Chapter 136

Chapter 136

Although everyone kept saying Wen Tangtang was fine, for some reason, Wen Miao couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

Lying in bed, she would pick up her phone every few minutes to check it, but there was no activity in the WeChat group. The last message was still the one Wen Miao had sent, giving them five minutes to reply.

She tossed and turned all night without sleeping.

The next morning, Wen Miao woke with a start. By instinct, she reached for her phone and opened it, only to find that Wen Xin and Wen Tangtang still hadn’t replied to anything.

Her fingers unconsciously clenched the quilt beneath her.

This was wrong. Very wrong!

It had been late last night, so the two of them not replying could barely be explained away. But it was almost nine now. Why had neither of them replied to a single message?

This wasn’t like either of them at all.

She got out of bed and changed, splashed some water on her face, then hurried out of the dorm.

On her way to the boys’ dormitory, Wen Miao happened to run into a few boys from her class walking together. She quickly stopped them to ask where Wen Xin was.

“Wen Xin?” The boy she stopped scratched his head, looked around, then called loudly to someone in the crowd, “Hey, hey, Ah Chuan! Come here, come here.”

A boy in a basketball uniform ran over from a distance, dribbling a basketball as he came. “What is it, Pangzi?”

“Wen Miao wants to ask about Wen Xin. Isn’t he in your dorm?”

The boy called Ah Chuan had come over reluctantly at first, but the moment he got a clear look at Wen Miao, his eyes lit up. His hand stilled, and the basketball slipped from his grasp, bounced to the ground, and rolled to Wen Miao’s feet.

Seeing this, Wen Miao bent down and picked it up.

“Holy crap! Wen Miao…”

Ah Chuan looked a little excited. After all, Wen Miao was the school’s publicly acknowledged genius girl-and more importantly, she had both brains and looks.

He was in the chemistry department, not the same department as Wen Miao and Wen Xin, so he didn’t get many chances to see her. But he was lucky! Their dorm room housed students from two classes, and he happened to share a room with Wen Miao’s older brother, Wen Xin. As the saying went, the pavilion closest to the water got the moonlight first…

The hateful thing was, every time he asked Wen Xin to introduce him to Wen Miao, that guy would look at him as if to say, A pig like you can forget about rooting around my family’s cabbage.

Who would have thought? Who would have thought?

Wen Xin, you guarded against everything, but I still found my chance.

Ah Chuan straightened his back and smoothed his hair. “Hello, I’m Wen Xin’s roommate. You can just call me Ah Chuan.”

Wen Miao was in no mood for small talk, so after handing him the basketball she had just picked up, she asked anxiously, “Did Wen Xin come back to the dorm last night?”

Ah Chuan froze. “No. Didn’t he go to the hospital yesterday?”

Wen Miao froze as well. “How did you know… he went to the hospital last night?”

Hearing Wen Miao’s question, Ah Chuan found it even stranger. From the sound of it, she also knew Wen Xin had gone to the hospital. But if she already knew, why had she come over to ask again?

But as he looked into Wen Miao’s eyes, clear and melancholy like autumn water, gazing at him with expectation, he somehow forgot all his doubts.

“Didn’t Ah Xin message you? I got a text from him yesterday saying he was going to the hospital…”

Wen Miao was stunned. “What? He sent you a message saying he was going to the hospital?”

Ah Chuan didn’t understand what she found so strange and answered a little blankly, “Yeah. He also asked the dorm supervisor for leave…”

Wen Miao was utterly shocked. In other words, both of them had told the dorm supervisor and their roommates that they were going to the hospital. She was the only one they hadn’t told?

Unable to believe it, she pleaded, “Sorry to trouble you, but could you let me see the message he sent you?”

Although Ah Chuan found it odd, he still took his phone out of his pocket, found Wen Xin’s contact, and opened it.

Ah Chuan’s phone seemed to have a privacy screen protector on it. From where Wen Miao stood, she couldn’t really see what was on the screen, so she could only rise on tiptoe and lean toward the front of the phone.
Ah Chuan was scrolling through his phone when he sensed a fresh, clean presence slowly drawing closer. His face abruptly flushed, and even the movements of his fingers on the screen grew smaller, as if he were afraid of disturbing the person beside him.

Wen Miao saw the message Wen Xin had sent. The wording was very similar to the one Wen Tangtang had sent, except he hadn’t explained why he was going to the hospital. He had also said he’d already asked the dorm supervisor for leave…

Wen Miao checked the time again and found that it was close to when Wen Tangtang had sent her message as well-10:40 p.m.

But Wen Miao’s expression instantly turned extremely ugly. The fingertips clutching her phone began to tremble.

No. This wasn’t right!

She had always thought Wen Xin hadn’t replied to her because his phone had run out of battery, so he hadn’t seen her message. Later, when she sent a message in their three-person group chat, it had already been almost eleven. She had assumed Wen Tangtang might have felt unwell after sending her own message and simply hadn’t used her phone again…

But if Wen Xin had still been sending messages to other people at 10:40, then there was no way he hadn’t seen the message she sent him!

Why hadn’t he replied? This wasn’t right. This wasn’t how he did things. And he had no reason not to reply…

And…

Thinking about it now, the excuses she had used to comfort herself yesterday were full of holes. If the two of them had gone to the hospital, they would have had to swipe their health insurance cards or register and pay, right? There was no way they wouldn’t have used their phones…

In that instant, many things flashed through her mind-Xu Lei, Wisdom Biotechnology, Gu Zhishu…

At first, Ah Chuan had been delighted that his goddess was getting close to him. But the very next second, he saw Wen Miao’s face suddenly change, as if she had seen something terrifying.

His gaze fell on the message Ah Xin had sent. It was clearly just a perfectly ordinary message. Yet he watched as Wen Miao’s face gradually turned deathly pale, beads of sweat visibly breaking out across her forehead.

“Are you… okay?”

Seeing that something seemed very wrong with Wen Miao, Ah Chuan was just about to reach out to support her when a pair of arms suddenly came from the side and caught Wen Miao by the arm.

Ah Chuan turned his head in surprise and saw a boy standing beside him, half a head taller than himself. The boy wore a black mask and cap, making it impossible to see what he looked like.

Before Ah Chuan could ask who this boy was, he heard Wen Miao call out in a trembling voice, “Nan Mu.”

Nan Mu held Wen Miao’s arm and gave it a gentle squeeze.

That small motion pulled Wen Miao’s scattered reason temporarily back into place. She steadied herself, then forced a faint smile at Ah Chuan. “Thank you for just now. Since Wen Xin went to the hospital, then everything should be fine. I’ll get going.”

With that, Wen Miao leaned on Nan Mu and walked away.

Ah Chuan didn’t even manage to hold out his phone and ask her to add him on WeChat. He could only watch helplessly as that boy whose face he hadn’t even seen half-embraced Wen Miao by the shoulders and led her into the distance.

“Holy crap. The genius girl is actually taken?” Pangzi, who was standing off to the side, sighed. “Man, another beauty lost to us.”

“It’s not like she’d be interested in you anyway. If anyone’s heartbroken here, it should be me, okay?” Ah Chuan clutched at his chest theatrically.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Narcissist. Wen Xin doesn’t even approve of you, and you think Wen Miao would?” Pangzi, who had been mocked, immediately protested.

Ah Chuan was too lazy to argue with Pangzi. The two of them walked side by side for a while before he suddenly came back to his senses. “Wait, what did Wen Miao call him just now? Nan Mu? That name sounds kind of familiar…”

“Nan Mu? Could it be that Nan Mu from the basketball club? The one girls are crazy about because he’s so good-looking…”

The moment Ah Chuan heard that, he blurted out, “Holy crap! No wonder it sounded so familiar… That guy… But he seems to have taken leave and gone home recently, so it probably wasn’t him… Thank God it wasn’t. Anyone can be Wen Miao’s boyfriend except him. He crushes me on the basketball court every single day-there’s no way I’m letting him crush me in love too!”