Happy times are always short-lived.

The group only arrived at the amusement park in the afternoon, and with the crowds being so dense, Shu Yuxin didn’t know how things went for the others. But as for her and Jiang Zixuan, they barely played many rides that afternoon.

In the end, around seven in the evening, Yan Zhikai sent a message in the discussion group telling everyone to gather. The meeting point was a plaza in the central area of the amusement park. By this time, there were far fewer people in the park, and about half of the benches in the plaza were empty. Those who arrived early sat on the benches, sharing stories about their afternoon fun.

Lao Mei and Fu Bai were the last to arrive. Under the night sky, they walked over with their arms around each other’s shoulders, looking much the same as when they had left earlier. Their mouths never stopped hurling insults at each other, bursting into loud laughter from time to time, acting like lunatics.

Yan Zhikai glanced at them, then put away his phone, stood up from the bench, and walked over. “Pretty early, huh? We’ve been waiting for you for half an hour.”

Lao Mei still wore that sleazy grin. “Hehe, didn’t see the message. Played a couple more rounds.”

“Roller coasters?” Peng Xiaoxiao asked curiously.

“Nope. It’s night session now, the roller coasters are closed. We played other stuff.”

“Oh, then the roller coaster bet you mentioned earlier—who won?” Yan Zhikai raised an eyebrow and asked.

At that, Lao Mei and Fu Bai looked at each other and almost spoke at the same time:

“Obviously I won! You didn’t see it—by the third ride this dog’s legs were shaking nonstop. It was hilarious!”

“Obviously I won! This bastard Lao Mei didn’t even dare open his eyes on the roller coaster, screaming like his mom died. It was hilarious!”

Then they glared at each other again and shouted, “What, you don’t accept it?! Want to compete again tomorrow?!”

In the end, they both added, “Fine! Let’s do it! We’ll come back tomorrow!”

Shu Yuxin twitched the corner of her mouth. “Are you two performing a duet or something?”

“Honestly,” Yan Zhikai rubbed his chin seriously, “you two could go straight into performing errenzhuan without any training.”

Lao Mei and Fu Bai snorted a couple of times and didn’t say anything more.

Lao Guan had been sitting there spacing out for a long time. Seeing everyone had arrived, he stood up and spoke. “So… are we going to eat now?”

Before Yan Zhikai could answer, Wei Zhanpeng smiled and guessed, “Your phone ran out of battery?”

“…Yeah. I freaking forgot to bring a power bank,” Lao Guan nodded helplessly.

Whenever he was out and not glued to his phone, the most likely reason was that it had run out of battery. For a hardcore shut-in like him, that was easy to guess.

Yan Zhikai tugged at the corner of his mouth, not sure if that counted as his signature smile. “Alright then, let’s head back to the hotel for dinner.”

It was getting late, and after playing all afternoon, everyone was more or less hungry, so no one objected to Yan Zhikai’s suggestion. After discussing it briefly, they all stood up and headed toward the amusement park exit.

Shu Yuxin and Jiang Zixuan still walked at the back. Looking at the lively group chatting ahead, Jiang Zixuan smiled slightly and asked in a low voice, “Hungry?”

“Huh?” Shu Yuxin had been spacing out while walking and was pulled back to reality by his question.

“Hungry?” Jiang Zixuan patiently asked again.

Shu Yuxin paused for a moment and nodded. “Yeah.”

She hadn’t eaten anything that afternoon.

“Back to the hotel for food again,” Jiang Zixuan tilted his head to look at her. “Will you really be full?”

“We’ll see… maybe this meal will have something I like?” Shu Yuxin sounded indifferent.

She’d always been like this since high school. Even though she was picky, she didn’t really care much about eating. Like now—if dinner didn’t have any dishes she liked, she’d rather just go hungry.

Jiang Zixuan rubbed his temples. “You really are something… If you don’t get full later, I’ll take you out for mala tang.”

“Deal!” Shu Yuxin nodded immediately.

After all, she had treated him to a drink at noon, so it seemed only fair that he treated her in the evening.

The hotel was very close to the amusement park, so it didn’t take long to walk there. At this hour, there weren’t many people eating on the second floor of the hotel, so Shu Yuxin’s table ended up being the noisiest in the entire dining area.

Well, not exactly noisy—most of the commotion came from Lao Mei and Fu Bai.

Being forced by Yan Zhikai to stop drinking at noon had dampened their mood a bit. Now that it was evening, Yan Zhikai no longer had any reason to stop them, and the two of them finally got to drink to their hearts’ content. This time, they weren’t just happily chugging bottle after bottle themselves—they even egged Lao Guan and Wei Zhanpeng into drinking a couple of glasses.

The table was again filled with all kinds of dishes, but the overall quality of dinner was a notch lower than lunch. Whether it was intentional on Yan Zhikai’s part or not, there were several more vegetarian dishes than at noon, all simple home-style stir-fries.

But these dishes suited Shu Yuxin’s taste better than lunch.

When dinner was about halfway done and everyone had eaten their fill, Yan Zhikai suddenly put down his chopsticks and tapped the table. “Hey, hold on a second.”

After everyone looked over, he even cleared his throat solemnly before speaking slowly. “So, here’s the thing. I invited you all out this time not just to help everyone get acquainted, but also for another reason.”

Hearing this, Lao Mei and the other seniors seemed to have expected it, but Shu Yuxin, Jiang Zixuan, and Peng Xiaoxiao—the three newcomers—were completely confused.

After a brief pause to let them process it, Yan Zhikai continued. “A couple of days ago was my birthday.”

“Your birthday?” Peng Xiaoxiao exclaimed in surprise.

Just a few days earlier, she had spent half a day hanging out in the activity room, and Yan Zhikai hadn’t mentioned his birthday at all.

“Yeah,” Yan Zhikai nodded. “I didn’t really have time that day, and even if I took you all out, it wouldn’t have been that fun. So I postponed it a couple of days and decided to celebrate today, make it lively.”

“Hah, then happy birthday!” Peng Xiaoxiao laughed boldly and pushed a glass of drink toward him. “Come on! Cheers!”

Yan Zhikai froze for a second.

That emotional switch was way too fast.

Seeing this, the others also picked up their drinks or glasses and pushed them toward Yan Zhikai. Lao Mei was the loudest of all. “Come on, come on! Cheers!”

Yan Zhikai tugged at the corner of his mouth, then picked up his glass of orange juice and clinked it with theirs. “Cheers.”

After everyone finished their drinks, Yan Zhikai put his glass down and let out a breath. “Save some room. The cake’s coming.”

As if responding to his words, almost the moment he finished speaking, a server pushed over a cart. There was nothing else on it—just a huge cake box. When the server reached their table, he carefully placed the cake in the empty spot on the table and smiled politely at Yan Zhikai. “Happy birthday to you.”

“Thank you.” Yan Zhikai forced a smile that barely counted as one.

The server nodded slightly and pushed the cart away.

“Tsk tsk tsk, Kai, your cake gets bigger every year,” Lao Mei said, pouring himself another glass of wine and smacking his lips.

“It’s not your money,” Yan Zhikai shot him a glance, then raised his hand and opened the cake.

It was a fruit cake, three tiers in total, exquisitely made. It was obvious a lot of money had been spent.

“If you want some, go ahead and cut it. Help yourselves,” Yan Zhikai waved at everyone.

The second half of dinner was very lively—not just because it was Yan Zhikai’s birthday, but also because Lao Mei and Fu Bai put a lot of effort into hyping up the atmosphere.

Even Shu Yuxin felt the two of them were perfect candidates for performing errenzhuan.

After everyone was well fed and the big cake was completely eaten, no one felt like going out again. So they all crowded into Yan Zhikai’s room for some final pre-bedtime entertainment.

Although there was a mahjong table in the room, hardly anyone knew how to play, so after discussing it, Lao Mei and the others found a deck of playing cards and pulled Wei Zhanpeng in to play with them. They weren’t playing for money—instead, they played a very direct game: whoever lost got their palm slapped. It was childish, but they found it great fun.

As a result, the others could occasionally hear crisp slapping sounds that hurt just to listen to, along with someone’s yelps of pain.

Yan Zhikai and Zhang Houlin got bored and started playing games on the TV, taking turns one round at a time, and actually enjoyed it quite a bit.

Lao Guan, as usual, sat on the edge of the bed with his phone plugged in, playing on it with single-minded focus, deaf to the outside world, fully immersed in his two-dimensional waifus.

Wei Zhanpeng had surprisingly brought his laptop with him this time. No one knew what he planned to do with it, but now it turned out to be a great way to kill time for Peng Xiaoxiao and the others. Peng Xiaoxiao and Shu Yuxin were currently together, digging through the unspeakable secrets stored on Wei Zhanpeng’s computer, while Jiang Zixuan sat behind them, occasionally offering a bit of advice.

The entertainment activity of the three of them put immense pressure on Wei Zhanpeng, who was playing cards, to the point that he was starting to have no idea how to play anymore.

“Pair of sevens!” Lao Mei slammed his cards onto the table with a bang, wearing that sleazy grin, though no one knew what exactly he was grinning about.

“Pair of eights.” Fu Bai casually tossed out his cards.

Wei Zhanpeng glanced over at the bed again, then drew two cards and threw them down. “Pair of twos!”

“Oho, impressive. Can’t beat that.” Lao Mei jerked his chin toward Fu Bai.

Fu Bai immediately threw down a bomb.

Wei Zhanpeng stared at the final pair of tens in his hand and fell silent.

He felt like he was done for.

On the other side, Peng Xiaoxiao had also hit a wall. “Can’t find it… where do you think he hid it?”

“I think it’s hidden files. The F drive is 47GB smaller than it should be, but I don’t know where he hid it,” Shu Yuxin said, staring intently at the screen, deep in thought.

To be honest, on her old computer, the only thing stopping others from seeing her own unspeakable secrets was a startup password.

Jiang Zixuan stroked his chin and offered his suggestion. “Check the Baidu Cloud download address files. He might’ve hidden it there.”

“Ah—!” Wei Zhanpeng’s scream briefly interrupted everyone’s actions. While enduring the inhumane punishment from Lao Mei and Fu Bai, he shouted desperately, “Lighter! Lighter! Damn it! Ah—! Ow—! Over there! I seriously don’t have any videos! Stop looking!”

“Hey, found it!” Peng Xiaoxiao suddenly clapped her hands and laughed. “Oho, ‘Thermal Molecular Dynamics Demonstration’—what a classy name.”

Wei Zhanpeng’s face instantly turned gray.

While Peng Xiaoxiao was flipping through Wei Zhanpeng’s treasured collection, Shu Yuxin elbowed Jiang Zixuan. “Tsk, you seem pretty experienced.”

“…Intuition. Just intuition.”