To Sweep Across Like Wildfire - Chapter 22

Chapter 22

The two of them casually booked an hourly room at a nearby hotel. After arriving at the room, Shen Qingruo called Xie Zhen and asked her to bring over some clean clothes.

Before entering the hotel, Meng Chi noticed a convenience store on the first floor. Once Shen Qingruo went into the bathroom, Meng Chi left the room to go buy toiletries.

The store had some simply styled clothes. Considering that Xie Zhen wouldn’t arrive immediately and Shen Qingruo wouldn’t have a change of clothes when she finished her shower, Meng Chi began to browse. When she picked out one particular set, a subtle thought crossed her mind.

Returning to the room, she handed the items to Shen Qingruo in the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, Shen Qingruo came out, drying her damp long hair with a towel. She tugged at her top and said to Meng Chi, “Little kid, did you do this on purpose?”

She was wearing the clothes Meng Chi had bought: a yellow top printed with a funny cartoon pattern of SpongeBob SquarePants making a face.

She hadn’t worn this type of clothing in many years.

Meng Chi, who was drawing on her tablet, looked up. Shen Qingruo’s light makeup had been washed away, leaving her looking clean and fresh. Underneath her yellow shorts was a pair of slender, porcelain-white legs with a faint rosy tint to the skin. The whole look made her appear several years younger, like a university student.

Keeping a straight face, Meng Chi said, “I just picked it at random.”

Shen Qingruo gave an “Oh” and didn’t think much of it. She pointed to the clothes and said, “Next time there’s an occasion like this, remember to buy something… more mature. Or even just simpler—white or black, solid-colored T-shirts and such.”

Meng Chi gave a brief response and looked back down at her drawing. Once Shen Qingruo walked away, she stole another couple of glances at her.

Truly, she was very cute.

Half an hour later, Meng Chi heard the rhythmic tapping of a keyboard and looked toward the computer desk.

The room had an LCD computer, and Shen Qingruo had turned it on at some point. She was sitting in the black leather office chair, her headphones hanging loosely around her neck, staring intently at the screen. Her left hand tapped the keys nimbly while her right hand gripped the mouse. Between her fingers was a lit cigarette. The newly opened light blue cigarette box sat right next to the open “Changhu Supermarket” plastic bag, as if it had just been taken out.

She had confiscated Meng Chi’s cigarettes only to unashamedly smoke them herself. It made one wonder if her “confiscation” had been motivated by self-interest from the very beginning.

Meng Chi didn’t dwell on it. Her attention was immediately drawn to the game on the screen: a female character in a sleeveless shirt and olive-drab shorts was moving swiftly through an intense gunfight, taking down opposing players with almost every aimed shot.

Compared to the tension in the game, the real-life Shen Qingruo appeared much more casual and relaxed. There wasn’t a hint of tension on her face as she leaned back in the chair, occasionally taking a puff of her cigarette.

In combat, the game character moved smoothly without a trace of wasted motion. Shen Qingruo’s hand-eye coordination was excellent; her left hand rapidly tapped the keyboard to control movement while her right hand constantly adjusted the mouse to change the camera angle and clicked repeatedly to fire.

After watching for a while, Meng Chi couldn’t help but walk to Shen Qingruo’s side.

She hadn’t known Shen Qingruo played games.

Shen Qingruo didn’t seem to be playing with total focus. Hearing the sound behind her, she turned her head, a cigarette dangling from her red lips with a precarious length of ash. Speaking through the filter, her beautiful voice sounded a bit muffled: “Am I bothering you?”

Meng Chi reached out, took the cigarette, tapped the ash into the ashtray, and placed it back in Shen Qingruo’s mouth. While looking at the screen, she said, “No, keep playing.”

Whether it was Meng Chi’s imagination or not, under her gaze, Shen Qingruo gradually sat up straighter. Her expression became a bit more serious, and she stopped smoking as much, letting the cigarette burn in her hand.

The game seemed to get more intense than before as well.

Shen Qingruo dropped the cigarette butt into the ashtray. Just as she was about to pull another one from the box, she glanced at Meng Chi beside her, put the cigarette back, and leaned back into the chair.

Noticing the gesture, Meng Chi said, “You can smoke, don’t mind me.”

Presumably, she didn’t want Meng Chi to breathe in second-hand smoke. Shen Qingruo kept her eyes fixed on the screen, picked up her water glass, took a few small sips, and murmured, “I can wait a bit.”

Seeing Meng Chi so interested, she chatted as she played: “We’re lucky this round. The final circle is on us. The other five have to run through the ‘blue zone.’ I don’t know how many teams are left, so I’ll hide for a bit, let them fight it out, and then I’ll go ‘third-party’ them…”

She assumed Meng Chi knew how to play.

Meng Chi didn’t understand a word of it and just gave a few vague hums in response.

A while later, there was a knock at the door. Meng Chi figured it was Xie Zhen and went to open it. It was indeed her.

“Where is she?” Xie Zhen asked casually as she walked in, carrying a bag of clothes.

Meng Chi stepped aside and tilted her head toward Shen Qingruo. “Playing games.”

“Ha! She’s certainly enjoying herself while the two of us are running around for her.” Xie Zhen walked in and tossed the clothes aside. Seeing Shen Qingruo in the SpongeBob outfit was like discovering a new continent. Her eyes lit up instantly. She walked over, tugged at the shirt, and teased, “What’s going on here? Trying to act young?”

The fabric was smooth and, with a casual tug, it slid down, exposing one of Shen Qingruo’s pale, delicate shoulders.

The two were used to joking around and didn’t pay it much mind.

Shen Qingruo pulled the shirt back up and said in a mock-dainty tone, “What are you doing? I am young. Don’t go getting handsy with me in front of the kid; it’s a bad influence.”

“Pah,” Xie Zhen said. “Aside from the ‘little meat’ [young man/kid] next to you, is there anything ‘young’ left about you?”

Her gaze drifted to the cigarette box on the desk, and she said happily, “Didn’t you say the convenience store that sold Sea Breeze had closed? What happened? Did it reopen?”

She immediately pulled a cigarette out, put it in her mouth, flicked the lighter with a click, and took a satisfying puff. With the air of a veteran smoker, she said comfortably, “I thought I’d never get to smoke these again.”

Reminded by Xie Zhen, Shen Qingruo noticed that these were indeed the ones she usually liked to smoke. Remembering something, a smile played on her lips.

Xie Zhen continued, “Give me a few boxes.”

Shen Qingruo shook two cigarettes out for her, placed them by her hand, and then dumped the rest back into the plastic bag. She tied the bag tight and placed it by her leg, saying airily, “Go buy your own.”

Xie Zhen was so annoyed by this protective display that she nearly choked on her smoke. She said excitedly, “I came all this way to bring you clothes so you wouldn’t have to go out naked, and this is how you treat your savior?”

Seeing Shen Qingruo unmoved, she sighed. “I never should have given you that life-saving fruit candy back then. Now you’ve grown up to be so fierce and rebellious.”

Their “fated connection” had all started with that one little fruit candy.

Time had passed, and Shen Qingruo was no longer the girl who had no money and had gone hungry for two days—the one who endured the exhaustion of running 800 meters just to pass the physical exam for her final scholarship.

Sometimes, she would joke about those events herself.

So, they no longer hesitated to tease each other about the past.

As soon as Xie Zhen mentioned it, Shen Qingruo knew what she was talking about.

She took the remaining two cigarettes back with a blank expression and said, “I almost forgot. That fruit candy was so hard it nearly broke my teeth.”

Xie Zhen couldn’t take this anymore. It was bad enough not to get two boxes, but taking back the two loose ones was too much. She immediately reached out to grab them.

Meng Chi didn’t understand the story about the “fruit candy,” but seeing them fight over it, she quickly said, “You can buy those cigarettes online.”

Xie Zhen was too focused on grabbing the cigarettes to hear, but Shen Qingruo looked back at Meng Chi. She didn’t care that Xie Zhen snatched the cigarettes away. She gave a few huffs and said, “No wonder you didn’t kick up a fuss when I confiscated them earlier. You’ve already found a source online.”

“What do you mean?” Xie Zhen hadn’t heard the first half and didn’t know the background.

Shen Qingruo pointed her finger emphatically at Meng Chi, meaning: If you dare buy more, just you wait. She said, “Send me the purchase link later.”

Meng Chi: “…”

How annoying. She had exposed herself.

But it didn’t matter. She would buy them secretly. It wasn’t like Shen Qingruo could install surveillance on her phone.

In the end, Shen Qingruo gave Xie Zhen a few more cigarettes anyway.

Xie Zhen smoked while watching Shen Qingruo play. She soon got excited. When Shen Qingruo finished another round, Xie Zhen rubbed her hands together and said, “There’s only one computer here, so Meng Chi and I can’t play. How about we play Peacekeeper Elite? We can form a squad of three.”

“Sure, but I haven’t played in a long time. I need to update it.”

“I have to reinstall it too,” Xie Zhen said. “I kept getting terrible teammates and couldn’t rank up, so I got mad and deleted it.”

Because Meng Chi had been watching the computer screen so intently while Shen Qingruo was playing, they both assumed she knew how to play.

Meng Chi thought to herself: Good timing, I need to download it too.

The hotel Wi-Fi was decent, and they soon finished their updates and downloads.

Three minutes later, Meng Chi entered the game world in a daze. She felt extremely uncomfortable; she had never played a 3D game before. The motion sickness was intense, and she couldn’t tell north from south.

Shen Qingruo and Xie Zhen communicated smoothly, talking about looting supplies or spotting other teams.

Suddenly, Xie Zhen said nervously, “Someone is flanking me, three of them… I tagged one… I’m down, I’m down! Help! Old Shen, get over here…”

After being knocked down, the game character crawled on the ground. Aside from crawling, she couldn’t do anything else and had to wait for a teammate to revive her. There was also a time limit; if the timer ran out before help arrived, she would be out of the game.

Shen Qingruo rushed to the scene. In a few moments, she took out all three enemies. Her health bar was half empty. While healing, she said, “Another team is coming. They probably heard the gunfire. I’ll go deal with them first.”

“Go, go,” Xie Zhen said. “Xiao Meng, give me a hand.”

She saw Meng Chi’s character just standing there nearby, seemingly doing nothing. When Meng Chi finally approached, Xie Zhen’s timer was almost out. She shouted urgently, “Xiao Meng, revive me! I’m going to die!”

Meng Chi’s character finally moved. At the exact moment Xie Zhen turned into a loot box, Meng Chi’s character pulled out a can of energy drink and started chugging it.

In all her time playing games, Xie Zhen had never seen such a move: “…”

Xie Zhen: “Are you… celebrating at my grave?”

Shen Qingruo glanced at Meng Chi’s phone screen. Seeing her fumbling with the controls, she understood immediately. She laughed and said to Xie Zhen, “You’re just too bad at this. Go practice your recoil control while you’re out; your aim is flying into the sky. Are you hunting birds?”

Though Shen Qingruo had bailed her out, Meng Chi still felt quite embarrassed. She said, “Sorry, I’ve never played this game before. I’m dragging you down. I should quit.”

“It’s fine, everyone starts as a newbie.” Shen Qingruo took Meng Chi’s phone, adjusted the button layout, and gave a careful explanation. Seeing that Meng Chi still struggled with the movement, she gently took her hand and showed her how to operate it.

Back at the lake, Meng Chi had wanted to hold Shen Qingruo’s hand, but after her failed attempt, she hadn’t been able to summon the courage again.

Now, a warm palm was pressed against the back of her hand.

Meng Chi’s heart raced uncontrollably. I’m touching her hand.