Chapter 44: The Little Yellow Snowman

On the bus, Lu You and Tang Wan sat close together, each wearing one Bluetooth earphone while watching a viral video review on Bilibili.

On the screen, four middle-aged men wearing white short-sleeved shirts and black shorts were running in the playground through the rain. With their faintly protruding bellies, they ran while saying with utter self-admiration, "Are the girls in the classroom over there looking at us?"

Both of them shuddered with a sudden wave of nausea.

"Hsssh~" Tang Wan drew in a sharp breath, hugging her own arms as she said, "That gave me goosebumps all over. How does that guy manage to be so repulsive yet so confident? With that belly of his, I feel like my soul has been tainted."

Lu You pinched the bridge of his nose, nodded in deep agreement, and said, "I have a physical sense of discomfort. I feel like I'm going to have nightmares tonight."

At that moment, a small hand rested on his stomach and poked around a few times.

Lu You grabbed the wrist of that mischievous hand, asking with a half-smile, "What are you doing?"

"I want to see if you have a little belly like him."

"Don't you already know whether I have one or not? Besides, what can you possibly feel through a down jacket? If you want to check, you might as well do it directly." As he spoke, Lu You made a motion to pull down the zipper of his jacket.

Tang Wan hurriedly pulled her hand back and said in a flustered voice, "I know, I know! I won't touch anymore!"

Seeing that she no longer dared to stir up trouble, Lu You shifted his attention back to the video.

Although the video was only a little over ten minutes long, Tang Wan felt as though a century had passed. Especially during the playback of the original footage, the cringe was so intense she felt like she was splitting in half.

When the video finally ended, Tang Wan let out a long breath and said with lingering awe, "That was sheer torture. I have no idea how these content creators manage to endure it. Just editing it alone would have broken me."

Lu You, on the other hand, looked like he was still finding it amusing and suggested, "Shall we find another one to watch? This feels quite interesting."

"No way!" Tang Wan said with resistance. "How is this kind of stuff interesting?"

"I feel like I can learn some knowledge from it," Lu You said earnestly.

"Don't you dare learn anything from it! If you dare to learn this, I'll beat you up!"

"Don't rush to conclusions, listen to me first," Lu You appeased her, saying, "That guy spent a few years making a drama like this primarily to teach us two lessons."

"Oh? What lessons?"

"Once a person chooses the wrong direction, no matter how much effort they put in, the destination they reach will still be wrong."

"Speak human."

Lu You thought for a moment, turned his body slightly, and continued, "Let me put it this way. That guy worked hard enough making this show, right? He wrote the script himself, spent several years polishing it, and personally controlled every detail of the filming down to the exact spot where each snowflake fell. But the resulting film can be described in three words: an absolute trainwreck."

"That is indeed true," Tang Wan agreed with his assessment. "What else?"

"The other lesson is that when a person's cognitive understanding divorces itself from general public thinking, the things they present and the inherent purpose behind them are usually not understood by the masses. Instead, the public will find them bizarre."

Tang Wan: ←_←

"Must you always speak so obscurely?"

"Uh... fine, let me put it more plainly. It means his perception of the world is different from that of the audience. Behavior that we find utterly bizarre might seem completely normal to him.
For instance, take that scene where the four of them run in the rain. His intention was to express the youthful brotherhood among the four. But the method he used was all wrong.
First of all, what college students look like that? Furthermore, while guys do talk about topics related to girls, we certainly don't discuss them directly out in the open like that.
Even though our minds as guys might contain quite a bit of filthy thoughts, we aren't shameless perverts. At least, not all of us are.
You can understand this drama as the self-delusion of a greasy, creepy man."

Tang Wan suddenly opened her eyes wide, stared into Lu You's deep and gentle gaze, and asked curiously, "So do you have filthy thoughts in your mind too?"

"After I said all that, is that really what you wanted to ask?" Lu You said in disbelief. "Shouldn't you be asking about that guy's situation?"

"I don't pay attention to him, I don't want to know about his affairs," Tang Wan urged him. "Hurry up and answer, do you have filthy thoughts in your head?"

The hole one digs, one must eventually fill.

Lu You struggled and said, "Well... considering I'm a teenage boy, I naturally have a tiny, tiny fraction of sexual fantasies in my head."

As he spoke, he used his fingers to measure a tiny gap in the air to emphasize, "Truly just a tiny fraction."

"Oh~ is that so?" Tang Wan looked at him with a teasing expression and bantered, "Are you watching movies by various female instructors, or personal works on the little blue bird?"

"I..." At this moment, Lu You snapped out of it, narrowed his eyes, and asked, "Wait a minute, you seem to know quite a lot about this too? What's going on here?"

Tang Wan immediately pulled up her scarf to cover her face, turned her head toward the window, and said with a trembling voice, "Is... is that so? I... I don't know anything about it."

"It seems the little snowman isn't white on the inside, but yellow."

"You're the yellow one, your whole body is yellow!" Tang Wan turned her back to him and retorted like a child.

Just then, the loudspeaker broadcasted a reminder that they were two stops away from their destination.

Lu You thought for a moment and decided to tease her next time, saying, "Alright, little yellow snowman, it's time to talk about serious matters."

Tang Wan kept looking out the window and muttered, "There are no little yellow snowmen here."

"Then a Minion?"

Tang Wan didn't want to talk to him and simply ignored him.

Seeing that she had no reaction, Lu You sighed and muttered to himself, "Ah, what a pity. I was thinking of having hotpot for lunch, but since we don't have our phones to order, I guess we'll have to forget it."

"What did you say?" Tang Wan instantly turned her head, pulled down her scarf, and revealed her exquisite little face.

"Huh? Did I say something?"

"Yes, you said we're having hotpot for lunch!" Tang Wan glared fixedly at Lu You.

"Really? How come I don't remember?"

"No way! You do remember! Let's have hotpot for lunch today, pretty please~" Tang Wan shook Lu You's arm and unleashed her ultimate acting of acting spoiled.

"Alright, alright." Lu You surrendered in less than two seconds.

In truth, when the girl one likes acts spoiled toward oneself, no boy can resist.

"Then lend me your phone so I can place the order."

"Okay!"

"Oh right, you should tell Li Yu and the others first that we're having hotpot later."

"I'll tell them right now!"

Tang Wan was in an exceptionally good mood. Just as boys cannot resist black silk stockings, girls find it equally hard to turn down a hotpot meal in the winter.

As for Lu You calling her a Minion or a yellow-centered snowman, he could call her whatever he liked; she would consider other things after finishing the hotpot.

...

Lu You held Tang Wan's phone, placed it between them, and scrolled through the delivery menu.

"Little snowman, what do you want to eat?"

Tang Wan looked at the restaurant; not only were the dish names rather fancy, but the prices were also somewhat outrageous.

"This... the prices are a bit hard to accept."

"Don't worry, order whatever you like, my treat."

Tang Wan shook her head and said, "It's not a question of whose treat it is, it's just that these prices really aren't worth it. It's clearly the exact same stuff, but things here are obviously much more expensive than elsewhere. Should we switch to another place?"

"If we switch to another place, then I'd actually be spending my own money."

"Huh? Why?"

Lu You smiled and explained, "Have you ever seen anyone having to pay when they go home to eat?"

"Is this opened by your family?" Tang Wan was genuinely startled. To be able to run a hotpot restaurant of this clearly high grade meant his family must be rather well-off.

"More or less, so feel free to order boldly, you don't need to worry about the price."

Tang Wan stopped overthinking it. Since Lu You had made it this clear, fussing over it further would just be being overly prudish.

"Then I won't be polite!"

Soon, a pile of meat dishes filled the shopping cart. There were fatty beef rolls, fatty lamb rolls, tripe, thousand-layer tripe, pig's aorta, various cuts of beef, shrimp paste, duck blood, and a wide variety of meatballs.

"Alright, that's everything Niannian and I want to eat. You can order the rest."

Looking at the all-meat selection, Lu You couldn't help laughing and saying, "You really aren't ordering a single vegetable? Aren't you afraid of getting fat from eating so much meat?"

"Since I'm already eating hotpot, why would I still worry about getting fat?" Tang Wan said dismissively, "Or is it that you care a lot if I get fat?"

Lu You added a splash of green and a few soy products to the single-minded menu and replied, "I only care whether the little snowman is happy every day and if her body is healthy."

Tang Wan said in a delighted tone, "The little snowman is very happy today, and her body is in tip-top shape!"

"How would you know? Are you the little snowman?"

"Aren't I?"

"The little snowman is yellow when cut open. Are you?"

Tang Wan's face flushed with shyness again. She gave Lu You a couple of playful "smacks" and scolded angrily, "You're still saying it! Still saying it! Is there no end to this?"

"Stop hitting me, stop hitting me." Lu You hurriedly appeased her and said, "You haven't placed the order yet, or else we won't have anything to eat later."

Tang Wan quickly sat back down and stopped acting up, saving her blows for when they reached the Carp Club.

Lu You took a long screenshot of the ordered dishes, then typed a phone number into the text message interface, sent the image out along with a message:
Deliver it to the Carp Club as soon as possible, I'll pick it up personally.

"Wow, is this what the boss's son is like? Such a swaggering tone!"

Lu You smiled. Right on cue, the bus broadcast announced that their stop had arrived.

"Let's go, little snowman, it's time to get off."

...

The two pushed open the door and stepped into the Carp Club.

It was the weekend, so there were quite a few customers, and the tables on the first floor were mostly occupied.

A young guy walked up to them and greeted Lu You with a smile, "Long time no see, young master. High school must have been pretty exhausting, right?"

"Exhaustive isn't the word, it's just that there's too little free time."

The young guy nodded in deep agreement and said, "Indeed. Having over ten hours of classes every single day is even more tiring than going to work."

"Li Yu should have arrived by now, right?"

"He's been here for a while, up on the second floor."

"Alright then, I'm heading up. Won't disturb your work."

"Go ahead." The young guy glanced at Tang Wan, then leaned close to Lu You's ear and whispered, "You two really have great taste."

Lu You nodded earnestly as well and replied, "I think so too."

The two of them walked up to the second floor.

Tang Wan drew closer to Lu You and asked, "What did he just say to you?"

"He said that the girl beside me looks like a heavenly being, breathtakingly beautiful."

"Well, that's true," Tang Wan said, her metaphorical tail lifting high up into the sky as she proclaimed proudly, "A beauty that eclipses the birds and puts flowers to shame, sinks the fish and drops the geese—that's me."

"Too bad she loves watching dirty videos and her heart is already tainted," Lu You sighed, shaking his head.

Tang Wan was so angry she wanted to reach out and pinch him, but unfortunately, she was wearing gloves, and he was wearing a thick down jacket, leaving her with no target to attack. She could only rain down a flurry of random slaps on him.