By Wednesday, Mai Mang noticed the other half of the pair was missing.

"It wasn't like it was useful or anything, but I decided to find a boyfriend because of it. How can it just disappear?"

At lunch in the cafeteria, Mai Mang listlessly counted grains of rice with her chopsticks. Han Yiyi sat across from her, leisurely sipping soup.

"Proves the idea of finding a boyfriend for a phone charm is so absurd even God couldn't stand it."

"Then why did you find a boyfriend, Yiyi?"

Han Yiyi paused a second, gathered herself, and was about to tell her love story when Mai Mang's phone on the table rang. She picked up—and the call never seemed to end. All Han Yiyi heard was Mai Mang occasionally murmuring "mm-hmm," while the person on the other end talked like someone who'd been mute for three lifetimes and just reincarnated.

After roughly three hundred seconds, Han Yiyi couldn't take it anymore. She set down her spoon. "Who is it?"

Mai Mang covered the receiver, looking troubled. "Says they're selling insurance."

Han Yiyi took the phone and hung up without a word.

"Huh?" The girl didn't understand.

Han Yiyi calmly continued her soup. "If you can listen to an insurance salesperson yap that long, what would happen if someone were selling condoms?"

Mai Mang beamed and leaned in under Han Yiyi's eyelids. "Go on, go on—the love story."

"Nothing to tell."

"Huh? Weren't you about to?"

"Changed my mind."

"How can you do that! At least tell me who you're dating."

"If we haven't broken up in a month, I'll tell you."

"So mean."

"Because every time I tell you, we break up within a week."

"…Is it because of me that you break up?"

Mai Mang looked mournful.

"Can't say it's entirely not your fault. You're pretty demanding. Lots of little things other people would laugh off—if it's you, they're unbearable. You keep saying things like 'Is there any man worse than him in the world,' 'He's not gentle at all,' 'Don't you think he's terrible to you'… In the end of course I start thinking he's really not that great. Haven't you noticed the breakup rate around you is way higher than the national average?" Han Yiyi stated this unhurriedly, stopped eating, eyes always glancing at the chopsticks on her plate.

Mai Mang knew the laziness queen's laziness nerve had twitched again. She took the spoon from Han Yiyi's hand and swapped it for chopsticks. "You really are one of a kind."

"Only just meeting me?"

Han Yiyi lowered her head and started eating again.

"So the mess in your love lives was all my fault…" Mai Mang picked up the earlier topic again, deeply wounded.

"Doesn't matter. Anyone who orbits you has to accept that. Besides, nobody around you is completely normal anyway—only oddballs attract oddballs. But your world is idealistic; your expectations for romance are high. A boyfriend found because of a phone charm would get hated immediately. Don't waste the energy."

Mai Mang bit her chopsticks awkwardly. "But won't I easily become a loser in love someday?"

"You're the type who can live cheerfully whether you're a loser in love or not."

"Now I suddenly feel so tragic."

The conversation was about to evolve into "The Tragic Life of Mai Mang" when a thunderous crash from nearby shook the whole cafeteria. It was in the direction Han Yiyi faced. She narrowed her eyes: "Ah. Tengqian."

The Cult Leader turned around. The boy had recklessly knocked over an entire row of tables, sending countless trays crashing to the floor. She shook her head in disdain. "Tsk tsk—that guy's the baseball team's ace. How is his coordination this bad?"

"So…" Half a second later the laziness queen had recovered her composure and continued eating. "Nobody normal after all."

Near the end of dinner, Jingyuan finally couldn't resist curiosity about Mai Mang, who had been quietly smiling the whole time: "Why are you so abnormal today? No—wait. Why are you so normal today?"

The girl smiled and shook her head, as if just emerging from an internal drama. After a few seconds she answered: "Last Friday Yiyi and I went shopping and bought a pair of couple phone charms. I put the star one on my phone, but the spare moon one disappeared."

"And then?"

"I thought about it for a long time. There's only one truth—it was stolen!"

"So?"

"So someone must have a crush on me!"

Jingyuan's first instinct was to scan his parents' reactions. The two adults seemed absorbed in weighty matters like "this year's zongzi aren't as good as last year's." The boy thought it over and decided not to always pour cold water on his sister. He nodded in agreement and added a friendly reminder: "But before you decide to date anyone, make sure you verify they're actually human."

Mai Mang, as always, filtered out the subtext and happily buried herself in her food.

"Oh, right—tomorrow afternoon our school's baseball team is playing yours. I'm going to cheer for my deskmate. Can I visit you?"

Visit?

Jingyuan ignored being placed in the category of prisoner or patient. After brief consideration, he said: "I'll probably be in the competition class helping with Q&A. If the timing works out, we can go home together afterward."

"Then we'll text tomorrow." Only then did she notice: "Competition… so boring… But there's something I've always wondered—why is gege's brain so good when I'm so dumb? Don't people related by blood have similar IQ because of genes?"

"Who said that?" Jingyuan blurted, then realized that wasn't quite right and ruffled the head of the girl who'd been struck where it hurt. "Your IQ is higher than mine."

"Huh?" A gloomy face turned sunny in an instant.

"You clear Minesweeper in under ten seconds every time, don't you?"

"What's a mini-game got to do with anything." Mai Mang turned gloomy again. "You don't mention how I get headshot in ten seconds every time in CS."

"…That one—our home computer's keyboard performs worse than the mouse."

"And my grades are always middling."

"Ranking first in your grade once isn't hard. Ranking first your whole life is hard—"

"Are you bragging?"

"But ranking first your whole life isn't the hardest thing. The hardest is ranking fifty-first your whole life—so don't get discouraged. Keep it up."

"Gege, do you know you have a talent?" Mai Mang said miserably. "Whether you're comforting or encouraging—any nice thing you say makes the listener feel worse."

"…You're too kind."

"Oh, almost forgot to tell you…"

Jingyuan lifted his eyes to Mai Mang, whose gaze held a strange light: "My project not only passed review in all three departments but got approved by the student council, so starting next week morning exercise is cancelled."

In eighteen years of belief, only "survival of the fittest" still applied.