My Romance Game Updated – Chapter 46

by Little Panda

Using Electricity

While Ren Chenxi was lost in her own thoughts, the lavish lunch quickly came to an end. Despite the huge spread of dishes and the large pot of rice, and though the girls ate with refined manners, they were still young women who had been worn down by two years in the apocalypse. No matter how elegant or graceful they looked, the speed at which they shoveled rice and snatched up food was anything but slow. Besides, this was a table full of precious delicacies they rarely got to eat! If they moved too slowly, wouldn’t they get less? Who knew when they’d ever get to eat like this again.

So, by the time Ren Chenxi snapped out of it, she discovered that every single dish on the table had been completely cleared! Even the pot of radish, corn, and beef soup had been drunk down to the last drop. Ren Chenxi stared at the group of girls, all rubbing their bulging stomachs with satisfied expressions, her own face a mask of shock. You girls, were you reincarnated from hungry ghosts or something?!¹

Seeing the look on Ren Chenxi’s face, Mu Ning’s lips curved into a smile. “Serves you right for spacing out during a meal!” Because you weren’t eating with your usual gusto, it made me eat less too. “Eating is such an important thing…”

“You should enjoy it seriously, with happiness and delight!” Ren Chenxi retorted automatically, then froze.

Mu Ning stared at her and asked casually, “You say that too?”

“Ah… My ge used to say it to me all the time, so I just remembered it…” Ren Chenxi once again shifted the blame to Ren Muhui.

This time, however, Mu Ning didn’t press her with questions as she had before. She just nodded, her voice tinged with nostalgia. “Yes, I heard Ren Muhui say it a few times, and I remembered it too. I thought I’d never hear it again, but I didn’t expect to hear the same words from you…”

She used to hate eating breakfast, but after Ren Muhui found out about her habit, he had insisted on bringing her breakfast every day. Sometimes it was bread and milk from the small campus supermarket, other times it was soybean milk and steamed buns he’d squeezed through the cafeteria crowds to buy. But most of the time, it was something he had cooked himself: a bowl of light preserved egg and lean pork congee, a bowl of small, delicate wontons, or a simple but nutritionally balanced sandwich…

The reason she could tell which were bought and which were homemade was that Ren Muhui always packed the breakfasts he prepared himself in cute, pretty little lunch boxes. Mu Ning had no idea how many lunch boxes he had prepared just to bring her breakfast. It was a pity that back then, she hadn’t liked Ren Muhui, and by extension, she had despised the breakfasts he brought her. Often, the moment he put down the breakfast and left, she would turn around and give it to some other girl nearby. So the lunch boxes were sometimes returned by the girls, and other times, they were just thrown away somewhere.

Eventually, Mu Ning got so fed up with Ren Muhui’s daily persistence that one day, she rejected him right to his face, telling him to never bring her breakfast again. Eating breakfast was too much trouble, and she didn’t want to waste her time on it. At that moment, Ren Muhui had just stared at her, his eyes wide with disbelief. “How could something as important as eating be a bother? You should enjoy it seriously, with happiness and delight! Skipping breakfast is bad for your body, especially your stomach!”

Yes, skipping breakfast really was bad for your stomach. That’s why she had gotten a stomachache later, and Ren Muhui had gone to buy her Stomach Medicine, then supervised her taking it for three straight days. She didn’t know why, but with ghosts and gods at work,² she had actually been obedient and taken the Stomach Medicine he bought for her. Later… a girl had joked with her, asking if she had finally accepted Ren Muhui. After that, she had started rejecting his daily breakfasts again, and along with them, she had emptied out a bottle that was still more than half full of pills and thrown the bottle back at him.

That medicine bottle looked a lot like the one Ren Chenxi had just used for the “Antidote.”

Thinking of the pills she had thrown away and the breakfasts she had casually given away, Mu Ning sighed softly.

“…” Seeing the nostalgia and sorrow filling Mu Ning’s eyes, Ren Chenxi pursed her lips. She had been about to make a stinging remark—Ren Muhui is gone, so what’s the use of reminiscing now? But… she let it go. For the sake of today’s sumptuous lunch, she couldn’t be bothered to lecture her. Stay calm, stay calm. Don’t think about the past. In any case, Mu Ning is my landlord now—a rent-free landlord at that. I’ll just try my best to treat her normally from now on.

While Mu Ning and Ren Chenxi were talking, Zhang Tongqi and Wu Tong had already stood up to clear the table. Seeing this, the other girls scrambled to help. Watching everyone’s enthusiasm, Zhang Tongqi couldn’t help but complain about the men again.

“Sigh! It’s a good thing we’ll be your neighbors from now on. You have no idea what it was like eating with Chen Gu and the others. Every time it came to washing dishes after a meal, those guys would dodge it if they could, and if they couldn’t, they’d procrastinate. They could let the lunch bowls sit until after dinner and wash them all together!”

Hearing this, Wu Tong chimed in. “Yes, yes! We finally couldn’t take it anymore, so we separated from the guys. We wash our own bowls, and they wash theirs. And then guess what?”

“They just don’t wash them and use the dirty bowls for their next meal?”

“Exactly! It’s the apocalypse, so maybe other people would use the same bowl for several meals to save water. But we have Boss, a water-system esper! We’re not short on water at all! How could those guys be so lazy!”

“If they’re like that with dishes, don’t even get me started on laundry! It’s a good thing you didn’t tour the third floor just now. They probably wouldn’t have the face to let you, anyway. The sofa, the coffee table, every surface that can hold something is piled high with their dirty clothes!”

“…” The girls, who had worn the same clothes for days on end during the apocalypse and had arrived at the base with greasy hair, didn’t dare to make a sound.

But Zhang Tongqi didn’t notice their awkwardness and continued her rant. “And even with that many dirty clothes piled up, do you think those guys will finally wash them? No! They’ll just dig through the pile and pick out a relatively less dirty one to wear again!”

“…” The girls, whose clothes had been dirty enough to smell on the road, all stared down at the floor.

The observant Sun Jia quickly noticed their discomfort and hurriedly tried to smooth things over with a smile. “Alright, alright! You can only be so particular here with us. If you went to any other house in the Villa Area, it would definitely be dirtier and messier than Chen Gu’s group! And never mind them, if your water usage was restricted every day, you’d be hoarding clothes to wash too.”

“Aiya, but we have Boss~ So naturally, we should be cleaner and more hygienic~” Wu Tong retorted, unwilling to concede.

Because of Zhang Tongqi and Wu Tong’s complaints, the girls, who had always been accustomed to conserving water, secretly resolved to be a little more extravagant with their water use from now on, lest they be looked down upon for being dirty and unhygienic.

Ren Chenxi didn’t feel the same awkwardness as the other girls. After all, she had been relatively lavish with her water use all along. And relying on her vast supply of clothes, she would just toss any that got dirty or torn and change into a brand-new, clean set. But hearing Sun Jia mention restricted water usage, Ren Chenxi suddenly turned to Mu Ning. “By the way, I’m curing Sun Jia’s addiction, so you’re not charging me rent. What about the water fee? How will that be calculated?”

“That little bit of water is nothing to me. Besides, we’ll be living together from now on, sharing water from the same water tower. It would be hard to divide, so let’s just forget about the water fee,” Mu Ning said, shaking her head slightly.

“No…”

Before Ren Chenxi could refuse, Mu Ning spoke again, adding, “You cure Sun Jia’s addiction, and I’ll waive your rent. You also heal that serious shoulder wound of hers, and I won’t charge you for water. How about that?”

“…” Put that way, it did seem reasonable. Ren Chenxi nodded and shot Mu Ning a sideways glance. “You certainly have a lot of faith in my medicine.”

“Isn’t it you who has confidence in your own medicine?” Mu Ning countered with a raised eyebrow.

“…” Ren Chenxi didn’t argue. Her gaze fell on the pendant light hanging in the kitchen, and she asked casually, “Then what about the electricity fee? You have to charge for that, right? Since we’ll be neighbors in the same building, we can… split it evenly?”

“Electricity fee?” Mu Ning first looked startled, then turned to Sun Jia. “Have we ever paid an electricity fee?”

Sun Jia smiled and shook her head. “Boss, you forgot. The guys buy the electricity. We usually just turn on the lights, but those guys, they play video games on the TV, so they use more power. They just decided to buy it all themselves.”

“Buy electricity?”

“Yes, the base doesn’t provide electricity. If survivors want to use power in the base, they can only buy it from a Lightning-system esper.”

“A Lightning-system esper can sell you electricity directly? How?” Ren Chenxi found this fascinating.

“With a Generator. We found this one in an abandoned factory, and then we had a professional technician from the base modify it for us. A Lightning-system esper can directly use this Generator to store electricity in two other Mobile power supplies.”

“Wow! So Lightning-system espers are just as eating fragrance³ as water-system espers! How many are there in the base right now? And what’s the price of electricity?” Tang Ying asked, full of envy.

“There are only two Lightning-system espers in the entire base. However, one of them, a 4th-order lightning-system esper, is one of the Fan family’s people. He only supplies power to their territory. So the remaining 3rd-order lightning-system esper is the one who supplies power to the whole base. I say the whole base, but in reality, not many survivors can afford electricity. Most of them are here in our Villa Area, and in the family housing for the base’s management.”

“It’s precisely because there’s only this one Lightning-system esper selling electricity that the price is more expensive than water!” Wu Tong helped explain. “For 1000 mAh of power, he charges 10 1st-order crystal cores. Our two Mobile power supplies have a capacity of 500,000 mAh each. To fully charge them both costs 10,000 1st-order crystal cores!”

“…Sss, so expensive!” Tang Ying stuck out her tongue in shock.⁴ “That Lightning-system esper can just sit at home all day and earn crystal cores.”

“It is very expensive!” Wu Tong nodded emphatically. “So even though those guys love to play, they don’t dare to waste too much electricity. The charge in these two Mobile power supplies is enough for them to play about sixty-odd hours of video games. They only dare to play for two hours a day at most.”

“…” Even playing video games for just two hours a day is far more luxurious than what ordinary people can afford! A normal person wouldn’t spend 10,000 1st-order crystal cores a month just to play games, right? So this is the confidence that comes from being protected by a 5th-order esper big shot!

The author has something to say:

The Mobile power supply here refers to the large kind for RVs or outdoor use, though in that era, it would probably be called a storage battery. And as for the Generator modification, the author doesn’t know the principle behind it, but hey, if esper abilities can exist, then modifying a Generator should be possible~ Anyway, the setting is in a game world, so please don’t apply real-world logic too strictly.

After all, judging by our country’s control of the pandemic, I feel that if a large number of people were really infected with a zombie virus, the whole nation would definitely unite, and it would be brought under very good control within two years. There might even be… a team that develops a vaccine.

People online used to joke, if the apocalypse suddenly arrived, how would you save yourself? For the author, a total weakling with a combat power of five, I would honestly just listen to the country, obediently stay at home, and lie flat waiting for rescue!!! But with so many people across the country waiting for rescue, the rescue speed would definitely be affected. If it really got to the point where zombies were about to break down my door, I’d first remove the peephole, then stick one finger out for a zombie to bite, and then just wait to turn into a zombie too~

Footnotes

In Chinese folk religion and Buddhism, a ‘hungry ghost’ (èsǐguǐ) is a spirit afflicted with insatiable hunger. To say someone is a reincarnation of one is a humorous exaggeration for a huge appetite.
An idiom that literally means ‘sent by ghosts and moved by gods’ (guǐshǐshénchāi). It describes an inexplicable, almost fated action that one takes without fully understanding why.
The literal meaning is ‘to eat fragrance’ (chīxiāng). It’s a colloquial term for something or someone being very popular and sought-after.
To stick out one’s tongue (tǔ shétou) is a common gesture of shock, playful embarrassment, or cuteness.

Footnotes

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