Chapter 42: The Ex-Boyfriend

Returning from Sanlitun to the campus, Yu Siyan accompanied her to the entrance of her dormitory building for the final time. They shared an embrace, which served as their formal farewell.

Although it did not evoke the excruciating, bone-deep agony of their previous breakup, Jiang Ying still felt a heavy wave of melancholy as she turned and walked away.

She walked slowly up the stairs, unlocked her dormitory door, and immediately froze at the sight that greeted her inside—

Zhou Anning, clad in her pajamas, was standing stiffly in the middle of the room like a robotic customer service representative. With her hands clasped respectfully over her lower abdomen, she looked into Jiang Ying's eyes with utmost sincerity and declared:

"Respected player Jiang Ying, your gaming time in Life Online has reached twenty-one years and five months. You have accumulated a total of two ex-boyfriends checked off, unlocking the new achievement: Men are merely playthings!"

The lingering sorrow that Jiang Ying had carried all the way back was neatly and cleanly shattered by Zhou Anning's linguistic iron fist. The two of them stared at each other with wide eyes before bursting into laughter simultaneously.

She walked over to the desk, pulled out a chair, and sat down. The smile on her face faded once more as she let out a soft sigh, "Although... sigh, I truly do feel a sense of relief."

Zhou Anning handed her a bowl of freshly washed blueberries, munching on one herself as she said, "Both of you carried rather heavy psychological burdens, and neither of you is particularly stubborn. Breaking up and remaining friends is actually quite a good outcome."

Even so, Jiang Ying remained listless for several days.

Aside from eating meals and visiting the department to complete her registration for the new semester, she curled up in the dormitory reading research literature or lay flat on her bed like a corpse, feeling just like someone who had swum a long-distance race and dragged themselves ashore, utterly devoid of energy to move.

After five or six days passed, Zhou Anning woke up one morning to find Jiang Ying sitting on the edge of her bed with messy hair and a spiritless expression, and finally decided that things could not go on like this.

She slapped her thigh and declared, "While the semester just started and things aren't too busy yet, let's go out and have some fun."

"Where would we even go?" Jiang Ying asked with zero enthusiasm.

Zhou Anning chuckled mischievously, "Let's go check out male models!"

"What male models?" Jiang Ying asked, wearing a blank expression.

"You know, that thing President Meng promised us when we had dinner on New Year's Day. Yu Siyan was quite generous back then and didn't even say you couldn't go."

Zhou Anning pulled out her phone and created a new WeChat group chat without Yu Siyan, pulling members from the four-person WeChat group that originally included Meng Shao, Yu Siyan, and the two of them from the New Year's dinner.

Life was just a giant group chat enclosing smaller ones. The name of the previous four-person group was still set as "A pair of holding-hands young lovers and two dog heads," but the newly created group had already been christened by Zhou Anning as "Beautiful Maidens Select a Consort."

She poked Meng Shao's WeChat avatar and typed:

"President Meng, new year, new atmosphere. Please summon the highest-quality male models from your agency for us to touch (rose)."

Meng Shao replied almost immediately.

"Well, well, I didn't expect Sister Zhou to still remember this."

"No problem, but let me state in advance: you two can go to the shooting location to have fun, but don't let yourselves get tricked by sweet talk. If anyone adds your WeChat to ask you out for drinks, tell me first."

Following that, he sent a long string of handsome guys' photos, mentioning that he had asked his staff and they happened to be scheduling new photo shoots in the next couple of days. If the two of them had any hunks they wanted to see, he could arrange for his subordinates to schedule them at the agency on the same day.

Zhou Anning dragged her chair over to Jiang Ying's side, and the two of them huddled together, swiping through the photos sent by Meng Shao in the WeChat group.

"Look at this edgy, handsome curly hair. He's of mixed heritage, and he even has a perky butt."

"And look at these twins... so sunny and cute."

"This one is practically the definition of a suave scoundrel!"

The photos sent by Meng Shao included both domestic and international models. They weren't the heavily filtered and edited pictures typical of male internet celebrities, but genuine model agency comp cards used internally. The frontal shots were completely unretouched, displaying their physiques in full view, complete with their exact vital statistics listed on the cards. All of the models stood well over 188 centimeters tall.

After looking at just three photos, Jiang Ying, who had previously felt no interest whatsoever, instantly felt energized, and then she heard her classmate beside her swallowing audibly with utter lack of restraint