[BL NOVEL] Waiting For You Online Chapter 1

He Jin is at the second cafeteria and orders sweet and sour pork ribs with cabbage meat paste on the side of his food box. He slowly grabbed his food and leisurely walked back to his dormitory. On the trail to the dormitory,  the crunching sound of fallen ginkgo and sycamore leaves sandwiched between footsteps could be heard.

Around the path, a group of beautifully dressed girls were bustling with activity and delicate laughter while heading in the same direction. They carried a ball in the hands, while shouting to help out with the props, their conversation containing words such as "tennis" and "the most handsome boy in school". Despite the little warmth of the slightly cool late autumn, just watching their exposed long legs, He Jin could not help but shiver. At the school tennis court, what looked to be a heavyweight competition was being prepared for the afternoon. There was gossip from the girls that "the most handsome boy in school” will be participating in said competition.

However, these He Jin did not care - have already spent two and a half years on this campus and have experienced what needed to experience already.

Junior year is the most busiest year for professional courses, especially after the start of the second semester, the college life seems to have easily disappeared, and anxiety and sense of loss of the future began to spread in the grade gradually.

He Jin sighed, as he recalled the conversation he had last night at home. The woman said on the phone that his father at home have made arrangements for him to work at a well-known institution that could recommend him to be a civil servant and good wages and high welfare. As soon he graduates, he can go back to work. He Jin suddenly felt a bit tired, not knowing why.

As he was approaching the dormitory, a silhouette suddenly appeared from behind, collides with He Jin, who was still in a trance. “Bang!” The lunchbox that was once in his hands fell on the ground.

"I'm sorry ..." The man pulled him up and waited for him to stand still in order to pick up the box. "Did it break?"

"Nothing is broken." He Jin took the box, which was a plexiglass lunch box with good sealing and leak-proof quality, was fortunately not broken. Count this kid lucky, he didn’t need to compensate me.

He Jin looked up and observed the man. He was wearing a blue and white POLO shirt, dressed in Nike's leisure jacket, long arms, neat short hair, slightly narrow eyes, and pursed lips. He gave off a stern and serious attitude.

-He seems to be on the tennis team, is he rushing to the competition?

He Jin beckoned with the hand to hint is that everything was alright without uttering a word while holding his lunch box to his body.

A few years ago, the national university alliance demanded that the major colleges improved the student accommodation environment to compete with the foreign, more well-known colleges and universities. The government have allocated funds to some key schools to rebuild the obsolete school building. The college that HeJin went to have just has only caught up with this welfare.

The majority of the funds were used to transform what the countless alumni called "pigsty dormitory", into a new dormitory that had two rooms with usually two or four occupants. Each dorm had a dining room, with a refrigerator, a microwave oven, and as well as air conditioning and heating. After the transformation, a lot of private students became envious of the new living conditions.

When He Jin opened the door, he saw three people eating at the table in the dining room. One of them noticed him arrived and cried "Brother Jin, why were you so slow?” The person who called out to He Jin was called Hou Dongyan and was his same room roommate. Hou Dongyan had a thin and small stature,  snubbed nose, large ears and looks like a very monkey. His nickname, of course, is called "monkey".

"I took a detour from school to the cafeteria, so I was late."

He Jin pulled out the empty seat, sat down, and opened the lunch box. Because the lunch box fell, the spare ribs and cabbage combined together into one pile. Originally the canteen dish looks bad, but now red and white paste is almost to hard to look at.

"What dish did you get? It looks really disgusting." Hou Dongyan said straightforwardly.

He Jin: "... ..."

"The school? What kind of activities are you busy with?" The other person asked.

Ever since He Jin was little, he has always been on the class committee. So naturally when he went to college, he ran for election for the student association. For two years, he worked in student activities. During that time,  he work exceptionally well and so, when he was a sophomore, he was promoted to minister of the Department of Study. But this year, He Jin obviously felt conflicted., Originally, many people recommended him to the bureau this semester and he even had the opportunity to run for the president of the student union, but he did not know which was the best option.

"It doesn’t matter, I had to count the casted votes" He Jin set down his chopsticks, his appetite now lost.

After finishing afternoon class, He Jin went back to the dormitory to rest for a while. When he woke up, he saw Hou Dongyan bent in front of his computer while playing a game. From time to time, a sound or two could be heard but he appeared to be very excited.

This guy is obsessed with games. Ever since he was a freshman to even now, He Jin has never seen him not play computer games. Although he is usually not absent from class, he isn’t necessarily motivated to try and always improvises, which always leads him with low to middle results. Even as we are approaching senior year, this guy still on eats, sleeps and plays without fail. He Jin sometimes feels a sense of envy seeing him.

Noticing a strange picture on Hou Dongyan’s computer screen, He Jin, in his slippers, asks: “Still playing?”.

Hou Dongyan took off the earphone, held his chest and cried "Why are you so silent? You gave me a scare!".

He Jinxiao glanced at him, looked to the computer, and asked: "What is this game?"

On the screen was a magnificent Xian Xia background with distant mountains. He Jin has never seen such scene before on the screen. Hearing that, Hou Dongyan immediately became excited: "This is 'God Evil Spirit', a domestic-made 3D game, the official site announced that immediately must leave ‘holographic’, So frustrating!”

"......God Evil Spirit?" the name sounding familiar to He Jin, but he was more curious about the gamename mostly and how the two characters differ from each other. God is not evil, also not strange.

"This game was very popular a couple of years ago, haven’t you heard of it before?" Hou Dongyan moved the laser-controlled mouse through the game scene, while explaining: "They recently changed the name. It used to be called 'Spirit Fairy', I had also played it before, but felt that it was not as amusing as European and American games, abandoned it, but I started to play it shortly after. I couldn’t believe that it was so good, it broke my prejudice against domestic-made game! The key is it’s fast 'holograph'! This is the third holographic online game of the world 's "Animal Soul" and "Magic Tower".”

He Jin was startled, but not for "holographic", but for "Smart Immortal" - this game was all the rage during middle school in the past and the only time that He Jin has played a online game. At that time, China's Internet novels began to become popular, especially in the outsider, fantasy, Xiuxian themes. Young people were sucked by the author's fantasy world, dreaming about their own fantasy. During this time, the Green Fox launched a network game "Smart Immortal", attracting countless young players.

He Jin and his classmates were also one of the many playing the game. Every day during and after school, “Smart Immortal” was the topic of discussion. There were even some people who established a class association of the game.  He Jin was influenced by what one sees and hears all day long, found it difficult to not follow the crowd.

“...... Six months ago, "Magic Tower" overseas opened a suit, gave high praises like the tide, and is simply now a focus of public attention!”

Hou Dongyan continues to gush "Oh yes!, recently the game officials also released a notice stating that during account registration period of ' Smart Immortal  'have the opportunity to extract a ‘God Evil Spirit’ holographic helmet, which is worth thousands of dollars. Can ' Ling Xian ' when we are junior high School, account password long forgotten! When 'smart immortal was released, we were in junior high school. The account number password have already been forgotten!"

Hou Dongyan realized the person who he was talking to was He Jin, the He Jin who that never played games and he was basically a chicken talking to a duck (1).

"Well, I know you must have no interest in these things... ..." Hou Dongyan looked at the time, was about to put down his  headphones and call his roommates to go to the cafeteria together for dinner, He heard the other person ask "Do you have this game’s installation package?”

Hou Dongyan: "...... Did the Sun hit the west?”

After dinner, He Jin double-clicked on the computer screen after the completion of the instalation of God Evil Spirit and entered the familiar string of letters of his account password in the smoke winding login box.

Hou Dongyan gasped as he stood behind him, shock written over his face: "You have an account?"

He Jin: " I’ve played the game during middle school."

Hou Dongyan eyes grew even bigger. "Do you still remember the account number password?".

He Jin: "All my social network account passwords are the same, if there is anything I may not remember, it could be the pin number ..."

“No, it ought to be this." he said. Hou Dongyan also looked at the screen expectantly. Today, He Jin has opened his eyes. He has known this guy for 2.5 years and never see him do anything except study and work. He has always thought that he was the definition of a nerd stereotype and a major workaholic. He did not think that he also played online games!

This year, the network speed has been very fast, the server was very popular, and queuing rarely happens. So just as he pressed the enter key, in just a moment, the game bar started, indicating that the account password is correct..

Immediately thereafter, the game pops up a system notification box--.

'Dear "Xiao Xian Jin", Welcome.’

(1) 鸡同鸭讲: A Chinese idiom, refers to two people who cannot communicate due to a language barrier.

TL Note:

MTL is difficult and I need to learn Chinese. I'm pretty sure I basically changed many of the sentences but I felt that it made more sense to do it when written in English. I was sort of reading as I was translating and now looking back, was not a good idea. There are some parts where I literally could not make any sense of it and just left it how it was. I'm still iffy about some of the translations of the name of the games. I just chose the ones that sounded the best and flowed with the context of the story.

Please comment down below on thoughts, opinions, reviews, etc. Constructive criticism is always welcomed and if you find mistakes please let me know. I'm a literal noob right now. I will read everything!