Chapter 68: Internet Cafe

With a common topic of conversation, the entry points for the two to chat increased significantly, and their relationship quickly drew closer.

After chatting for over ten minutes, and with Cheng Huaiyu urging him to ask if the two girls had agreed, Xu Heng finally mentioned the trip to the internet cafe to Jiang Mengyuan.

"Club activity? Going to an internet cafe?"

Jiang Mengyuan's attitude in her QQ reply was clearly quite hesitant.

"I don't know how to play computer games, so there's nothing for me to do at an internet cafe."

"If she doesn't know how, you can let her watch us play from the side, and let her witness her club president's superb AK skills!"

Cheng Huaiyu had by this time moved his chair to sit beside Xu Heng, helping him act as an advisor.

His suggestion made the corner of Xu Heng's mouth twitch; he felt in his heart that Cheng Huaiyu was only able to find a girlfriend purely because of his looks and his lavish spending, as his emotional intelligence when chatting with girls was frighteningly low.

Seeing that Xu Heng hadn't typed anything for a long time, Cheng Huaiyu said anxiously, "Hurry up, Old Xu, reply according to what I said, you can't go wrong."

He was already impatient to take the two girls to the internet cafe; having girls accompany them to play games at an internet cafe, and being seen by others there—whoa! How cool would that be!

Twenty-year-old young men always want to deliberately show off in front of girls; they assume that by letting girls see how awesome they are at playing games, they can manifest their own heroic demeanor.

Little did they know that the girls couldn't understand the games they were playing at all, nor were they interested in how skilled they were at gaming.

If one replied according to Cheng Huaiyu's suggestion, nine out of ten girls would refuse.

Xu Heng ignored his urging, his fingers flying across the keyboard.

"It's okay, I can teach you how to play when we get to the internet cafe. If you really don't like playing games, you can just watch anime on the side. Anyway, you can get course credits just by tagging along for two photos; you wouldn't want to reach your junior or senior year and still be short on credits, then have to frantically participate in activities to make them up, right?"

"Old Xu, how can you say that! This is a legitimate club activity; what do you mean by 'tagging along' to get credits? You're making the girls have a bad impression of our club!" Cheng Huaiyu shouted.

Xu Heng said, "There wasn't a good impression to begin with; you might as well let them see some tangible benefits."

Cheng Huaiyu originally wanted to retort, but upon seeing that the other side had agreed, he immediately swallowed his words, could only rub his nose and chuckle, and said, "You really do have a lot of devious ideas, Old Xu."

"Since there are girls tonight, shouldn't we groom ourselves, wash our hair, and change into new clothes? Otherwise, the girls will see us looking disheveled and turn around and run away," Zhao Gaoyang said from over there.

"Wash your hair for an internet cafe? Forget it," Cheng Huaiyu said, speechless.

Zhao Gaoyang smiled and said, "Fine, our club still has Zheng Yang at the bottom of the barrel, and I'm not the dirtiest one. If we get looked down upon, Zheng Yang can take the blame."

As it turned out, when everyone met up, he discovered that Zheng Yang had actually gone through a stunning transformation; his hair was no longer a bird's nest but combed neatly, his clothes and pants weren't worn inside-out, his beard was shaved clean, and he had even applied some moisturizing cream to his face. His demeanor was like a completely different person compared to his previous half-dead state.

"Holy crap! Zheng Yang, are you going on a blind date?" Zhao Gaoyang couldn't help but tease.

Zheng Yang smiled sheepishly, rubbed the back of his head, and said, "Lingling likes clean boys, and I also feel that as a man, one's image shouldn't be too unkempt, so I asked Old Li to help me dress up a bit."

Zhao Gaoyang was dumbfounded and said, "It's only been a few days, and you're already calling her 'Lingling'? And Old Li, why are you all dressed up so neatly too? We're going to surf the web, not to the Jinling blind-dating corner."

Li Xu pushed up the bridge of his glasses, spread his hands, and said, "Haven't I always been like this?"

"Damn it, I forgot, you're the one who loves cleanliness the most."

After saying this, Zheng Yang looked at Xu Heng and Cheng Huaiyu. Although Xu Heng was wearing ordinary casual clothes, he had been very mindful of his image management since his rebirth; his hair was neither too long nor too short, his outfit was well-coordinated, and he looked as refreshing as a spring breeze. Then he looked at Cheng Huaiyu, who couldn't compare to Xu Heng but still looked decent. Finally, it fell to him: flip-flops, big shorts, a white T-shirt with two holes in it, and a jacket that was wrinkled and unpressed.

It turned out he was the only disheveled one! Thinking of this, Zhao Gaoyang felt miserable and muttered, "Zheng Yang, you've betrayed our revolution. What happened to washing your hair every two days and showering every three days? You've put me in an unfaithful and unrighteous position!"

Zheng Yang helplessly said there was no other way; he had only suddenly thought of tidying up these past two days, otherwise he would definitely have stayed disheveled with him.

Cheng Huaiyu, meanwhile, curiously asked him how he had hooked up with the new club member.

"It's... it's just that the day after Lingling joined the club, she got lost at school and couldn't find her counselor's office. I happened to be going to my C programming class, so I showed her the way. Later, she treated me to a meal. Maybe she discovered I'm a kind-hearted person, and she even added me on QQ. One thing led to another, and we started chatting. She said I'm not bad-looking, but I should pay more attention to keeping myself tidy..."

"Is that new club member named Lingling pretty?"

"Average, not as good-looking as Fan Xi," Zhao Gaoyang interjected on Zheng Yang's behalf.

"But she's Zheng Yang's type," Xu Heng glanced at Zhao Gaoyang and added, "And it looks like she isn't holding that attitude of just playing with Zheng Yang; perhaps she really does have a bit of a crush on him."

"Then it's no fun; I thought she was a great beauty."

Hearing that the new club member wasn't pretty, Cheng Huaiyu immediately lost interest. Compared to a story about an ordinary freshman girl falling for a disheveled guy, he preferred stories about perfect goddesses falling for loser engineering students.

The five of them gossiped about Zheng Yang and Chang Lingling all the way, and when they arrived at the entrance of the Blue Sky Internet Cafe, the two girls were already standing there looking quite pretty.

"Damn! This freshman isn't pretty?" Cheng Huaiyu was the first to see Jiang Mengyuan standing in front of Chang Lingling, wearing a half-up ponytail and glasses, pure and lovely.

He thought this was the "Lingling" that Zheng Yang and the others were talking about, and wondered if their aesthetic sense was flawed—wasn't this a total beauty? She would probably be even prettier if she took off her glasses.

Xu Heng shook his head, walked up to Jiang Mengyuan and the other girl, and introduced them: "This is Jiang Mengyuan from the Art Theory department in her freshman year, and the one behind her is her roommate, Chang Lingling."

Once he said this, Cheng Huaiyu knew he had mistaken the person, and awkwardly smiled at Jiang Mengyuan and her friend: "Hello, two freshmen. I'm the president of the Esports Club. I had something come up during the last recruitment drive and couldn't make it. Please forgive any lack of hospitality from these club members."

Jiang Mengyuan was pleasantly surprised and waved her hands, hurriedly saying, "Not at all, the seniors have been very helpful to us." After saying this, she glanced at Xu Heng twice.

"I've never been to an internet cafe since I was little! I really wanted to see what it looks like inside," Chang Lingling said from over there with an excited expression.

"Did you bring your ID cards?" Xu Heng suddenly asked.

He remembered that he hadn't reminded the two of them about this, because bringing an ID card to an internet cafe was common sense, but hearing Chang Lingling say she had never been to one, he felt there was a high probability she didn't know the common rules for internet cafes either.

Sure enough, Chang Lingling's excited expression immediately froze, and she said in astonishment, "You need an ID card to go online?"

"..."