Muddle-Headed Chapter 001 – Winning a Prize
“Congratulations, player ‘Ghostly Hands,’ for your outstanding performance in the game, your luck has exploded, and you have won a super prize pack provided by our system. Please click to confirm receipt!”
“Damn it! Playing the lottery game again? Only an idiot would believe it!” Lin Feng was in the midst of slaying monsters when he was suddenly disturbed by a dialog box popping up, blocking most of the game screen, causing him to miss three ‘Whirlwind Slashes’ in a row, which made him scream in frustration. Without thinking, he moved the mouse towards the cancel button.
“Hey! Man, you’re bold, daring to challenge the final boss in a dungeon with just one high-level spell!” Just as his finger was about to click the mouse, someone suddenly slapped his shoulder hard, causing the mouse cursor to draw a beautiful arc on the screen, landing right on the confirm button.
The ongoing game screen suddenly froze; the once vibrant patterns turned into a mess of colorful pixels.
The internet cafe was packed, so getting bumped into by passersby wasn’t a big deal.
“Damn! Be gentle, man!” Lin Feng was busy cursing without even noticing the anomaly on the screen. The guy, however, was facing the screen, realized the trouble, made a funny face, and then bolted.
“Smokes! Hey, fatty, leave a smoke, you’re fast on your feet!” Lin Feng extended two fingers, intending to ask for a cigarette, but the fat guy vanished in a flash. Lin Feng thought to himself, “Damn, running like he’s late for his own rebirth!” With no choice but to suppress his craving, he turned back to continue his monster-slaying and leveling up, only to find the game screen frozen, with the damned lottery dialog box now a black square dominating the center of the screen, the mouse cursor stuck on the confirm button, immovable.
“Damn it, my gear…” Lin Feng was beyond frustrated; today he was in top form, and he had just cornered a fat monster, its health nearly depleted. Just a bit more, and he would have exploded it, but this damn broken computer crashed at the critical moment! And this damned lottery gimmick, how could Lin Feng, a veteran of internet cafe games, not know the tricks involved? It was probably because some premium gear on him had caught someone’s eye.
“Internet manager, the computer’s crashed!” Worried about his game gear being stolen, Lin Feng frantically slapped the monitor. Suddenly, there was a ‘clack’ sound, and something dark fell out from the monitor.
“What are you slapping? Can’t you reboot when it crashes?” The internet manager, a tough woman, heard Lin Feng’s commotion, saw him slapping the monitor, and spoke rudely, striding over to Lin Feng.
“Wow, she’s even fiercer than me! The broken computer crashed…” Lin Feng tried to argue, but this lady was unusually fierce. She pushed Lin Feng aside, bent down, and rebooted the computer without a word. The computer beeped and started logging in again.
“Done!” The manager tossed out two words, turned her waist, and started to leave.
“Hey! My game…”
“Log back in!”
“My…”
“Find it yourself!”
“I…”
“What’s with all the ‘I’s? You think the computer’s too bad? A dollar an hour, what kind of good computer do you expect? If you don’t want to play, fine! Check out at the service desk! If you’re not playing, leave; there are people waiting outside!”
The manager’s roar echoed through the internet cafe, and everyone’s eyes turned to Lin Feng. Especially the guys near the door, eager to rush over and grab a seat.
Lin Feng’s momentum was completely deflated. He thought to himself, “If I had money, would I come to this shady internet cafe?”
“Hmph!” The manager, victorious in battle, left with even more arrogance, her nose almost touching the sky.
“Wait!”
“What now, kid?”
“Oh! Here’s the deal, I just found a phone, I don’t know who dropped it!” Lin Feng raised the phone he had just picked up, still muttering to himself. He had seen coins, garbage, and even dead cockroaches fall out of monitors before, but never a phone this big! Could it be that he was seeing things after playing games for too long? The monitor was old and worn, but there didn’t seem to be a gap large enough for a phone to fall out. Weird, but Lin Feng was not one to keep lost items for himself.
“A phone?” The fierce manager’s eyes lit up, reaching out towards Lin Feng, “Let me see!”
The internet cafe was filled with all sorts of people, and lost items were common. Hearing about a found phone caused a stir; gamers, movie watchers, and chatters all paused, checking their own belongings for theft.
Lin Feng obediently handed over the phone, noticing the greedy gleam in her eyes, he silently cursed his own stupidity. This woman was known for her greed; she might just pocket the phone and come up with some excuse to justify her possession.
To his surprise, the manager immediately looked down on the phone as soon as it was in her hands.
“This piece of junk, you call this a phone? Hey… anyone here lost a ‘phone’?” The manager held the phone up high, deliberately dragging out the word ‘phone,’ but her question only brought laughter.
“I bet this is the newly released Blackberry 9 series!”
“Hmm, I think it’s a Nokia 8800, look at that craftsmanship, how meticulous!”
Everyone started guessing, the more they talked, the more ridiculous it got, covering all the high-end smartphones on the market.
The manager, egged on by these ‘sexually frustrated wolves,’ became even more flamboyant.
“Kid, if you want to flirt, just say so, no need for such tricks! Hey! Kid, where are you looking? Here’s your phone!” The manager, wearing a low-cut shirt, inadvertently revealed some cleavage while bending over. Unintentionally, Lin Feng’s gaze lingered there, and he couldn’t look away.
Thud! The phone was thrown back at him, and Lin Feng, coming back to his senses, hurriedly caught it.
“Damn, like I want to flirt with you!” Caught in his thoughts, Lin Feng’s face reddened slightly. Who didn’t know her background? What’s there to be proud of? Can’t a guy do a good deed on a whim? Although the phone he just picked up was badly scratched, with a blurry screen and several cracks, making it difficult to even send a text, it was still a phone, right? Fine, if no one wants it, he’d just throw it away.
