Chapter 73: Li Ergou

Li Ergou was my close friend in middle school. When she moved with her parents to North City for high school, she enrolled in the North City D University School of Foreign Languages.

Though she relocated, that didn’t affect our friendship. Back then, we were both still in high school. Many students would secretly bring their phones to school, locking them in their dorm room cabinets or stuffing them deep in their bedding. After finishing all our homework each night, we’d return to our rooms, take out our phones, log onto QQ to see which familiar faces were online, joke around a bit, browse some webpages, and then go to sleep.

Thirty megabytes of data was more than enough for an entire month—our phones still had physical buttons—but our feelings were the truest then.

Every night, Li Ergou would chat with me about all the things she was struggling to adapt to at her new school, and later, the joy of making new friends. This continued up until the day before she left for the Top Student Training Camp.

She messaged me, “Zijian, tomorrow I’ll be going to the Top Student Training Camp. They don’t allow phones there.”

“If you want to find me, get into D University.”

“I’ll be waiting for you at D University.”

At that time, I was poring over a math problem, and by the time I saw her message, her avatar was already gray. From that day onward, it never lit up again.

“Hey, Zijian, is her real name actually Li Ergou?” Lin Wan’s expression was as if she’d just swallowed bitter melon juice.

“No, that’s just a nickname I gave her. Her real name is…”

Maybe because I’d called her by her nickname for so long, I actually forgot her real name for a moment. I racked my brains for a good while before I finally remembered.

“Li Xinxin.”

Lin Wan patted her chest and looked at me. “I knew it—if a girl was really named ‘Ergou,’ probably nobody would want her.”

I ignored Lin Wan’s joke and began searching for Li Xinxin’s name on the room lists, door by door.

I started from the seventh floor and worked my way down. Finally, on the fifth floor, room 505, I found her name.

Beside her name was another: Jiang Linlin.

I suppressed my excitement and refrained from knocking. Knocking on doors in the middle of the night, even if I wasn’t mistaken for a creep, would still attract the attention of other ability holders—which was not a good idea.

I dragged Lin Wan back to our rooms, enduring what felt like an endless night.

The next morning, I got up early, bought breakfast, dressed neatly, and arrived at the door of room 505, planning to surprise Li Ergou as soon as she stepped out.

After waiting for about fifteen minutes, the door finally opened from inside.

A girl in a blue gauze dress yawned as she stepped out, carrying a washbasin.

“Ergou!”

“I’ve missed you so much!”

I hugged the girl in the blue dress directly. She was startled and tried to wriggle out of my embrace.

But as a guy, there was no way she could push me off so easily.

“Who are you?!”

Panicking, she shoved at me frantically, trying to escape my grip.

But I was being completely shameless, burying my face tightly against her chest.

“Pervert!”

Summoning strength from who knows where, the girl in blue kicked me flying to the floor, panting heavily, her face flushed red.

I glanced at her, and couldn’t help but blush myself.

Because I’d been holding on too tightly, when she kicked me away, my hands were still clutching a piece of her dress.

Now, I was standing there with a scrap of blue gauze in my hand, and her body was entirely exposed before me.

She hadn’t seemed to realize anything was amiss just yet. She stared at me in shock, which quickly turned to rage.

“You!”

“You scoundrel!”

She raised her leg, about to stomp on my face, when another girl emerged from the room.

Long hair cascading over her shoulders, dressed in pale pink pajamas, she hurried out and, upon seeing me on the ground, her eyes immediately filled with tears.

Only then did I realize this was the Li Ergou I’d been searching for.

“Zijian…”

Li Xinxin’s eyes reddened instantly, tears streaming uncontrollably as she rushed to my side.

“Zijian, you really came!”

“Zijian, how could you come here?!”

“You shouldn’t have come here!”

Li Xinxin was so overcome she could barely speak, but I understood from her words that she too was involved in this game.

And she seemed to know as much as Lin Wan and I did.

“Xinxin, is this pervert your friend?”

Now that Li Ergou was hugging me, the girl in blue seemed to recover, her gaze toward me now tinged with embarrassment as she instinctively tugged at her strapless dress.

But she couldn’t grab anything.

Looking down, she realized her gauze dress had been ripped off at some point, leaving her upper half bare except for a pair of blue panties.

“Ahh!”

She let out a piercing scream and dashed back into the dorm, slamming the door.

The whole sequence took just a few seconds. Before I’d even recovered from her scream, their door was already shut.

“Zijian… what did you do to my roommate?”

Li Xinxin looked utterly bewildered—she’d been facing me the whole time and hadn’t seen what happened behind her.

I could only hold up the piece of blue gauze in my hand.

“I, uh, mistook your roommate for you.”

“And then accidentally tore off her dress.”

“Haha.”

Seeing my helpless face, Li Xinxin burst out laughing. “Zijian, you’re in big trouble now.”

“My roommate Jiang Linlin is the belle of our law school—lots of guys are interested in her.”

“And you’ve seen her body. You’re done for.”

“So what? It’s not like I like her anyway.”

With that, I took out the breakfast I’d brought for Xinxin. She happily accepted it, pulled me up from the floor, and was about to take me into the dorm.

But no matter how many times she knocked, there was no response from inside.

“Linlin, let me in,” Li Xinxin called through the door.

From inside, we could only hear the soft sound of sobbing, but no words in reply.

“If you don’t open up, I’ll use my key,” Li Xinxin teased.

“Xinxin, that disgusting pervert bullied me! You have to stand up for me!” came the reply at last.

The door opened a crack. Jiang Linlin had changed into something thick and heavy, wrapping herself up tightly as if afraid anyone might catch a glimpse.

“Xinxin, who is this guy?” Jiang Linlin eyed me with deep reluctance.

Li Xinxin took her hand and led her back to sit on the dorm bed, gesturing for me to come in as well.

I pulled up a chair and sat nearby, listening as the two girls chatted.

It was then, through their conversation, that I learned what had happened to Li Ergou during the years she’d been missing.

After entering the Top Student Training Camp, she was dispatched to the area around Tianchi Lake in Xinjiang for a special assignment. When the mission was over, her memory was wiped, and she started again as an ordinary student at D University.

In the law school, her outstanding academic abilities quickly won her the favor of her mentors, and she was selected as one of the university’s recommended master’s students. But the good times didn’t last. Suddenly, monsters appeared, killing most of the people in the faculty.

Less than three hundred survived, and half of those later died in a deadly game. In the most recent game, Li Xinxin’s roommate was killed, and she and the remaining students moved into this building.

That’s how she met her new roommate, Jiang Linlin.

Jiang Linlin was just an ordinary person, but as for me, I’m a formidable Contractor,” Li Xinxin said, her once-timid face now full of confidence.

“Zijian, don’t underestimate me. I’ve gotten so much stronger over these years.”

“Don’t get cocky, Ergou. No matter how strong you are, you can’t beat me,” I called her by her old nickname without hesitation, seeing how full of herself she was.

“Ergou?” Jiang Linlin covered her mouth in surprise. “Xinxin, is that really your nickname?”

When she saw her roommate had heard such an embarrassing nickname, Li Xinxin’s expression darkened instantly.

It was an intimate name, but only when no one else was around.

“Zijian, you’re really not giving me any face,” Li Ergou said, planting her foot on the chair and resting her arm on her knee, looking down at me.

“From now on, you will call me Your Majesty the Queen.”