Chapter 23: Past Events
Chapter 23: Past Events?
However, there was one message that caught Alex\'s attention.
"Are you Alex? I\'m Olivia Davis."
Naturally, Alex knew Olivia, and they were even quite familiar.
After all, she was the famous campus beauty, pursued by countless admirers.
Countless guys dreamed of her, causing the dormitory to always run out of toilet paper.
Alex could chat with her and exchange some jokes.
But he had self-awareness and didn\'t entertain any unrealistic ideas.
After graduation, everyone went their separate ways, and contact gradually faded.
In the blink of an eye, two years had passed.
Alex reminisced a bit.
After coming back to his senses, he sent a message without denying his identity.
"Olivia, impressive that you could guess it\'s me. Yes, I\'m Alex."
Encountering an acquaintance for the first time, Alex felt a bit surreal for a moment.
He was also curious as to why Olivia, whom he hadn\'t seen in two years, could be so sure that the person in the faceless short video was him.
"Olivia, how did you recognize me? I didn\'t show my face. Do you have X-ray vision or something? Scary, four years of college and you\'ve seen me so many times."
The chat box showed Olivia was typing.
Soon, Olivia sent a string of text.
"Of course, I recognized your voice! Don\'t you remember how I always said your voice was so nice back in college?"
That was indeed true.
The only notable attribute Alex could boast about was his voice.
Back in college, he was one of the top ten singers.
Upon arriving at campus, he won over a large number of fans by participating in the campus singing competition for the first time.
Alex sent another message: "Olivia, how did you end up in this apocalypse game too? How are things on your end?"
Olivia replied, "I\'m managing alright for now, barely getting enough to eat... But supplies are also not abundant."
"Oh, guess who I ran into here?"
Alex looked at the message, guessing that it might be an encounter with an old acquaintance.
Moreover, she was teasing him, so it must be a classmate or a teacher from college.
"Who is it? We had so many classmates, I wouldn\'t be able to guess. If I try one by one, it might take until nightfall!"
Olivia sent a smiling face with a hand over the mouth emoji and then said, "Okay, I\'ll tell you directly. It\'s Frank from our class, remember him? I\'m in a team with him now."
Seeing those three words, Alex\'s expression soured a bit.
He naturally remembered this rich second-generation guy from their class.
Frank was a local from the university Alex attended and was famously wealthy.
Furthermore, he lived in the same dorm as Alex, giving Alex his first glimpse into the life of a wealthy person.
Luxury goods were tossed around casually, and a stream of female companions came and went without repeats.
Alex\'s parents had passed away early, leaving him to be raised solely by his grandfather.
After his grandfather passed away when he entered college, he had to rely on working part-time jobs and student loans to cover his living expenses and tuition.
But thankfully, Alex\'s resourcefulness allowed him to make enough money through his part-time jobs to sustain a relatively comfortable college life.
The feud between the two was indeed about money.
Alex still vividly remembered that it was in the second semester of their sophomore year, on a hot night.
As usual in the dormitory, only Alex was left reading while the others went to the local bar with Frank to dance.
When Frank and the others returned laughing and chatting, Alex greeted them with a smile as usual.
Then, he continued reading.
But that night was not peaceful.
Frank searched through his bed and wardrobe but couldn\'t find his watch.
When he went out dancing that night, he had intended to wear his prestigious watch to attract some high-quality girls.
However, due to being in a hurry, he left without searching carefully.
So, when Frank returned from the club, he wanted to quickly find it for next time.
But he couldn\'t find it no matter how hard he searched.
"Weird? Where\'s my watch?"
Frank grumbled, and other dorm mates gathered around him.
One of Frank\'s closest buddies, who was usually very loyal to him, said, "What\'s wrong? Frank, your watch is missing? That watch must be worth at least hundreds of thousands, right?!"
Other dorm mates chimed in.
"Frank, keep looking carefully, you\'ll definitely find it. It couldn\'t have been stolen, right...?"
Suddenly, the dorm fell into a somewhat eerie silence because of this remark.
Frank slowly lifted his head and looked towards Alex sitting at the nearby desk, furrowing his brows.
"Alex, there was only you in the dorm just now. Do you know where my watch went?"
Upon hearing this, Alex furrowed his brows directly.
The implication was clear: Are you implying that I had something to do with your missing watch?
Alex put down his book calmly and said, "I\'ve been in the dorm the whole time, and no one else came in. Keep searching, and if you still can\'t find it in the dorm, maybe you lost it somewhere else?"
Frank scoffed and said deliberately slowly, "My watch was in school all along. I wore it to class yesterday. And you said no one came into the dorm. I see, maybe you stole it yourself."
Alex stood up from his chair, feeling angry.
"Frank, what do you mean by that?"
Facing Alex\'s questioning, Frank refused to back down.
"What do I mean? I mean just that, I suspect you stole my watch!"
"Why do you assume it\'s me who stole your watch? Just because I was alone in the dorm?!"
Frank tore into Alex\'s face, grumbling, "Who in our class doesn\'t know that you\'re the poorest one among us! You see such a nice watch like mine, can you resist?"
Alex\'s lips trembled with anger, feeling incredulous.