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Chapter 24: Chen Yuan, I Want Egg-Fried Rice.

Gossip usually spread through people who already knew one another.

Those acquaintances felt just as curious about their friends’ private lives.

It worked the same way every Spring Festival when aunts and uncles bombarded you with questions and finished by saying, “We are family; why wouldn’t I care?”

On campus there were confession walls, gossip groups, and other outlets that satisfied the students’ pent-up itch for drama.

All of them more or less played the role of those nosy relatives at New Year.

Most students felt shy yet gossipy, so they kept passing along every scrap of rumor.

Yu Enqi ranked on the campus-belle list.

Although she was already a junior and most boys knew she once dated Chen Yuan and no longer felt interested in her, people still talked about her.

The buzz never reached school-wide headlines, yet it never died either.

Because this story involved Chen Yuan, the rumor churned through layers of hidden connections all afternoon and finally reached his roommates.

“I knew it—only a matter of time,” Li Hua grumbled.

He had disliked Yu Enqi from the start, but because she was Chen Yuan’s girlfriend he never said so in front of him.

“Let me see what happened.”

Huang Zhisheng took the phone.

On the screen lay a barbecue-shop photo Liu Yuhang had posted in a gossip chat, along with claims that Yu Enqi and Chen Yuan had split up in public.

“Who’s the girl beside Old Chen?” Tan Haoxin owned a pair of eyes trained to spot beauty and fixed at once on the silver-haired girl in the picture.

“… …”

“All you ever stare at is legs!” Li Hua saw through him immediately.

“Exactly. Old Chen just got dumped—focus,” Huang Zhisheng laughed.

“Let’s call him.”

“He might not answer. Let’s go find him.”

“What if he’s not at home?”

“If he’s missing, we call the police.”

“Hahaha…”

After a long pause Liu Yuhang finally sent a tentative message: “Where are you? You okay?”

Chen Yuan replied with a single question mark, then revealed he was at home.

The boys decided to go over.

“Come! His girl is gone; we don’t leave till we’re drunk,” Huang Zhisheng declared.

“Now only Hua has a girlfriend—kick him out of Dorm 250!”

Hua, of course, meant Li Hua.

He looked delicate and always got along with girls, so dating felt natural to him.

He and his girlfriend had been childhood sweethearts for years.

Li Hua snorted. “You Nantong folk sure talk big…”

What decent guy forced his roommate into women’s clothes?

“Face it, every girl in this school wears makeup worse than you in a dress. You spoiled our taste,” Luo Zichuan said while leaning over with his phone.

On the screen shone a nine-yuan-ninety lipstick.

“Pick a shade, darling.”

Li Hua: “…”

“Get lost! Why don’t you put it on yourself? Even a monkey would rip its own backside off with that stuff!”

He pounded Luo Zichuan with his soft fists, which only amused the target.

The group ambled down the mountain and headed toward Chen Yuan’s apartment.

Passing a convenience store, each of them grabbed a few bottles of Snow Beer.

“Brothers, are we drinking without food?” someone asked halfway there.

“No worries, we’ll have Old Chen fry us some peanuts.”

“Savage…”

“Forget it. Let’s buy some skewers.”

“Move, move.”

Joking around, they certainly would not show up empty-handed.

Old Chen had just broken up; asking him to fry peanuts felt cruel—besides, peanuts were never enough.

They had climbed a mountain and felt ravenous.

So they doubled back onto the avenue, looking for a place that sold skewers to go.

…

Meanwhile Chen Yuan had no idea five men carrying giant beers were on their way.

He stood in the kitchen, cooking for Clovie.

His technique looked rusty, yet it worked.

They had started late because he had taken Clovie to the supermarket for daily supplies: handkerchiefs, cups, toothbrush, even sanitary pads…

“Do I have to teach her how to use pads?” Chen Yuan had stood before that aisle, lost in thought.

He still bought them; at worst she would figure it out alone.

He had asked whether she wanted to eat the kebabs downstairs or another barbecue place—University Town offered little variety.

But Clovie said something unusual: “I want your cooking.”

When she checked the fridge earlier, she found plenty of ingredients and suddenly craved Chen Yuan’s homemade dishes.

Back in Nix Kingdom, he had cooked for her, and she missed the taste.

“But there’s no leftover rice…”

She requested egg-fried rice, and Chen Yuan felt helpless.

“Are you the Big Bad Wolf? All this meat around, yet you want plain fried rice!” he muttered.

Clovie merely fixed him with pale blue eyes; her white lashes shimmered like snow.

“All right, all right…”

Chen Yuan steamed a fresh pot of rice and busied himself again.

Of course he would not serve only egg-fried rice; he also stir-fried several side dishes.

Clovie sat obediently on the sofa, playing with her phone.

From time to time she snapped a picture of Chen Yuan in the kitchen and happily set it as her wallpaper.

She learned fast; a smartphone felt like a toy—fun and fascinating.

Even a three-year-old could swipe through pictures of pretty ladies, yet many elderly people struggled with smartphones…

Why? Who knew?

Whenever he set an alarm for his grandma, she praised him as a real scholar and bragged to neighbors that her grandson possessed incredible skills.

Clovie opened WeChat again; for now Chen Yuan remained her only contact.

She had already changed his note from GG Boom to simply Chen Yuan.

She considered using “Teacher,” yet the phone felt different from real life.

Calling him Teacher face to face felt intimate; typing it looked distant.

She preferred the opposite for herself: in person she liked him to call her by name, but on the phone she fancied “Your Majesty the Queen.”

How strange—perhaps that was just how this world’s communication worked.

“All right, wash up and eat,” Chen Yuan called.

He carried multiple dishes out of the kitchen.

Clovie hurriedly put down her phone, her new white slippers tap-tap-tapping as she followed him.

Watching Chen Yuan move around in an apron felt magical to her.

The word was happiness—just like in fairy tales, where the prince and princess lived…

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