A Second Time

Reentering his lit room, Jiang Feng sat on the edge of his bed and looked at the stormy night outside through his window. Lifting one of the legs up and hugging it while his back leaned on the wall, a weird satisfaction filled the young man as he stayed silent and pictured his current look from a third-person view.

Just by imagining how handsome he would look in the eyes of others made him blush in embarrassment for daring to think of such thoughts.

"I should head online and see if there's any interesting stuff to read about, spicy news has been popping out quite recently after all." Jiang Feng muttered to himself as he took out a mobile phone from his black silk pants tailored to him.

Clicking on the power switch, the phone's screen lit up as a familiar photo reflected in his eyes.

Looking at the photo, Jiang Feng subconsciously went through the faces that were on it as he first recognized his own right at the bottom middle. Moving up, was a pair of male and female that looked about the same age as him.

The two hugged each other and made a love shape using their hands, placing the love right above the head of Jiang Feng, as if trying to disgust him for being single in his 16 years of life. Although the smile on Jiang Feng showed that he wasn't affected by their actions, the expression of the last guy on the top says otherwise.

It was a male as well, and from how gloomy the face looked, it wasn't hard to know that the man had been craving for a girl to pick him up.

'This photo still brings back the good scenery on that ice mountain.' Jiang Feng thought to himself as he looked at the snowflakes stuck in the images.

Bringing himself back to reality, Jiang Feng looked at the time shown on his mobile and sighed. It was 4 in the morning, and mostly everyone was still in deep sleep, except those who had work or were staying up late for something.

Recalling the reason that made him wake up so early, Jiang Feng made an oath to meet a doctor or a therapist in the near days before school restarts and the exam week comes.

Once that was done, he pressed on the small bar of icons that represented the notifications that he received during his sleep. Extending into a list, Jiang Feng slowly scrolled down and searched for something interesting to look at.

"Not this, not this either…sigh, I should find some time to delete these apps. They're being a nuisance now that I don't need them." Jiang Feng said as he grumbled at the amount of messages that he received from unknown contacts.

Just then, a certain notification caught his eyes as it made them twitch uncontrollably for a minute or two. Double tapping on that certain notification, Jiang Feng was then brought to a communication app with a green logo that spun around while it was loading.

Ignoring the icon, Jiang Feng's eyes narrowed down as a list of chats and groups appeared before him the next second. His eyes twitched even more wildly than earlier as he stared at the top of the list, with a stunning amount of 999+ messages.

Tapping on that chat, Jiang Feng took a deep breath to calm himself down, trying to understand that his friends must have their own reasons for sending so many messages that the system stopped counting instead of going to bed. Who knows, they might be talking about politics.

'But that's also a bad thing to do instead of sleeping, right?'

Letting go of the breath that he held in, Jiang Feng quickly scrolled through the small white bars filled with black lines, briefly reading them to try and understand their topic of conversation.

As he went further down, the twitch on his eyes only grew stronger as his irritation increased to quite a terrifying level. He had been scrolling for about 5 minutes now, and the only thing that he had read about was a bunch of chit-chats between his friends on who was the most good-looking female student in their school.

What's worse, was the fact that started this conversation was a female, and she was even voicing out her opinion directly like she takes the opposite way. The boyfriend in the group even replied using unmasked lust before her!

Finally reaching the bottom of the chat that no incoming messages, for now, Jiang Feng once again took a deep breath and typed out his opinion in the chat.

Jiang Feng: "Shouldn't you guys stop already? You guys have been staying up late for more than 6 hours and @Tang Hu Lu, could you stop sending those pictures of your roommates? I almost got beaten up by my mother when she saw them. Now, there's a rumor in the house saying I have a foot fetish."

Immediately after the message was sent through, the status of the ID that Jiang Feng had tagged turned from neutral to online as a long line of reply was sent in less than 10 seconds.

Tang Hu Lu: "What's wrong with that? Appreciate the finer things in life. @The World's Sun has his own weird fetish and no one minds."

The World's Sun: "Wait, what do you mean I have a weird fetish? Isn't it perfectly normal for boys to like fox ears and tails?!"

Lao Mu: "@The World's Sun's back at it. I was worried there for a second when you didn't mention your fox-girl obsession. Thought about calling the cops. Lol."

The World's Sun: "@Tang Hu Lu, let us talk about that in private later, and why do you need to call the cops just because I didn't talk about fox ears earlier, @Lao Mu? Can't I be normal for once?"

Lao Mu: "No"

Tang Hu Lu: "Your 'normal' is to talk about fox girls all day"

The World's Sun: "…"

Sighing deeply, Jiang Feng turned away from the phone's screen as he massaged his temples. Why was it always so hard to have a normal conversation with his friends?