The canteen in North District One is smaller than the one at the main campus, but the space is actually more spacious.
This side is the territory of the Arts Faculty, with fewer people, and most of the ones coming and going are girls. Not many have regular meal times.
Standing at the entrance, Su Huai took a quick glance and led the two of them upstairs from the side.
On the second floor, there are privately-contracted food stalls. There are two stir-fry places that are quite good, but the best are Wang Steamed Dumplings and Chuanshudao Spicy Hot Pot.
After a quick tour, Su Huai made a decision, "How about spicy hot pot?"
Although it was phrased as a question, in such situations, most people wouldn't object.
But that might not be the case once they got more familiar with each other.
Chen Nuanhan nodded lightly, "I think that's fine, it smells pretty good."
Seeing that the goddess had no objections, Wu Tianyou immediately headed energetically towards the milk tea stall, "Then I'll get something to drink! Nuannuan, do you want a hot drink or a cold one?"
Chen Nuanhan didn't make a sound.
So Wu Tianyou bought four drinks, one hot cocoa and three chilled fruit juices.
Su Huai casually picked a lemon passion fruit drink. It tasted quite good, but he didn't drink it with joy.
Feeding without the addition of dog food has no soul.
Brother can't go back, can only live by eating soft rice like this...
In a sigh, a super-large portion of spicy hot pot was quickly served from the stall.
In addition to the regular ingredients, 8 large prawns were added. Together with rice, the total cost was 88 yuan, which was Su Huai's meal budget for two days in his past life.
As he was paying, Su Huai was thinking: could this kind of group dining count as spending on Chen Nuanhan?
The system responded with a pop-up —
[The Freeloading Feature is only activated when the host of the meal is the target goddess.]
In other words, this feature was very specific.
Su Huai didn't mind the money per se, but he grumbled in his heart: the damned system is pretty strict...
Since group dining didn't count as spending on the goddess, he would have to be careful with spending money in the future. He definitely couldn't be the sucker paying unnecessarily.
Su Huai had a neutral attitude towards money; he was neither stingily extreme nor wastefully so.
The money that should be spent, he didn't save; the money that shouldn't be spent, he didn't pay a cent of.
Being a corporate slave doesn't mean you're a masochist. The new generation of kids won't necessarily become warped just because they've been poor for a long time. The double standards flooding the internet are nothing but deliberate slander of the lower-class citizens by some malicious marketing accounts.
On the whole, Su Huai could be considered as someone who was extremely eager for success. He couldn't bring himself to do truly bad things, nor was he a paragon of selflessness who acted entirely for the nation.
He couldn't freeload but that didn't stop him from enjoying the meal.
The long-missed familiar taste even put him in a great mood.
After gobbling down a few bites, Su Huai couldn't wait to peel a couple of cloves of garlic and held them up to Chen Nuanhan, "Want a clove?"
Chen Nuanhan's eyes widened, looking stunned, "Are you crazy? People toast with drinks, you toast with garlic?"
While she said that, her snow-white neck clearly made a gulping motion, obviously swallowing saliva.
"Huai, stop messing around!"
Wu Tianyou hurriedly took the garlic clove, trying to smooth things over for the goddess.
"How could Nuannuan possibly eat garlic? I've seen her eat very little meat normally... Give it to me, thanks!"
Bullshit!
Get the chance to join her for a late-night drink and a small barbecue, and see if she eats garlic!
Damn it, at home when she's munching on green onions dipped in thick sauce, there's always a 'jiojio' propped up on the seat. Whether it's the left foot or the right foot depends solely on which side the sauce bowl is placed on...
Su Huai disdainfully glanced at Wu Tianyou, sentencing the foolish kid to death in his mind for the Nth time.
The goddess Chen Nuanhan in his fantasies was barely one-fifth of the real Chen Nuanhan.
The actual Chen Nuanhan was more real, more willful, better at acting, and even more trying than now.
Su Huai divided a clove of garlic, handed a piece to Wu Tianyou, then turned and asked Chen Nuanhan, "You brought chewing gum and mouthwash, right? Share some with me later."
"Yes, I brought..."
She had just agreed halfway when Chen Nuanhan's movements suddenly froze, her eyes suspiciously fixated on Su Huai's face.
Strange, how do you know I always carry those two things with me?!
She was not just puzzled, but a strange tingling sensation was also rising from the bottom of her heart.
She couldn't tell if it was an illusion but she always felt that Su Huai had an unusually keen understanding of her, and as time went on, he became more relaxed and natural around her.
This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it made her feel uneasy.
Apart from the uneasiness, there was also an ineffable expectation that kept gently, secretly piercing through layers of obstacles, tickling her heart.
In Su Huai's panel, his favorability rating showed no change at all.
But in reality, Chen Nuanhan's curiosity about Su Huai grew with time.
With the tall, rich, and handsome Wu Tianyou and the ordinary commoner Su Huai both sitting opposite a girl, normally, she should give more attention to Wu Tianyou while largely ignoring Su Huai.
However, in Chen Nuanhan's case, this expected proportion was completely reversed.
She gave most of her attention to Su Huai, responding to Wu Tianyou only with noncommittal grunts, making no attempt to hide her perfunctory attitude.
As Su Huai was deliberately quiet, when she really couldn't find a topic, she even took the initiative to ask, "Su Huai, which club do you plan to join?"
A club?
How did that come up?
Su Huai looked up, puzzled, while Chen Nuanhan gestured with her mouth towards the window, where the entrance of the cafeteria was bustling, crowded with all sorts of stalls.
It's a bit of a stretch.
Su Huai had every reason to suspect that Chen Nuanhan actually "wanted to give herself a chance" to join the same club as him.
Otherwise, why bring up such a far-reaching topic?
Gou Huai suddenly became alert; he didn't want to mix with Chen Nuanhan in the long run—it was too disruptive to his lone wolf plan.
"I'll have to think about it; I might not have that much time."
An excuse.
The reality was: I have to wait and see which club Gu Jiuyue plans to join.
Chen Nuanhan, however, didn't realize that she was just a backup option, as she excitedly imagined, "Our school has a music academy, I wonder if there's a piano or vocal music club, I'd really like to delve deeper…"
Wu Tianyou hurriedly showered her with flattery, "Nuannuan's piano skills need further polish in a club? If you went, you'd definitely be the top girl!"
Chen Nuanhan rolled her eyes emphatically.
Girls all like to be flattered, to hear sweet nothings, but it has to be based on facts—at least on partial truth, not blindly heaped praise.
She knew her piano skills very well, and such comments just made her feel awkward.
This time, however, Su Huai didn't come to her rescue.
Gou Huai simply responded lightly, "You guys decide first—once I sort out the class duties, I'll see."
So a perfectly good topic quickly turned into Wu Tianyou pestering Chen Nuanhan, determined to be joined at the hip with her.
Chen Nuanhan restlessly put down her chopsticks, feeling numb again…
**************
Everyone's so awesome!
We shot up the rankings in no time, hitting number two on the new urban books list with the least amount of words—so cool.
But it looks like we won't be making it to the top of the new books overall ranking this week, so let's pause and try again next Monday at dawn.
Love you guys, thank you very much!