicked “Accept.”
The message “You have added each other as friends” popped up, and Luo Jing’s scalp went numb.
Ignoring his deskmate’s curious questions after hearing Wu Li’s words, he quickly put his phone in front of Wu Li: “Help me, help me.”
Wu Li glanced at it and laughed unkindly, the laughter mostly mocking, then said helplessly, “I’ve never had an online relationship, you’ll have to ask someone else.”
“…” Luo Jing gave him a look of exasperation, then looked back at his phone screen, the exasperation turning into infinite guilt and distress.
What should he do? What should he say?
After pondering for a moment, he typed and sent a “Hello.”
“What’s going on? Who’s having an online relationship?” His deskmate immediately leaned in, his eyes shining with the desire for gossip. “Is it you, Luo Jing?”
“No!” he instinctively denied.
“But actually… it’s kind of the same,” he then muttered softly.
Gossip was human nature. His deskmate hadn’t been very interested initially, but Luo Jing’s behavior piqued his curiosity, so he also looked at the phone screen.
“Are you chasing her?” His deskmate commented while looking, “Judging by the profile picture and name, it doesn’t seem like a girl. Is it a guy?”
“Or do you like this type?”
Wu Li chuckled, about to reveal the truth to Luo Jing’s deskmate and join him in mocking and ridiculing Luo Jing, when Luo Jing’s gaze shot over.
It carried the message “If you dare say anything, you’re dead.”
Wu Li: “…”
“Yes, this is the guy he likes, he’s chasing him,” he said instead.
Luo Jing closed his eyes, suppressing the urge to hit him.
It wasn’t much better.
He would definitely find an opportunity to beat Wu Li up.
Hearing this, his deskmate looked at Luo Jing as if seeing him for the first time, with a hint of novelty: “So you like guys? I always thought you liked girls.”
Although same-sex relationships had long been legalized, heterosexual relationships were still the mainstream, and Luo Jing had never shown any such inclinations before, so his deskmate was a bit surprised.
But then again, Luo Jing hadn’t shown any interest in any girls either.
Thinking about it this way, it seemed quite reasonable.
“Chasing a guy is easy,” his deskmate said eagerly. “We’re all guys.”
“It’s different. The guy he likes is several years older than him, a university student,” Wu Li said mysteriously.
“Really?! Luo Jing, you’re aiming high for your first relationship!” His deskmate was instantly impressed.
The fact that the person Luo Jing liked was so much older than him was more surprising than the fact that he liked guys.
In the eyes of a junior high student, university students were adults, and they felt very distant.
Like they were worlds apart.
“Actually, it’s not that bad, just four or five years older,” Wu Li tried to encourage him to think outside the box and be more open-minded.
“Now that you mention it, that’s true…” His deskmate pondered.
“Right, right.”
They were enjoying their conversation, but the person involved felt suffocated.
Luo Jing was incredibly embarrassed by their casual discussion.
And hearing the words “the person he likes,” “crush,” and “the guy he’s chasing” repeatedly, he almost started to believe he was actually chasing someone.
“Stop it, please,” Luo Jing looked at the two culprits, unable to bear it.
His phone vibrated. Luo Jing instinctively looked over and saw Huai Dan had just replied.
H: [Awake?]
The tone was too familiar. Luo Jing was about to reply instinctively when he noticed the unchanged note and snapped back to reality, deleting the typed words.
He almost forgot he was on his alternate account.
Luo Jing felt a lingering fear and poked Huai Dan’s profile picture irritably.
Why hadn’t he noticed how familiar Huai Dan acted before?
[I poked “H”]
H: [?]
Luo Jing: “…”
He wished the earth would swallow him whole.
He thought for a moment, deciding to pretend nothing had happened, and replied awkwardly.
L: [Sorry for taking so long to accept your friend request.]
Polite, appropriate, flawless.
To show his compatibility with Huai Dan and create a sense of them being a good match, Luo Jing had deliberately chosen a nickname for his “second sister” that was similar in style to Huai Dan’s.
H: [It’s okay.]
H: [In class?]
Luo Jing: ?
He was startled by this question, momentarily feeling like the other person was actually talking to him. Then he remembered that his “second sister” was also a student, so he suppressed his inexplicable guilt and continued to reply calmly.
L: [Yes.]
H: [Don’t get distracted in class.]
“Clang.”
Luo Jing threw his phone into the drawer.
Wu Li, who had been chatting with Luo Jing’s deskmate, was startled by the sudden noise.
“What’s wrong now?” Wu Li looked at him, puzzled.
Luo Jing was silent and covered his face with his hands.
Deskmate: “?”
After a moment, he removed his hands from his face. Perhaps due to the brief lack of oxygen, his face was slightly flushed, as if he had encountered something extremely embarrassing.
Every word Huai Dan said felt like it was directed at him, amplifying his guilt infinitely.
He felt like he was about to be exposed if they continued chatting, or that he wouldn’t be able to control himself and tell Huai Dan the truth.
“This is too difficult,” Luo Jing said. “I feel like one of those fake mountebanks, forced to perform in front of the emperor.”
He felt like he was about to lose his head.
“Then go online and learn, improve your ‘scamming skills’,” Wu Li suggested.
His deskmate was confused, not understanding why the topic had shifted from chasing someone to scamming someone.
Luo Jing, however, found this suggestion very constructive.
He started searching for “how to have an online relationship.”
After pressing the search button, the screen froze for a second, and then countless posts about online relationships appeared before Luo Jing. He felt a sense of awe and the vague feeling of a new world opening up to him.
Suppressing his strange thoughts, he clicked on a few posts and started reading carefully.
After a busy day, Master Luo returned home.
The various online dating-related knowledge he had acquired lingered in his mind. He felt like he had become an online dating master after being baptized by this wealth of information.
He couldn’t wait to put his newfound skills to use.
An online guru had said it right: online dating was all about chatting, sharing daily life, and finding common ground, or making the other person feel like they had found a soulmate through shared interests.
Luo Jing decided to start with shared interests.
He opened his phone with determination.
AAA.Homework Wholesaler Xiao Luo: [Brother, what do you usually like to do?]
Brother: [What’s wrong?]
AAA.Homework Wholesaler Xiao Luo: [Just asking.]
Brother: [Nothing in particular. I look at stocks when I have free time.]
Brother: [Finished your homework?]
Luo Jing fell silent.
Firstly, he didn’t understand stocks. Secondly, he hadn’t actually finished his homework.
He usually did some of it at school, so he wouldn’t have much left to do at home, but today he had been busy improving his online dating skills and hadn’t had time.
With the high school entrance exam approaching, he already had a lot of homework. Hearing Huai Dan mention it, Luo Jing felt despair.
AAA.Homework Wholesaler Xiao Luo: [No, I’ll do it now…]
For some reason, he always felt like he was facing a teacher when talking to Huai Dan recently.
Even more so than an actual teacher.
Brother: [Mm, go do it. Finish it early and rest early.]
“Sigh.” Luo Jing sighed, put his backpack on the desk, and started taking out his homework.
Fortunately, it was just the beginning of the semester, and the teachers might not have regained their end-of-semester homework-assigning momentum yet, so they had been merciful… Wait, what was this?
Luo Jing stared at a black envelope that had fallen out from between two workbooks, lost in thought.
He tried to recall for half a minute but couldn’t remember ever having this.
He instinctively turned it over to look at the front and saw a few words written on the envelope in white ink, in neat handwriting: To Luo Jing.
Luo Jing: “???”
His first thought was that it was a love letter.
His second thought was that he had never seen this color before. It was quite special, and it looked a bit menacing, so he wasn’t quite sure what the contents were.
Thinking it might be some kind of strange challenge letter, Luo Jing opened the envelope, took out the letter, and quickly scanned it.
Luo Jing: “…”
It really was a love letter.
But to his surprise, the content of this love letter was a bit special.
The sender didn’t ask him to date them, but simply expressed their admiration for him, then detailed their secret crush, and said they didn’t expect anything in return after crushing for so long, but they felt that since graduation was approaching, they might regret it if they didn’t confess.
Although the wording was a bit stiff and strangely awkward, the details of the secret crush were written sincerely and vividly, enough to move anyone who read it.
However, the more Luo Jing read, the more familiar some of the details seemed.
An absurd but compelling guess appeared in his mind.
He looked at the signature at the end of the letter with a blank expression.
It really was their class’ math representative.
But… but he was a guy!
Luo Jing was dumbfounded, feeling the absurdity of opening a math textbook and finding a dating guide inside.
