Accidentally Caught The Eye Of A Yandere - Chapter 3

Shen Ying stopped observing in secret. He turned his gaze directly and openly to the right, quietly watching the boy beside him sit down, turn on the computer, and then pull out a wet wipe to meticulously clean the mouse. After wiping the mouse, he cleaned the keyboard, and finally, with extreme care, wiped down the over-ear headphones.

A whole flurry of cleaning.

Peng Sheng, who had watched the entire routine from the side, couldn’t sit still any longer and picked up his phone to type.

[Peng Sheng: What is this guy doing? Is he in the wrong place? Since he came to a net cafe like this, who is he trying to fool with that level of germaphobia? What a poser.]

[Ying: ?]

Shen Ying gave him a baffled glance. He couldn’t understand why someone else being clean bothered him so much. If it weren’t inappropriate given the setting, he definitely would have kicked him by now.

[Peng Sheng: I don’t mean anything else by it, I just hate handsome guys. If you hadn’t been low-key handsome and easygoing since we were kids, I definitely wouldn’t have been able to stand you either.]

Shen Ying let out a frustrated laugh and typed back.

[Ying: When you go back later, remember to buy some bleach to scrub your dark, shadowy heart.]

[Ying: Besides, if I had the means to be particular about things, I’d be even more extra than him.]

[Peng Sheng: It’s not like I’m intentionally picking on him. Most average internet cafes aren’t clean places anyway, and the whole room smells like smoke and who-knows-what. He clearly didn’t have to come in here. With his setup, wouldn’t it be better to go to a proper place? What gets me is that his actions feel like a personal insult—I feel like in his eyes, we’re all dirty trash.]

[Peng Sheng: Holy crap! This guy really came here to watch online classes! Tsk tsk, even more of a poser.]

Seeing this message, Shen Ying, who had been full of rebuttals, stopped caring about texting. He raised his eyes to look right again. Sure enough, a middle-aged man wearing glasses appeared on the adjacent computer screen, his mouth opening and closing as he introduced something. A couple of seconds later, several large characters appeared in the center of the screen:

Lectures on Mathematics Competition.

“…”

Shen Ying looked at the screen for a few seconds. When he snapped back to reality, he noticed the boy next to him taking hold of the mouse again. He didn’t notice what the boy clicked, but he did notice his fingers—slender, distinctly jointed, fair, and clean. At a glance, they were the hands of someone raised in luxury.

[Ying: Mind your own business. It looks like his computer at home isn’t working and he had no choice but to settle for this place. You hate this and hate that—can you ever finish hating?]

After warning Peng Sheng, Shen Ying put down his phone.

Since he still had to wait for Sister Yan to finish up, and had nothing better to do, Shen Ying decided to check the event page of the game system.

Just as his mouse moved to the event interface, a modest commotion came from the seat next to him. Curious, Shen Ying looked over again, only to see the boy take off the headphones he had just put on, press the built-in volume buttons a few times, put them back on, take them off again two seconds later, and finally unplug the headphone power cable before plugging it back in.

“Can you not hear any sound from the headphones?” Seeing him repeat this operation twice, Shen Ying took the initiative to ask.

The moment he spoke, the boy turned his eyes toward him instantly. His gaze was calm and unruffled, devoid of any discernible emotion. After quietly staring at Shen Ying for a brief moment, he nodded with an “Mm.”

“If you don’t mind, let me take a look for you first? If that doesn’t work, I can call the front desk for you.” As Shen Ying spoke, his wheeled chair had already shifted a few centimeters toward the boy’s direction.

“Okay.”

A pleasant, distinctly youth-like voice reached his ears. Shen Ying thought the voice sounded remarkably pleasant. Smiling, he stood up and approached the boy, naturally taking the headphones from his hands. After checking, he confirmed that the cable was indeed intact. He pressed the volume buttons on top, and the indicator light quickly lit up.

Shen Ying raised the headphones to his ear and heard nothing, even though the online teacher on the computer screen was clearly delivering the lesson with rich expression.

“Let me use the mouse for a second.” Shen Ying leaned over and clicked on the platform streaming the online class. The volume inside was set to 73%, so he switched back to the main desktop to check the system volume hidden in the taskbar.

As the interface switched, Shen Ying instantly breathed a sigh of relief, glad that his effort wouldn’t be in vain.

“The system volume might have been adjusted by the previous customer. Next time you use a computer and can’t hear anything, you can check here first…” Shen Ying pointed to a spot on the bottom right of the computer screen. But as he turned his head slightly, his voice came to an abrupt halt.

At an extremely close distance, Shen Ying once again met the boy’s pitch-black pupils, which clearly reflected his own facial expression.

The boy in front of him hadn’t shifted his position at all—he hadn’t dodged back even an inch when Shen Ying leaned in earlier.

If Shen Ying’s turn had been any faster, the two of them would have probably bumped heads and raised a huge bump each.

Without hesitation, Shen Ying took the initiative to pull his head back a few centimeters before straightening his waist. Jiang Shi’s gaze moved along with his movements, finally locking back onto his face—focused and completely unreserved.

Looking at the emotion in his eyes, Shen Ying was thoroughly confused at first, but then convinced himself that he understood. The look in the boy’s eyes was clearly admiration for him—it even seemed to carry a bit of worship.

Shen Ying couldn’t help but laugh softly, thinking to himself that this student must be really unfamiliar with operating computers. He had merely helped adjust the volume, yet the guy was looking at him with so much admiration.

“Next time you don’t know how to operate something, you can search for it online first. It’s very convenient,” Shen Ying said, suppressing the smile that really shouldn’t be on his face right now, his tone extremely patient. “Take a look at the screen now. Click here to check the system volume.”

When Shen Ying spoke again, Jiang Shi seemed to snap back to reality. Following the movement of Shen Ying’s finger, he glanced at the computer screen, but after only a second, his gaze fell back onto Shen Ying’s face. “Thank you.”

“It’s no big deal. Go ahead and listen. If there’s any operation you don’t understand later, you can ask me. Don’t worry about troubling me—you helped me out big time at the entrance earlier,” Shen Ying said to him with a smile.

This guy isn’t as cold and distant as he looks on the outside after all. Turns out he’s just introverted and quiet.

Jiang Shi didn’t respond immediately. He kept staring at him, waiting for his lips to move again.

“Sister Yan invited you,” Peng Sheng’s voice rang out at an inconvenient moment.

Hearing this, Shen Ying turned back to look at his own computer screen. Seeing a game invitation pop up from Sister Yan’s account, he put away his thought of chatting further with the boy. He turned around, sat back in his seat, grabbed the mouse to accept the invitation, and put on his headset, cutting off all outside noise.

Thus, he failed to notice the strange look in Peng Sheng’s eyes at that moment.

Peng Sheng looked past Shen Ying, fixing his gaze on this Yinan No. 1 High School student. Saying he hated handsome guys on WeChat earlier was just him running his mouth, but right now, his intuition told him that this guy from Yinan No. 1 High was definitely not simple. Just looking at the way he stared at his friend—it was strangely intense, blatantly lingering.

The other guy was sharp, too. He had already been slightly frowning because his conversation was interrupted, and now, crossing eyes with Peng Sheng across the space, he looked at him with a coldness as if looking at garbage.

Peng Sheng: “…”

Fuck.

“Hurry up and join the lobby, what are you doing?” Shen Ying, completely unaware of the underlying tension in the air, began to urge Peng Sheng.

“Coming.” Peng Sheng had no choice but to pull his gaze back, rationalizing that he wouldn’t interact with this kind of person in the future anyway, so there was no need to care.

Five minutes into the match, with two god-tier younger brothers carrying the game, Sister Yan comfortably began to chat.

“Are you two planning to work hard and focus on studying together?” Sister Yan asked while clearing minion waves. “Is Little Peng going to pause taking play-along orders for the other game too?”

Peng Sheng replied quickly: “Remove the ‘you two’, Sister Yan. It’s Food God who wants to focus on studying. I’m still taking orders as usual. I’m just a slacker anyway—no matter how hard I try, it won’t change anything, so I choose to give up.”

“For real? Don’t give up so fast. If I remember correctly, you guys just started your second year of high school? If you work hard, getting into a regular university is totally doable. University life is actually pretty fun,” Sister Yan advised after hearing him.

“Sister Yan, don’t listen to his nonsense,” Shen Ying chimed in after stealing the enemy’s jungle monsters. “His dad keeps a close eye on him, so he wouldn’t dare completely slack off.”

He was telling the truth. Peng Sheng’s grades weren’t particularly terrible. Although they were neighbors, his family’s financial situation was much better than Shen Ying’s. The main reason he wanted to work as a gaming companion in his spare time was simply because he liked playing games.

When they worked as gaming companions, they usually didn’t chat casually with clients—only discussing game-related topics. Orders were processed through official platforms without private contact. But Sister Yan was their top repeat client, and they had cooperated numerous times. Plus, she was very chatty and easygoing. Although they didn’t know each other’s real names, after chatting over so many games, they knew a bit about each other’s backgrounds.

Sister Yan knew the two of them were high school students, while they knew Sister Yan was an office worker who had graduated from college two years ago. She had no major hobbies other than playing games after work, reading novels, and admiring handsome guys online.

Sure enough, hearing that the two younger brothers hadn’t truly given up on themselves, Sister Yan felt relieved and began teasing them. “Since you two are so good at games, do a lot of girls at school fall head over heels for you?”

Peng Sheng: “Being good at games isn’t much use at school—you have to have good grades. Either way, our Food God is super popular at school. He’s not only handsome, but also smart.”

Hearing him start up again, Shen Ying was completely speechless: “Can you speak a little less? You might not want face, but I still do.”

“What a pity that I haven’t had the chance to see what our Little Food God looks like with my own eyes. Just listening to his voice, I know he must be a heartthrob in real life. If it were back in my high school days, even without seeing his face, I’d have a crush on him for at least three years just from his voice.” Sister Yan feigned a tone of deep regret. “In a novel, he’d probably be male lead material.”

“Please, no,” Peng Sheng reacted strongly to the last comment. “Lately, I’ve noticed that all male leads in novels are trending to be sick—whether physically or mentally. It’s way too dark. Our Food God is a sunshine heartthrob, so whoever wants to be the male lead can go right ahead.”

Shen Ying, operating his mouse to farm jungle monsters, heard the word “sunshine” and chimed in distractedly, “I beg you, please shut your mouth.”

“Little Peng reads novels too? For real? What genre do you read?” Sister Yan on the other side of the network successfully had her teasing attention redirected.

“Just random novels I borrowed from the girls in our class when I was bored at school, but I haven’t finished a single one,” Peng Sheng answered indignantly. “Because out of ten male leads, nine of them are sick! How is that normal? What’s worse, there was even one who choked the female lead’s neck—it’s completely insane!! What kind of bullshit male lead is that? Isn’t that just a violent maniac? And in the end, the two of them still got married!”

“Are you sure you were reading a novel and not a true crime segment?” Shen Ying asked in disbelief after finishing off a jungle monster and using his champion to save Sister Yan from an enemy ambush.

Peng Sheng: “Who knows? When I complained in class that these male leads were all psychos, my front-desk classmate said I didn’t understand shit. She said if you read novels, you have to read these yandere male leads—that’s what makes it thrilling.”

“Yandere? What on earth is that?” Hearing this unfamiliar term for the first time, Shen Ying asked curiously, “A sick baby?”

As soon as the words left his mouth, wild laughter immediately erupted through the headset from Sister Yan. “Hahaha, a sick baby! Hahaha, stop, my stomach hurts from laughing! That’s the first time I’ve ever heard it interpreted like that! Little Food God, you’re gonna be the death of me!”

“…Sorry, I really haven’t heard that word before.” Shen Ying realized his mistake and wanted to laugh too.

“Anyway, it’s definitely not a good person—a total outlaw!” Peng Sheng said with righteous indignation.

Sister Yan laughed her fill before stopping to explain to Shen Ying.

“Actually, a yandere male lead refers to someone who has an overwhelmingly strong desire for possession over the person they like. If the person they like interacts too much with others, they’ll do extreme things out of jealousy and anger—like the neck-choking Little Peng mentioned earlier. They also hope the person they like will love them forever, have eyes only for them, and ideally obey them for a lifetime. Otherwise, when their possessiveness flares up, they might even lock the person they like away.”

After educating the two straight guys on her understanding, Sister Yan silently added, perhaps fearing she might corrupt them: “Of course, don’t get me wrong! We only accept this setting when reading novels. If you encounter someone like this in real life, you should call the police immediately! After all, there’s a wall between dimensions!”

Shen Ying listened in utter confusion, half-understanding it, but he didn’t pursue the topic out of further curiosity. After all, he neither read novels nor had any interest in such strange character tropes.

The final match ended in victory amid intermittent chatting and laughter. After telling Sister Yan they could play together again when they had time, Shen Ying logged out of the game.

“Let’s go. Pack up and head to that BBQ place you mentioned,” Shen Ying said to Peng Sheng. “In the future, I won’t easily come this far just to play games or eat BBQ.”

“Sure, sure. Let me reply to a couple of messages first.”

Shen Ying closed all the software logged on the computer. Just as he picked up his phone, an incoming call popped up.

“Did your grandpa send you a message that you didn’t reply to? He called me instead,” Shen Ying asked Peng Sheng upon seeing the caller ID.

Peng Sheng was typing on his phone: “No, I just opened WeChat, there’s no message from him.”

“Grandpa Peng,” Shen Ying answered with a smile right after Peng Sheng finished speaking.

The very next second, Peng Sheng saw the smile on Shen Ying’s face instantly freeze. Just as he was about to ask what happened, he saw Shen Ying stand up abruptly with a panicked expression, his tone urgent:

“Which hospital was he sent to? I’ll come over right away!”