These days, all three guys in the dorm came from pretty ordinary families. Wen Yang’s situation was especially rough.

The book mentioned that he was poor. Otherwise, why would the male lead, a college student, spend all his time working odd jobs in different places, meeting one girl after another and getting into all kinds of messy relationships?

Wen Yang wasn’t the male lead yet, and he hadn’t started his job-hopping adventures, but he was already running short on cash.

The end of the month was almost here, and Ning Chu and Wang Jie didn’t have much left either.

Standing on the balcony, Ning Chu looked at the other two inside. The three of them stared at each other in bafflement. After a moment of silence, he lowered his head and muttered, “That rich bastard actually came home at a time like this.”

If Zhang Shaoqing were here, he’d definitely be fighting to treat them.

Then again, it was the villain’s money. Ning Chu felt completely justified spending it. He didn’t feel the slightest bit bad—in fact, he’d even wondered if he could spend Zhang Shaoqing into bankruptcy and make sure he never became a villain at all.

After staring at each other for a moment, Ning Chu finally spoke up. “Why don’t we go take a look first? It’s not like you have to spend money to enjoy the amusement park.”

Wang Jie agreed. Wen Yang looked at the two of them, then could only nod reluctantly.

The university sat halfway up a hill on the outskirts of the city. It was quiet and scenic, with a whole commercial district that had sprung up around it. Getting to the city center was a bit of a hassle, but the amusement park was also out in the suburbs, less than half an hour away by bus.

Before this, the farthest Ning Chu had ever gone was the Sichuan restaurant behind the school.

He’d often wondered what kind of world lay beyond the university—the main setting of those smutty novels. But once he actually got on the bus, he realized the world was pretty normal.

There were no perverts taking sneaky photos or stalking people on the bus, no blushing girls squeezing their thighs together on the street, and no sign of anything supernatural. Aside from people here being better-looking and dressing more boldly, this world wasn’t all that different from his previous one.

Ning Chu gazed curiously out the window, taking in everything around him.

Did that mean if he left school and got away from the male lead, he could live out the rest of his life in peace?

He glanced at Wen Yang, sitting right beside him. The guy was tall, with his legs sprawled wide and taking up Ning Chu’s space, so Ning Chu had to press his legs together as much as he could and lean against the window.

Wen Yang noticed him looking and glanced down at him. “Just so you know, I’ve only got two hundred left for living expenses this month.”

“I’ll treat you.” Ning Chu rolled his eyes.

What a blockhead! What kind of male lead worries about money every day?

He still hadn’t figured out what the outside world was like. Running away now wouldn’t be smart—he might end up in a situation he couldn’t handle at all. Besides, the story had only just begun, and Wen Yang was still an innocent virgin. He wasn’t a threat to Ning Chu yet.

The day Wen Yang turned into a womanizer and Zhang Shaoqing became a villain, Ning Chu would grab a train and get the hell out of there overnight.

If he rented a place outside, the scenes that would’ve happened in the dorm would probably just shift to a different time and place. Lingling’s earlier storyline and the later bar storyline had both come back around after being delayed.

“Do you think I should get a job outside?” Wen Yang sighed and leaned back in his seat.

A job? No way!

Ning Chu’s mind raced, and he blurted out a lecture. “We’re students. Our job is to study. You get financial aid from the school, so why would you go out and work instead of studying?”

“I guess you’re right...”

“If you’re short on money, tell me.” He patted his flat chest with a generous air. Thump, thump. “I’m not as rich as Shaoqing, but I can afford to feed one more person!”

“You don’t have to do that...”

“We’re roommates, aren’t we? Don’t sweat the small stuff~” Ning Chu waved a hand dismissively and smiled, reassuring him.

In Wen Yang’s eyes, sunlight streamed through the window and bathed Ning Chu, a faint glow reflecting off his skin. His smile was so sweet and warm that he looked just like a little angel.

“Don’t worry about all that. We’re here to have fun, so let’s enjoy ourselves.”

“Yeah.”

Ning Chu put a stop to Wen Yang’s plans to get a part-time job and secretly breathed a sigh of relief. Then he started worrying over whether his living expenses would be enough to feed them both.

If he bought Wen Yang steamed buns for every meal, they’d be fine...

He was just the author of a little smut novel, and now he was only a side character. Why was he worrying like someone’s dad?

They joked and laughed all the way there. Half an hour later, the three of them got off the bus at the stop by the amusement park.

It was the weekend, and plenty of visitors were out, laughing and messing around in groups of three or five. The amusement park didn’t charge admission; you only had to buy tickets for the rides. Ning Chu breathed a sigh of relief.

He’d thought they might come all this way and not even be able to get through the gates.

“I’ll go get us some water first.”

Ning Chu had been the one to suggest the outing, so he naturally had to look after the other two. He also wanted to make sure Wen Yang had a good time, or he might decide to spend his weekends with girls instead. And since Ning Chu had just snapped at Wang Jie, he needed to make it up to him.

He bought three bottles of water and walked out of the convenience store with the plastic bag in hand. He looked toward the bus stop, only to find that his roommates were nowhere in sight.

He froze, then rose onto his toes to scan the plaza in front of the amusement park. But the place was packed, and at only five foot three, no matter how hard he tried, all he could see was a crowd of visitors blocking his view.

“Did they sneak onto the bus and go home without me?”

Ning Chu muttered to himself. He figured Wen Yang and Wang Jie had gotten bored waiting for him and were wandering around nearby.

He hadn’t written any amusement-park-related scenes into the book, so he wasn’t too worried.

He just hoped Wen Yang wouldn’t run into one of the girls mentioned in the book and trigger a storyline.

He stepped into the plaza, looking sharply from side to side as he searched for his roommates.

As a man, he should’ve had nothing to fear in a situation like this. But within minutes, he was getting anxious and panicky, completely at a loss.

He realized there was a shady figure secretly following him from behind!

He’d been in this world for two weeks. At school, whether he was eating, sleeping, going through military training, or attending lectures, he’d always been with his roommates. But this time, he was all alone.

A powerful sense of unease washed over him.

Ning Chu felt a chill creep up his back. When he suddenly turned around, the figure quickly vanished into the crowd, but a pair of malicious eyes stayed fixed on him, like a coyote lying in wait in the dead of night.

Who was it?!

A criminal looking to rob him or steal his money? Or some lurking monster straight out of a smut novel?

Maybe he was acting strangely, because a few visitors nearby turned to look at him and whispered among themselves, seeming to take pleasure in his predicament.

The sky seemed to darken. The air grew so thin it felt like there wasn’t enough oxygen, and his heart kept pounding faster until all he could do was gasp for breath.

Every scattered, jumbled sound swelled in his mind, coming from all directions, everywhere at once.

Everything around him felt so unfamiliar. He felt rejected by the whole world, adrift outside it, accepted by no one.

“Ning Chu!”

“We’ve been looking all over for you. Why are you standing here by yourself?”

The distant call suddenly rang in his ears like a clap of thunder. Ning Chu shuddered and instinctively looked behind him. Wen Yang and Wang Jie were jogging toward him, one ahead of the other.

“Wen Yang, Wang Jie...”

If there was anything familiar to him in this strange world, it was probably the characters he’d written—the roommates he’d lived with for two weeks.

The heart lodged in his throat finally settled when he saw his roommates, and the creepy gaze from behind him vanished at that very moment.

“What’s wrong? You look exhausted.”

“I-I was looking for you...”

“We were looking for you too.”