S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 2 Chapter 65

Password Murderer 05 – Cafeteria

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"Cafeteria?" Zhan Zhao was interested and asked, "Are we going to the stir-fry restaurant?" 

Bai Yutang couldn't laugh or cry, "Who knows if there is a stir-fry restaurant here? It's not our previous school. Let's go to the cafeteria first." After he finished speaking, he dragged Zhan Zhao, who was looking for the stir-fry restaurant, to the cafeteria.

It was past six o'clock, and the cafeteria was full of people, but it was past the lively stage of queuing for meals. The students had all bought their meals and sat in twos and threes while eating and chatting.

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang walked into the cafeteria.

Generally speaking, a college girl may not know how many people there are in their university, or how many teachers there are, but she definitely knows how many handsome guys there are.

As soon as Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang walked into the cafeteria, the eyes of the girls who were used to looking at the handsome guys in the cafeteria immediately fell on them. The two went to the service counter to buy meal tickets, and the girls began to whisper.

"Which department are those two from?"

"I haven't seen them, are they new here?"

"They don’t look like students, are they new teachers?"

The girls started to get excited. They stared at them with wide eyes, and tried to exchange as much information as possible with each other, wondering who these two people were. 

A boy was asked by his girlfriend, to which he responded with his face showing half dissatisfaction and half delight, "These two are definitely not from our school, maybe they are from another school, or they happened to come here to eat."

"How do you know?" The girlfriend asked.

"I'm from the sports department. The one in white clothes is super good at sports. If he were in our school, I would know it." The boy said adamantly.

"Maybe they are freshman!" Several girls added.

"It's not that… I think the one in the blue sweater looks like a teacher."

"You’re right..." The girls glanced at each other, "Is he a new teacher? I need to know which subject he is teaching so I can go to his class!"

After entering the cafeteria, Bai Yutang looked around, glancing at the people who were eating, then turned back and paid for the meal ticket at the service counter. Zhan Zhao was looking for a window selling stir-fry seriously. Sure enough, he saw the words ‘stir-fry’ at the top of the last window. Zhan Zhao immediately came to his senses and pulled Bai Yutang, "Xiao Bai, there."

Bai Yutang nodded with a helpless smile and followed.

Zhan Zhao looked inside the window, and a middle-aged woman in a white chef uniform asked, "What do you want to eat...?" The woman was generally sturdy, but when she saw the appearances of Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang clearly, her instinctive maternal tendencies immediately came out. With a smile, she asked, “Are you two new here? What would you like to eat?” (Angel: sturdy, or 彪悍 (biāo hàn), is a compliment generally used to describe someone who is strong and brave.)

Zhan Zhao thought for a while, then asked, "Are there any sweet and sour eggs?"

Bai Yutang smiled behind Zhan Zhao. Zhan Zhao remembered back to the time when they were studying. One night, they went to the cafeteria very late, almost all of the food was gone, but there were some scallion fried eggs left in the small stir-fry window. Zhan Zhao wrinkled his nose as he looked at them. Bai Yutang asked the chef to chop up the scallion fried eggs and to stir-fry them with yellow onion and top them with sweet and sour sauce, just like sweet and sour pork ribs. He also asked him to put in some chopped green onions and minced meat.

They were well acquainted with the cook, and he followed Bai Yutang’s instructions. After it was cooked, Zhan Zhao ate a large bowl of rice with his sweet and sour eggs. After that, he had a special affection for those sweet and sour eggs, and would often ask the cook to make them for him. However, after graduating and going abroad, he forgot about such things. He suddenly remembered it today and really wanted to eat it, so he asked the lady in the kitchen, “Sweet and sour eggs, the kind of fried eggs made with green onions... "

Originally, the two did not expect to have it, but unexpectedly, the lady nodded, "Okay!" She took a piece of paper to record their order, "A sweet and sour egg, what else?"

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang looked at each other with surprise and joy. Zhan Zhao suddenly felt hungry and said, "There is also a sliced boiled pork, a cold cucumber, stir-fried sanxian, and winter melon soup with bacon." (Angel: stir-fried sanxian, or 炒三鲜, is a traditional northern cuisine made from sautéed potato, green pepper, and eggplant.)

The lady in the kitchen wrote down the order and said, "Find a place to sit, and I will call you to come get it when I'm done!"

Zhan Zhao nodded. Thinking about sitting next to him and waiting for their food, Bai Yutang took his hand and whispered, “Let’s go and sit in a crowded place.”

Zhan Zhao narrowed his eyes and glanced at him, "Do you want to get information?"

Bai Yutang raised his eyebrows at him, "The place where people eat is where intelligence is most concentrated.”

"Is there any scientific basis for this?" Zhan Zhao looked at him.

"Naturally there is, because all of the mouths around are moving." After speaking, Bai Yutang took Zhan Zhao to a densely populated place. 

The eyes of the surrounding people slowly shifted as the two of them walked over. They found a table to sit down at, with four girls next to them and a circle of people around them.

After sitting down, Zhan Zhao subconsciously touched his stomach. Bai Yutang frowned and asked in a low voice, "Does your stomach hurt?"

Zhan Zhao raised his eyebrows, "I’m probably just hungry."

"It hurts?" Bai Yutang frowned.

The few girls sitting next to them saw one of the ones who was bolder go to the nearby drinking fountain, fill a disposable cup with hot water, and hand it over while whispering, “A cup of hot water will probably make you feel better.”

Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao looked up and saw a short-haired female student. Bai Yutang took the hot water and handed it to Zhan Zhao, giving the girl a big smile, "Thank you."

The girl was dizzy in an instant, and several students next to her became interested. Generally speaking, boys with his looks are very cute and cool. How could he be so kind!

"You are not from our school?" Another girl who was sitting close to them asked. "I haven't seen you around."

"Oh, we were just passing by to do something." Bai Yutang smiled and looked at Zhan Zhao, "You are so promising that this grown-up was scared to the point that his stomach hurts.”

Zhan Zhao rolled his eyes, but he had no choice but to play along, "You should try it. I thought I met the Grim Reaper. I was scared to death."

"Grim Reaper?" The girls looked at each other.

At that moment, they heard the lady in the cafeteria shouting from not far away, "Hey! The two handsome guys over there, your food is ready!"

Bai Yutang stood up to get the food and rice, while Zhan Zhao sat and waited.

He heard one of the girls ask, "Um, did you go to the forest at the back of the campus?"

Zhan Zhao nodded, "Well, I was just curious at first, I wanted to see the haunted house. Then I suddenly saw an uncle with a sickle and was shocked."

"Hehe..." The girls all laughed and said to Zhan Zhao, "It’s okay, everyone will be scared at first. However, if you give him a chance, you will know that this mute uncle is a good person!"

"Mute uncle?" Zhan Zhao was surprised.

"En." The girl smiled and nodded, "That mute uncle is said to have been at the school for more than ten years, and has always been responsible for the gardening and cleaning.

"En, he is very nice. When there were a lot of bicycle thefts happening at school, he helped us catch the thieves.”

"Then why is he so scary?" Zhan Zhao asked.

"I don't know. It is said that he was injured before and then became mute."

“People have died at the haunted house that you mentioned earlier.” The girl said, “Because it’s too evil, no one dares to live in it. There was also a girl that drowned there not long ago. The school has since issued a ban, prohibiting people from going to that area. Next month, there is a construction team coming in to tear it down and rebuild it.”

"Oh." Zhan Zhao nodded. At that time, Bai Yutang came over with a tray in each hand and food on both trays. The girls had silly expressions on their faces as they watched him. He has such strong arms and good balance that he didn’t even spill a single drop of soup as he put the trays down.

Bai Yutang handed the rice bowl to Zhan Zhao, and then took all of the dishes off the tray.

"What's that?" The girls looked at the plate of sweet and sour eggs curiously.

"Would you like to try it?" Zhan Zhao pushed the sweet and sour eggs towards them, "It's delicious."

The group of girls were familiar with each other, not to mention that this was a once in a lifetime chance to be able to eat with such a handsome guy. Thinking to themselves, ‘I have to do some self-study tonight!’, the girls reached their chopsticks out and took a piece of the sweet and sour egg.

The sweet and sour taste is naturally very popular with girls. Part of the egg yolk is fried, and it is mixed into the sweet and sour soup. The tender inside is wrapped in the crispy egg, adding a bit of a soft waxy texture. After eating a few, one girl opened her eyes and smiled, "Ah! It's delicious! What kind of dish is this, why have I never seen it before?"

"Sweet and sour eggs." Zhan Zhao said with a smile, "You have to use scallions and fried eggs."

"Well, it's delicious..." The girls continued to eat.

"By the way, what did you just say about people dying in the dormitory?" Bai Yutang asked.

"Oh!" A girl said while drinking soup, "I also heard what the seniors said. There was a fire in that building before, and a total of five boys in the dormitory were burned to death. One of them just happened to be home on vacation, so he survived."

"Burned to death in this dormitory?" Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang looked at each other, "So, there was a fire in the dormitory?"

After hearing this, several girls looked at each other and said, "The school said that it was just an accident. It was caused by the use of illegal electrical appliances, the kind that head up the room quickly... However, I heard from the seniors that they were splashed with gasoline and burned to death at night when everyone was sleeping.”

"Yes, yes! I heard that too! Then the rest students in that building didn't dare to live there anymore, so they vacated it."

"So... Since that building is so evil, why hasn't it been demolished?" Bai Yutang asked.

"While our school used to be a small, normal college, it is now a normal university. The dormitories were a mess and there were no new buildings at all. Now it has been completely demolished and rebuilt. That old dormitory is the only remaining original building.” When the girl saw that Zhan Zhao put some boiled meat into her bowl, she felt a little dizzy from his beauty, babbling, “In order to preserve some of the memories of the original campus, the school left that old dormitory building.”

"You said that a girl died there a few days ago?" Zhan Zhao then asked.

"En..." Several girls shook their heads helplessly, "That girl was called Liu Mei, and she is pretty good-looking. She is a student from the Faculty of Humanities, and she seems to be from the Law Department, or maybe English?" The girls confirmed with each other, "She lived in the building next to us, so she should be in English. Is there such a beauty in the English department? She is really pretty. It's a pity that she died."

"Yes! I heard that she is the girlfriend of the president of the Humanities Student Union.”

"Ah? Is that true?" The girls couldn't stop once they started talking about this topic, "Isn’t that Lu Qi?"

“It wasn’t me that said it, but they really don’t match well.”

"You’re right!"

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang looked at each other; sure enough, the girls were more interested in love than dead people.

"How did she die?" Zhan Zhao interrupted the group of girls at an appropriate time in order to further develop the topic.

"Drowned." A girl replied, "I heard that Lu Qi burns paper money for her every day."

"Really?" The other girls were surprised.

"Well, my boyfriend and Lu Qi are on the same basketball team," The girl replied.

"Oh my god, he’s so dedicated, so handsome, has a good character, and great grades..." Several girls began to sigh with emotion.

Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao looked at each other helplessly, and decided to continue eating. As soon as they turned back to their food, they heard a boy sitting on the other side of them suddenly sneer.

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang exchanged glances, but did not move.

The boy had almost finished his meal. He packed up his things and stood up. Both Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao were taken aback; the boy was at least 1.9 meters tall.

Seeing him leave, Bai Yutang said to Zhan Zhao, "I'm going to buy a pack of cigarettes."

"En." Zhan Zhao nodded and continued to chat with the girls. From the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Bai Yutang following the boy and walking out of the door.

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Aww, Yutang took care of him so well while they were in school (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: April 20/21, 2021