A massive bright red font filled the entire screen in front of Su Wanli—GAME OVER, as if mercilessly mocking her failure.
“Tsk, damn, not again…”
Accompanied by a dissatisfied grunt, Su Wanli tossed the game controller in her hand onto the soft bean bag chair in the gaming room, then irritably ran her fingers through her hair and covered her eyes with her arm.
All told, this was already her thirty-seventh failure today.
‘…It’s all because that Meng Wange’s face keeps popping up in front of me!’
[Host…]
“Stop, I know you’re going to say something annoying like ‘Meng Wange isn’t even here, how can she be at fault’ and other nonsense. In the past, I might have patiently explained to you, ‘If she were here, I wouldn’t be stuck because I keep overthinking,’ ‘If there were other things to do, I wouldn’t be here alone playing games,’ and so on.”
Su Wanli silently picked up the White Dumpling from her pocket and shot it a cold glare—
“But I’m different now. Now I just want to find something that makes a sound and vent my irritation. Since you spoke up, don’t blame me.”
[Understood, Host. You are free to choose whatever action you wish to take against the System. But before that, the System must remind you that the current time has already passed 3:30 PM.]
“Huh? 3:30? What about 3:30? Even if I play straight through until 4 or 5 in the afternoon—”
As if to remind Su Wanli, the System quietly played back words that Meng Wange had once said—
“Miss Su, for tomorrow’s fireworks show, please take care of gathering the tools we’ll need?”
“—Waaahhhh!!!”
Su Wanli, finally snapping out of her game-induced daze, abruptly sat up from the sofa, smacked her forehead, and then pulled out from her pocket the list filled with various items that Meng Wange had given her.
‘Crap! In order to distract myself, I ended up playing for too long… Today wasn’t a completely free day—there was also the shopping task that Meng Wange personally entrusted to me, and even repeated to Zhang Ma!’
Su Wanli’s gaze silently shifted to the alarm clock placed in the room.
‘It’s already 3:40!’
“Where’s Zhang Ma? Why didn’t she call me? Why didn’t she come remind me to eat, making me—”
[Host, actually Zhang Ma came at noon.]
[You were irritably playing games at the time, refused her meal invitation, and even chased her out of the room.]
“There was… that? No wonder I’m so hungry now…”
Su Wanli, feeling a bit at a loss about her further descent into villainess behavior, silently patted her forehead.
‘But now that things have come to this, there’s no time to solve my hunger problem. The most important thing is to act quickly.’
Having made up her mind, Su Wanli pushed open the door of the gaming room and shouted downstairs—
“Zhang Ma! Zhang Ma—! Quickly prepare the car! We’re going out now!!”
…
After weaving through various business districts in South City, and looking at the bags and parcels that were already too many for the back seat, Su Wanli finally stopped her crazy spending spree.
“Hmm, really no more room? I think a lot of these products are overpackaged—if we take off all the outer packaging and just keep the contents, can we fit a bit more?”
“…Really, there’s no more room, Miss Su. If we buy any more, things will pile into the passenger seat, and then the only empty spot in the car will be the driver’s seat.”
“Tch, fine. Let’s stop here for now.”
Finally hearing the stop command, Zhang Ma silently exchanged a glance with the nearby driver and made a victory gesture.
In that short afternoon, Su Wanli not only bought a bunch of high-end windproof and rainproof tents, goose down sleeping bags that could wrap a person entirely, various flavors of self-heating hotpot and sweet snacks, but she even ran to several specialty fireworks stores and bought almost every style of sparkler available.
“A fireworks show is really just watching other people set off fireworks, right? If after watching, you get the urge yourself but have nothing to set off, wouldn’t that be too pitiful?”
Faced with Su Wanli’s plausible reasoning, if Zhang Ma hadn’t timely said something like “Large fireworks are not allowed on the highway,” the space in the car would probably have been compressed even further…
Zhang Ma helped the driver tie the last of Su Wanli’s purchases onto the car, then sat in the narrow gap in the back seat and silently wiped the sweat from her forehead.
—Finally, the exhaustion of this whole day was about to end.
The driver also looked overwhelmed. He took off his sunglasses, gently rubbed his eyes, then instinctively turned his head to look at the eldest miss of the Su family sitting in the front passenger seat.
“Um, Miss Su, everything is loaded. Are we going straight home now? Or…”
Su Wanli, who had originally planned to go straight home, fell silent for a moment after hearing this.
Although Zhang Ma’s objection had been very timely, it was useless. Su Wanli, who had intended to go straight home, suddenly had another thought flash through her mind at that moment.
“…Hey, Old Jin?”
“Huh? Go straight home? Since we’ve finished shopping, of course we go home, where else? Don’t tell me you want to go to Yunsheng County now…”
‘…Ah.’
A flash of inspiration struck Su Wanli, and then she turned her right hand into a fist and lightly tapped it against her left palm—
‘Oh, right? Why not? What Meng Wange said to me at the time was just to go to Yunsheng County ahead of time to check the situation there and prepare for Sunday’s fireworks show.’
‘She didn’t say exactly how early. Now it’s already Saturday evening. Since Meng Wange set out this morning, more than ten hours have passed.’
‘With Meng Wange’s efficiency, she should have already gotten a general grasp of Yunsheng County, right? Should… be the case, right? After all, it’s just a small coastal county, not some big place.’
Thinking like this, Su Wanli subconsciously pulled out her phone and checked the notification bar.
Meng Wange, aside from sending a message to let her know she had arrived safely at Yunsheng County, hadn’t sent a single message since.
‘Even a simple “Everything’s going well,” or “The scenery is nice here” would be fine? She didn’t even send a casual photo! Could it be that… she’s abandoned me after leading me on?’
‘…Pfft, what nonsense is this? Meng Wange is probably still busy inspecting everywhere, trying to make tomorrow’s trip perfect. After all, she’s that serious of a person; it’s understandable that she wants to ensure every aspect of my experience…’
But the moment she thought about having to spend the rest of the day alone in an empty room just like that morning, an even greater sense of lingering irritation welled up in Su Wanli’s heart.
‘In that case, then…’
Su Wanli slightly curled the corner of her mouth, opened the navigation to Yunsheng County right in front of the driver, and then waved her hand grandly—
“Let’s go. Destination is Yunsheng County. We’re setting off now.”
“Huh!?”
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