057 Little Tang’s Puzzle Exploration
The next day at noon, Tang Hexing woke up. From the first second he opened his eyes, he was in a state of confusion and bewilderment.
He saw an unfamiliar white cat lying on his body, sleeping soundly… Wait, where did this cat come from?
Looking around, yes, it was his own dormitory. But besides the little hamster Wang Heng was raising, who else in the dorm had a pet? But on closer inspection, this cat was quite cute, and its white fur was reasonably clean.
Tang Hexing didn’t wake the little cat. He placed it to the side to let it sleep and sat up. Then he became even more bewildered.
He slept on the lower bunk, and his shoes were placed under the bed, within reach of his feet. But when he looked down at this moment, both his slippers were there, but only the left one of his outdoor sneakers was present.
Where did his right sneaker go?
Tang Hexing patted his head and finally remembered… yesterday was Saturday. They had all gone to a mixer, stayed out very late, and he seemed to have had a little to drink. And then? What happened then?
He patted his head again, but he couldn’t remember no matter how hard he tried.
The feeling of memory loss made Tang Hexing feel a little panicked.
He put on his slippers and got out of bed. Looking around, the dormitory was empty and quiet. There was no shouting from Fu Hanwen’s gaming, no silly laughter from Wang Ke’s loli anime, and certainly no sound of Wang Heng typing on his keyboard or flipping through a book. It was so quiet that it was a little unsettling.
Where had his roommates gone?
Tang Hexing suddenly remembered a movie he had seen before, in which the protagonist had dissociative identity disorder. He was a normal person during the day, but at night he became a serial killer. The problem was, his daytime personality knew nothing about it, until one day he dug up his backyard and found piles of bones… Thinking of this, Tang Hexing couldn’t help but shiver.
I should be a normal person, right?
It was just a little drinking. It shouldn’t have awakened the demon inside, right?
The more his thoughts ran wild, the more panicked he became.
Tang Hexing took a deep breath and told himself to calm down. Judging from a reasonable perspective, his roommates should have gone out for something… Looking at his phone, hmm, going to the cafeteria for lunch at noon, that was very reasonable.
His phone’s battery was about to die. He walked to his desk and looked for a charging cable. But the moment he picked up the charging cable, he was bewildered again.
Why was a piece of chocolate stuck into the charging cable’s connector?
It was a Dove chocolate bar. The wrapper had been pierced, and it lay on the desk looking pitiful, forcibly penetrated by the charging cable…
Tang Hexing pulled out the charging cable, looked at the chocolate residue filling the connector, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
“Can this cable still be used? Probably not, right?”
So, what on earth happened last night?
At this moment, the little white cat finally woke up. It stretched, jumped down from the bed, walked over with elegant steps, rubbed against his pant leg, and then curled up into a ball in a corner.
Tang Hexing glared at the cat. “Why are you so familiar! Am I your owner for you to be rubbing against me!”
The cat glanced at him and didn’t bother with him anymore.
Tang Hexing looked down and saw that he was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, not having taken them off or changed. Sniffing the collar, he could still smell alcohol. So, was he really that drunk?
If he was that drunk, it wasn’t hard to understand mistaking a chocolate bar for a phone and forcibly plugging in the charging cable. But there were still two questions that couldn’t be explained—where did this cat come from? And where was his other sneaker?
Just as Tang Hexing was at a loss, his roommates returned.
The one who opened the door was Wang Heng, with Fu Hanwen and Wang Ke following behind. Wang Ke was also carrying a plastic bag with food in it.
“Oh, you’re awake!” Wang Heng smiled. “Do you still remember what happened last night?”
Tang Hexing shook his head blankly.
Fu Hanwen winked. “Let’s make sure first. Are you really awake?”
Wang Ke held up his index and middle fingers. “How many is this?”
“It’s two!” Tang Hexing hurried over. “So what on earth happened last night!”
The three of them exchanged glances. In each other’s eyes, there were two parts sympathy, two parts pity, and… one hundred percent schadenfreude.
Wang Heng pointed to the little white cat in the corner and said, “You can ask your Hanekawa Tsubasa. She witnessed almost the entire process.”
Tang Hexing looked at the cat, still bewildered. “Hanekawa Tsubasa?”
Fu Hanwen took out his phone and cleared his throat. “I think words are pale and powerless. It’s really hard for us to describe your behavior last night, really hard to explain it to you clearly. But it’s okay, we recorded it.”
Wang Ke: “We all recorded it with our phones, but Little Fu was the fastest to pull his out, so his version is the most complete. You’ll know when you see it.”
Tang Hexing took the phone and opened the nearly three-minute-long video in the photo album.
At the beginning of the video, the screen shook a little, then focused on Tang Hexing. It should have been late at night, long past the time for lights-out and power-off. But fortunately, two desk lamps were fully charged, providing ample lighting.
In the video, Tang Hexing was sitting on his bed, bent over, and vomiting violently.
The voices of his roommates could be heard in the video.
Wang Heng: “The smell of alcohol is so strong…”
Fu Hanwen: “Open the window to air it out, or we won’t be able to sleep tonight!”
Wang Ke: “He seems to have puked all over his shoe…”
Tang Hexing looked closely. Sure enough, he was vomiting into that sneaker!
The real-life Fu Hanwen patted his shoulder. “We threw that shoe away overnight. Seriously, if we hadn’t wrapped it in three layers of plastic bags, we really wouldn’t have dared to touch it.”
Tang Hexing was speechless.
Wang Heng: “The exciting part hasn’t even come yet. Keep watching.”
The exciting part hasn’t even come yet? Hearing him say that, Tang Hexing’s scalp tingled.
But the next moment, Tang Hexing knew why Wang Heng had said that…
In the video, Tang Hexing held up the vomit-filled sneaker with his right hand, held the little white cat with his other hand, and said loudly with a big smile, “Thank you all for attending my wedding with Student Hanekawa! Come, I’ll drink this cup first as a toast!”
In the video, Wang Heng, Fu Hanwen, and Wang Ke said in unison:
“Wait!”
“Put it down quickly!”
“Damn, I’m going to puke too!”
In the video, Wang Heng grabbed a plastic bag from the table, put it over Tang Hexing’s right hand, and forcefully snatched away the sneaker that had been ravaged beyond recognition.
“Quick, quick, throw it away!”
“Where do we throw it? Fu Hanwen, where’s your trash can?”
“Outside! Throw it outside! Don’t ruin my trash can!”
“The sanitation worker will kill us…”
“Never mind, never mind, just throw it out first! I can’t take it anymore!”
“Pour what he puked down the drain, then throw the shoe away. That’s better.”
“Wang Ke, you do it! Whoever suggested it, does it!”
Tang Hexing stared at the phone, his gaze already vacant. The video was still playing. After his ‘cup’ was snatched away by Wang Heng, he didn’t just lie down. Instead, he grabbed the little white cat, placed it in front of him, and then bowed deeply to it…
Fu Hanwen sighed. “Do you know? We were busy until three in the morning, dealing with the trash and mopping the floor.”
Tang Hexing: “…”
Wang Heng patted Little Tang’s shoulder. “Don’t drink next time, really.”
Wang Ke also added, “Exactly. You act recklessly after drinking. Look, you’ll have to be responsible for Student Hanekawa in the future, right? You’ve already bowed to heaven and earth with her…”
