314: I Only Barely Passed Through Bribery (2)

I Only Barely Passed Through Bribery (2)

In the blink of an eye, it was already Friday.2

After finishing her morning classes and having a meal in the canteen, Shi Yao took a look at the blinding sunlight outside and decided to wait until evening, when the sun had set, before heading back home.

As soon as she returned to her dormitory room, a new message arrived on her phone.

It was an invitation from <111111

asking her to play.

Shi Yao wasn't tired, and she didn't feel an urge to take an afternoon nap. Seeing that there were still a few good hours before the weather was good enough for her to make the long journey back home, she decided to accept Mister Numbers' request. She logged into the game and entered the room he had shared with her.

Juice and Expert weren't around.

This was also something peculiar Shi Yao had noticed. Recently, when they were playing, the two of them would often not be around. When she asked them about this in the group chat, they replied that they were busy revising for their exams.

So, when Shi Yao plugged in her earphones, she casually asked, "Are Juice and Expert still busy revising?"

Mister Numbers replied with an "Un" before falling silent.

Even though the time they spent playing together had increased substantially as compared to before, Mister Numbers' reticent personality still remained the same as ever.

Nevertheless, there was still a significant improvement when compared to his completely shut-off attitude stage in the past. At the very least, whenever he played with her nowadays, his microphone would be switched on. Even if they didn't chat with each other, they could still hear vague sounds from the other party's side.

When they were playing the third round, a feminine voice suddenly sounded from Mister Numbers' side, "I'll place the fruits here."

Mister Numbers didn't respond to the remark, and the feminine voice didn't speak anymore either.

Solely because the word 'fruits' were spoken, Shi Yao asked: "You're at home?"

<111111

: "Un."

Shi Yao: "Is the person who brought you fruits your mother?"

<111111

: "She's a maid in my house."

Shi Yao replied with an "Oh", and roughly five seconds later, she asked once more, "You live in Beijing[1]?"

<111111

first replied with an "Un" before following up with a "Yeah, that's right". As he spoke, he managed to kill a player in the game.

Shi Yao casually remarked, "What a coincidence, I live in Beijing too, though my house is in the suburbs. What about you?"

<111111

reported a rough location.

Shi Yao's eyebrows shot up in astonishment. Mister Numbers' house was actually in the vicinity of where Lin Jiage stayed too...

...

At roughly five o'clock, Shi Yao went offline, and Lin Jiage didn't continue playing either.

He closed his eyes and rested for a while before getting on his laptop to continue his incomplete project.

At roughly seven o'clock, when the maid called for him to head down for dinner, he closed his laptop. As he headed down the stairs, he casually sent a message to Shi Yao, asking: [Have you arrived home yet?]

There was no response from Shi Yao, and he didn't pay any mind to it either.

After dinner, Lin Jiage went to the courtyard to take a quick stroll, and when he returned, he sent another message to Shi Yao: [Have you finished eating yet? Play?]

There was still no response from Shi Yao.

So, he switched on the TV and surfed through the channels in boredom for a while before whipping out his phone to send Shi Yao another WeChat message: [Remember to call me to play after you're done with your work.]

Still, there was no response from Shi Yao's part.

At this point, Lin Jiage wasn't in the mood to find activities to fill in his time anymore. Thus, he logged onto the game, and he realized that Shi Yao was actually online as well!

So, he sent Shi Yao a message: [Pull me into your squad after you're done.]

He didn't back out of the game but waited patiently until Shi Yao was done with her game, and he proactively applied to join her squad.

It was a while before Shi Yao finally accepted his request. He quickly put on his earpiece and greeted her with a casual "Hey".

Following which, the microphone symbol lit up next to Shi Yao's name, but what reached his ears was a male's voice instead: "Hey."

 -

[1] The university is in Beijing, but when Shi Yao asked the question, what she meant was whether he was a local in Beijing, or to be more exact, whether he had a hukou in Beijing. To give a very rough idea of what a hukou is, it's something like further citizenship within a country divided by your province. Those who have a hukou in Beijing will be able to reside permanently in Beijing and will be able to buy a house here, so on and so forth. On the other hand, those who don't have a hukou in Beijing are still able to enter Beijing, but they wouldn't be able to stay there for too long, and they might face problems getting a job, buying a house, and such.

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