570. Figurine
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“Xiong Da! Guess what I just bought!”
At noon, Xiong Da was mindlessly staring at his computer when he was jolted by an unexpected chirpy voice.
He instinctively turned his head towards the door and saw Lin Nan bursting in, cradling a small box with glee. “Look! I bought a King Arthur!”
Tu Junhui and Chen Yao followed closely behind, with Chen Yao shaking his head in resignation as he explained to Xiong Da, “She found a King Arthur on an online flea market for over a hundred bucks and insists it’s real.”
“Uh-huh.” Xiong Da’s gaze flicked over to the small box in Lin Nan’s hands before he turned back to aimlessly stare at his computer screen.
Lin Nan dashed to her desk, positively beaming with pride as she bragged to Chen Yao, “I scored a steal, okay? Some girl was selling her boyfriend’s figurine for over a thousand! She totally didn’t get its worth and let it go for just over a hundred.”
“Come on! Do you really think something worth over a thousand could be sold for a hundred?” Chen Yao leaned against the wardrobe, ribbing Lin Nan while occasionally glancing at Xiong Da.
“She’s the one who’s silly! If I flip this for a grand, I’m making over eight hundred!” Lin Nan whipped out her phone to snap pictures of her “prize,” practically dancing in excitement. “Once I sell it, I’ll take all three of you out for barbecue!”
“They’ve already told you it’s fake.” Tu Junhui chimed in, “With that brain of yours, you could lose all your money in a heartbeat.”
Lin Nan shot him a glare, baring her teeth, “Shut it! You just can’t stand to see me make money!”
“You’re the one being foolish! And not listening to advice either!” Tu Junhui shot back without hesitation.
As their bickering escalated, Chen Yao quickly intervened, “Isn’t Xiong Da the expert on this? Let him weigh in.”
Suddenly, the dorm fell silent as everyone turned to look at Xiong Da.
Still in a daze, Xiong Da noticed he was the center of attention and blinked, looking back at them.
“Come on! Give us your expert opinion!” Lin Nan demanded, standing up and approaching Xiong Da’s desk, carefully placing the box down. “Do you think this is real?”
Xiong Da gawked at the figurine inside the box, remaining silent for what felt like an eternity before finally shaking his head, “Figurines don’t really have fakes and real ones… if you like it, that’s what matters.”
“I mean, is it really worth over a thousand? Isn’t a legit figurine supposed to cost thousands?”
Without even taking the figurine out, Xiong Da could already spot some flaws just by peeping through the transparent packaging.
After all, he was a hardcore figurine enthusiast; the figurines on his shelf were worth thousands, and he had a glass cabinet dedicated to them. Even without being a scholar of the subject, he was an expert of sorts.
Xiong Da opened the package and pulled out the figurine, then pointed at its hair, “It’s too rough; this has to be a domestic product.”
“Is that valuable?”
“Online? At most seventy bucks…”
Lin Nan’s face darkened, “What nonsense! I paid over a hundred for it!”
“You’ve been swindled.”
“I don’t believe it! Just look how exquisite the face is! It can’t be domestic!” Lin Nan argued, pointing fervently at the figurine’s face.
But Xiong Da simply shook his head, “The face is a disaster; you probably haven’t seen enough about Saber to realize it.”
“Then look at these legs!”
“???”
Lin Nan got stuck; the Saber figurine wore a dress, so there were no legs to see. She promptly asked, “What’s Saber anyway?”
Just then, she glanced up and pointed at another Saber figurine on the bookshelf, “Mine looks like yours!”
“Same character, different outfits,” Xiong Da explained, “Saber is the King Arthur you keep talking about. If you’ve watched enough anime, you’ve probably seen her; she’s pretty famous online.”
“So she’s really valuable?”
Xiong Da suddenly realized that Lin Nan seemed to be overly naive today. He took a deep breath, ready to enlighten her about the value of figurines and the character of Saber, when he abruptly shut his mouth.
Looking back at Chen Yao and Tu Junhui, who were both grinning like Cheshire cats, it was obvious they were enjoying the spectacle.
“What’s going on with you two?”
Tu Junhui seized Xiong Da’s shoulder, chuckling, “Ever since you stopped drinking, you’ve been the chatty one today!”
“You couldn’t even string two words together a few days ago,” Chen Yao laughed even harder.
Lin Nan likewise ditched her confused demeanor, pouting, “Hurry up and snap out of it; give me back Chen Yao!”
Xiong Da stared blankly at the trio surrounding him, lost in thought.
Noticing his daze, Chen Yao shrugged, “Why not read a novel when you can’t sleep at night? Isn’t that better?”
“It’s just one woman, what’s the big deal?” Tu Junhui’s comment got him kicked in the shin by Lin Nan, who snorted like a pig and ran off to a corner, rallying, “You dare hit me again, Lin Nan? I swear I’ll fall on the ground and make you pay hundreds of thousands!”
However, looking back at the dent in the wall near his bed that looked like a half-finger deep, he suddenly chickened out.
Ignoring the antics of Tu Junhui, Lin Nan noticed that Xiong Da had returned his gaze to the computer screen.
He still seemed stuck in his own world.
“It’d be good to talk a bit more… you act like it’s a lecture, all gloomy,” Lin Nan mumbled, reaching for the figurine, planning to package it up for a return. But suddenly, Xiong Da grabbed both the packaging and the figurine.
“What? I’m going to pack it up for a return!”
This was a figurine Lin Nan had specially bought online for over sixty bucks! She was testing to see if Xiong Da had reached the point of apathy where he wouldn’t care even about figurines.
Clearly, that was not the case.
“Once you open it, you can’t return it; just let it be,” Xiong Da remarked, stuffing the figurine and box into the drawer. “Besides, you don’t even collect figurines.”
And it looked like he had found his voice again?
He was starting to snatch things now!
“Taking my figurine means no cutting any fingers, got it?!” Lin Nan protested, feeling Xiong Da’s actions were childish and completely shattering her image of him. “What did you cut your finger with? Hand it over!”
She recalled seeing classmates slice their fingers for show-off back in middle school, but that was pure cringey behavior, whereas Xiong Da’s antics could only be blamed on his questionable brain cells.
After hesitating, Xiong Da pointed up at his head.
On the bed?
Lin Nan hurriedly climbed the ladder to Xiong Da’s bed, glancing around before finding something that resembled a top near the pillow.
“What’s this?”
“A fidget spinner; I wasn’t paying attention when I played with it last night, and I cut my finger.”
“???”
Looking at the sharp edges of the spinner, Lin Nan could imagine the chaos it could unleash when it spun.
She hopped off the bed with the spinner, waddling over to Chen Yao and thrusting it at him in frustration, “Weren’t you saying cutting fingers earlier?”
“How was I supposed to know he played with that at midnight…?”
“Couldn’t you just ask what happened?”
“Not like I had the chance to ask yet,” Chen Yao huddled his neck, “Aren’t you going to return that figurine? It costs around sixty to seventy bucks.”
Only then did she remember losing sixty bucks on this venture, prompting her to sit angrily back in her chair. Then she decided to give the confiscated fidget spinner a try.
It spun between her index and middle fingers, and after a moment, she reached over with the other hand to give it a spin, only to feel a sudden sharp pain.
Mmp!
