A single second of sympathy for the original poster.

“Do you think White Jinyan likes me?”

For Gwen had asked was beyond the scope of this question. She frowned her little face and thought for a long time before answering hesitantly.

“Um... why don’t you ask the person involved directly?”

“I’m not doing that!” Chen Ruowen shook her head so hard it looked like a rattle drum. “I’m not asking someone that stupid question. It would make it sound like I care about him. I’m not asking!”

“Then that’s going to be hard,” Gwen said with a troubled look. “If you don’t ask, how would you know whether he likes you or not?”

Remembering what Gao Tang had said to her at noon, Chen Ruowen ventured cautiously, “I’ve heard that boys usually take the initiative with girls they like? Even if they don’t confess, they’ll send messages every day, call her, things like that. Is that true?”

This question was clearly beyond the scope again...

Gwen: “I... I don’t know... I’m a girl!”

“No one has ever chased you?” Chen Ruowen pressed, unwilling to give up.

“Seems like... no... after all, I...” Gwen stopped there, then asked back with some curiosity. “There should be a lot of boys pursuing you, right? Shouldn’t you be very clear about this question?”

Chen Ruowen’s face darkened. “I don’t know. No one has ever pursued me.”

(Gao Tang roared in fury: Do I not count as a person?!)

“Then should we... find a boy to ask?” Gwen suggested. “I think you could ask Gao Tang. He looks like he has a lot of experience.”

The very experienced Gao Tang let out a huge sneeze three hundred meters away.

Chen Ruowen’s face darkened again. “No. I’m not asking him.”

That conclusion had been told to her by that very experienced Gao Tang. Go ask him again, so he could anger her to death a second time?

“Then... do you have any other male friends? We could ask them.”

Chen Ruowen immediately reached under her pillow for her phone... ah, right, she had already smashed it.

She crawled to the other end of the bed and groped around for a while, then picked up her tablet, searched through her contacts for a bit, and finally hurled the tablet back in frustration.

“No good. All my male friends know White Jinyan. If I ask them this kind of question, won’t he find out?”

Uh... that did sound rather troublesome.

Gwen frowned in deep thought. Only after she had fed Chen Ruowen an entire bowl of ginseng soup did she finally come up with a decent idea.

“How about... we ask online? There seem to be some chat forums for discussing these kinds of questions. We can register an account and ask strangers on the internet?”

Chen Ruowen nodded vigorously. The two of them immediately split the work, spending half an hour finding what claimed to be the world’s largest relationship forum, then another half hour learning how to register and post. They anonymously put up Chen Ruowen’s question.

Then they waited half an hour and received not a single reply.

“Why is no one answering me?”

Chen Ruowen hugged the tablet, unable to figure out what was wrong.

More than ten minutes later, a reply finally came from an internet user named “The Angry Guy.”

“No picture, no talk.”

Chen Ruowen and Gwen exchanged a glance, then replied with a string of question marks in confusion.

“What does that mean?”

The Angry Guy answered instantly: “Post photos! Who has the time to reply if you don’t even post a picture? Are you mentally ill?”

“This crazy person actually dares to insult me!”

Chen Ruowen nearly followed the cable line over and beat The Angry Guy to death. Gwen tried to calm her down for a long time before stopping her.

But why did posting on a forum require baring a photo just to bait replies? Chen Ruowen looked at Gwen.

“Gwen...”

Gwen shook her head violently. “If my dad sees it, he’ll beat me to death!”

“I’ll have someone edit it for you. I guarantee even your own father won’t recognize you!”

“Waaah, that’s so embarrassing...”

Half a minute later, under Chen Ruowen’s “coercion,” Gwen took a selfie. Chen Ruowen immediately sent it to Assistant Pan and told him to use the photo as a template and finish the editing within ten minutes. It had to keep her beauty intact while being altered so thoroughly that even her own father wouldn’t recognize her.

When Assistant Pan received the message, he practically wanted to die. After finally finishing the edit, he then received Chen Ruowen’s lethal stream of criticism, and it took nearly twenty minutes of back-and-forth before he sobbed and submitted the task.

Once the photo was posted, The Angry Guy replied instantly.

“You edited it so much even your own father wouldn’t recognize you, huh?”

Chen Ruowen was furious enough to explode.

Still, the traffic brought by the photo was undeniable. The once-ignored plea-for-help post received more than a dozen replies within just five minutes. Even though everyone knew the photo had been edited, a picture was still far more attractive than no picture at all.

No one knew what sort of psychology that was.

The two girls shut the door and spent two hours chasing replies in the room. Though there were plenty of trash responses, as time went on more and more replies appeared that were reasoned and well-founded, and some people even shared their own personal experiences.

After summarizing the men’s responses, the two finally reached this conclusion:

The pursuit of a mate is the instinct of male creatures.

Even the most passive man, when facing the woman he likes, will not simply sit and wait.

Some may be too shy or afraid of rejection to confess directly, but the everyday concern of asking after her well-being, checking in on her, and other instinctive acts of care are impossible to suppress.

If he cannot even take the initiative, then he must not like you.

“But when I go looking for him, he usually doesn’t refuse!” The more Chen Ruowen read those replies, the angrier she became, and she couldn’t help defending herself.

The Angry Guy shot back: “Hah. Why refuse something that’s delivered to your door? If a girl comes chasing after you, even if you don’t like her, you probably won’t reject her either. Unless you’re so ugly heaven and earth are enraged.”

“But he treats me very well too! He usually listens to me and cares about my opinion!” Chen Ruowen had completely forgotten her original purpose. She kept replying furiously to The Angry Guy, trying to convince him.

“Wake up, miss. If he really treated you well, would he let you spend the middle of the night thinking nonsense? If a man truly likes a woman, he will definitely confess. Anyone who flirts with you without commitment is scum, no exceptions!”

Many other users also added replies below that comment.

“You said he treats you well. I’m guessing the guy probably has a fairly gentle personality?”

“And you said you two grew up together? If he liked you, he would have confessed long ago, okay? No movement until now means he doesn’t like you! Do you have no self-awareness? How dare you come online to ask.”

“Agree with the above. The longer a man and woman know each other, the less likely they are to end up together. He probably only thinks of you as a younger sister.”

“Above +1. He definitely doesn’t like you.”

“Sympathy for the original poster for one second. Who hasn’t had a breakup?”

“Don’t cry, original poster. This is growth. Everyone has to go through it.”

“Condolences, original poster...”

...

“Aaaaaah!!!”

Chen Ruowen, furious to the point of madness, even smashed the tablet.