Chapter 280: Paige - I Shouldn't Have Compared You to Chuck! Young Sheldon - Chuck, You Jerk!!!
The competitive spirit of this super genius surpassed the joy of reuniting with Chuck after so long.
Paige re-entered the ward with a stony expression.
Joey was so startled he nearly fell out of bed, looking pleadingly at Chuck, but couldn't glean any useful information from his blank face, leaving him increasingly anxious.
"What's wrong, Paige?"
Linda, still glowing with newfound energy, looked over with concern.
"Nothing."
Paige's tone was ice-cold.
Linda was taken aback, finally snapping out of her romantic haze. She got up from Joey's bedside, walked over, and hugged her daughter with worry.
Seeing Paige maintain that stony expression, she smiled apologetically at everyone, then pulled her daughter outside to talk privately.
"Chuck, is this bad news?"
Joey looked at Chuck anxiously after watching them leave.
"Good news."
Chuck shook his head.
"Good news?"
Joey's eyes lit up, then he caught himself and smiled bitterly. "The 'good news' you're talking about probably isn't what we normal people would consider good news... Go ahead and tell me. I'm bracing myself."
"Two choices."
Chuck said, looking at him. "Either marry Linda, settle down, and live a quiet life, or break up with her—let her dump you—and make sure she's happy about it, not heartbroken. Pick one."
"That's nearly impossible. Getting dumped by Linda is easy enough, but even being the one to break it off, how am I supposed to keep her from being sad..."
Joey instinctively complained, but before he could finish, Chuck's gaze stopped him cold. After thinking for a moment, he smiled bitterly. "I get it. I'll do my best!"
"You'd better do more than your best."
Chuck said bluntly. "Otherwise, if Linda ends up heartbroken because of you, no matter how sad she gets, you'll definitely end up way more miserable than her down the line."
"..."
Joey looked at his broken leg, speechless.
In most cases, faced with such a suspicious accident and a broken leg, anyone with half a brain would call the police to investigate and prevent similar incidents from happening again.
But Joey is a sitcom character—even with a broken leg, he can laugh it off, replacing danger with humor.
And thank God for that.
Otherwise, in the original timeline, when Joey's character Dr. Drake Ramoray was written into a coma because he offended the writers, in this timeline it wouldn't just be a fictional consequence of angering the writers, but a real-life situation that would then be written into the show.
"I know what to do."
Joey gritted his teeth, already formulating a plan.
As a ladies' man, this wasn't really an insurmountable problem for him.
It's just that he'd always been the one to break hearts for his own benefit, never the other way around.
This time, understanding the seriousness from Chuck's words, and trusting Chuck's judgment, he might have no choice but to become the guy who gets cheated on. And the kind who actively sets it up himself...
Over by the elevators.
"Paige, are you okay?"
Linda tried to comfort her. "I know you might have some concerns about Joey..."
"I have no concerns about him."
Paige interrupted her mother. "As long as he makes you happy, I'm fine with whatever."
"..."
Linda's eye twitched.
Those were nice words, absolutely sincere!
And coming from her most beloved, brilliant youngest daughter, they moved her deeply. But if only her expression had been as sweet as usual when she said them.
Even if it was just an act.
That's right!
As Paige's mother, Linda had always vaguely sensed another side to her daughter, but she simply didn't want to examine it too closely.
Now, Paige had suddenly dropped the facade, essentially saying 'Joey means nothing to me; in my eyes, he's just a tool for your happiness, Mom,' which caught Linda, as a mother, somewhat off guard.
"Alright."
Seeing this, Linda could only suppress her worries and look at Paige's little face. Calming down to think about it, she suddenly felt that perhaps it really wasn't about Joey at all.
"How did your math question with Chuck go?"
Linda's heart sank.
Apart from her divorce from her ex-husband, when Paige felt she was the cause of everything and had huge emotional swings, there hadn't been such dramatic mood changes before or since.
"Very enlightening!"
Paige's eyes narrowed, her expression cold.
"It really was about Chuck!"
Linda realized.
Only an outsider with an IQ similar to her daughter's could cause such strong psychological reactions in Paige.
"Actually, you could talk and spend more time with Sheldon."
Linda gently suggested. "You're practically the same age, only a few months apart, and you're both brilliant college students. You should have plenty in common."
"Sheldon?"
Paige let out a short laugh, then her lip curled into an amused, somewhat predatory smile. "Mom, you're absolutely right. I should definitely talk to him."
"Exactly!"
Linda said happily. "You two were already pretty close back in Texas. Now that you've both come to the East Coast—you in New York and him in neighboring New Jersey—you're so close by. You should definitely stay in touch more."
"Okay, go enjoy your time with Joey."
Paige's face regained its sweet smile. She gently pushed her mother, Linda, back toward the ward, then pulled out her phone and initiated a video call with young Sheldon.
"Hello?"
Young Sheldon answered the call reflexively, then looked at the little terror Paige with immediate wariness.
"Let's play chess!"
Paige got straight to the point. "Use your full intellectual capacity! I want you to try to beat me with everything you've got!"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Even though he was intimidated by the little terror, Sheldon still couldn't accept the condescension in Paige's tone. "You think I can't beat you?"
"Have you ever beaten me?"
Paige's mind flashed back to Chuck's earlier demeanor, and she instinctively responded with the same blunt, expressionless tone.
In the video, Sheldon glared at Paige indignantly.
"Come on!"
Paige urged.
Sheldon was angry, but he didn't dare refuse outright. He just wanted to beat Paige to prove himself!
"You lost again!"
"How can you be this bad!"
"You made the exact same mistake! You're hopeless! At this rate, you won't even be qualified to be my practice partner!"
Paige won game after game against Sheldon, but as the matches accumulated, she became increasingly frustrated and started verbally tearing into him.
"Waaah."
After many games, Sheldon's mental state collapsed, his chess play deteriorated, and seeing Paige's verbal abuse escalating, he finally couldn't hold back anymore and burst into tears.
"How could you be like this... Chuck isn't even as mean as you..."
Even in this moment, he subconsciously swallowed the words "cruel" and "vicious" that were about to escape. At this point, he truly felt that the title of "Little Terror" didn't do Paige justice.
"I'm sorry."
Seeing this, Paige's competitive rage, which had been fueled by Chuck's blunt words, subsided slightly. "I shouldn't have compared you to Chuck and the others."
"..."
Little Sheldon's crying stopped abruptly. His lips twitched, his eye twitched. When he realized this was somehow related to Chuck again, he immediately connected all the dots and cried out in anguish and frustration: "Chuck Wolowitz!!!"
The cry echoed throughout the universe!
(End of Chapter)
[Power Stone Goal: 500 = +1 Chapter]
[Review Goal: 10 = +1 Chapter]
If you liked it, feel free to leave a review.
50+ chapters ahead on P1treon Soulforger