God's Left Hand

Book 1: Chapter 2

One weekend afternoon, Ai Qing’s roommate spilled a glass of water onto her new laptop while animatedly telling a joke.

Ai Qing was forced to accompany her to the computer city for repair.

Since it was the weekend, the computer city in downtown was very crowded.

Her roommate had a poor sense of directions; they walked through the whole third floor but still couldn’t find the shop where she had bought the computer.

“I only remember that the owner was very handsome, with short black hair and his eyes were always smiling……” The roommate kept talking about the features of the owner. Ai Qing didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. “Did you buy this computer just because of his face?”

“Certainly not.” The roommate said with a guilty conscience. “I just admire him. When I was there, he and some other handsome guys were looking at a computer. That computer was super good looking and had a logo that I don’t even recognize……it’s a strange alien head. They kept talking about computer accessories. If you’d seen it, it would have made your blood boil.” Her roommate got more excited as she spoke. “Actually, I thought about it later, it was just a laptop. But the way they talked about it, it sounded like a sports car……I was thinking about joining in the fun, but it’s too expensive; it’s worth several tens of thousands, so I gave up.”

Ai Qing finally understood what she was talking about at this point. “Alienware.”

“Un?” The roommate didn’t get it.

“The laptop you were talking about is from `Alienware`.” Ai Qing smiling comforted her. “For your usual needs for watching movies or novels, you don’t need that kind of high end laptop. That’s specially for playing games.”

“Yeah, that handsome guy also said so.” The roommate looked like she had finally found her soul mate. “It was the first time that I found the boys were so chic when they were talking about games. Usually, I would just think that they’re just bums.”

Ai Qing responded with an “un”. “Actually, if it’s real professional game players, they’re usually even more pickier about the accessories, there are even specially designated brands for mouse pads.”

“Ai Qing.” The roommate looked at her excitedly. “He said exactly the same thing.”

Ai Qing didn’t continue and pointed at her laptop. “So, what are you going to tell him? Usually, the seller isn’t responsible for this kind of damage by accidentally spilling water.”

“I don’t know……” Her roommate looked at the laptop in her arms with a pained expression.

Ai Qing was about to say something, suddenly, she saw someone at a store looked very, very familiar.

When that person turned around, Ai Qing realized that she was correct. Both of them were stunned. He was the first to recover his senses and smiled.

“Ai Qing, that’s the guy.” The roommate exhaled a long breath. “We finally found it.”

Ai Qing acknowledged with an “un”.

She looked at the person who was five or six steps away.

He was smiling and then extinguished the cigarette. He didn’t speak to Ai Qing at first and instead asked her roommate, “something wrong with the computer?”

She hurriedly moved forwards and started to confess what she had done.

In the end, because of Ai Qing, Slide didn’t say anything and opened up the computer to carefully check it, inside and out. Fortunately, there was a keyboard film covering it, there wasn’t too much of damage. Ai Qing sat in his shop and watched him fix the laptop while chatting with her roommate, her eyes were fixed on his left hand and couldn’t move away.

Her roommate only found out Ai Qing had some unusual relationship with him after the computer was fixed. She immediately got the hint and said that she wanted to go shopping, leaving the computer and Ai Qing in the shop. It was lunch time, Slide took up his phone and asked her, “I can’t leave, how about I order some take out and you can eat with me at the shop?”

Ai Qing nodded smiling.

He quickly made the call and ordered two gan chao niu he (Note: fried rice noodles with beef).

After he hung up, Ai Qing walked over and glanced at his hand. “What happened to your hand?”