Having spent a large sum on the buying agent’s hair-growth helmet, Tan Yin threw herself into her delivery work with even more energy. The weather had been great these past few weekends; having done delivery work for a while now, Tan Yin had grown more familiar with the routes, and with her diligence, she managed to complete quite a few orders each day.
Ever since that incident, Chu Hang had apparently avoided ordering from this restaurant entirely, never placing another order. But today, Tan Yin received an order from Qingjiang Garden.
“Building 11? Isn’t that the standalone villa right next to Chu Hang’s?” Tan Yin wondered to herself—did the flavors at De Zhi Wei happen to particularly suit the tastes of Qingjiang Garden residents? Not only did Chu Hang like it, but his neighbor did too?
“Hello! Your delivery has—”
Tan Yin stood at the door of Building 11 holding the delivery bag, and before she’d even finished her sentence, the door opened.
Who else would be behind that door but Duan Yingfei?
Compared to Tan Yin’s surprise, Duan Yingfei was much more composed—she’d clearly anticipated Tan Yin’s arrival, and with an expression that was hard to please, raised her wrist as if about to check her watch.
“No need to check, I’m not late,” Tan Yin said, holding out the delivery bag.
Duan Yingfei gave a cold snort, then took the bag and started opening it. Clearly, she was looking for a reason to complain.
“The soup didn’t spill either.”
Duan Yingfei looked up, suddenly smiled at Tan Yin, then opened the delivery bag herself and deliberately spilled the soup, right in front of her.
“It’s spilled now.”
Duan Yingfei’s eyes were provocative, her expression smug. She held up the bowl, now only half full, and looked at Tan Yin. “You spilled most of my soup, so I’ll have to file a complaint against you.”
De Zhi Wei had a policy—once a delivery rider received one complaint, that order’s commission would be forfeited, and if the total complaints in a single day exceeded five, the rider’s part-time delivery job would be terminated outright.
Tan Yin glared at Duan Yingfei angrily. “This is deliberate retaliation!”
Duan Yingfei smiled without a care. “That’s right, of course this is deliberate retaliation. I ordered from De Zhi Wei eight times in a row within one hour, just waiting for you to be the one to deliver. It took until the eighth order to finally get you.”
It seemed that Jiang Yilu’s journalism school informant hadn’t made everything up after all—Duan Yingfei really was petty and vindictive.
The defeat in the cafeteria last time had clearly left Duan Yingfei bitterly resentful. She glared at Tan Yin. “I already told you—Chu Hang and I grew up together, our two families have always been neighbors. Don’t think that by sidestepping school and doing food delivery to get close to Chu Hang, I don’t know what’s going on. I saw you coming out of Chu Hang’s house that day! You’re truly shameless!”
Tan Yin said, incredulous, “So what you’re saying is, as a neighbor, you have nothing better to do all day than keep watch on everything Chu Hang does, secretly monitoring even his food orders, not missing a single detail—don’t you think that’s a bit obsessive?”
Duan Yingfei, embarrassed into anger, said, “No matter what, I’m still better than a shameless woman like you, thinking all day about how to get Chu Hang’s attention. Really… wait! Don’t walk away! I’m not done yet! We’ll see about this! I’ll make sure you regret this!”
Tan Yin ignored Duan Yingfei’s stomping and threats behind her—she still had another delivery to make and didn’t have time to waste here. Before she’d even left Qingjiang Garden, she got a complaint notification on her phone.
Expected.
Tan Yin pressed her lips together and rode off on her scooter toward the address of her next order.
She thought bitterly, “hard to earn money, hard to eat crap”—that saying was truly not wrong.
But Tan Yin didn’t realize this round of bad reviews wasn’t the end of it. After a few more deliveries, she got another order from Building 11 in Qingjiang Garden.
As an employee of De Zhi Wei, Tan Yin couldn’t refuse orders randomly assigned by the delivery system, so she had no choice but to grit her teeth and make the trip back to Qingjiang Garden again.
This time’s outcome was, naturally, identical to the last—Duan Yingfei once again deliberately picked a fight and smugly gave Tan Yin another bad review.
This rich young lady was clearly petty and terribly bored—throughout the entire day, even though not every order would be randomly assigned to Tan Yin due to the delivery system’s random distribution, Duan Yingfei didn’t mind wasting time and money, repeatedly placing orders at De Zhi Wei just to try her luck. Whenever one of those orders happened to land with Tan Yin, she’d find some excuse to give her a bad review each time.
After running back and forth all day, Tan Yin nearly had her entire day’s work ruined because of Duan Yingfei’s four complaints.
She stormed back to her dorm with a sour face, and after much thought, declared to Jiang Yilu, “I used to not understand what it meant that ‘suffering breeds great writing.’ Now I get it! Only pain can forge a true artist! Only after enduring life’s brutal grind can one’s purest creative passion erupt! Anger! That’s also a form of power!”
Jiang Yilu: ???
Tan Yin’s voice was full of impassioned fervor. “Though a day of part-time work has caused my body great trauma, my heart right now is full of strength!”
Tan Yin looked down and saw Jiang Yilu regarding her with an expression that said “did delivering food fry your brain,” and paused, calmed herself, and then announced her decision.
“I’m going to draw a special side story for Beneath Ten Thousand: The Temptation of the Campus Hunk!”
Jiang Yilu’s eyes went wide. “Girl, you’re playing with fire here! Didn’t you just barely manage to keep Chu Hang calm by locking and hiding your posts? And you still want to go poke the bear again? Tan Yin, wouldn’t it be nicer to just live peacefully?”
“What if this side story doesn’t involve Chu Hang at all?” Tan Yin’s eyes lit up. “I’ll use characters from The Temptation of the Campus Hunk other than Chu Hang as the leads, and bring in a special new character just for the side story. In the form of a spin-off, I’ll give The Temptation of the Campus Hunk a sense of closure while also completely diverting attention away from Chu Hang. I’ve already got the whole plot figured out. I even have the title—When Love Becomes the Past!”
Jiang Yilu remained skeptical. “Chu Hang is the soul of the entire comic—what kind of insanely powerful plot are you going to need to shift the focus away from him?”
“Watch me!”
With that, Tan Yin eagerly took out her drawing tablet and buried herself in work.
Duan Yingfei, you want to mess with me? You’re still too green! We architecture students never admit defeat!
Tan Yin buried herself in drawing the entire night, and once she’d successfully uploaded the side story, she finally relaxed—and that’s when she noticed the hair-growth helmet that had arrived a few days earlier, sitting on her desk.
It was now around 9 p.m. on Sunday. There was a room check every night at ten, so local students who’d gone home for the weekend would all be returning to campus tonight. Based on Tan Yin’s intel, Chu Hang’s habit was to return to the dorm around nine-thirty on Sunday nights.
She glanced again at the hair-growth helmet, then at the architecture mechanics problems that were driving her crazy, and finally made up her mind—she picked up the helmet and headed out the door.
Tan Yin got lucky. She hadn’t waited long outside the boys’ dormitory building, holding the box, when she spotted Chu Hang leisurely making his way back.
Tan Yin started waving vigorously. “Chu Hang!”
Chu Hang clearly spotted her from a distance too, but compared to Tan Yin’s enthusiasm, his manner was much colder. He pressed his lips together, brow slightly furrowed, and if not for the fact that Tan Yin was standing right at the entrance of the boys’ dormitory, he looked as though he’d very much like to take a detour to avoid her.
But there was no avoiding it in the end. Tan Yin had been waiting there specifically, and the moment Chu Hang got close, she eagerly held out the item. “Hey, Chu Hang, this is a small token of my appreciation, specially bought for you!”
Chu Hang frowned warily at the box in Tan Yin’s hands. “I don’t need it, take it away.”
With that, Chu Hang turned to leave.
“Hey hey hey! Don’t!” Tan Yin quickly stopped him. “There’s no other meaning behind this gift, I really have thought things through and adjusted my mindset—I won’t have any inappropriate feelings toward you anymore. Giving you this is purely gratitude as a classmate, just… just to really thank you for tutoring me before. You have to accept it. Once you accept it today, it means our relationship has turned a new page—from now on, we’re just classmates!”
Chu Hang made no move to accept it, watching Tan Yin warily. “What is this?”
Tan Yin winked at him. “Something that’ll let you keep tutoring me once you use it—you’ll see, it’s exactly what your heart most needs.” She lowered her voice mysteriously. “Trust me, this thing will make you happy!”
With that, without waiting for Chu Hang’s reaction, Tan Yin shoved the box into his hands and dashed off on her own. As she left, she called back repeatedly, reminding him this was good stuff—he absolutely had to use it!
As for Tan Yin’s gift, deep down, Chu Hang was resistant. He had an instinctive premonition—running into Tan Yin inevitably meant bad luck was coming.
Especially since this woman’s moods were like a storm, utterly unpredictable. Just days ago she’d claimed she wanted to be his devoted snail fairy, loving him to the point of dying for it, and now today she stood in front of him smiling, saying she just wanted to be ordinary classmates. This drastic contradiction couldn’t help but fill Chu Hang with suspicion and wariness. She’d made such dramatic declarations about her feelings for him—how could she possibly get over her obsession with him so simply? It made no sense.
So this box was probably yet another scheme she’d cooked up to get his attention.
Tan Yin had dropped the box and run off, leaving Chu Hang no choice but to bring it back to the dorm. He knew he ought to ignore this box just as he ignored Tan Yin, but in the end, curiosity got the better of him, and he opened it.
To his surprise, inside the box wasn’t some kind of romantic gift or overture, but—
But a helmet?!
Chen Ziqiang, who had already been discharged from the hospital these past couple of days, one leg still in a cast, hobbled over. “Chu Hang, is this the VR gaming headset you bought?” As a dedicated gaming enthusiast, Chen Ziqiang was immediately excited, practically fawning. “Chu Hang, remember when it rained and you forgot your umbrella, and I lent you mine so you wouldn’t get soaked? With a relationship like ours, you’ll definitely let me play with this later, right?”
But Chen Ziqiang’s excitement didn’t last long—once Chu Hang took the helmet fully out of the box, Chen Ziqiang noticed something was off.
“Why doesn’t this helmet have the VR headset display screen? The glasses are the whole point of a VR headset!” he asked, puzzled. “I heard they’ve already invented brainwave gaming abroad! Could this be one of those legendary holographic helmets?!”
It wasn’t unreasonable for Chen Ziqiang to jump to such conclusions—Chu Hang’s family was wealthy, and he owned all kinds of cutting-edge foreign tech products that hadn’t even been seen domestically.
But even Chu Hang was baffled by this helmet. There wasn’t even an instruction manual in the box, just a USB charging cable.
“It’s definitely a holographic gaming helmet!” Chen Ziqiang was certain of it, and enthusiastically said, “Come on, Chu Hang, sit down, let me help you set it up.”
With that, Chen Ziqiang wasted no time pushing Chu Hang into a chair, and before Chu Hang could refuse, put the helmet on him and plugged in the USB cable.
“Quick, press the power button!”
Under Chen Ziqiang’s eager and expectant gaze, Chu Hang pressed the power button, and then—
Then he got electrocuted!
The instant he pressed the button, Chu Hang nearly instantly felt a strong electric current shoot into his brain, both numbing and painful, making his entire head feel like it was about to explode.
By the time he finally struggled to switch it off and pull off the helmet, Chu Hang was still shaken with disbelief.
Tan Yin had said this thing would make him happy?! Chu Hang felt like this thing was going to be the death of him!
Had she given him a portable electroshock therapy device? Planning to shock him until he liked her?
Chu Hang’s sudden electrocution had startled Chen Ziqiang too. He pulled out the USB cable, turned the helmet over and inspected it thoroughly, and finally found a small line of English text on the inside of the helmet.
“‘Hair grow helmet’…” Chen Ziqiang was shocked. “This is a hair-growth helmet?!” He looked at Chu Hang, astonished. “Why on earth would you buy this? And this thing is obviously some sketchy knockoff product—no manual, and even the English translation is this poorly done…”
Chu Hang pressed his lips together tightly, his face going completely dark.
A hair-growth helmet?!
Was Tan Yin giving him this really not some kind of mockery about his future baldness?
She sure had guts—failing to win him over, she’d gone straight to venting her frustration by giving him some sketchy knockoff hair-growth helmet from who knows where. Because he wouldn’t like her, she was going to electrocute him to death!
Having delivered the hair-growth helmet, Tan Yin returned to her dorm in high spirits. Though Chu Hang wouldn’t admit it, she’d seen it for herself that time she’d been invisible—he really did care about his hair. This gift of hers had definitely hit home.
Though the hair-growth helmet had cost quite a lot, Tan Yin felt it was all worth it—buying it for Chu Hang was meant to smooth things over so he’d keep tutoring her. When you thought about it, wasn’t this basically an investment in her own education? As all the famous people said, investing in yourself and your education never loses you money!
Just as Tan Yin happily lay down on her bed feeling pleased with herself, Jiang Yilu suddenly yanked her right back out from under the covers.
“That buying agent I recommended to you before, did you buy the hair-growth helmet from her?”
Tan Yin blinked. “What’s wrong?”
Jiang Yilu waved her phone. “Whatever you do, don’t buy from her! I just heard from another buying agent that the hair-growth helmets she sells are fake! Not imported from America at all, just knockoffs made in some factory in Dongguan. Not only won’t they grow hair, they’ll actually give you electric shocks!” Jiang Yilu patted Tan Yin. “That hair-growth helmet has already shocked several people—they reported it to the police, and that buying agent just got arrested.”
“…”