Chapter 73: Worth it
Lin Luoran had a username on Shanghai International Studies University's BBS: "A Gentle Knife." In her profile, she had fearlessly entered "female" as her gender. To her mind, the name alone was enough to make those seasoned upperclassmen-who could supposedly discern a girl's personality, whether she hid a wild streak, and even her birth chart from her username-keep their distance for the sake of their future descendants' happiness.
There was plenty of juicy gossip on the BBS, and the campus network covered everything. Lin Luoran was quite happy to use this ID to find useful things online, occasionally lending a hand to people looking for past foreign-language exam papers or little bits of information. Before long, however, she discovered that quite a few people on the BBS were finding excuses to contact her. They all seemed rather accomplished, always taking the opportunity to discuss literature, history, ideals, life, and so on, or to show off their privileged lifestyles, probing into her real-life circumstances in various ways in an attempt to get closer to her.
At first, she took these conversations with strangers quite seriously, but the more she chatted, the more something felt wrong. Usernames such as "I'd Gladly Take the Knife," "The Gentleness of That Knife," and "Death by a Thousand Cuts" sprang up like mushrooms after rain, lining up beneath her posts to bump them. It was practically a martial world of forum spam.
Some even went so far as to approach her with water while she was playing tennis, saying he was "Hu Yidao," that he was particularly grateful for the past English exam papers she had given him, and that since they were both there, why not play together?
During her English corner sessions, would-be protectors speaking English tinged with their regional