Xia He's words still hung in his ears, impossible to chase away.

I'm only like this with you.

Jiang Yueming had already returned home and was curled up in his chair playing a game. Tomorrow the break would end, but he wasn't spending this last bit of time on his beloved game at all.

‘Can I finish a playthrough in just this one night…’

On the screen, the word Defeat jumped out, and the picture instantly turned gray.

His state tonight wasn't great.

An unremarkable side-quest boss, the kind he'd normally crush without a second thought, had cost him multiple lives tonight.

It wasn't that the boss had grown stronger. It was that he kept drifting off—in the middle of the fight, his mind would wander elsewhere.

Wander to the billowing white steam of the hot pot, wander to the curve of Xia He's lifted lips.

‘One more try, and if I die, I'm off to sleep!’

Jiang Yueming shook his head and pressed the revive button. The in-game character stood up again, swung back onto the horse, and galloped across the wilderness.

If I can't beat it in a normal fight, then I'll just pile on some buffs, Jiang Yueming thought.

He controlled his character to pull out a pile of food from the backpack and stuff it all into his mouth at once. In the next second, layers of faint glows lit up on the character's body.

Potion of Dullness, reduces damage taken...

Potion of Rage, increases critical hit rate...

Hot Pot Delicacy, slightly increases all attributes, grants immunity to cold...

With all the buffs stacked to the max, a roar sounded, and powerful music kicked in.

He had originally intended to save these items for the final boss, because gathering the materials for them was truly a hassle. So Jiang Yueming had only prepared one of each, planning to keep them until the very end.

But tonight, he didn't want to wait. Who cared about final or not, he'd get past this hurdle in front of him first.

In the game screen, the wilderness was suddenly plunged into a temperature drop. A snowstorm descended without warning.

The sun was swallowed. The sky tore open a rift. A white dragon burst out of the clouds, roaring as it swooped down.

The first phase's Cold debuff was directly neutralized by the Hot Pot Delicacy. Jiang Yueming flicked his finger, and the character executed a roll, barely dodging the first blast of dragon breath.

‘The immunity to cold really is useful.’

Without the slowing effect brought by cold, the character was as agile as a cheetah in his hands. The Hot Pot Delicacy was the most difficult piece of the entire buff set to obtain, but its effect was indeed immediate.

‘Speaking of hot pot…’

He recalled the meal that evening, Xia He sitting opposite him, chopsticks holding a piece of meat, her eyes sparkling as she looked at him and said—I'm only like this with you.

To call that sentence a veiled confession would be putting it lightly.

Jiang Yueming felt Xia He was a bit too forward—how could she casually say such a thing to someone she'd only known for a week?

Yet she had said it so naturally, as if the words had been rehearsed in her heart a thousand, ten thousand times, just waiting for this very second to slip out.

The battle on the screen continued.

The ice dragon flipped over and entered its second phase. Its scales and claws were covered in a layer of frost. Its long tail swept across, and in the moment Jiang Yueming was distracted, his character was struck, his HP bar instantly dropping by a third.

"Tsk."

Jiang Yueming hurriedly chugged a bottle of Healing Potion, pulled back to create distance, and forced himself to fix his gaze on the screen.

He had been playing this game for a long time. The family console couldn't run online games, so he could only buy single-player games to play.

Behind him, a transparent glass cabinet neatly housed a pile of games, all sorts, big and small.

He didn't have many hobbies. His only hobby was playing some games. Even that shut-in Dong Ziyang called him a homebody and told him to go outside more.

"Like you love going out so much yourself," Jiang Yueming had retorted at the time.

Dong Ziyang said righteously, "I at least go to an internet cafe once a week."

"Isn't that still indoors?"

"The internet cafe smells like cigarette smoke. It's different."

"What's different about it?"

Dong Ziyang thought for a long time, before squeezing out a reply: "It has that lived-in, worldly atmosphere."

Jiang Yueming laughed for a long time then.

Dong Ziyang said that a shut-in like him wasn't appealing to girls. Don't you want to experience a sweet romance in your high school days?

‘But if I'm not appealing to girls, what am I supposed to use to get into a relationship? Just keep holed up at home playing games and wait for a girl to come knocking on the door?’

As he thought this, his hands unconsciously slowed down, and the HP bar on the screen continued to drop.

For no particular reason, he recalled Xia He's face.

She really was very beautiful, so beautiful it created a sense of distance, the kind you could only gaze at from afar, giving off a feeling of "can be admired from a distance, but not played with."

He couldn't imagine the scene of Xia He standing by his side. That girl was so wonderful, wherever she went, light would shine. When she smiled, it was as if spring had arrived and flowers had bloomed.

And yet, this very person had taken his hand during the day, more than once. And she smiled at him, only at him.

Jiang Yueming suddenly felt a little scared.

He both looked forward to the story that would follow, and feared it would vanish in the blink of an eye.

He was afraid of being toyed with, that those smiles were merely well-practiced skills she'd long mastered, afraid that he was just a pastime she'd casually picked up from her boring life.

She was so skilled.

Those gestures and those perfectly timed approaches—had they been practiced on others before?

The ice dragon raised its head and let out a long howl. The roar echoed across the wilderness. The music suddenly tightened. A gale swept a blizzard down from the sky, violently tearing away all the trees, and the wilderness was completely transformed into an ice field.

The final phase.

The Healing Potions had all been consumed. He couldn't afford a single mistake from now on.

The ice dragon had no idea that the challenger before it was still thinking about other things at this life-or-death moment.

And Jiang Yueming had no idea either—a long, long time ago, Xia He had indeed staged these very same tactics countless times, all directed at him.

He had originally thought that he wouldn't be even remotely connected to the words "love and romance" before university, but Xia He's appearance had shattered all his plans.

A variable he absolutely could not ignore had suddenly appeared in his world.

The ice dragon's movements grew more frenzied. The snowstorm was so thick it obscured his vision, nothing visible beyond five meters. The giant dragon hid within the snowy curtain, vanishing without a trace.

In this stage, the player couldn't deal damage, only dodge.

Sharp claws would launch surprise attacks from within the snow, with no pattern to follow, requiring pure reaction to block on sight.

Jiang Yueming narrowed his eyes, the fingers holding the controller gently tightening. He held his breath, pressing all his attention into his pupils.

One.

Three.

Five.

...

The last one!

As long as he dodged the final attack, the boss would fall into a period of rigidity, and he could completely burst it down with one full damage rotation.

He was about to beat it.

Jiang Yueming's concentration was at its peak. He closely watched the swirling snowstorm, vigilant for an attack that could appear at any moment.

His hand applied slight pressure on the dodge button, like a trigger pulled halfway.

Just then—the phone on the table suddenly dinged. Someone was sending him a message late at night.

He instinctively glanced sideways at the lit-up phone screen. Sender: Xia He.

Just as he was about to shift his gaze down to see the content, the screen suddenly exploded with a dragon's roar.

Caught completely off guard, before he could even turn his head back, his fingers had already frantically pressed the dodge button.

Too late.

Sharp claws sliced across the screen. The sword-wielding warrior weakly knelt, his blade stabbed into the frozen earth.

Defeat

Red letters appeared before Jiang Yueming, whose mouth hung slightly open.

"What the hell?"

Jiang Yueming cursed, furrowing his brows. Gritting his teeth, he grabbed his phone.

‘Of all times, why did it have to be right then? Do you have any idea how long I saved up those items?!’

He opened his phone, and the message that appeared made him freeze.

Go to bed early, okay? No staying up late gaming tonight! I'll be checking tomorrow. If you have dark circles, I'll be mad!

Jiang Yueming stared at that line, his mouth opening and closing, but no words came out.

Once again, because of a woman, he had been defeated by a simple side-quest boss. And this woman wasn't even in the game.