Chapter 245: Online Dating Scam (VIII)
606 The four of them exchanged subtle glances.
If they had only tentatively invited the girl with short hair before, then after hearing this sentence, the other party had to come this time.
Guo Guo played dumb: "Why? I think our dormitory is pretty good! Besides, our cell phones have no signal now, so we don't have to worry about the fraud gang contacting us again."
The short-haired girl glanced at her speechlessly and with a hint of pity: "The more ignorant people are, the happier they live. Remember to sleep soundly tonight."
"Could there be thieves besides scammers?! What about the snacks I left in the dormitory? My jelly, cheese, chocolate, breakfast biscuits, double cheese sandwich bread..." Guo Guo's face showed horror.
girl:"… …"
She rolled her throat twice, and her expression was obviously relaxed.
After hesitating for a while, the girl looked at her stomach again and finally made a reluctant decision: "I won't take your food for free. I'll pay you twice the price." She emphasized: "But now."
"—Everyone must return to their dormitories before curfew. Remember?"
606 looked at the few functioning cell phone clocks.
It is now 6:45 pm.
Zhang You: "What's the curfew tonight?"
"Seven o'clock."
The short-haired girl stared at her expressionlessly, but when she looked closely, she seemed to have a faint sneer on her face. "Hasn't anyone told you? Everyone who has attended evening self-study knows that our curfew is 7 o'clock."
"If you still want to hang around outside, you don't have much time left."
At 6:46, Zheng Wanqing, who had returned to the fourth floor to get her things, stood in front of the group again, with a bag full of snacks in each hand.
The short-haired girl didn't seem to notice that the knuckles on her right hand were silver. She only raised her eyebrows in surprise. "That's pretty fast. Okay, then follow me."
This time, the girl finally revealed her name. Her name was Li Zeya, and she lived in Dormitory 303. The four of them followed her into the room, only to find it completely empty. Of the four beds, only one was covered in a pile of food packaging.
There is no doubt that that is Li Zeya's bed.
"We were lucky in our dormitory. Only one person won the bid in the fraud case. But unfortunately, that person was me."
As soon as Li Zeya entered the room, he opened the food brought by 606 and began to stuff it into his mouth without paying any attention to the other people around him. He didn't stop until his cheeks were as full as a hamster's. Then he said calmly and intermittently:
"I know you came to me for that watch..." After downing half a bottle of juice, Li Zeya burped loudly and continued eating without stopping: " But I didn't write it at all, and it's too late to write it now. For the sake of all this food, I'll sign it for you, and you can fill in the content yourself... burp!"
Zhang You briefly exchanged glances with the others. "Even if we're writing for you, we still need to understand your true situation first. Can you tell me how you were deceived?"
Li Zeya ate and recalled: "Nothing much, just a scammer said he had a food processing factory and two large supermarkets, and I could buy bread, biscuits and frozen beef from him at a 10% discount all year round, and I fell for it."
606: “…”
It actually makes sense.
"Then, I found out he was dragging his feet on delivering the beef, so I called the police." Li Zeya wiped his mouth. "That's it."
The whole process was so simple that there was almost no need to write it down in detail.
Compared to the simple case, Guo Guo was more shocked by the other party's eating speed - it had only been a few minutes and he had already finished half of the snacks?
That’s enough dinner for three people!
[With her around, I can now even understand why Xin Jue eats so much.]
Guo Guo complained quietly in the chat room in his mind.
Tang Xin Jue reminded: "It's 6:50 now, we still have ten minutes."
As if he could see that they were in a hurry, Li Zeya briefly recounted the experience of being cheated, showed them a screenshot of the scammer's corresponding account on the chat platform, and then prepared to close the door and send them away.
Before closing the door, she indifferently reminded, "Don't even think about looking for anyone else. At this time, unless you smash down all the doors, you won't be able to see anyone."
"Of course, you can break down a door if you want. Just remember to lock it for her before you leave, otherwise... you'll regret it."
The door slammed shut.
As Li Zeya finally said, there was no one left alive in the entire building. Before seven o'clock, the four of them returned to dormitory 404.
Guo Guo realized it belatedly: "We haven't asked Li Zeya why the curfew is 7 o'clock yet?"
She remembered that during the time of the Headless Ghost copy, there was no curfew in this school.
"It's definitely related to the Headless Ghost case." Zhang You said firmly, "Do you remember what time the Heart Sutra was sent back?"
Guo Guo: "In the afternoon... around six o'clock?"
Zhang You nodded: "Six o'clock sharp, [evening self-study] ends."
Guo Guo suddenly realized: "After evening self-study, add an hour for eating and traveling, and that's exactly the curfew!"
This regulation is equivalent to locking all students in the school and even in every dormitory room after evening self-study.
"They'll feel very depressed and terrified," Tang Xinjue said. "Whether or not something as horrific as the evening study session continues to happen during these nights, serious secondary trauma has already occurred. Therefore, they will generally suffer from strong PTSD symptoms. I believe this may be one of the main dangers we may face in the coming period."
Zhang You frowned: "A student with an abnormal mental state?"
Tang Xinjue chuckled: "Be more precise, they are victims."
Zhang You: "More strictly speaking, we are also victims. So why are they the ones in danger, while we are the ones who bear the risk?"
She carefully explained her point of view: "If we have the same identity, we are all victimized students trapped in this building, then theoretically, as long as they can do the same thing, we can do the same thing. This is within the scope of the rules."
Tang Xinjue raised an eyebrow: "What can't they do?"
Guo Guo raised his hand and answered, "I know this question! Rights and obligations should be discussed separately. We are just ordinary, weak students. For now, we are only pursuing equal rights. We can discuss obligations later."
Zheng Wanqing: "Simply put, we have to do what NPCs can do, and if NPCs can't do something, we can find a reason to do it."
“…Yeah, that makes sense.”
After staring at the three people for a few seconds, Tang Xinjue laughed:
"I said these before, right?"
The three of them remained standing motionless, and Zhang You spoke first:
"I don't know whether to congratulate you for remembering or to worry about you."
"I believe that if I were to ask you to speak now, you would be able to accurately reveal all the details and secret codes of our past. If I showed any intention of attacking you, the mental chains would immediately control me... Of course, the most important thing is, I will not do that."
"What about you?"
Zhang You asked calmly, word by word:
" If I really did the above actions, would you defend yourself or fight back immediately, or would you worry about whether something happened to me?"
"Or...is worrying about us still an option in your mind?"
As Zhang You finished his last words, a long and piercing ringtone rang out from outside the door, stretching from the end of the corridor to the beginning, as if heralding the arrival of another time period.
At seven o'clock sharp, curfew is over.
Tang Xinjue also remained standing, staring at the other person quietly.
In silence, she spoke:
"I'm sorry. Maybe this will disappoint you, but I can't remember."
"My sea of consciousness still contains every detail related to you, and all the logical thinking I need. But I just suddenly forget that I still have them."
"This may make me feel a little weird, but that's not my intention..." She sighed, "I'm sorry, I didn't want to make you worry."
"What do you mean? What you said is too profound and I don't understand. Have you lost your feelings? Or is your brain center affected? Don't scare me!" Guo Guo asked anxiously.
"yes……"
Tang Xinjue opened his mouth, as if wanting to explain more, but then kept silent, only promising, "I will recover as soon as possible. It won't affect my passing the exam, don't worry."
A strange rustling sound began to be heard in the corridor. The wind outside was howling and blowing against the doors and windows, but the room was still eerily quiet.
After a moment, Zhang You closed his eyes and let out a long breath:
"It's okay, Xin Jue, of course we believe you."
"As long as you say these three words, when have we never believed you?"
Guo Guo also sniffed and grabbed Zheng Wanqing's arm: "Zheng Wanqing and I have always believed in you. Don't worry, you, you will definitely recover."
Tang Xin Jue: "Thank you for your trust, but why are you shaking?"
Guo Guo: "Because, because there's a ghost on the balcony! She's about to crawl in!!!"
Amidst Guo Guo's short scream, a flash of lightning struck from outside the dark window, illuminating the first figure that broke into their sight.
This was a girl who looked somewhat familiar. Zhang You immediately recognized her as one of the freshmen who first gathered in dormitory 404.
At this moment, the girl's clothes and appearance looked normal and intact. She was holding a piece of paper and anxiously knocking on the window, as if to send something in:
"I forgot to give you the complaint form..."
Zheng Wanqing shrugged: "Looking at it this way, he looks like a normal person."
Since we couldn't leave the dormitory during curfew, we had the things delivered through the public balcony shared by the two dormitories, which was not a problem.
Guo Guo: "Indeed...if the direction she just crawled from wasn't from the left."
——Dormitory 406, which shared the balcony with them, was clearly on the right.
On the left, besides bare walls and water pipes, there was another balcony blocked by barbed wire. How did she get in ?!
During this time, Zhang You quickly flipped through a stack of forms and found the one belonging to the girl outside the window:
"But I have already submitted your appeal form successfully."
She said calmly and professionally, "It's intact, don't worry."
girl:"……"
Another flash of lightning passed, and the white paper in the girl's hand turned yellow, and the handwriting turned into crooked bloodstains, slowly flowing down:
"Let me in! Let me in!"
She knocked on the window frantically.
The people in the room turned a blind eye and even continued to analyze.
Zhang You said: "In fact, in addition to the students who were deceived, I think there is also a very important message about the fraud gangs."
She placed several complaint forms flat on the table and circled several red lines from the fraud process.
"This is the social media account used by those [virtual lovers]."
From the specific information, it can be seen that this gang strictly implemented the refined division of labor and cooperation, using different accounts and nicknames for each student, and resolutely preventing collisions and exposure.
"But there's another detail," Zhang You said. "Did you notice? These scammers know everything about us."
"—Their deceptive rhetoric, the fake identities they created, even their profile pictures and nicknames were practically tailor-made for us."
Zhang You gave examples one by one: "Guoguo likes to read novels and anime. The scammer who contacted her had a profile picture of one of her favorite characters. As soon as we started chatting, he said he was a part-time novelist. I have severe mysophobia, so he said he was a tidying up person with mild obsessive-compulsive disorder..."
It also targets different people's personalities: Song Rong is vain, so when she chats with her, she appears to be a top student and a rich second-generation; Sun Miao is greedy, so when she chats with her, she appears to be an investment planner; Shi Qingqing is timid, so when she chats with her, she "just happens" to be a psychological counselor.
If the specific process of deceiving people can be said to be the result of extracting information from the deceived person, then the information that happens to match from the very beginning, could it be that the deceiver can predict the future?
Tang Xinjue pondered, "You mean, the scammer probably knew about all of us in advance?"
Zhang You was more direct: "There is a traitor among us."
Given how well the scammers know the students, it would be difficult to accomplish this even if they had accessed the school's information database in advance.
It's more like there's someone next to them... tipping them off anytime and anywhere!
At this moment, there was a sudden loud noise outside the window. It turned out that the girl had banged her head heavily on the glass, and all the red and white flesh burst out, with a dark eye socket in the middle:
"It's so cold and windy outside, please. Aren't we classmates? Don't you want to help me?"
"I can let you in," Guo Guo said seriously, "but you have to prove that you are not a traitor first."
Zheng Wanqing disagreed: "How can you prove this? You're just being difficult. I think we should just let her fight the guy who's banging on the door in the corridor outside. Whoever finds the traitor wins."
girl:"?"
Zhang You: "If they could find it themselves, we wouldn't have come here. After all, this is an exam, so we have to pay attention to the questions."
Guo Guo looked out the window, feeling disappointed. "You can't always rely on others for help. That's not right. You should work hard to make ends meet, okay?"
girl:"……"
