"Lu Yuan!"
Su Yao's cool voice came from deep inside the convenience store. It wasn't loud, but in the empty shop it carried clearly.
Lu Yuan was crouched by the entrance, sweeping the last few shards of broken glass toward the base of the wall. When he heard her call, he stood up and brushed the dust off his hands.
"What is it?"
"Come here. There's food over here."
Lu Yuan stepped over the cleaned-up entrance and walked deeper inside, moving along the narrow gaps between the shelves.
The lighting in the store was poor. The row of shelves against the wall was still standing, and the goods on them were covered in a layer of dust, making them hard to see clearly.
Gu Siyu was standing in front of another row of shelves, rummaging through something. The other girls had scattered to search the nearby buildings.
Su Yao was crouched in front of the innermost row of shelves, her long hair falling from her shoulders and covering most of the side of her face. She was naked as she crouched there, her thighs pressed tightly together.
Lu Yuan hurried over.
"What is it?"
"This."
Su Yao turned slightly and pointed at the shelf.
Lu Yuan crouched down to look.
On the bottom shelf were a few bags of bread. Dust had settled on the packaging, but the seals were still intact, with no sign of expiration or spoilage.
"Just these few bags," Su Yao said softly, glancing at him from the side. "These are the only things left on this shelf that are still edible."
Lu Yuan's eyes lit up, and he reached out to grab a bag of bread.
[Item obtained: Bread x1]
[Talent "Absolute Critical Hit" triggered]
[Critical hit multiplier: x100]
[Actual obtained: Bread x100]
[Stored in backpack.]
Lu Yuan's fingers froze for a moment.
One hundred times.
He picked up the remaining bags as well. Every single one triggered a critical hit, with different multipliers, but the lowest was still more than a dozen times.
The amount of bread in his backpack shot up to several hundred bags.
Enough to feed more than thirty people for several days.
He couldn't help himself and reached out to pat Su Yao on the head.
Her hair was soft, and it felt good under his hand. When his fingertips touched the top of her head, Su Yao's body jolted very slightly, but she didn't dodge.
"No wonder you're my deskmate."
Su Yao's body stiffened for an instant.
His palm covered the top of her head, and his fingers sank into her soft long hair. The warmth spread down from her scalp.
The tips of Su Yao's ears turned red, but her expression barely changed. Only her eyelashes fluttered once before returning to normal.
She didn't avoid his hand. Only after he withdrew it on his own did she slowly stand up, both hands hanging at her sides. Her long hair slid down over her shoulders, partly covering her chest.
"Lu Yuan."
"Mm?"
Su Yao looked at his face, quiet and still.
"That love letter you wrote me back then, do you still have it?"
Lu Yuan's hand froze in midair.
"Huh?"
Su Yao's expression didn't change at all. Her cool gaze stayed fixed on him.
"The love letter you wrote to me," she repeated, her tone flat. "I read it."
Lu Yuan's brain short-circuited for about two seconds.
That love letter was something he had secretly written during two whole self-study periods. He had written, torn it up, rewritten it, and by the time he finished the final draft, even he thought it was disgustingly mushy.
Originally, he had planned to wait until school was over, after all the other students had left, and slip it into her desk drawer.
Who would have thought that on that same afternoon, Zhou Wei would be standing at the classroom door calling his name.
"Lu Yuan, come to my office."
Once he got there, he was scolded for ages. She said his mock exam scores had been dropping lately, said he had been spacing out in class, said that as the only boy in the class he should set an example for the girls, and on and on for almost an hour.
By the time he came out of the office, it was already dark and most of the school had left.
He went back to the classroom to get the love letter.
At that time, only Shen Nian and her two girlfriends were still there, for some reason not having left yet.
Chen Keke had a baby-face and wore a pure, innocent smile. Xu Zhaozhao's dyed blond hair was especially eye-catching, and the corners of her mouth were turned up in a clearly malicious grin.
When Shen Nian saw him come in, the corners of her mouth spread.
Lu Yuan had a bad feeling then. Those three usually got along well with him, but when it came to teasing him, they were bolder than anyone else.
Then things went even more absurd than he had feared.
For some reason Shen Nian suddenly insisted on "trying what a man's body feels like."
She and Chen Keke and Xu Zhaozhao all pinned Lu Yuan down on the desk.
Chen Keke was small and not very strong, but Xu Zhaozhao with her blond hair was genuinely skilled at holding someone down. Add in the fact that Shen Nian was naturally strong, and Lu Yuan couldn't break free at all on his own.
In just a few moves, Shen Nian had undone his buttons. His pants were dragged down to his knees, and Lu Yuan gave up struggling.
The three of them crouched together and stared at that thing for a long while. Chen Keke even reached out and poked it.
"It's so soft."
"That's it?"
Lu Yuan clenched his teeth and said nothing.
It wasn't that he didn't want to get hard. He just really couldn't.
The classroom door wasn't locked. Someone could come down the hallway at any moment, and the duty teacher's office was right downstairs.
His entire head was filled with "What if I get caught?" and that fear sucked all the blood straight out of his lower body.
Under those circumstances, there was no way he could get hard no matter what.
Shen Nian messed with him for several minutes, touching and stroking him all over, but Lu Yuan still hung there only half-soft, half-hard. The more she tried, the more impatient she got, and in the end she stood up in a fury and kicked his shin.
"This isn't over."
With that, she dragged her two girlfriends away.
Lu Yuan pulled his pants back up and sat in the classroom for five minutes until his heartbeat returned to normal.
Then the mock exam came next, and that was the end of it.
After that, everyone was teleported to this damn place.
He had completely forgotten about the love letter.
And now Su Yao was telling him she had read it.
She was still waiting for his answer.
Her gaze was steady, and there was an unfamiliar emotion hidden in her cool eyes.
Lu Yuan opened his mouth, and his mind turned into a mess.
"You... when did you see it?"
"After you finished writing it," Su Yao said, her tone still calm. But her fingers hanging at her side curled slightly. "That day I waited for you in the classroom for a long time. I wanted to wait until you gave it to me yourself."
"You didn't come, so I left. Later, you still never gave it to me."
Lu Yuan's lips moved.
He didn't come because Zhou Wei had kept him in her office for almost an hour. And he hadn't given it to her because Shen Nian and the other two had stripped him, messed around with him, and made him forget all about the letter.
How was he supposed to tell Su Yao that?
Say that three female classmates pinned me down, pulled off my pants, studied my cock for a while, and then I forgot all about the love letter?
His gaze drifted outward without meaning to.
On the concrete road outside the door, Zhou Wei was standing in the middle of the road, arms folded, scanning her surroundings to keep watch for them.
His eyes stayed on Zhou Wei for less than a second before returning to Su Yao's face.
He silently muttered an apology to Teacher Zhou in his heart.
"It was confiscated by Teacher Zhou."
"Huh?" Su Yao's brows twitched.
"That afternoon, she called me to her office just because of that and scolded me for almost an hour."
Su Yao looked at him, and the confusion on her face finally got an answer.
Being called to the teacher's office and scolded was exactly Zhou Wei's style, and it also explained why he hadn't been able to hand the love letter to her himself that day.
Her doubts over the past few days - why he had written a love letter and then never given it to her, whether he had regretted it, whether he thought she wasn't good enough - all of it vanished after Lu Yuan said those words.
It had been confiscated by the teacher.
And he had been scolded too.
So it wasn't that he didn't want to give it to her. He simply hadn't had the chance.
That cool expression softened a little.
The corners of her mouth curved into a very small arc, ten times prettier than not smiling at all.
"If that's the case," Su Yao said, her voice dropping half a degree. She lifted her eyes and kept looking at Lu Yuan without looking away, "then I've read it too."
She paused.
"I agree."
Lu Yuan froze.
After saying those three words, Su Yao turned around and walked to the other side of the shelf. Her long hair swung in an arc, revealing a small stretch of reddened skin at the back of her neck.
"There seem to be a few bottles of water over there. Come get them."
Her voice had already returned to a normal warmth.
Lu Yuan stood there, staring at her back. His mind went blank for two seconds, and then he took two steps toward Su Yao.
Gu Siyu had been rummaging through that plastic basket nearby the whole time. She hadn't lifted her head even once, but her hands had stopped moving for quite a while.
Only after Lu Yuan walked over did Gu Siyu finally look up, glance at Su Yao's back, then glance at Lu Yuan.
She said nothing.
Then she lowered her head and kept rummaging through the basket.
The basket was empty.