Running away from the Love-Brain

Ordinary Friends

Prologue: Guidelines for Escaping the "Love Brain"

You must understand, love is crap.Don't fall in love, don't talk about love.Stay far away from Cui Muhuo.

—Chi Buyu's Famous Sayings: "A Person Should Never Be a Love Brain"

"Weird."

"What's weird?"

"Chi Buyu, she's been acting so weird lately," said the woman in a local dialect, Chengdu accent, her voice mixed with the lively chatter and drumbeats in the bar, light and cheerful despite the slight strain.

"Didn't I call her a few days ago to ask if she was coming to our class reunion? And then I asked her if she had Cui Xijin's number..."

The person she was talking to chuckled, "And then what? What did Chi Buyu say to you, class president?"

The class president, who had been speaking in the Chengdu dialect, sighed. "She said—"

As she spoke, she raised the half-face mask in her hand to cover the upper part of her face and mimicked Chi Buyu's vague tone from the phone call.

"Cui Xijin? Who's that?"

Then, after an awkward ten-second pause...

"Oh, you mean that Cui Xijin? Not really familiar, we're not that close."

Perhaps it was because she suddenly switched to Mandarin, but the words sounded especially odd.

The northern classmate, who had been listening, burst into even louder laughter, her shoulders shaking as she grabbed her own mask—painted with the face of Mr. Krabs from SpongeBob SquarePants—to cover her face.

After a moment of reflection, she added, "I remember the two of them dancing Trouble Maker during our first-year military training night. Didn't the whole grade spread rumors that Chi Buyu actually kissed Cui Xijin back then? How could Chi Buyu forget something that memorable?"

"Exactly!" The class president, still holding the Mr. Krabs mask, pursed her lips.

"After that, didn't they kind of stop getting along? Every time they met, they'd argue. One said the other's face was too pale and ghostly cold, and the other complained that one smiled too much like a fool with nothing but water in their brain. They could never just peacefully share a room..."

Halfway through her sentence, she paused, suddenly realizing something.

"Wait—those two have been tangled up for ages. Why is Chi Buyu now pretending she doesn't know Cui Xijin over the phone?"

Then, as if to herself, she added, "Could it be something that happened in June, when they were in Hong Kong..."

"In Hong Kong? What? Reconnected? Tears of rekindled love? A passionate reunion?"

"What kind of ridiculous soap opera words are you using? None of them apply to those two. I'd sooner believe they got into a knock-down, drag-out fight in Hong Kong and now refuse to have anything to do with each other, which is why Chi Buyu's acting like she doesn't know her."

"That's not impossible," said the northern classmate, still laughing as she leaned in closer.

"But were they really on such bad terms back in school? I don't remember seeing any of those fights you mentioned. I always thought they were pretty good friends—"

"Zzzzap—"

A sharp screeching sound came from the speakers on stage, cutting off her words as though they had violated some unspoken rule and needed immediate correction.