Chapter 158 Love Letters

Day 11 of the road survival game!

Shortly after the temple fair that day, Hagiwara and Matsuda returned to Tokyo to continue their university life. However, unlike before, they had a friend who was a few years younger than them.

Like elementary school students handing in homework, I send them a Chinese text message every morning to say hello, and every evening to ask if they've eaten and remind them to get some rest...

They could all imagine a girl who wasn't very good at socializing trying hard to make friends, but turning the attempt into a primary school student submitting homework, which made them want to laugh every time they saw it, and they would often tease her in their replies.

They would call each other when they had time to chat and catch up on each other's lives. For example, Kazesei told them that he had made new female friends at school, and Hagiwara and Matsuda shared the interesting things that had happened to them since they started working part-time jobs...

Before they knew it, winter break had arrived. The two had returned to their hometown and had told Feng Xingshou beforehand, and even made plans to eat together at a super delicious restaurant they knew.

However, an unexpected and inexplicable situation occurred for Hagiwara. He found a letter in his mailbox that had no stamp, was clearly hand-mailed, and was signed, "I will be waiting for you in the park until evening."

He thought Feng Jiang had something she couldn't talk to him about over the phone, so he opened the letter and saw a piece of paper that looked like it had been torn from a 16-page notebook and used as letter paper.

The entire text is written in Chinese characters, which is obviously the work of Feng Jiang, who is not good at Japanese. Because many Chinese characters are used differently in Japan than in China, he had to go to the library to find a Chinese dictionary to compare and translate it.

It's basically Feng Jiang describing in Chinese the various emotions she felt when she met and got along with him. She wrote about how her heart would race when she saw him, how she would overthink things because of his jokes, how she felt a little embarrassed, yet also a little eager to try it again, wanting him to tease her like that next time...

In short, it was about the feelings that arise when a young girl first falls in love. Combined with the cover of the letter, Hagiwara realized that she had actually received a love letter from Kaze, and she was a little flustered for a moment.

He had received love letters before, but they were from girls who weren't his friends or close acquaintances. He always managed to reject them without hurting their feelings.

As for familiar classmates and friends? He would distance himself from them as soon as he realized they had feelings for him that went beyond friendship. In fact, he would never get too close to a girl who obviously liked him, let alone become friends with her.

After all, if you don't have feelings for the other person, and you know that the other person likes you, why would you still be friends with them? Isn't that just playing games, deliberately keeping them on your toes as a backup so that they can't give up and can find someone more suitable for them?

Hagiwara hates playing games and would never do such a thing. So, this is the first time he has received a love letter from someone he considers a female friend within his circle of friends.

He hasn't even graduated from university yet! He hasn't matured enough to handle this unexpected development, so naturally he panicked terribly, even seeking help from Kojinpei. How could he avoid losing Fuuka as a friend? Without hurting her? And how could he get her to give up on her goal and reject his confession...?

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Just thinking about how Xiaozhenping looked shocked after hearing his plea for help with so many conditions, his beady eyes turned into crescent-shaped eyes, and he said speechlessly that he never knew he was so naive!

Kenji Hagiwara finds it quite amusing when he thinks about it now. He was being foolish back then, even though he believed that people who engage in ambiguous relationships were sophisticated, selfish, and irresponsible, and he was determined not to become that kind of person.

Therefore, he was determined not to create any ambiguous situations within his circle of friends. However, after receiving Feng Jiang's love letter, his first thought was that he couldn't lose this friend and couldn't refuse her in a way that would make her sad and upset!

This premise is inherently contradictory to my own consistent beliefs, directly revealing my mindset. As the person involved, I was completely unaware of it. No wonder Xiaozhenping looked at me like I was an idiot and criticized me for being naive!

What puzzled him most was that, while he was struggling with this, he was also organizing all sorts of polite ways to refuse her in his mind that wouldn't hurt Feng Jiang. He waited for her in the park until it got dark, but why didn't she come? And when he called her, her phone was just turned off?

After that day, perhaps due to his desire to escape, he was racking his brains about how to reply to Feng Jiang's love letter. He was initially relieved when she didn't come, thinking that she might have made up her mind to send the love letter, but then felt shy and didn't go to the appointment, and even turned off her phone.

The next day, he decided to delay as long as possible, hoping to have more time to come up with a better, more tactful response, so that he wouldn't mishandle the situation and cause her to become angry and break off all ties with him...

When he was almost ready and tried to call her again to ask her out and reply to her love letter, he discovered that her Japanese phone number had been canceled. Only then did Hagiwara realize that something was wrong.

Later, he went to the school and Fuu-chan's place to find her, only to find out that she had returned to Japan the day after he handed her the love letter without telling him or Kojinpei. He heard that she even had to complete the transfer procedures after returning to Japan.

Uh...─━ _ ─━ But she was clearly a third-year junior high school student before studying abroad, but when she transferred schools, she returned to China as a high school student. I guess Gin, her older brother, was really worried about his academically challenged sister!

If I really calculate it carefully, the time I've been separated from Feng Jiang is about two years in my sense of time. I never expected that our reunion would be like that. If only I had realized that I had feelings for her sooner.

Given my personality, I'll definitely try to figure out how much she likes me first. If I feel the success rate is high, I'll confess to her as soon as possible, get her into my life first, and then consider things like future work, marriage, and whose country to settle in!

Sigh! I never thought I'd make such a foolish mistake. It's too late to regret it now. There's an inevitable choice ahead: we'll have to be apart for eighteen years before I can see her again. I know that with my stubborn nature, I'll definitely keep waiting for her.

But I certainly won't be as young and handsome as I am now. Will she still like me then? Even if she does, the thought of not being able to be by her side during the best years of my life, and wasting her youth, is so frustrating. Just thinking about it makes my heart ache...

But she was only 15 when we parted. Girls change a lot in 18 years, and twenty years have passed. It's understandable that I didn't recognize her at first! o(￣ヘ￣o＃) How come Feng-chan didn't recognize me back then? It's only been two years, my appearance hasn't changed much, has it? And I've even grown taller!

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As Hagiwara was agonizing over this sudden realization of the inevitable future development, Matsuda, looking around, said, "Alright, we've already talked to Furuya and Kaze-chan."

We've gathered a lot of intelligence and clarified many questions. Contact with the outside world ends here. Our next priority is to locate an exit, and then, if there's still time, gather supplies.

"Hmm! But we can't see any dungeon exits in this section. I suspect we might need to search in more dangerous areas." Feng Xingshou had already looked around while they were talking to his brother, and there were no dungeon exits or dungeon boundaries either.

This situation reminded her of her experience in the last instance, and she couldn't help but worry that the exit of this instance might have a similar delay trap design, just waiting for them to fall into the trap and get themselves into an embarrassing vicious cycle to watch the fun!

Just as she was starting to worry about how things were going, Hagiwara relayed her words to Matsuda. After listening, Matsuda followed in Hagiwara's and Kazesei's footsteps, pondering where exactly this most dangerous area was.

It couldn't be a ship already submerged by seawater. After all, based on my experience with the dungeons and the Ferris wheel explosion I encountered, the only possible location for a dungeon exit is near the point of destruction at the end of the dungeon.

If that's the case, then we would need to look at the ship's structural diagram and the current accident situation to deduce where the ship will be submerged when the dungeon ends.

As for the possibility that the entire ship would sink when the dungeon ended, Matsuda and Hagiwara rejected it from the beginning. After all, such a large ship could not possibly sink so quickly unless it was constantly attacked by waves and storms.

Ships that sink due to explosions like this can take at least several hours to completely sink, depending on how quickly the relevant departments respond.

They could even dispatch tugboats to tow the sinking cruise ship back to the dock, so only a portion, at most about half, would sink within an hour...

Just as they were pondering the content, Matsuda's phone suddenly rang. He took it out, opened it, and immediately smiled: "It's the structural diagram of this large ship and the Metropolitan Police Department's report on the current situation of the accident."

"Heh...it's like everything I needed has arrived! Furuya is really reliable!" Hagiwara praised his friend with a smile, then turned to Kaze and said, "Kaze-chan, wait a minute..."

Based on the ship's construction and accident history, let's roughly determine the cruise ship's sinking status when the instance ends, considering the performance of various instances these past few days..."

"No need to explain to me! Just focus on doing what you're doing." Hagiwara habitually wanted to explain to Kazesei no Kami the reasons for their actions, but before he could finish, Kazesei no Kami interrupted him.