Chapter 18: My Best Friend Is An Idiot

Here’s the English translation of your passage with a natural, fluent tone:

Did She Pay for the Jianbing or Not? It wasn’t until Summer Hua had walked quite a long way that she suddenly realized—she hadn’t paid for the jianbing.

Back when she used to hang around Lin An, he was always the one footing the bill.

So naturally, she didn’t think much of it at the time.

But when she returned to the jianbing stand, the place was already deserted.

“Boss, who paid just now?” Summer Hua asked.

“How would I know?” the vendor grumbled, eyes glued to a short video on his phone. “The better-looking one paid. Are you buying or not? If not, stop wasting my time…”

Alright then. The better-looking one paid?

Must’ve been Lin An—no doubt about it.

She’d just send him a red envelope later and call it a day.

Why not Ji Fan, you ask?

Well… maybe it’s just a matter of perception!

As someone in the arts herself, Summer Hua had some rather fixed ideas about others in the same field.

To her, anyone “artsy” was usually fake handsome.

But her best friend, Lin An—that guy was genuinely handsome!

Back in the day, the girls he lured in were like fish swimming upstream—countless and never-ending.

Of course… “How do I even describe the Lin An of today?” Summer Hua said with a tinge of melancholy.

“Honestly, he’s kind of a doofus now. A bit silly and naive. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was just a harmless, honest guy.”

How did he turn out so good-looking later?

How did he evolve?

Was it a genetic mutation?

Sir, may I ask—on your journey to becoming handsome, how exactly did you allocate your skill points?

They say boys can change a lot as they grow.

That makes sense—after all, Lin An is only 17 right now!

After waving goodbye to the jianbing vendor with the terrible attitude, Summer Hua was still deep in thought. She pinched her own arm—soft, squishy, and comfortable…

“Wait, no—that’s not what I was thinking about,” she corrected herself sternly, “I was wondering… should I start building some muscle?”

“Otherwise, I’d have zero resistance in front of any guy.”

“But… is it really worth it?”

……

After weighing the pros and cons, she gave up.

Even if she trained for three years, odds were she still wouldn’t beat a guy in a fight.

Having experienced the change from male to female firsthand, she knew all too well—train for ten years, and she’d probably still get wrecked by a guy.

She figured she was destined to become one of those girls who gets out of breath after three steps and can’t open a bottle cap.

Though, under special circumstances, maybe she could pop open Lin An’s skull instead.

“I can’t go back to school,” Summer Hua sighed.

“But it’s not even my fault. Worst case, I’ll just transfer.” That was her final card to play.

After all, a person’s gotta have some pride.

She hoped that after tomorrow, she could walk into class freely again.

Instinctively, she wandered over to the convenience store where she worked part-time.

After standing there for a moment, though, she turned around and left.

She wasn’t in the mood to work at all.

Instead, she walked slowly home.

There, a pile of deliveries had already arrived:

Motherboard. Wiring. Power button. Heatsink. Graphics card…

She went through the used parts she’d painstakingly scavenged, and was delighted to discover she’d somehow ended up with an extra GPU.

She had sacrificed the money for a CPU and RAM to get a low-end graphics card instead.

She also got a five-yuan PC case from the scrap yard.

“Let’s get this done today while I still have time.”

“I’ll deal with the internet this afternoon too…” She had already arranged the broadband service; the installation guy had been calling her nonstop asking when he could come set it up.

As for assembling the computer—c’mon, how hard could it be?

First step: install the CPU, memory, heatsink, and GPU. The rest was just making sure the wires were connected correctly. That’s it. Easy-peasy. If you’ve got hands, you can build it.

Summer Hua didn’t get the fuss. Was it really supposed to be difficult?

“OK, done~” she said, screwing on the final bolt and brushing the dust off her hands.

Everything was second-hand, so of course it was a bit dusty.

She had a USB drive loaded with a pirated Windows 7 system— young people without money couldn’t afford to be picky.

It would do for now.

The next step— installing the OS— was the trickiest part.

She knew how to assemble a PC because she’d taken one apart before.

But she’d never installed a system from scratch.

In the past, she’d used the convenient “One-Click Install” option.

Now, she pulled out her phone and carefully followed the tutorial step-by-step…

Fortunately, even though the entire machine was built from second-hand parts, its performance wasn’t bad at all.

A few minutes later— thump-thump~— the screen lit up with that familiar green meadow of the Windows desktop.

“What a clean desktop,” Summer Hua exclaimed.

Aside from a few basic office programs, you couldn’t even spot a single QQ icon.

There were a lot of apps she still needed to install, but this time, she’d learned her lesson: not a single video app was allowed.

She set a firm rule— if it wasn’t related to her work, she wasn’t installing it.

Every guy knows: never lend your computer to a woman or a child.

They’ll use it for five minutes, and you’ll spend two hours hunting down sneaky bundled software afterward.

Summer Hua didn’t download any games to enjoy, nor did she do anything related to her actual skills.

Instead, she opened the official website of her school, Southbank No. 1 High.

“If I remember correctly, the school’s PA system was replaced just last year…” Summer Hua murmured.

That would’ve been when she first started 10th grade.

The school website was full of outdated announcements that no one cared about.

She dug around for a long time before finally finding the information she wanted:

A detailed procurement notice listing various school equipment—computers, desks and chairs, gym gear and among them, the PA system. It even included the model numbers.

“Media Player: Model MBK-3000.”

“Constant-voltage Amplifier: HKWWANDT HK-260.”

“Component Stereo System: Tape Deck, Speakers, DVD…”

“Wireless Microphone, H-band.”

When she saw that last line, Summer Hua’s eyes lit up, and a sly smile tugged at her lips.

“Got it. Ehehehe~ ha~”

Summer Hua considered herself a lazy person.

She really didn’t have the energy to go around complaining to people about everything her homeroom teacher had done.

Life was already hard enough— why make herself look even more miserable?

“Let me think… once I take control of the school’s loudspeakers, how should I use them?” She tilted her head and imagined, “Maybe I’ll write a tragic exposé about the homeroom teacher’s crimes…”

“And then pick a nice, sunny afternoon.”

“To read it aloud… in a calm, breezy tone.”

Of course, all that was just her fantasy— chances were, she wouldn’t actually do it like that.

Still, Summer Hua was dead set on hijacking the school’s PA system.

Based on the model numbers from the equipment list, she easily found and downloaded an audio signal simulation app for the speaker system onto her phone.

“Now there’s just one final and hardest— step left.”

“How do I get the PA system in the broadcast room to recognize and connect to my phone?”

But no big deal— she already had the signal protocols.

Now, it was time to stir up a little trouble.