Guide on How to Fail at Online Dating

Edited by Divetus

Jing Huan stared at Xiang Huaizhi's WeChat name and blushed; both his face and ears were completely red and felt warm for a long time. He didn't exit his chat with Xiang Huaizhi until his number of unread messages went up to ten.

It was the dorm group chat that no one had used in a while.

Lu Wenhao: [Shared from NCH Video Center - Full VOD of Yearning For's livestream room.]

Lu Wenhao: It only took a few days for this VOD to take first place. It completely surpassed all of Xiang Ge's previous PK videos…

Gao Zixiang: Only oneself can surpass oneself, this is what it means to be strong, understand?

A few days had already passed, but Jing Huan couldn't bring himself to watch the VOD.

He needed to save some face.

As long as he didn't look, the embarrassment couldn't catch up with him.

Lu Wenhao: The period where the mic was muted had been cut into short videos and uploaded online. The two marketing accounts that I follow are both forwarding it around..

Lu Wenhao: Holy shit! When I saw it in the afternoon, it had only been forwarded 200 times, and now it's gone up to 8000 times?!

Jing Huan was a bit confused.

Happiness Every Day: What do you mean, when the mic was muted?

Lu Wenhao: In the middle ah, after you went to take a bath.

Ten minutes later, Jing Huan locked the door, drew the curtains, put on headphones, and slowly opened the VOD shared by Lu Wenhao.

Because he was unable to remember the exact timestamp, he had to bite the bullet and drag the progress bar slowly from the beginning.

"Who am I? I'm Yearning For's sweetheart baby…"

Fuck.

For a moment, Jing Huan felt as though he placed himself on the executioning grounds.

He stayed silent for more than ten seconds before recovering from his embarrassment. He couldn't help reaching out to cover his eyes, leaving only a small gap, and then continued to watch the livestream VOD.

Did he really speak in such a tone that was begging for a spanking?

And this Immortal Mengmeng had tolerated it? And then even sent Xiang Huaizhi a thousand yuan gift later?

He didn't know whether to praise Immortal Mengmeng for being generous or for being single-minded…

Jing Huan endured the discomfort and finally survived to the period after he went to the bathroom.

He heard Xiang Huaizhi say, "Cursing people out will get you muted, cursing out my wife will get you kicked out."

?

Jing Huan blinked a few times behind the cover of his fingers, and then slowly reached out with those fingers to turn up the computer volume.

After listening to this video, Jing Huan could only calm down after pouring and downing two glasses of ice water in succession.

He had mixed feelings.

He felt embarrassed and ashamed, but he also inexplicably also felt that it was quite sweet…

After a moment, Jing Huan saved the VOD to his computer, and then calmly clicked the "report" button at the top left of the screen.

In fact, he had already been prepared to be cursed out a long time ago. Although he had certainly done nothing bad to other people as a catfisher, he would've accepted getting cursed out a bit by others, if they felt like he deserved it.

But nothing had happened; in the past few days, he hadn't heard any malicious words towards him.

Now he knew that it was actually because Xiang Huaizhi had used a few light words to deflect everyone's attention.

Jing Huan couldn't help but look at his WeChat again.

When he had first met Xiang Huaizhi, he had always thought that Xiang Huaizhi was a very cold person, whether in speech or in action.

It was only later on that he found out how gentle this man was.

After making sure the VOD was downloaded, Jing Huan closed the page.

He opened up NCH and simultaneously logged into both Xiao Tianjing’s and Yearning For’s accounts, preparing to form a team to do dailies.

He had just set up the team at their house when Yearning For’s friends notifications flashed.

[Stranger] Withered and Fallen: Are you there?

Because Xiang Huaizhi had a guild officer position, there were often people who messaged him privately that wanted to join the guild. During this period of time, he rarely turned off messages from strangers.

Jing Huan had just wanted to reply with "not the original account owner" when another message flew over from the other party.

[Stranger] Withered and Fallen: Where are you from ah, great God?

[Stranger] Withered and Fallen: Do you use XX?

[Stranger] Yearning For: What is XX?

[Stranger] Withered and Fallen: Haha, it's a software that people like us use ah.

Jing Huan frowned.

People like us? Who is 'us'?

Jing Huan picked up his cellphone and searched the name of what this person had mentioned. A piece of software popped up in the search results.

Below it was a brief description, "a social app used by men".

[Stranger] Withered and Fallen: Where are you from?

[Stranger] Yearning For: What do you want?

[Stranger] Withered and Fallen: Want to meet you.

[Stranger] Yearning For: ?

[Stranger] Withered and Fallen: I can send you photos first. If you're satisfied, we can keep talking.

No matter how dense Jing Huan was, by now, he had started to understand the situation.

[Stranger] Yearning For: Send and we'll see.

[Stranger] Withered and Fallen: [The other party has sent you a photo: Accept / Reject]

Jing Huan opened it and took a look.

It was actually a half-naked □□ with flirty eyes. Jing Huan took one look and immediately closed it.

[Stranger] Yearning For: That's it?

[Stranger] Withered and Fallen: Ah?

[Stranger] Yearning For: Bro, let's be real. With your little body, I would make you cry for three months with just a punch.

[Stranger] Yearning For: If you bother my husband again, I'll set up a hospital bed for you and pay for an annual service.

After sending those two sentences, Jing Huan refreshed the other party's information. As expected, he had already gone offline.

It was a level ten side account. From one glance it was obvious that he had come here to drool over Yearning For.

Jing Huan sneered, moved his fingers, and opened the messaging settings to block stranger messages in Yearning For's account.

[Friend] Half Life: Huanhuan, what are you doing?

[Friend] Xiao Tianjing: Doing dailies.

Now that they knew Xiao Tianjing was Jing Huan, Lu Wenaho and Gao Zixiang immediately added him as a friend, and sent a lot of materials to Lu Hang to compensate for the previous incident.

[Friend] Half Life: Voice chat for a while?

The dorm group chat voice chatted for a while.

"Well then, I'll just ask you," Lu Wenhao cleared his throat. "You know about the fact that Xiang Ge's was being run by a booster before ba? So the thing with your Jie…"

"I know." Jing Huan said.

Lu Wenhao was shocked. "Oh…"

Gao Zixiang asked, "Does this mean that you two are wholeheartedly in love with each other?"

"En," said Jing Huan. "Even more wholeheartedly than you and your girlfriend."

Gao Zixiang cheerfully laughed when he heard that. "Fuck, leave my baby alone, I refuse to compare."

Their group chatted about their exam results for a while. Only Lu Wenhao had failed a class, and the other two barely managed to pass.

Lu Wenhao sighed, "Why am I always so unlucky? I failed the exam, I failed to promote my in-game rank, and online dating resulted in either a catfisher or an auntie…"

He paused, "Even if it was a catfisher ba, if there was one as handsome as Huanhuan, then it wouldn't be that bad."

"Don't have dirty thoughts about your daddy." Jing Huan interrupted him.

"Who's having dirty thoughts about you, I'm just using you as an analogy."

"No analogies either."

"… Server bully." After Lu Wenhao said that, he suddenly felt that his summary had no problems.

Hanging up the voice chat, Jing Huan logged off NCH.

One person couldn't operate two accounts that well. The simple instances had already been finished, and he really didn't know what else to do.

He glanced at the PUBG icon to the side.

Jing Huan furrowed his eyebrows and found the five person group chat created by Lu Hang——

Happiness Every Day: What are all of you doing?

Gao Zixiang: Farming and refining purple stones.

Lu Ge: Getting ready to take a bath.

Lu Wenhao: Just got scolded by my mother. I'm 20 years old, why am I still scolded for my grades… What's up? Do you want to do something?

Happiness Every Day: Boyfriend [heart] at home yet? All alone and *lonely* [heart]

Gao Zixiang:?

Lu Ge: ?

Lu Wenhao: ???

Happiness Every Day: Pure male college student [heart] passionately working [heart], online, waiting for three people. If boyfriend ♂ doesn't come back, I won't sleep, to Erangel, I'll leap [kiss]

The group was silent for a few seconds.

Lu Wenhao: Motherfucker, just directly say it. Don't do all these cringey things, I'm scared to death.

Lu Ge: I think you just want me to be beaten to death by Xiangxiang. How can I dare to play this game? Do I dare to get in this car?

Gao Zixiang: Sorry, I still like pure female college students.

Happiness Every Day: So, are you fuckers coming or not?

Five minutes later, the four of them started their long PUBG journey of turning into lootboxes.

Xiang Huaizhi's cellphone had run out of power midway through the day. After charging it in the car, he couldn't help laughing when he saw the group's chat logs.

Jing Huan had sent him a lot of private messages. At the beginning, it was livestreaming him doing dailies. Later, it became a livestream of turning into lootboxes and the various ways to die in PUBG.

Just as he finished reading all the unread messages, Jing Huan had sent two more messages.

Happiness Every Day: I'm dead again. Stupid Lu Wenhao didn't throw his frag grenade right and blew me up.

Happiness Every Day: I'm so pitiful ah Gege.

Wanting Happiness Every Day: Boyfriend is home.

Happiness Every Day: En?

Wanting Happiness Every Day: Time to sleep.

When he returned home, Xiang Huaizhi took a bath first before video calling Jing Huan.

Jing Huan laid on the bed and asked, "Do you still need to go out tomorrow?"

Xiang Huaizhi let out an "en" sound, "Still have to go for another two days."

Jing Huan opened the calendar and looked at it. Two days from now would be New Year's Eve.

Xiang Huaizhi logged into the game and looked at the quest list. "Helped me do my dailies?"

"En, afraid you wouldn't be able to."

Speaking of this, Jing Huan remembered something and turned his gaze away from the camera. "By the way, when I went on your account today, I turned on the settings to refuse stranger messages."

Aware of his tone, Xiang Huaizhi asked, "What happened?"

"It's nothing. There was just a fool who privately messaged you. I've blacklisted him." Jing Huan paused and said, "A man."

"…"

Xiang Huaizhi immediately understood.

In fact, he had run into this kind of situation many times before. After all, many players had ranked him as #1 in the entire game, which was enough to attract people.

But a man… That was a first.

"I used to rarely accept stranger messages, but during this period, Chunxiao has been busy and can't get online during the day, so she asked me to help with guild applications." Xiang Huaizhi explained.

"I know. I just felt like he looked down on people." Jing Huan said.

"What do you mean, looked down on people?"

Xiang Huaizhi opened his friend list and sent Chunxiao a message, saying that he didn't want a guild officer position anymore.

"He sent your account a picture. He was so skinny that you could see his ribs. And he looked shady, not at all attractive." Jing Huan doubtfully asked, "Where did he find the courage to ask my husband out?"

Xiang Huaizhi paused and asked, "What did you call me?"

Jing Huan realized what he had just said and also froze.

He was silent for a few seconds before boldly and straightforwardly saying, "Husband ah… What, not letting me call you that?"

Xiang Huaizhi silently laughed, "Letting you."

After a while, Xiang Huaizhi lightly frowned and asked, "How did you know he was so skinny that you could see his ribs?"

"In the picture he sent ah." Jing Huan said, "Half-naked, I could see everything."

"…"

Xiang Huaizhi expressionlessly opened the blacklist, found the side account, and sent the ID to an assassin group he had on his account.

[Friend] Yearning For: Reward of 1000, for this person's main account.

—

Juurensha: ….XHZ, sometimes you go overboard a bit.

Divi: LMFAO, at first it was like… oh, Huanhuan is calling me husband? Then XHZ's like… Wait, that male was showing my baby his body? FIND HIM AND KILL HIM.

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