Zhang Shaoqing's family situation was pretty complicated.
The book had never mentioned it, but after spending some time with him, Ning Chu had gotten a rough idea of what his family was like.
His parents were divorced, and he lived with his mother. She was extremely controlling, calling him every night to ask what he'd done that day and wanting to plan every single thing he ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Both his parents came from business families, so he was never short on money. But his mother's suffocating control had become a constant source of stress for him.
After his shower, Ning Chu returned from the balcony to the dorm and found Zhang Shaoqing had already left.
“He went back?”
Wang Jie brushed past him with his clothes in hand, hurrying off to take a shower as he replied, “He left two minutes ago.”
“Oh... I see.”
Ning Chu muttered to himself, tossed his dirty clothes into a bucket, then went to the dorm mirror and grabbed a dry towel, rubbing his still-damp hair vigorously.
He stared at himself in the mirror, wearing nothing but a thin pair of silky pajamas.
His bangs just brushed his eyebrows, and the hair on either side of his head had grown a little past his ears. Maybe he should get a haircut this weekend.
After his shower, the bath had washed all the dust from his already fair face. His soft, pale skin seemed to glow in the room's light. He had an oval face with a touch of baby fat on his cheeks, and his features were delicate and cute. It was just a shame he looked so young.
This body was clearly a college freshman's, and his ID said he was already over eighteen. But his face still made him look like a shota. After seeing the baby-faced girl in his class with her ridiculously huge chest, he could accept his own shota face.
Well, in a smutty novel's world, there had to be handsome guys and beautiful girls of every type.
Once he grew into his looks over the next few years, he figured he wouldn't be any less handsome than the male lead.
He was pretty satisfied with his face, but when his gaze traveled down his neck, Ning Chu saw his delicate collarbones and the little red beans that stood out against his pajamas.
There was a slight swell around the little red beans, too. He could feel the distinct fleshiness when he touched them in the shower.
A week ago, he only had the little red beans...
After he'd completely wrecked the first plotline, his chest had started to feel fleshy. It had stayed that way ever since, and seemed to be getting bigger.
“If I keep wrecking the plot, maybe I'll start looking more and more like a girl?”
“Maybe I'll even turn into one...”
Ning Chu had suspected as much for a while, but he still couldn't bring himself to choose between “turning into a girl and getting fucked” and “turning into a girl.”
If he could, he'd rather have neither.
“Ning Chu, are you using the washing machine?” Wen Yang poked his head in from the balcony. “I don't feel like doing laundry this weekend.”
“Sure, I guess.”
There was a hot-water room and a laundry room on every other floor of the dorm building, but Ning Chu had never liked using the shared coin-operated washing machines.
They just felt kind of dirty.
“My clothes are in the bucket. Take them down with yours, will you? I've got some coins in my drawer.”
Ning Chu usually didn't turn down requests from the world's chosen one. He agreed, picked up two buckets of dirty laundry and the coins, and was already at the dorm door, ready to leave—when he suddenly stopped. He lowered his head and looked at the two conspicuous little red beans on his chest, along with the slight swell beneath them.
It was fine in the dorm. His roommates sometimes took a curious look and teased him about it, but they knew each other well enough.
But he imagined people staring at him out in public, and felt embarrassed just thinking about it.
He went back to the wardrobe, found a jacket, and threw it on. Only then did Ning Chu carry the buckets toward the laundry room, glancing around as he went in hopes of spotting other characters connected to the plot.
There were plenty of handsome guys in the building. He even saw a girl casually going on a date with her boyfriend right there in the hallway.
It was way too hard to recognize characters from the book when he didn't know their names and had only seen what they looked like.
The moment Ning Chu stepped into the laundry room, his eyes went straight to the middle-aged man squatting beside a washing machine with a wrench in hand.
That was... the dorm supervisor!
Ning Chu's mouth twitched. He did his best to look away from the dorm supervisor.
That guy had a little something to do with a side plot in the novel...
But the world of smutty novels really was ridiculous. The man was clearly in his forties or fifties, yet his arms were bulging with muscle and his build was sturdy. His face showed the wear of time, but he was still handsome, with all the charm of a mature man.
Maybe this was what people meant when they said they had a thing for older men.
The side-plot character was supposed to have nothing to do with Ning Chu, but he still wondered if he could ruin the guy's sex life.
Either way, he'd picked a fight with the “god” who'd tossed him into this world.
He dumped all the dirty clothes into the washing machine, fed it the coins, and checked that it had started running. Then Ning Chu turned to look at the dorm supervisor again.
But this time, his eyes met the dorm supervisor's.
“...”
Ning Chu guiltily lowered his head, breaking eye contact, and hurried toward the door.
After all, he'd been thinking about how to ruin the dorm supervisor's sex life.
“Hey, wait! Which dorm are you from?”
He was almost out the door when a deep voice behind him called out.
His scalp prickled. He answered automatically, “Room 203. Ning Chu.”
“Oh...” The dorm supervisor thought for a moment, then remembered the freshman who'd looked far too short at the start-of-term registration.
He'd seen plenty of handsome guys and pretty girls, but an eighteen-year-old shota was a rare sight. That was why he remembered Ning Chu so well.
He looked Ning Chu up and down again. With his slender build and delicate face, he looked like a girl at first glance, though you could just barely make out a hint of masculine features between his brows.
“You act like you've seen a ghost.” He lowered his head and went back to fixing the washing machine, muttering, “Why feel guilty if you haven't done anything wrong? I thought someone had brought a woman in.”
Ning Chu stiffened under the man's scrutiny and gave an awkward smile. Once the dorm supervisor stopped paying attention to him, he hurried out of the laundry room.
Could he report that there really was a girl who'd snuck into the boys' dorm?
And she was making out with her boyfriend in the middle of the hallway, putting on a lovey-dovey show for everyone!
Ning Chu shoved open the dorm door and went back to his desk. Resting his chin in one hand and biting his nail, he started listing the problems he'd run into so far.
The scumbag counselor, Han Jingye. He'd already planted Wen Yang as a spy on that front, so all he could do now was wait patiently.
The dorm supervisor's plotline was about two people falling for each other. But if he got the chance, Ning Chu hoped none of the novel's plotlines would ever happen in this world.
The villain, Zhang Shaoqing, was an unpredictable factor, but for now, he seemed like a decent guy.
The protagonist, Wen Yang... Huh? Where was Wen Yang?
Ning Chu suddenly realized what was wrong. He turned to look at Wen Yang's desk, then got to his feet and bounced up to peek at Wen Yang's bed.
Wang Jie had been focused on his game, but the commotion distracted him. He turned around and asked, “What are you doing?”
“Where's Wen Yang?!”
Ning Chu sounded downright panicked. Like a headless chicken, he rushed around the dorm searching for Wen Yang.
Completely baffled, Wang Jie scratched his head. “He went out a little while ago.”
“What'd he go out for?!”
“How would I know?”
Holy crap! A diversion on the surface, a secret move behind the scenes!
He told me to go to the laundry room, then snuck off himself!
