In the twilight, the small colored lights on the pink claw machine flickered, and a little girl with pigtails was holding her grandmother's hand and looking up.
Lin Chaoxi threw the coin into the air, caught it, and walked to the claw machine.
"Sister, you can't catch this." The little girl said aggrievedly.
"We come here for a walk every day and see many young people grabbing a lot of coins, but they can't catch them all." The old lady also said, "She insisted on catching them, and today she wasted another 10 yuan."
Lin Chaoxi originally just wanted to give it a try, but suddenly he became competitive.
She squatted in front of the little girl: "I think I can catch it."
"What if you can't catch it?"
"Then I'll go buy one."
Little girl: “…”
Lin Chaoxi took out her phone and immediately started searching for the legendary doll catching cheats. There were many related posts and guides, so she found the most detailed one and read it from beginning to end.
Pei Zhi came over with two cups of Coke. Lin Chaoxi took one and showed him the strategy guide: "Which one do you think is easier to catch?"
Pei Zhi scrolled through the webpage on her mobile phone very quickly. He looked up at the claw machine again: "It's the fifth one on your left."
"That Stitch?"
"Well, but..."
"But what?"
"Let's try it first."
After reading the strategy guide and with Pei Zhi's support, Lin Chaoxi was full of confidence.
She put down her Coke, took a deep breath, and threw the coin into the machine. The buttons on the machine flashed a colorful light. She held her breath and concentrated, controlling the arm and pressing the direction key according to the instructions in the guide.
The claws opened and fell quickly, grabbing Stitch's blue body directly and passing through his armpits, which is said to be the best grabbing position.
but……
The claws quickly pulled up, the force of the little claws was almost as light as touching Stitch. A second later, the claws returned to their original position, and Stitch did not move at all.
Lin Chaoxi was shocked. This was too much.
"I told you, it's impossible." The little girl shouted beside my leg.
Lin Zhaoxi took a big sip of Coke and looked at Pei Zhi in surprise: "What did you mean by 'but' just now?"
"Whether you can catch the doll or not probably has little to do with technique, it's mainly a matter of probability."
Pei Zhi said it tactfully.
"Eh... gambling... machine?"
“The claw machine should be some kind of variation of the gambling machine.”
Pei Zhi took out his cell phone and showed her what he had just found. Lin Chaoxi came over and Pei Zhi swiped the screen of his cell phone at a suitable speed.
"The gripping power is divided into 'strong', 'weak' and 'none'. Stores can set the probability of grabbing, from 1/5 to 1/20, and the highest can be 1/200." Lin Chaoxi paused, "So the gripping power is an odds mechanism?"
"Um."
The boy also lowered his head slightly to look, so his breath was very close to her ear.
"It turns out it's a matter of luck." Lin Chaoxi stepped back.
"So you can't catch it?" the little girl interrupted.
Lin Zhaoxi looked at Pei Zhi helplessly.
Pei Zhi put away his phone, turned around and walked back to the cashier. When he came back, he had a gaming coin in his hand.
Silver coins sparkle.
"You bought two more drinks?" Lin Chaoxi asked.
"Redeem it directly, two yuan per coin." Pei Zhi replied.
The little girl stared at him with wide eyes: "Brother, you are so stingy. Other boys buy a bunch of claw machines for their girlfriends."
"If the price is higher than this, it is more cost-effective to buy it directly from Taobao."
Pei Zhi said this as he handed the Coke in his hand to Lin Chaoxi, who took it.
The little girl was in a daze, and Lin Chaoxi was also in a daze.
"Can you help me look to the side and choose the one you like?" Pei Zhi said to her.
Lin Chaoxi walked over and found that the side view was better. The colorful plush toys were reflected on the glass, and the boy looked focused.
Lin Chaoxi held two cups of Coke, stretched out his index finger reluctantly, poked the glass, and pointed at a fat gray penguin near the outside.
Pei Zhi nodded and put the coin into the machine. The small colored lights on the glass also flashed a dazzling light. But he didn't use any skills, he didn't shake the joystick or press the keys desperately, just let the claws move gently to the corresponding position.
Lin Zhaoxi leaned close to the glass: "A little further to the left, there's the fat penguin."
"good."
The gripper falls down, perfectly grabbing the penguin's center of gravity and lifting it up. The mechanical claw moves slowly to the top of the drop hole, the gripper releases, and the fat penguin falls naturally.
The little girl was stunned, and Lin Chaoxi, holding two cups of Coke, was even more stunned.
Is it that simple?
Pei Zhi bent down and took out the fat gray and white penguin from the exit. He first took his cup of Coke from her hand, and then handed the plush toy to her.
The store has typical KTV lighting, a series of lavender light strips, and the surrounding lighting is dim and ambiguous.
Lin Zhaoxi's heartbeat quickened, but when she saw the gray penguin's smiling eyes, her mind flashed back to the time when Pei Zhi directly opened the Gao Qiu card in elementary school. She wanted to say "thank you" but ended up saying, "you really are... the emperor of Europe."
"Let's go then." Pei Zhi said.
Lin Chaoxi held a Coke in one hand and a doll in the other, and walked back to the box with him.
When they sat down, their table was so quiet that you could hear a pin drop.
Lin Chaoxi took a sip of Coke. Somehow, she no longer felt the nervousness and embarrassment she had when she left. Knowing that Pei Zhi was allergic to alcohol, it didn't seem like a big deal.
——
The hot pot bar KTV activity is obviously a night event, but Teacher Xiaojie is old. After eating all the hot pot beef, he was the first to say that he wanted to go back to study.
Among the students, there were those who liked to play and those who were not so sociable. When he left, nearly half of them said they wanted to go with him.
It was around 8pm, some girls were going back to their dormitories, and some were doing internships outside the school. The boys naturally wanted to act like gentlemen and escort the girls back.
"It's just past 8 o'clock, it's very safe, we can just take a taxi ourselves, why would we need to send someone off?" the girls said.
"Then can we take your car?" the boy asked with a cheeky smile.
"Sure, aa."
Lin Chaoxi and Pei Zhi stood outside the crowd. In her backpack was the little penguin that Pei Zhi had just caught.
The boys and girls talked to each other and decided to carpool according to where they wanted to go.
"How are you going back?" Pei Zhi asked her.
Lin Zhaoxi was about to answer when she heard someone ask her, "Lin Zhaoxi, are you going back to school?"
"I'm going home. My home is in Jingling New Village, Jiangxia District."
The students gathered together and began to discuss where Jingling New Village in Jiangxia District was and whose car she should take.
"I originally wanted to take the bus, but now it seems we have to carpool." She answered Pei Zhi in a low voice.
Pei Zhi nodded, and just like when he asked her, he simply asked everyone else's location, and then began to circle people: "You can take a taxi together, let the driver take Zhongping Road, and drop him off near the Second Hospital."
"You two can take a taxi back to school together."
"You are both doing internships near the Science Park. Walk through Central and get off at Zhongshan Road. Send her off first, and then the two of you."
…
…
Pei Zhi seemed to have a detailed map of the entire city in his mind. He simply planned who should go together and who would get off first and who would get off later. The students on the roadside were stunned. Lin Chaoxi calmed down and said he was calm.
Finally, Pei Zhi picked two more students, a boy and a girl, and said to them, "Let's go together."
——
In a taxi.
No one dared to let Pei Zhi squeeze into the back seat, so they respectfully escorted him to the co-pilot seat.
Outside the car window, the night scene of the city passed by. Lin Zhaoxi sat in the middle of the back seat, holding her schoolbag. The boys and girls around her were not good at speaking, including the taxi driver, who drove in silence without saying a word. The surroundings were very quiet.
Lin Chaoxi originally wanted to talk to Pei Zhi to ease the atmosphere, but Pei Zhi kept his head down looking at his phone, occasionally telling the driver how to get there.
So until the boy got off the car, Lin Chaoxi had nothing to say. Then the girl got off the car, and the topic she had just thought of was interrupted. In the end, she and Pei Zhi were the only ones left in the car.
She was finally able to sit comfortably, but outside was the familiar barbecue stall and the taxi had arrived at her doorstep.
Suddenly, a WeChat voice notification sounded in the car.
Lin Zhaoxi subconsciously flipped through her phone and found that it was not her call. The driver remained calm. In the passenger seat, Pei Zhi picked up the phone, pressed the answer button, and put it to his ear.
It was unknown who was on the other end of the phone. Pei Zhi listened for a while and then replied gently, "We're almost at Jingling New Village."
"In Jiangxia District."
"We'll have dinner together and share a ride home."
The boys answered in turn.
The person on the other end of the phone was shouting something. Pei Zhi listened patiently for a while, then raised his head slightly to look in the rearview mirror and said, "Lin Zhaoxi."
The boy's eyes were clear and when he suddenly heard his own name, Lin Chaoxi's heart skipped a beat.
The driver stepped on the brakes, she leaned forward slightly, looked out the window, and found that they had arrived.
Pei Zhi was still on the phone. Lin Zhaoxi whispered, "I'm leaving first. Tell me the fare later and we'll split the bill."
After saying that, she opened the car door, and the night and the smell of barbecue blew in.
"Wait." Pei Zhi suddenly called her.
"Ah, what's wrong?"
Pei Zhi held the microphone with one hand and looked back at her: "Do you have time later?"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com