Guide on How to Fail at Online Dating

Edited by Divetus

In April, the sound of a basketball swishing through the basket and landing on the ground resounded all over the court.

"The freshmen and sophomores are quite lively." As he came out of the school building, the class monitor stretched out and said to the friends by his side, "What do you say? Go to a restaurant?"

"Okay ah, let's go to the Sichuan restaurant from last time ba, it's spicy enough."

"Only if you guys agree to not ply me with alcohol ah. I have a big instance to do in the game tonight."

"Fuck, you're acting as if no one else also has to do instances."

As NCH launched its new expansion, the game's popularity had soared. Many old players returned one after another. This college group also agreed to all join a new server to settle in the wild and create a new guild.

Only when they had finished chatting did Xiang Huaizhi look away from the end of the basketball court. "You guys go ahead ba, I'm not going."

"Why?" the class monitor asked.

"Why else?" the boy beside him chuckled. "His boyfriend is waiting for him at home."

"No, he's playing basketball." Xiang Huaizhi stopped at the entrance of the basketball court. "Going now."

Xiang Huaizhi hadn't really bothered hiding the fact that he was dating someone. Later, he even brought Jing Huan with him to have a meal with them.

In this day and age, same-sex dating was already no longer a rare occurance. At first, everyone was shocked, and then wished them well while embarrassingly being at a loss. After three rounds of drinking, they started to ask questions.

Jing Huan answered while laughing, responding with slightly reserved words, and everyone happily listened.

Xiang Huaizhi sat beside Jing Huan and occasionally inserted a sentence or two. At last, he covered Jing Huan's cup, not letting him drink anymore.

"Who would've thought…" The class monitor looked in the direction of Xiang Huaizhi's departure and said, "That even our campus' male god would actually fall in love."

The court was already full. Xiang Huaizhi walked to the furthest corner, and when he found Jing Huan, he had just hit a fadeaway shot. His shirt swayed in the wind, revealing his pale, thin waist.

The ball did a lap around the rim and fell into the net.

Jing Huan's lips proudly rose. He wiped off the sweat beside his mouth with the back of his hand before high-fiving Gao Zixiang and then going back to his defender position. He bent down, put his hands on his knees, and waited for the other side to kick off.

Their court was the most crowded. All of the boys exhausted from playing sat on the stone benches on the sidelines, enjoying the cool breeze while watching the game. Jing Huan had just thrown the ball when a boy sitting on the far right of the stone bench with his legs crossed whistled at him.

Jing Huan glanced in the direction of the sound but, within less than a second, he looked away to catch the ball that his teammates threw to him.

The boy was dazzled by Jing Huan's gaze, smiling with great interest. He took out his cellphone, turned on the camera, and had just pointed it at the person on the court——

"If you don't want to have to change your cell phone, put it away."

The boy paused his actions, looking back to see the person behind him before angrily locking his screen. He called out, "Senior."

Jing Huan scored another basket. When Lu Wenhao passed by, he asked, "Your loyal fan is here again?"

He was referring to the whistling boy.

As he was mentioned, Jing Huan grew a little impatient. That boy somehow knew about his sexuality and said that he was also gay, and wanted to become friends with Jing Huan because he was isolated by his sexuality.

It wasn't that Jing Huan was cold, it was simply that he was really too annoying. Every day, that person would seek him out on WeChat and then send him ambiguous messages. Once, Jing Huan had met him in the canteen and he wanted to put his arms around his waist, making Jing Huan want to almost punch him on the spot.

"Fan my ass." Jing Huan said.

Lu Wenhao said, "Just now I saw that it seemed like he was photographing you with his cellphone."

Jing Huan heard his words and cursed out a low "fuck". He threw the ball over to Lu Wenhao.

Lu Wenhao asked, "What are you doing?"

"Beating people up…"

Jing Huan turned around with a black expression, wanting to call out that troublesome boy, but he saw that the stone bench at the far right was already empty. There was only Xiang Huaizhi standing beside the stone bench with a smile that wasn’t really a smile on his face.

In an instant, Jing Huan's expression changed.

Lu Wenhao was startled and came up to drag him back. "Don't ah, if you really want to beat him up, you should beat him up when we're off campus. What if you get punished for it… What are you smiling at?"

Jing Huan carefully cleared his throat. "No, you guys play ba."

"Really going to beat him up ah?" Lu Wenhao asked. "Let's go together ba, with just your little body, you might not be able to even beat him up…"

"Not able to beat him up my ass." Jing Huan said, "Family is here, leaving now."

Lu Wenhao followed his gaze and was immediately speechless.

Fuck, he was worried for nothing.

As soon as Jing Huan walked up to him, Xiang Huaizhi handed him a water bottle.

Jing Huan gulped down two mouthfuls of water and then felt better. "When did you get here?"

"Just now," Xiang Huaizhi said, "When you landed the fadeaway shot."

Jing Huan said, "Did you see my fadeaway three-pointer? Is your boyfriend handsome?"

"Handsome."

Jing Huan was satisfied. He screwed on the cap and then looked left and right.

"What are you looking for?" Xiang Huaizhi asked.

"Nothing," Jing Huan wiped his sweat with a towel and concisely said, "A fool."

Xiang Huaizhi took the towel from his hand, and Jing Huan immediately said, "It's dirty…"

"Has he been bothering you for a long time?" Xiang Huaizhi folded the towel over and turned his head to wipe Jing Huan's nape.

Jing Huan was stunned. "You saw him?"

"En."

"Not that long… a week ba. He described himself so pitifully before, so I felt bad for him and added him as a friend."

Xiang Huaizhi let out an "en" and abandoned the towel. "Let's go eat."

After eating and heading back home, Jing Huan saw Xiang Huaizhi's reflection in the elevator door.

Xiang Huaizhi was looking down, his eyebrows lightly furrowed.

It was only then that Jing Huan realized his mood and turned his head around. "Ge… You're not angry, ba?"

The elevator door opened and Xiang Huaizhi stepped out. "En."

Jing Huan stood in a daze for a few seconds before hurriedly chasing after him.

"No, I really thought that he just wanted to become friends with me at first," Jing Huan said. "Later on, he kept saying some weird stuff to me, and I immediately blacklisted him. You can check if you don't believe me…"

Xiang Huaizhi looked at the phone that Jing Huan offered over, and he couldn't help but laugh. "I'm not angry with you."

Jing Huan didn't understand. "Then, what are you angry with?"

Xiang Huaizhi was silent for a bit.

"I don't know," he sighed after a long time. "I don't want anyone else to like you… Is it very stingy of me to say that?"

Jing Huan stared at him for a while.

Xiang Huaizhi added, "In the future, I'll try my best to…"

Before he spoke, Jing Huan hooked his arms around his neck and gave him a kiss.

"It's very stingy…" Jing Huan blushed and stifled a laugh. "I don't want others to like you either. Even if they just sneak an extra glance at you, I'm not happy. We're in the same boat, neither of us can say anything about the other."

Xiang Huaizhi's heart itched, and wanted to return the kiss.

As soon as he lowered his head, he heard the sound of the neighbouring apartment door open, so he froze in midair and then turned to open his own door.

As soon as Jing Huan entered the apartment, he took off his clothes and went to take a bath because he was sweaty all over.

Xiang Huaizhi changed into a thin T-shirt and sat in front of the computer. Their two accounts had been AFKing in Fairyland all afternoon and had received a lot of messages.

He had just wanted to clear up the status bar when the cellphone on the desk suddenly dinged, and the screen lit up.

[Empress Mother: Stop talking nonsense. You've never dated anyone, so how do you know you don't like girls? ]

[Empress Mother: Or, do you have someone you like?]

[Empress Mother: A man?]

Xiang Huaizhi froze for a few seconds before he realized that this was Jing Huan's cellphone.

Although he only saw Mama Jing's reply, Xiang Huaizhi had already guessed the message Jing Huan had sent before that.

The screen darkened so Xiang Huaizhi turned the cellphone on again. His Adam's apple bobbed in his throat while his lowered eyes glinted.

Xiang Huaizhi previously said that it was still too early to come out of the closet to their parents, and that they shouldn't worry about it.

In fact, it wasn't that simple. Rather than letting things directly explode one day, it was better to slowly cook the frogs in warm water.

So the day after he had said that, he had tried to talk to his mother about his sexual orientation.

Xiang Huaizhi had wanted to settle his family first, and then accompany Jing Huan to face his storm.

But, he found that Jing Huan's mind seemed to have run through the same ideas as him.

When Jing Huan came out of the bath, Xiang Huaizhi was leaning against the chair, grasping his mouse in his hand.

Jing Huan wiped his hair. "What are you doing…?"

Xiang Huaizhi raised his eyes and reached out to him. "Come here."

Jing Huan raised his eyebrows and went to his side.

"Sit up here," Xiang Huaizhi said.

Jing Huan sat face to face with Xiang Huaizhi on his leg and kissed him for a while. Afterwards, he uneasily looked up and mumbled, "What's wrong with you… The chair won't break ba?"

The water from the ends of Jing Huan's hair soaked Xiang Huaizhi's T-shirt and Xiang Huaizhi raised his hand to twiddle his hair a bit.

"Nothing much, I just like you and want to kiss you."

Jing Huan's heart pounded wildly, and he distractedly said, "Oh… Then you kiss bei."

Afraid of Jing Huan falling off, they stuck close to each other. Jing Huan obediently lowered his head and kissed him. Xiang Huaizhi's hand had already travelled along his clothes before sticking onto his bare back.

Ultimately, Chunxiao's WeChat phone call interrupted the kiss.

Jing Huan just remembered that they agreed to do a big 20 person instance with the guild, and they couldn't just ditch.

The day after Xiang Huaizhi moved in, Jing Huan had bought a new computer desk and computer. The two computers were close together but it didn't affect any gameplay.

Jing Huan was kissed into a daze as soon as he finished taking a bath. He only slowly raised his hand to smooth his hair when Xiang Huaizhi sat back in his spot.

After Xiang Huaizhi logged in, they teamed up to go to the instance giver.

From the corner of his eye, he saw that Jing Huan was looking at the NCH forum. .

Jing Huan scrolled with his mouse and mumbled, "Why is this group of people so strange?"

"What's the matter?" Xiang Huaizhi asked.

"Ah? No, it's just…" Jing Huan frowned. "People in the forum used to scold me all the time, saying that I was pretending to be cute, that I was coquettish, and that I was shameless."

Jing Huan paused, "But after that day's livestream, no one has scolded me."

Far more than not scolding him.

They even said that he was cute, brave, and bold for chasing after love…

Someone had even posted an analysis, analyzing how he met Xiang Huaizhi, how he chased him, and when Xiang Huaizhi's heart had been moved…

That post was 12 pages long!

This group of people were truly bored.

And he was even more bored. As one of the parties involved, he actually chased after and finished reading all 12 pages, in the end, handing in all of his nutrient solutions to the original poster "asfnc123".

Jing Huan closed the webpage and was about to concentrate on doing the instance but then saw a hot post go up from the corner of his eye.

[Yearning For x Xiao Tianjing [gay] Slowly Liking You by-asfnc123]

"?"

Seeing the poster's familiar name, Jing Huan couldn't stop himself from moving his mouse and clicking on it.

-

That night, the NCH players were going about as usual, doing quests, spending money and chatting and bragging in all the chat channels.

Until a megaphone popped up at the bottom of the screen——

[Full game megaphone] Yearning For: Thank you for your hospitality. Don't know which player serialized me and my wife into a slash fic on the forum. Here I just want to say that you're free to create and post these things, but I hope that you don't make up too many ambiguous parts with me and other players in your piece.

[Full game megaphone] Yearning For: He's angry and can't be coaxed. Please be considerate of me, thank you.

——End of the story——

The author has something to say:

That's it. I don't want to write the timeline too far. Thank you for your company.

I'll see you later.

—

Juurensha: And that's it folks! I hope you've enjoyed the story! This was my first translation project, and I've really had a good time with all of you! Special thanks to Divi, my long suffering editor, and Zryuu for kicking us off in the beginning and dealing with all my questions! I'm also translating PUBG Online Romance of the Century, by the same author of this novel, so if you want to check that out, please do here!

Divi: And we're finally at the end, thank you for reading GHFOD! Thank you for Zyruu posting this when it was getting released, it was truly a gem! Thank you for Juu for picking this up and having me! I hope that everyone has enjoyed our dumb Huanhuan and XHZ shenanigans. It may be the end, but they will always live on! Here's to hoping there are extra pieces in the published version ^-^. Please take a look at PUBG if you want some more comedy and games!

Here's a GHFOD/PUBG crossover fic by me (juurensha) with XHZ finally meeting the Xiao Yan Huanhuan talks so much about here

And we have a fanart page!

And be sure to support the raws!