Caught at the Internet Cafe

The boy didn't like talking about his family, though. Even when the two of them talked past each other, his favorite subject remained the magic Lin Er could use.

Ever since buying the Harry Potter book, Lin Er had been itching to tell him the story. Judging by his curiosity about spells, he hadn't read the children's book.

Friday afternoons were another time when the fewest people were at school. Lin Er no longer needed to use the computer lab, so she went straight to an internet cafe and got a computer.

People on either side of her were playing games with gusto. Lin Er flipped through Harry Potter, chatting with her pen pal while looking up words on the computer. When she looked up because her hand was sore from writing, she clearly saw the person on her left mouthing something to the person on her right.

"What, is me reading a novel disturbing your games?"

Why did being called a "show-off" make her a little happy?

The two hadn't known each other, but both had been drawn to the sight of Lin Er studying English at an internet cafe and accidentally caught each other's eye. Who would have thought that after exchanging just one remark, the person herself would catch them?

They hurriedly turned back and clattered away at their keyboards, looking extremely busy, as though they hadn't heard a thing.

Lin Er paid them no mind. Seeing the long, complicated sentences she was using this time, her young pen pal realized she had found a way to translate and immediately bombarded her with questions.

Lin Er could only get to work on the laborious task of translating.

The internet in 2009 just wasn't as convenient as it would be later. At least with translation like this, any smartphone would have done the job in the future, but now she had to look up every word one by one.

She worked her way through the whole thing with a mixture of guesswork and deduction.

Fortunately, the boy was easy to figure out. Magic was all he was interested in.

She sent him the English name of a spell, and the boy didn't reply for quite a while. He had probably gone to try it out. Luckily, it was only Lumos.

In Harry Potter, forcing yourself to use magic before you were old enough seemed dangerous. That worried Lin Er, and she frantically looked up words on the computer, even starting to write a little essay telling him to be careful.

She didn't even notice the internet cafe had fallen quiet as she shuffled between her notebook and the magic book. She was afraid his magic and hers weren't the same thing. It would be fine if he couldn't use it, but not if he hurt himself.

Not until someone rapped on the desk with their knuckles did Lin Er take off her headphones and look up at the person in confusion. She'd paid for an hour. Was it over already?

"Student, which class are you in?"

Lin Er looked to either side. All right, now she knew what was going on.

"Class One, first year."

"From No. 2 Middle School?"

"No. 1 Middle School."

She didn't know the man, but he was quite pleasant. Plenty of people nearby were peeking over, and even a few non-mainstream types with wild, teased hair had turned off their computer sound and were glancing this way.

Lin Er copied the two beside her and stood up. He didn't say anything, just operated the computer for a moment. All the web pages he switched through were translations of one kind or another, so he switched back to the first page for her.

"It's all right. Studying is a good thing, but an internet cafe isn't a suitable place for someone your age. If you want to use a computer to study, you can ask your homeroom teacher. The school's computer lab does have computers."

Lin Er nodded obediently throughout and watched the kindly teacher leave, dragging the two male students on either side of her out by their ears.

The internet cafe suddenly grew noisy again, and a guy with yellow hair gave her a thumbs-up.

"Impressive! You closed those web pages fast!"

A young woman beside him, with purple streaks in her wild hair, poked him and pressed him back into his chair to keep playing. Even in the noisy surroundings, Lin Er could hear what she said.

"You think everyone's like you? She was really studying. She's been learning vocabulary since she came in!"

Lin Er blinked and closed the web page, feeling a little guilty.

All right, that definitely hadn't been an English teacher. Otherwise, he would have noticed that not one word in the translations filling her screen was taught in middle school.

The boy apparently hadn't succeeded. He said dejectedly that he didn't have a wand, and his mother's wand had broken, so he still couldn't use magic.

Seeing the boy's little scheme, Lin Er hesitated for a moment, then sent the wand over through the magic book.

She wondered whether she could accept the consequences if the boy didn't keep his word.

Apparently she could. Having magic as a cheat would certainly make her life easier, but her greatest asset was her memories. Whether or not she had the wand, her future would be better than her previous life.

[tomorrow]

The magic book fell quiet for a moment.

A long while later, the other side replied with an [OK].

The computer hadn't been used for a long time, or perhaps her paid time had run out, and the whole screen went black. Lin Er packed up her things and left the internet cafe.

Her young pen pal probably wasn't in the mood to chat with her now, so there was no point staying at the internet cafe. The smell was awful, on a par with the smell in a car, and she retched twice as soon as she stepped outside.

By the time she got back to school, class hadn't started yet, but most of her classmates had arrived.

They were quite bold. Some were keeping watch, some were looking on, and they had gathered around the classroom multimedia system in the corner of the platform to steal crops.

Lin Er patted Ying Yuecheng on the shoulder and gave him a small cake as he looked at her in confusion.

"A thank-you gift!"

After she returned to her seat, Ying Yuecheng stole several glances at her. Finally, he went back to his seat and ate the cake.

He liked sweets. So he had been that way since childhood.

She had bought special meal tickets that week, and her homeroom teacher still had an extra meal ticket to give her. Lin Er didn't refuse, just kept memorizing her lessons.

She couldn't have lived her life over only to end up at No. 2 Middle School again three years later. She wouldn't even be able to forgive herself.

Having more than four thousand yuan gave her plenty of confidence. Even after a major shopping trip in the city, she still had over three thousand left.

Her living allowance was only two hundred yuan a month. If she spent carefully, it would be enough for three years.

Even without the wand, it was impossible that she wouldn't find another way to make money over the next three years. It was just that, if she lost the bag with the Undetectable Extension Charm, she was afraid she'd wake up in the middle of the night and curse: the boy had used up all the trust she had in this life!

Then she'd mock herself: You're sick. No wonder you couldn't live well in your last life either.

So, little boy, trying someone else's wand out was enough. Once he turned eleven, he could get an identical one of his own!

Life without the wand was harder to bear than she had imagined, not because of whether it would come back, but because she had forgotten to recharge the charm on her schoolbag. It had only one day left.

And her schoolbag now held at least four or five cubic meters of stuff. If it suddenly burst out, she wouldn't have anywhere to hide it!

Was she supposed to tell the teacher that the rice had run under her bed by itself?

With that weighing on her mind, every day felt like a year to Lin Er. After evening self-study, she didn't return to the dormitory, but went straight to the storage room and frantically moved things out, leaving only her money and a few snacks inside.

When she got back to the dormitory, she gave Shi Meng and the others the hot water and lay down on her bed.

The magic book had been lying open under her pillow the whole time. There was no way to send items through it when it was closed.

She drifted off to sleep while the whispers in the dormitory had yet to die down completely. Suddenly, something pressed against the back of Lin Er's head.

She could hear the voices of the third-year students outside the window gradually growing quieter. A girl in the next dormitory shouted, "Can you keep it down? It's already eleven!"

The whispering in her dormitory was interrupted. Then someone muttered a couple of words and turned over, and everything fell completely quiet.