Chapter 26.2 - Text Message (2)
Just as Bai Li left the room, a message popped up on Luo Zhi’s phone.
Bai Li said this every day. It seemed like any progress Luo Zhi made brought her joy, as if it were her own happiness. This made Luo Zhi feel embarrassed—Bai Li didn’t understand anything about her situation, and Luo Zhi didn’t know how to make her realize that, in fact, nothing had even started yet.
“I’m actually very simple. Conferences like that are just boring for me.” The macroeconomics teacher was a foreigner from Columbia University, and his speeches mixed Chinese and English, something Luo Zhi and the others had long gotten used to. Luo Zhi spaced out, and when she looked up, it seemed like he was complaining about an economic forum he had attended a few days ago during class suspension.
"Alright, back to the topic. Basically, this kind of inflation rate is very tricky in developing countries. Given its money supply, this moderate inflation rate is actually beneficial."
Luo Zhi was stunned—although he had been doing this "bilingual teaching" since day one, it was usually just inserting some English words into Chinese sentences. However, the way he used "given" just now was so clever, with the entire sentence suddenly shifting to an English structure with Chinese words mixed in.
Luo Zhi smiled. She often found herself laughing inexplicably during class.
Her phone vibrated, an unfamiliar number.
"Hello, is this Luo Zhi? Sorry to disturb you, but I wanted to ask if you're free this afternoon. I have something about Sheng Huainan that I’d like to talk to you about."
Luo Zhi read the message several times and slowly replied.
"I'm not very close to him. If it's something important, you can talk directly to him. Sorry about that."
No more messages came after that.
Also, the message she sent to Sheng Huainan in the morning still hadn’t been replied to. Sometimes, she felt it was so foolish to keep waiting like this. Whether she was in class or doing homework, she always replied to every message as soon as she got it, but the other person didn’t do the same.
She turned her phone off, then on again, always hoping a few messages would pop up when it restarted. Later, she just took out the battery and shoved it to the bottom of her bag full of books—she was lazy, so lazy that she didn’t want to dig through the heavy books to find the battery, and her phone remained quiet for a long time.
It was so quiet that she almost forgot about it.
Before bed, she took out the battery, turned the phone on, set the alarm, and realized there really were new messages.
"Tomorrow at 3 p.m., the café. The debate team needs your help with something. Please make sure to come. My phone’s out of battery, using a classmate’s. Sheng Huainan."
Luo Zhi’s first reaction was to think about the mysterious message from the morning. However, she remembered that the morning message had come from a "Dynamic Network" number, while this one started with 132, which seemed to be from China Unicom.
She sent a reply: "Strange, didn’t we agree to meet at 4 p.m. tomorrow to watch a movie?"
" When did I say I wanted to watch a movie? Do you want to watch one?"
"Oh, never mind. 3 p.m., right? Got it."
Luo Zhi stared at the bed frame, thought for a moment, then got up to make a call.
At 3 p.m. the next day, Luo Zhi walked into the café. There were very few people inside, and she clearly didn’t see Sheng Huainan, nor anyone obviously gathered at one table. Someone waved at her, and she looked over.
Sure enough, it was the woman in the red dress from outside the supermarket. Luo Zhi walked closer and noticed her delicate makeup, the bright yellow silk scarf around her neck, and the subtle trace of aggression in her expression.
"Hello. My name is Xu Ri Qing."
