After AFK for five years, I returned to be number one in the entire server.

Actually, one of them had no intention of eating the other's leftovers, and the other really had nothing left.

From that day on, Lin would go to find Shen Yi every mealtime.

The two gradually settled on a fixed spot in the cafeteria. After several days, Zhou Ran and Zhao Jiaxin noticed that Shen Yi seemed to only eat with Lin Ye.

Occasionally, Lin would not know whether she had something to do or had forgotten, and would not look for Shen Yi.

Shen Yi usually doesn't go to the cafeteria, and sometimes she doesn't even eat. She'll sit on her bed in the dormitory, staring blankly at the table.

Not long after working at the barbecue restaurant, Shen Yi quit her part-time job at Huixiansheng Supermarket.

The reason is simple: the hours of the supermarket's evening shift and the barbecue restaurant's shift overlap, making it impossible to manage both simultaneously.

The hourly wage at a barbecue restaurant is much higher than that of a supermarket, and there are additional subsidies during holidays and weekends when there is a large customer flow. In total, the monthly income is almost twice that of a supermarket.

In their spare time, Lin would work part-time at the barbecue restaurant with her. The two rarely spoke while working, each doing their own thing, occasionally passing each other in the aisle.

After finishing her part-time job each day, Lin would walk back to school with Shen Yi.

The streetlights were sparse late at night, and there were hardly any people on the road.

The two entered the school gate and walked along the main road all the way to Guiyuan.

The walk takes about ten minutes and is very quiet. Sometimes the only sounds along the way are footsteps and the occasional voices coming from the dormitory buildings in the distance.

When they arrived at the dormitory building, Lin stopped, and Shen Yi swiped her card to enter. There was no extra farewell ceremony between the two.

She said, "I'm going back." He nodded and turned to walk towards Songyuan.

Half a month has passed in the blink of an eye.

In late October, large swaths of withered yellow leaves fell to the ground, and sanitation workers swept them up every morning, only to have them covered again by the afternoon.

Shen Yi's life was divided into several fixed segments: attending classes, eating, working part-time, and sleeping.

These things, when put together, fill the day perfectly, leaving no gaps and no extra time to think about anything else.

She has been working part-time at the barbecue restaurant for more than half a month, and with the money she had saved from Huixiansheng, she has about four thousand yuan in her hands.

At this rate, the debt of 16,000 yuan will take a long time to accumulate.

Shen Yi had no classes on Saturday afternoon.

She left the school gate, walked south for a while, and came to a supermarket to buy laundry detergent and toothpaste.

The supermarket wasn't big, the shelves were packed tightly together, and the lighting was a bit too bright, making people dizzy.

She carried a bottle of laundry detergent and a tube of toothpaste to the cashier, where there were two people in front of her.

When it was her turn, the cashier scanned the barcode on the toothpaste and then picked up the bottle of laundry detergent.

"Did you know this brand is having a prize-winning promotion right now?" The cashier, a woman in her forties, pointed to the transparent film covering the bottle while scanning the code. "Each bottle has a scratch card attached to it."

At the cashier's prompting, Shen Yi agreed to let them take out the card.

She flipped the card over, scraped off the coating, and silver powder fell onto the cash register.

The cashier stopped, looked down at the card for two seconds, then brought it closer and squinted to confirm the words on it.

"Oh My God……"

She looked up abruptly at Shen Yi, her expression one of surprise and delight: "Girl, you've won the grand prize!"

Some of the people behind Shen Yi peeked out curiously, while others walked out of the supermarket without a care.

"Thirty thousand dollars!" The cashier held up the card.

Shen Yi stood in front of the cashier, looking at the card.

"This is incredibly lucky."

Is it true or false?

"It must be real. This brand is a big manufacturer; they wouldn't dare to run a fake promotion."

The cashier excitedly flipped the card over and pointed to the small print: "There's a QR code here. Scan it, fill in the information as instructed, and the money will be directly deposited into your account within seven business days."

Shen Yi took the card.

People around were still talking about it; some took out their phones to take pictures, while others turned back to the shelf to see if the same laundry detergent was still available.

She put the toothpaste and laundry detergent into a bag, scanned the code to pay, and turned to leave the supermarket.

The cold air from outside hit her face as she stood on the steps.

On the way back, she walked very slowly, almost as if she were taking a stroll.

The roadside trees had lost most of their leaves, their bare branches casting long, thin shadows under the streetlights. The wind blew the fallen leaves to the curb, scattering them haphazardly.

She stopped at the side of the road and waited for the red light.

Across the street on the sidewalk, a little girl was holding her mother's hand, with a cotton candy in her other hand, and she was smiling brightly.

The green light came on, and she crossed the street.

That night, Shen Yi didn't tell anyone about winning the lottery.

She lay in bed, opened her phone case, glanced at the card, then put it back in the case and placed it next to her pillow.

Monday, at a barbecue restaurant.

In the afternoon, meal preparation began, and Shen Yi arrived at the shop before Lin.

She had already changed her clothes and was in the back kitchen taking frozen meat platters out of the freezer and sorting them by type.

When Lin came in, she heard the sound of the plastic curtain hanging at the door being pulled open.

Their work was no different from usual. Shen Yi was in charge of serving dishes and clearing tables in the front hall, while Lin was doing the same thing on the other side, only much more efficiently, and then came over to help Shen Yi.

They still didn't communicate much.

The female manager sat on a high stool behind the front desk, a cup of strong tea beside her, her gaze constantly following the shop's waiters.

After closing time, Shen Yi went to the back to change her clothes.

Taking advantage of the lull, the female manager called out to Lin Ye, who was mopping the floor.

"Young man, come here."

Lin also walked over carrying a mop.

The female manager gestured towards the kitchen, her voice low and unsure of Lin Ye and Shen Yi's relationship: "Your female classmate spied on you many times tonight, you know that, right?"

The female manager smiled, the kind of smile that comes from someone with more experience looking at young people, with a hint of teasing and感慨: "You two have such a good relationship. I've seen many college couples, but it's rare to see someone like you who come and go together every day, who doesn't slack off while working, and who isn't clingy at all. You're much more down-to-earth than those who show off their love all the time."

When Shen Yi came out from the back, the female manager had already stopped talking and was looking down at the day's accounts.

The next day, in the cafeteria.

Shen Yi's plate had an extra dish today compared to usual: braised pork ribs, one of the most expensive meat dishes sold in the cafeteria.

She used to order almost exclusively the cheapest vegetarian dishes.

Lin didn't pay much attention and kept eating his food with his head down.

After eating for a while, a piece of pork rib fell into his bowl.

Lin glanced at the rib; the meat was stewed until very tender. He didn't say anything, picked it up, and ate it.

A few dozen seconds later, another piece of pork rib fell into his bowl.

Lin looked up and asked, "Why don't you eat by yourself?"

"I don't like eating this."

"Why buy it if you don't like it?"

"I bought this for you."

She and Lin had eaten together many times, and most of the time they could see braised pork ribs on each other's plates.