My Romance Game Updated – Chapter 82

The Photo

Just as Liao Lan was nervously trying to explain to Mu Ning that he was thoroughly straight, that he had absolutely no interest in men, and even less in Ren Muhui, Zhang Tongqi called Ren Chenxi downstairs. Zhang Tongqi was afraid this shameless Liao Lan would try to pull some old friendship angle with the Boss’s boyfriend to win sympathy, so she specifically went to fetch Ren Chenxi—who knew the truth—so they could see what other lies Liao Lan would try to spin.

Meanwhile, from the neighboring Men’s Building, Yang Xiangrui, Zhu Kang, Fang Hong, and several other guys who had old grudges with Liao Lan also hurried over. They weren’t just here to stop these mangy dogs¹ from mooching water—they were here to watch the show. To see these mangy dogs fail to get water and end up leaving in disgrace.

            

When Ren Chenxi came downstairs, she happened to meet Mu Ning’s suspicious gaze head-on and felt a bit confused. But after seeing Liao Lan’s nervous face outside, she understood. So Mu Ning had finally gotten around to asking Liao Lan about Ren Muhui’s gender! Honestly, what took her so long?

Ren Chenxi shot Mu Ning a calm glance, then walked up to Liao Lan and said with some annoyance, “What are you all talking about?” It was just a question about gender—why all the hemming and hawing?

“Mu-xuejie asked me if I’d ever seen your brother change clothes…” Liao Lan’s voice carried a note of grievance. “But I shared a dorm with Ren Muhui—how could I not have seen him change clothes?!”

            

A grown man acting all disgusting and pitiful like that—Ren Chenxi almost couldn’t resist slapping this disgusting man with an Explosion Card. But considering she was at the base now and couldn’t just kill people casually, and wasting an Explosion Card on trash like this would be a total waste, Ren Chenxi had to suppress her urge to fling cards at him. She said impatiently, “Can’t you just speak properly? She asks you something, you answer normally! Just tell the truth—what’s so hard about that?”

“Tell the truth?” Mu Ning stared intently at Ren Chenxi. Perhaps because she’d already formed some conclusions in her heart, the more she looked at Liao Lan, the more suspicious he seemed. She even felt that in just these few exchanges between Ren Chenxi and Liao Lan, they were secretly signaling something to each other. “How do you know he’s telling the truth?”

“…” This Liao Lan—probably because he’d kept mooching water under the pretext of being her older brother’s friend, he’d left a psychological shadow on Mu Ning. So now Mu Ning didn’t believe a word Liao Lan said? This was tricky! If Mu Ning didn’t believe him saying Ren Muhui was a man, then who could she find to prove it?

            

Just as Ren Chenxi was worrying about this, Liao Lan argued indignantly, “What do you mean ‘how do you know’! Why would I lie about seeing Ren Muhui change clothes?! I roomed with Ren Muhui for so long… seeing him change clothes—is that something anyone would need to sneak around and deny?”

“Then what did you see?” Mu Ning’s gaze grew even colder.

“I… I saw everything there was to see…” Seeing Mu Ning’s expression getting more and more wrong, Liao Lan immediately started trembling and dragged Li Jie down with him to save his own skin: “B-but it wasn’t just me! Li Jie saw Ren Muhui bathing too! He even laughed with me about how that pretty boy² Ren Muhui had a pretty white ass too…”

            

Suddenly named by Liao Lan, Li Jie also jumped in fright. Seeing Mu Ning’s murderous look, he hurriedly explained: “N-no! I wasn’t peeping! Ren Muhui was bathing at the public bathhouse, and he didn’t close his stall door properly. I just happened to pass by and glanced—just a glance!”

However, such an explanation did nothing to ease the murderous look in Mu Ning’s eyes. The aura of a 6th-order esper fully unleashed, and Liao Lan and Li Jie—mere 2nd-order espers—began trembling like a pair of quails³. In their extreme panic, they helplessly looked around, wondering if they could drag someone else down with them to divert Mu Ning’s attention. And when they swept their gaze around, they spotted Yang Xiangrui and Zhu Kang watching with schadenfreude.

“Mu-xuejie! It wasn’t just me who saw Ren Muhui bathing! Yang Xiangrui and Zhu Kang saw too!” Liao Lan had never gotten along with Yang Xiangrui anyway, and seeing that punchable expression on his face right now, he immediately dragged them down with him without hesitation! And he wasn’t even lying—since everyone was in the same college, they lived in the same dorm building, and as luck would have it, on the same floor!

            

Yang Xiangrui and Zhu Kang had been grinning maliciously at Li Jie and Liao Lan’s predicament, and suddenly being dragged into this left them both a bit dazed. And Mu Ning, just as Li Jie and Liao Lan had hoped, turned her cold gaze toward the two bewildered men.

“You’ve also seen Ren Muhui bathing?”

“…” Mu-xuejie radiating murderous intent was terrifying! Yang Xiangrui and Zhu Kang immediately started trembling and huddled together. But even though they were scared, neither dared to lie, so they honestly nodded and admitted: “Mu-xuejie, we’re on the same floor as Ren-xuezhang. Ren-xuezhang would often walk past our dorm door shirtless, carrying his basin, on his way to the bathhouse…”

            

Hearing Yang Xiangrui and Zhu Kang’s words, Mu Ning’s brow furrowed even tighter. She glanced at Ren Chenxi again, then coldly glared at Li Jie, Liao Lan, and the others. She flicked her vine whip, slamming it hard against the ground, scaring the souls right out of those two.

“Get out!”

Shameless as Li Jie and Liao Lan were, even they didn’t have the guts to keep mooching when faced with Mu Ning’s murderous gaze. The moment Mu Ning spoke, their whole group scrammed.

            

After Li Jie and Liao Lan scurried away, Mu Ning kept her face dark as she scrutinized Yang Xiangrui and Zhu Kang, occasionally shooting glances at Ren Chenxi. That suspicious look in her eyes immediately sparked Ren Chenxi’s temper.

“Hey! You don’t believe Li Jie and Liao Lan, fine—but you don’t believe Yang Xiangrui and Zhu Kang either? They’ve never lied to you about anything, have they?”

Facing Ren Chenxi, Mu Ning’s attitude softened considerably. She just shook her head slightly, then looked coldly at Yang Xiangrui and Zhu Kang. In front of Ren Chenxi, she asked directly: “Are you certain Ren Muhui was male?”

            

“???” The two of them, still trembling under Mu Ning’s gaze, had thought she was going to ask something very serious—but this?? What kind of question was that?! Though completely baffled, they still nodded honestly: “Of course! What’s uncertain about that? We saw Ren-xuezhang so many times every day…”

Mu Ning glanced at Ren Chenxi again, specifically looking at her chest, then continued questioning Yang Xiangrui and Zhu Kang: “Did Ren Muhui have breasts?”

“…” Why were Mu-xuejie’s questions getting stranger and stranger?! Had Mu-xuejie suffered some kind of severe shock to be asking such bizarre questions?! Yang Xiangrui and Zhu Kang exchanged a look, then answered nervously and reluctantly: “Y-yes, he had a chest…”

            

When Mu Ning and Ren Chenxi heard Yang Xiangrui say “had a chest,” both their expressions darkened. Ren Chenxi was about to scold Yang Xiangrui for talking nonsense when Yang Xiangrui added: “…muscles…”

“…” Bro, could you not pause like that when you talk?!

Ren Chenxi had just breathed a sigh of relief when Mu Ning pressed on: “Are you certain it was pectoral muscles, not breasts?”

            

“…”

Now everyone fell silent. By this point, not only Yang Xiangrui and Zhu Kang suspected Mu Ning had been traumatized by something, but even Chen Gu, Zhang Tongqi, and Mu Ning’s other loyal subordinates were looking at her strangely. They all felt tonight’s Boss was very off. Could it be that some esper with a disguise ability had impersonated their Boss? But… if someone had gone through all that trouble to disguise themselves as their Boss, why would they ask such perverted questions?

Yang Xiangrui looked helplessly at Chen Gu, but only received a look that said “I can’t help you.” He could only grit his teeth and answer: “I… I’m certain…”

            

“What proof do you have?”

“…” You need fucking proof for this?!

Facing Mu Ning’s relentless questioning, Yang Xiangrui stared in shock. He desperately wanted to point at his own two eyes and roar at Mu Ning: This father saw it with both my fucking eyes—doesn’t that count as proof?! But facing the oppressive aura radiating from Mu Ning, Yang Xiangrui could only surrender and shake his head: “I… I don’t…”

            

Just as Yang Xiangrui was about to say he had no proof, Zhu Kang suddenly tugged at his sleeve and whispered: “Didn’t you take a photo of Ren-xuezhang?”

“Eh! Don’t talk nonsense! I’m not a pervert, why would I take…”

Halfway through his sentence, Yang Xiangrui suddenly remembered! Back in the day, Ren Muhui liked walking around the men’s dorm shirtless, as if showing off his physique. Yang Xiangrui had been quite upset about this and often complained to his friends about Ren Muhui’s behavior. Once, a friend from another school was curious about what this Ren Muhui he kept complaining about actually looked like, and wanted Yang Xiangrui to take a photo to compare with the sports science students’ buff guys at their school. So Yang Xiangrui had pulled Zhu Kang along to secretly snap a photo of Ren Muhui when he went downstairs to pick up takeout, intending to show his friend later… but Yang Xiangrui had never deleted that photo.

            

Yang Xiangrui and Zhu Kang whispered to each other. Mu Ning couldn’t hear clearly, but she caught the word “photo” and asked coldly with impatience: “What photo?!”

“J-just a photo of Ren-xuezhang… without clothes…”

“You even took nude photos of him!!!” Mu Ning’s tone was furious.

            

“And you kept someone’s nude photo all this time!” Chen Gu and the others’ expressions also turned strange as they looked at Yang Xiangrui.

“N-no! It’s not what you think!!! It’s just a normal photo of Ren-xuezhang shirtless!” Seeing that he was about to be branded a pervert, Yang Xiangrui hurriedly explained the origin of the photo and why it had stayed on his phone.

The reason was actually quite simple—Yang Xiangrui had switched phones later and forgotten about the photos on his old phone. Though he’d changed phones, he hadn’t thrown away the old one; it just sat there. Then the apocalypse came. His new phone got smashed in the chaos, but the old phone was perfectly fine. So he’d kept using the old phone, sometimes to check the time, sometimes to play simple games like Snake and Brick Breaker⁴.

            

Yang Xiangrui had never gone through the old phone’s photo album. But when Zhu Kang borrowed Yang Xiangrui’s phone to play games, he’d seen that photo of Ren Muhui. Out of some twisted curiosity, he hadn’t mentioned it to Yang Xiangrui. Only now, when Mu Ning was pressing Yang Xiangrui for evidence about whether Ren Muhui had “breasts or pectoral muscles,” did Zhu Kang remind him that his phone still had that photo.

Hearing Yang Xiangrui’s explanation, Mu Ning expressionlessly extended her hand and said coldly: “Then show me this photo you mentioned.”

Yang Xiangrui always kept the old phone on him to check the time. When Mu Ning reached out, he immediately fumbled to pull the phone from his pocket, then found the photo and carefully handed the phone to Mu Ning.

            

The non-smartphone of this era was small and light, but its camera resolution was pitifully low. Yet even with such low resolution, the photo clearly showed an unmistakably male body topped by a face that bore some resemblance to Ren Chenxi’s—a face seen in profile.

Seeing this photo, a look of disbelief flashed through Mu Ning’s eyes. But quickly, she turned the phone screen toward Ren Chenxi and stated with certainty: “This person isn’t you!”

Obviously it’s not me—it’s Ren Muhui!

            

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The author has something to say:

Mutou: This isn’t the photo I imagined!

Xixi: What other photo did you want to see, you punk!

            

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Damn, just found out Shuanghui has problems too! What am I supposed to add to my instant noodles now—no more sausages?! I like chicken sausage…

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