The Buggiest System

180 - Ditched

Oblivious to all of the joy he implanted in people's minds, Zhou Lei arrived at the arcade in high spirits.

Even if Zhou Lei had whistled here, it wouldn't make much of a difference. After all, almost everyone here was having a good time!

He headed to the area where Dance Dance Revolution was located.

When he arrived, someone else was using the machine, while Lin Hanying was nowhere to be seen.

He took out his phone to check the time. "5:42 pm. Where is she?"

He tapped his feet as he listened to the music coming from the DDR machine while waiting for Lin Hanying to arrive.

After several days of practice, his feet were synchronized to the sound to a frightening degree. Of course, people didn't notice him at all since they were busy not caring.

There was also the fact that the person playing was just a newbie, and the only people who kept watching on were his friends who laughed at him hysterically.

Zhou Lei opened the WeChat app on his phone and sent a message to his friend.

"Where... are... you... no, no, no... Did... you... encounter... a problem? Wait, no, no, no..."

He struggled for quite a bit before he decided to just send a simple message

[Yo yo wats up its yo boi zhou Lei
im on wechat and im here to say:
where are you]

Eventually, the song ended, and the person got an almost perfect score... of zero. His friends teased him as they walked away.

Zhou Lei glanced at them before he stepped on the machine and inserted a quarter into it. Choosing the hardest song, he started practicing again.

Clang! Clang! Step!

He used his hands to balance himself while his feet went wild. So far, there were no misses.

Of course, this was only for a few seconds...

'Damn it...' Zhou Lei cursed himself in his mind for making an easily avoidable mistake.

He continued practing...

An hour later.

Beads of sweat poured out his body as he finished up. For some reason, Lin Hanying still didn't show up. Maybe she had some sudden problem to face?

Zhou Lei felt disappointed, but he also knew that it couldn't be helped. He could only be angry for a few seconds before he forgave her for ditching him.

Out of quarters to insert, Zhou Lei was about to get some more money from System when a thought came into his mind.

'...I've still got 2 days left, haven't I?'

Boredom seeped into his mind as he imagined the thought of practicing for an hour more without Lin Hanying.

In the first place, he didn't like dancing anyway. The one reason he started playing in the first place was the mission.

He hesitated to withdraw money from System until he caved in and turned the interface off.

Placing his hands into his pockets, Zhou Lei walked off the machine, barely achieving an improvement today.

Zhou Lei walked out of the arcade as he let out a sigh. He didn't really enjoy playing Dance Dance Revolution at first.

When Lin Hanying taught him how to get better at the game, he thought that he learned how to gain pleasure from the game as well.

Now, he found out that the game didn't get fun at all, it was only fun when she was around.

"What a bummer..." Zhou Lei strolled off with a low mood.

As he looked around the mall, he wondered what else he could do in this place. After all, he was already here.

His eyes landed on a particular café.

I wonder what coffee tastes like... This youth had never even thought off drinking coffee before as they were too expensive for him to even think about buying.

Now that he had some reserve in System, he made his way towards the café.

As he opened the door, the aroma of coffee assaulted his nose. He felt like he was getting lifted up from his bad mood...

Zhou Lei's flat expression gradually turned to a smile under the facemask.

He walked over to the cashier.