Love Me in Another Universe

Chapter 90. A Lonely Heart (Part 2)

April 17, 2000, Monday. After finishing two classes of maths for liberal arts students in the afternoon, Guan Xuchen and Wen Yuwei went to the Internet cafe outside Guangdong Yixian University (GYU) again.

Once seated, Guan Xuchen first opened the "GYU Space" BBS forum. In the "Girls' Thoughts" section, he spotted a latest post from "StefanieMoon" published that noon, titled "A Boyfriend Who Corrects His Mistakes Is a Good One". It read: "A beautiful music box plus a sincere apology—I'll forgive you this time!" Heehee~~"

The text-only BBS had no images attached, but Guan Xuchen thought of the music box of carousel crystal ball he had gone to buy with Gao Xinglang on Sunday, and guessed this must be the one Fan Yueming was talking about.

Guan Xuchen let out a soft sigh. He closed the BBS forum, then opened his 163.com email box and saw six unread messages. Two of them were spam emails, another two were replies to the messages he had sent to Sonnik and Roy—fellow users from "Guangtong Space"—last Friday, and the remaining two came from unknown email addresses, with subjects reading "Guangtong Dating" and "Finally Found You" respectively.

"Great! I got responses to my dating profile so quickly!" Guan Xuchen thought with delight.

He cast a sideways glance at Wen Yuwei in the adjacent seat and noticed Wen was totally absorbed in playing an online game. So he clicked open each of the four emails from online respondents.

Guan Xuchen opened Sonnik's email first. It read, "Hi Tommy, thanks for your email. Nice to meet you. I'm a senior at Nanyue University of Technology, and I like basketball and online games. My pager number is 126123456. Hope we can get to know each other better."

After reading it, Guan Xuchen felt quite happy and replied right away: "Sonnik, thanks for your reply! Sorry, I don't have a pager yet. My OICQ number is 1314072412. I'll call your pager from the dorm phone after my evening study session. Hope we can get to know each other better."

Guan Xuchen then opened Roy's email. It read, "Hi, Tommy, thanks for your email. Actually, I want to ask—do you have a boyfriend right now? Have you ever had sexual contact with someone of the same sex?" Are you a '0'or a '1'? Are you open to '419'? I've attached a photo of myself. If you're interested, feel free to reach out. My OICQ number is 1069419.

Guan Xuchen's cheeks flushed red. He found Roy's questions far too direct, and a sense of unease crept over him. Still, he downloaded the photo Roy had attached—he wanted to see what Roy looked like first, before deciding whether to reply to his email.

The photo started loading slowly, and Roy's face was the first thing that came into view. Guan Xuchen thought Roy was quite good-looking, even vaguely reminiscent of some male celebrity—only his expression seemed a little provocative. By the time the photo was half-loaded, Guan Xuchen felt something was wrong: Roy's upper body was bare, and his lower half hadn't appeared on the screen yet.

"Could he be totally naked?" The thought made Guan Xuchen jump. He hurried to close the unfinished photo, and the swivel chair he was sitting on unconsciously slid back a little.

Wen Yuwei, sitting beside him, noticed Guan Xuchen's unease and turned to ask, "Tommy, you okay?"

"Oh, y-yeah. Just saw a cockroach or something." Guan Xuchen forced a smile as he answered.

"You're scared of cockroaches?" Wen Yuwei teased him, then turned back to focus fully on his online game.

Guan Xuchen slid his swivel chair forward again, glanced left and right to make sure neither Wen Yuwei nor anyone else was paying attention to him. Only then did he start loading Roy's photo once again. This time, though, he shrank the photo loading window down to roughly the size of a 2x2 icon grid, and dragged it to the bottom-left corner of the screen.