From eight in the morning to noon, there were four full class periods.

During those four hours, I spent the first two flipping through the doujinshi Wang Lei had collected or at least gotten his hands on. In the last two, I searched up his background and looked into news related to paid companions.

Based on my rough investigation, Wang Lei had only publicly mentioned around thirty or forty books. If you approached them with an “art appreciation” and “plot research” mindset, then with decent internet speed, one forty-minute class was enough to finish all of them.

You could probably even read them twice.

The only reason it took so long was... I was doing this in class.

In class, okay?!

Sure, in college these days, especially at ordinary vocational schools, it was common to see teachers lecturing up front while students secretly played on their phones below. You could even call it the norm.

But reading doujinshi right in front of the teacher, with that many students around?

I definitely didn't have the guts.

And besides, this stuff was technically banned content. Even though I had special channels and special apps to access it, the loading speed was absurdly slow. A twenty-five-page book often took five or six minutes just to fully load.

That was already thanks to my phone being the latest model. If it had been one generation older, with a slightly worse signal, then loading one image in three minutes would've already been pretty good.

As for the later class, C language was much easier, because it was a computer lab session.

Students in the Software Technology program at the School of Information Technology had that advantage. Out of a week's worth of classes, nearly half were lab sessions. With a computer in front of you as cover, you could do pretty much whatever you wanted.

By going through those books, and then searching Wang Lei and his so-called "million-yuan company" during C class, I got a general picture of him.

Just like Liang Zhiming had said before, Wang Lei was from a demolition-compensation household, and his family was very well-off.

But... his family hadn't been poor to begin with. Even without the compensation money, he still would've counted as a rich young master.

This guy's father, Wang Yajun, was the owner of a fairly large clothing factory in Guiyuan City. He had multiple factories across the province, and his net worth was probably over fifty million yuan. You could find all that basic information with a casual online search.

I really didn't understand why Liang Zhiming had never once doubted this so-called "brother" of his.

Second, Wang Lei really did have a company under his name. It was called Leixiang Pet Supplies Co., Ltd.

You could tell from the name alone that it dealt in pet products. Dog collars, dog clothes, cat trees, scratching boards, that sort of thing. The company was very small. Its address was in Shuiming District of Xiangcao City, northwest of Xiangcao City's Central District, near Shuiming Park.

As for Wang Lei himself, he was currently the boss of that Leixiang Pet Supplies company, and also a fourth-year student in the Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Department at Xiangcao University.

Fourth year. At this point, unless something unexpected had happened, his classes should already be over, and all students should be out doing internships. Since Wang Lei had opened his own company and was his own boss, submitting his own internship paperwork wouldn't be a problem at all.

Lastly, there were Wang Lei's hobbies and interests.

Through the internet, I barely managed to find that he occasionally played online games like Dragon Nest, Blade & Soul, and Dungeon Fighter Online. In all of those games' forums, he was apparently a pretty big name. The kind of guy who casually dumped hundreds of thousands into a game and got called a big shot.

As for League of Legends... Liang Zhiming had mentioned that they used to go to internet cafés together to play it back in middle school, but I couldn't find any posts related to League on Wang Lei's forum account.

He also watched anime, mostly school romance stuff, though there was some gods-and-demons isekai mixed in too.

He liked roller skating, and had posted on skating bar forums before.

As for doujinshi...

Just like I'd guessed from the start, Wang Lei had a foot fetish.

Feet, not legs.

Most of the books he read shared one common trait: the heroine was always the domineering queen type, with long legs in black stockings, stepping on the male lead and sneering as she called him a pervert.

And by queen type, I meant personality, not body shape or appearance.

The heroines in those books ranged from mature onee-san types to lolis to young girls. The male lead, meanwhile, was basically always an ordinary guy. Ordinary looks, ordinary build, timid and submissive.

He'd either get reverse-pushed by the heroine, or just get looked down on from the first page to the last. Stepped on, toyed with, ordered around at will, with no dignity at all, like a little dog.

I wasn't about to assume a normal person would project themselves onto the heroine. If that were the case, he'd be reading gender-swap doujinshi instead.

So I came to a bold conclusion:

When Wang Lei read this kind of stuff, he projected himself onto the male lead.

In other words, the one being bullied and dominated by women.

Was it because his life had been too privileged? Because he had money, never lacked girls around him, and had always been used to girls obeying him, so now he craved the roles being reversed? Wanted some girl who looked down on him and wasn't swayed by money... something like that?

The lives of rich people really are dull and empty...

Looking at it that way, Wang Lei actually hadn't lied to me on QQ.

Because in Re:Zero, Rem did have a pretty strong queenly aura the first few times she met the male lead.

"Alright, that's it for today. Go get lunch."

At 12:05 noon, as the pleasant class-ending bell rang, the boys around me scattered with a whoosh.

"Let's eat, let's eat!"

"Internet café time! Let's go play PUBG!"

"I just saw this dirty Lu Daneng strat. Stick a C4 on a car, drive it into a building push, jump out halfway, and boom—instant explosion!"

"Xiaoxue."

A moment later, Chen Xiaorui beside me stood up too and stretched lazily.

"Uwah... wanna grab lunch together?"

I hesitated for a second. "Aren't you going to deal with that boyfriend of yours who dared not answer your calls?"

The hesitation on Chen Xiaorui's face was obvious. She'd probably had a bad talk with her boyfriend, and right now, she didn't actually want to eat with me.

But because of that psychological thing where people keep maintaining the image they've already put out, she'd just declared this morning that we were now "besties," so at this moment, she had no choice but to invite me.

"Ah, right right right."

Sure enough, after hearing what I said, her face instantly looked full of relief.

"We still haven't settled yesterday's score."

"Go ahead."

I packed up the books on my desk. "I need to head back to the dorm first and look up some stuff anyway."

"Then I'm heading out first, Xiaoxue!"

Looking like a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders, Chen Xiaorui slung her bag over her back.

"I'll treat you to a meal another day."

"You're still thinking about that?"

I said irritably, "I'm not gonna starve to death."

"Hehe..."

Watching Chen Xiaorui run out of the classroom, I quietly let out a sigh of relief too—

My relationship with that girl had been established, at least for now.

I put on my backpack, shut down the computer in front of me, and followed the other students out of the classroom.

I didn't go straight to the cafeteria.

Instead, I headed directly for the girls' dorm.

It wasn't because of that "looking up information" excuse I gave Chen Xiaorui.

It was because... my panties were wet.

Back in the dorm, I took a pair of pure white panties from the wardrobe under my bed and went into the bathroom. When I came back out, I had the changed underwear in my hand.

"The aftereffects of reading too much doujinshi."

Shaking my head, I soaked the panties in water, quickly hand-washed them, and hung them out on the balcony.

Only then did I take my meal card and little bag and head for the cafeteria again.

"One serving of this, and this too... eating here."

Beep—

At the cheapest stall in the school cafeteria, I ordered a one-meat, one-vegetable set meal. Holding the bowl with both hands, I found a small chair in the corner and sat down.

【Then let's meet at the entrance of Shuiming Park at 1:40. Take a taxi over. I'll reimburse the fare.】

On QQ, the screen was showing the earlier chat log between me and Wang Lei.

"1:40..."

I glanced at the time in the top-left corner of the screen.

12:16.

It took about twenty minutes by car to get from here to Shuiming Park. One o'clock wasn't rush hour, so traffic probably wouldn't be bad. Giving myself thirty minutes of buffer time should be enough.

Counting backward, that meant I needed to get in a taxi by 1:10, and at the very latest, walk out of the dorm by 1:00. Simple makeup and changing clothes would take about twenty minutes, so that meant I had to wake up at 12:40...

Was the schedule really this tight?

I sped up my eating.

No matter what, even if I didn't have a full hour, I absolutely had to get at least fifteen minutes of sleep at noon.

That helped a lot with restoring energy and keeping my body's metabolism and detox on track.

And later, I still had to go to the supermarket to buy a new pair of socks. The over-the-knee socks from yesterday kept slipping down, so they weren't suitable for a long date outfit. If the supermarket had black pantyhose, that would be even better.

Anyway, what that guy liked was black stockings. He didn't really care whether they were thigh-highs, garter stockings, or pantyhose.

Come to think of it, being a paid companion seemed ridiculously hard these days...

I remembered some of the information I'd looked up in class earlier—

【Sing "Pomp and Circumstance," that super popular song lately.】

【In the game, you have to keep calling me hubby, got it?】

【Play the hero I pick and let me kill you a hundred times.】

【My flight got delayed. I'm at the airport. No girlfriend, no family with me, and I don't even want to play games. Just talk to me for a while.】

Among the information I found about paid companions, there were countless "clients" like that.

What felt even worse was that some clients would make awkward jokes, like, "Your boobs are so small, how are you gonna satisfy me?" or "Hurry up and enter my body, I can't wait, sis."

Some were even worse. If the companion made even a small mistake, the client would start cursing them out. And at that point, the companion could only force a smile and say, "Boss is right, that's on me. I'll throw in two extra hours as compensation."

And in the paid companion world, it was usually the clients choosing the companions. A single order from one client could have over a dozen companions fighting over it like crazy. Constant undercutting, showing off skill, showing off voice quality—it was everywhere.

It wasn't like with that Huali Cat case, where even after being picked, we still had the right to refuse.

I didn't know whether this newly emerging "rental girlfriend" thing would turn into that in the future.

I didn't know what kind of bizarre clients I'd run into later either.

The only thing I knew for sure right now was...

I had to work hard to improve myself.

Whether it was knowledge or my body, I had to make myself as strong as possible.

Study. Train. Strive.

My previous life hadn't exactly been a success, so even if I was a girl in this life, I still wanted to live in a way that wouldn't let myself down.

After finishing lunch, I deleted all the browsing traces on my phone related to my investigation of Wang Lei. I hid several apps in private mode, added a password, then took a deep breath in my seat—

"Come on, Xiaoxue. You can do this."