MM Racing 024 Restaurant Gossip
024 Restaurant Gossip
"Make way, this is your esteemed S-grade meal! All unauthorized personnel, please step aside!"
Fingel stormed to the table, carrying two trays and shouting excitedly. Roasted lamb chops, braised pork, fried chicken legs, stir-fried noodles, steamed dumplings, jianbing guozi... a fusion of Chinese and Western dishes, with both meat and vegetables included.
"Report S-level: Your lunch has been purchased according to your requirements. Please check."
Lu Mingfei took the student card and glanced at the huge tray.
"Are all of these mine?"
"Of course not!" Fingel said casually, pulling out a chair and sitting down. "These are mine; I've already given you yours."
The one next to it was Lu Mingfei's pitiful plate of vegetables.
Then, without any hesitation, he tore off a large piece of pork with skin and stuffed it into his mouth, muttering indistinctly as he chewed, "Brother, the menu you mentioned earlier was too bland. We hybrids have a fast metabolism; our genes carry a money-burning furnace in us. You can burn off as much as you eat without having to worry about calorie restriction!"
As he spoke, he grabbed a fried chicken leg, took a big bite, and continued in a muffled voice, "And let me tell you, the chef at the Kassel cafeteria is best at cooking meat. You're a vegetarian, so you've come here for nothing."
Lu Mingfei ate his broccoli expressionlessly.
Fingel finished a chicken leg in a few bites, wiped his greasy hands haphazardly on a tissue, then leaned closer, lowered his voice, and said with a gossipy glint in his eyes, "Hey junior, you're pretty fast."
"What speed?"
"This is it?" Fingel's eyes glanced across at the other side for a moment, then quickly looked back.
Zero stopped eating, raised his head slightly, and coldly glanced at Fingel with his icy blue eyes.
Fingel shuddered and immediately shrank back: "Um... junior, let me tell you some campus gossip, you might not know this since you're new here—"
"No need," Lu Mingfei said.
"Yes, yes, these are juicy tidbits you'd never hear at a regular university." Fingel cleared his throat. "Take student council president Caesar and that red-haired little witch, for example. Do you know how they decided to get together?"
Seeing that Lu Mingfei didn't refute, Fingel immediately got excited: "One night, Nono suddenly had a seizure, drove her Ferrari around the dormitory building, flooring the gas pedal, and yelling, 'Whoever takes me out to play, I'll date them!' And then Caesar, that kid, jumped out of the third-floor window! He was holding two Desert Eagles and firing them into the air! While firing, he shouted, 'Then let's go on a date!' Tsk tsk tsk, that scene, that's real manly romance!"
Following the tone of his voice, Lu Mingfei imagined the scene. Two bored minds, driven by adrenaline, were finding all sorts of ways to seek thrills in the greenhouse of peacetime.
"And then?" Lu Mingfei asked.
"And then? Then they officially became a couple." Fingel shrugged. "So, bro, even though you looked really cool in Valhalla yesterday, Caesar is, after all, the Gattuso family's chosen heir... Hey, what's going on between you and your college counselor... um... Hakone...?"
The girl slowed down noticeably as she cut her steak, her silver knife and fork lightly scraping the edge of the porcelain plate.
"Yes, I went."
"Really went? What did he do?" Fingel's eyes widened, his gossip-loving soul burning brightly.
"To see the scenery and soak in hot springs," Lu Mingfei replied matter-of-factly. "She wanted to persuade me to enroll in school, but I said I wanted to go to Hakone, so she went with me."
"You soaked in a hot spring?!"
"Public hot springs," Lu Mingfei added, "separate for men and women."
Fingel's expression became incredibly complex, as if he was trying hard to believe but couldn't help but doubt: "So there's nothing between you two?"
There's nothing there.
"Just friends?"
"Just friends."
"A purely platonic, purely innocent relationship between counselors and freshmen?"
"right."
Fingel leaned back in his chair, let out a long sigh, and looked as if to say, "I believe you, but I don't believe in this world."
"Brother, do you know what your problem is?" Fingel said.
"What?"
"You're too frank," Fingel said, pointing to Lu Mingfei's plate. "Look at how you answered those questions just now, you didn't even blink. A normal person, when asked those kinds of questions, would either blush, panic, or pretend to be angry. But you, you recited it like a textbook."
Lu Mingfei thought for a moment: "Because everything I said was the truth."
"Yes, that's the problem." Fingel slammed his hand on the table. "What you said is true, but your behavior is too ambiguous. A three-day, three-night trip to Hakone before starting university is something only couples do. Now you're telling me 'we're just friends,' do you think anyone will believe you?"
"Who are you all?"
"Everyone is everyone." Fingel spread his arms and looked around the restaurant. "Everyone who saw Nono take you to Hakone. Everyone who heard you were the first freshman she personally mentored. Everyone."
The girl across from him put down her knife and fork, pulled out a napkin, and wiped her mouth. She stood up, not looking at Fingel, but at Lu Mingfei, then turned and left.
Fingel gazed at the girl's petite figure as she walked away, then suddenly turned back, his tone unusually serious: "Brother, let me tell you something from the bottom of my heart."
"What?"
"This zero is interested in you."
"zero?"
Lu Mingfei looked up at Fingel, his eyes clearly saying, "What are you talking about?"
"It's that Russian girl sitting across from you!" Fingel exclaimed, "I studied journalism, I have a professional instinct. Do you know how many times she looked at your plate while she was sitting across from you?"
"have no idea."
"Three times." Fingel held up three fingers. "The first time was when you sat down, the second time was when you started eating broccoli, and the third time was when you answered my question about Nono."
Lu Mingfei thought for a moment: "What does this prove?"
"That means she's observing you!" Fingel lowered his voice, but his tone grew increasingly agitated. "A normal girl sitting across from a guy at dinner will either be looking at her phone, looking out the window, or looking at her own food. She looked at your plate three times; that means she's interested in your eating habits. What does it mean when a girl is interested in a guy's eating habits?"
"Does that mean she wants to study nutrition?"
Fingel nearly choked to death on his own saliva.
"Bullshit! Look at the way she was staring at you just now, so focused! I got hold of the seating chart for the 3E exam, and you're sitting right behind her. Tell me, did you use some kind of magic on her during the exam?"
Lu Mingfei sighed, put down his chopsticks, and said, "Zero isn't interested in me."
"Boring? Zero is nothing, and love without anything is silent! It's a silent volcano!" Fingel continued to ramble on.
Lu Mingfei didn't want to explain anymore.
He discovered a pattern: when everyone is expecting a story, the truth is the least popular option.
He picked up his plate and stood up.
"I've finished eating."
"Hey, hey, don't go, junior!" Fingel quickly grabbed his sleeve. "What did you do in the 3E exam room? Why were you able to hand in your papers early? That old fogey Manstein never lets anyone hand in their papers early!"
Lu Mingfei pulled out his sleeve.
"I don't know what she wrote," he said. "I didn't do anything."
"Then why were you able to hand in your paper early? That old-fashioned Manstein never lets anyone hand in their paper early!"
"Because I didn't enter the realm of spiritual vision at all."
Fingel opened his mouth, then closed it again.
He looked into Lu Mingfei's eyes, trying to find any trace of a lie.
This S-class individual possesses an aura that is neither that of a strong person nor a weak one. It's a sense of detachment, like someone observing the world from afar, occasionally coming over for a short visit, and then leaving.
He remembered that photograph.
Fingel loosened his grip.
"Okay," he said, "but junior, let me give you one last piece of advice."
"What?"
"Whether you have feelings for Nono or not, don't do anything to betray Caesar." Fingel's tone was unusually serious. "Caesar is much crazier than you think when he's insane. He can jump down from the third floor to chase Nono, and he can jump down from the third floor to cut you down."
Lu Mingfei looked at him.
"I have no feelings for Nono," he said.
Fingel smiled, a smile that conveyed a sense of "I've seen too many people who refuse to admit it."
Lu Mingfei turned and left.
He placed his tray in the recycling bin and walked out of the cafeteria. An autumn breeze blew by, carrying a chill. He took a deep breath; the air smelled of leaves and earth.
As I walked across the lawn, I saw Nono sitting on a bench.
She was wearing a red hoodie, the hood pulled up to cover most of her face, her legs curled up on the chair, looking down at her phone. Sunlight filtered through the maple leaves, casting dappled shadows on her, making her look smaller than usual.
Several groups of students stared at him with curious eyes and whispered among themselves. Lu Mingfei gave up on greeting them and went straight back to his dormitory.
He pushed open the dormitory door, and Lao Tang's avatar was lit up on the computer.
Lu Mingfei typed a string of words: "The people here are too gossipy."
A dozen seconds later, Lao Tang replied: "Hahahaha, you just realized?"
Lu Mingfei leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling.
My phone vibrated again.
"Being gossiped about means you have value; if no one gossips about you, you should be crying."