Love O2O: Getting to know you again, in real life

Like Jumping into a Cold Ocean

[Posted 2/02/21]

[Author's Note: I gotta stop doing such long author's notes. But:

Oh. My. Goodness. Has anyone ever told you all HOW great you are—I'm talking to all of you reading / commenting / voting..

Thank you for all your encouraging messages after my near emotional breakdown in the last post, lol 😭. All your comments and likes are channeling Bei Weiwei's fighting spirit! I was so devastated bc I sort of became a yangshuang shipper while I've been re-watching all these LO2O episodes and working on this. And then... well, THAT whole dream died.

Yeah.

And then I was almost giving up on fanfics. But you all are keeping me going! for. Real.

Also I realized, "wait a second, there's still a bit more story to go"—this chapter is not the last chapter for this book quite yet... there's like two or three more coming after this one... ]

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In the silence, Bei Weiwei watched three jaws drop. A spoon that Yugong was holding clattered onto the floor. The sound of it clanging on the wood made everyone seem even more frozen in surprise.

(Weiwei did not know that the senior who clutched that spoon was also secretly also harboring slight disappointment due to a slight broken heart. But all this, he quickly buried deep into his subconscious—after all, he was loyal to Xiao Nai until the bitter end.)

To the five of them, sitting together around one small table, it felt like the whole coffee shop had stopped moving and gone silent.

Weiwei picked the spoon up off the ground, and then kept smiling, looking at her seniors encouragingly.

"I knew it!" Yugong said. "You've all been sneaking around under the cover of warehouses."

"That's not the right idiom," said Xiao Nai. "And besides, don't say these things lightly."

Bei Weiwei glanced at Xiao Nai's handsome face. Though it remained strangely impassive, she realized she was starting to be able to read his expressions more easily. She could see that a delighted smile danced somewhere behind his mask. She could see it in his eyes.

I'm starting to understand Xiao Nai like I understand Yixiao Naihe, she thought.

And then suddenly—like that—the boys exploded into chatter. The words coming out of their mouth were like a high speed car chase.

... "You have to tell everyone!"

... "This is news for the whole campus!"

... "Wah, Xiao Nai, you really given up the bachelor's life!"

... "Wow, Weiwei, I can't believe you're really a woman in real life! Everyone on the server was saying..."

... "Hey—" (at this point Hao Mei hit Yugong while squinting disapprovingly) "Haven't you learned you can't believe online gossip? Just like you can't believe real-life gossip!"

... "OK, Nai, now that you're with sansao in real life, you have to take us to a celebration dinner!"

"I spent all my money on Miss Weiwei already." (That was Xiao Nai lodging a protest, and being evil as usual.)

Bei Weiwei's sweet voice drifted up above all their discussions.

"To be honest," she said, "I've been having trouble facing all the campus gossip..."