Chapter 10

Chapter 10

During Chinese class that afternoon, Teacher Zhuang called on Yuan Lina, who was sleeping soundly, to answer a question. Naturally, she couldn’t answer it. He tore into her, saying she disrespected teachers and had no upbringing. Yuan Lina suddenly snapped and cursed him right back, saying Teacher Zhuang was the bastard who had a father but no one to raise him.

She was furious, and almost rushed up to the podium to hit him.

I had the vague feeling that she seemed even more unhinged than she had been a few days ago. I wondered if what happened yesterday-Feng Wendong teaching the PE teacher a lesson right in front of her-had affected her somehow.

That incident had destroyed Yuan Lina’s sense of order.

That night, Teacher Zhuang was beaten up on his way back to the teachers’ dormitory. The surveillance cameras hadn’t caught who did it, but everyone already had an answer in their hearts: Feng Wendong.

Yuan Lina still came to class in heavy makeup, but this time, everyone in class kept their distance from her.

No one talked to her. No one ate with her. Even when test papers were passed from the front to the back, the boy sitting in front of her tossed hers behind him as if he were disgusted by garbage. Because he didn’t want to turn around and hand it to her, he accidentally threw the paper into the trash can.

But Yuan Lina didn’t say anything. It wasn’t as if she would have written anything on that paper anyway.

After observing her for two days, I finally worked up the courage to walk over to her seat. I took out the different flavors of chocolate I had promised to bring her that day and placed them on her desk one by one, neatly lined up.

I could feel countless pairs of eyes on me. Some people had already started whispering.

The pressure of an environment like this was immense. Even though I was already an adult on the inside, in that moment, under that pressure, I actually found myself thinking, Maybe I should just leave her alone.

“Nana, these chocolates are for you.”

“Nana?”

“I think calling you that makes us sound close.”

“What the hell is wrong with you now?”

Ignoring her cold attitude, I plopped down in the empty seat beside her. “I want to ask you something. Do you really like Feng Wendong that much?”

“What else?”

“Feng Wendong comes from a very good family. If you can’t even get into college, there’s no way his family will ever accept you in the future.”

“What kind of nonsense are you spouting?”

“I’m saying you can’t just keep giving up on yourself like this. You should work hard to become someone worthy of Feng Wendong. Only then will the two of you have a future.”

Originally, I had planned to use the bait of a beautiful future with Feng Wendong to get Yuan Lina to study hard and return to the right path.

I hadn’t expected Yuan Lina’s love-addled brain to be even worse than I imagined. She said, “Are you sick? How could Feng Wendong and I possibly have a future? I know exactly where I stand.”

“Huh?”

“He’s just playing around with me.”

“Then why are you still with him?”

“Because I like him. Even if I can only be with him for one day, I’m satisfied. Every extra day is another day to be happy. As for the future, I’ll think about it when it comes.”

Before this, I had thought Yuan Lina saw herself as Cinderella, loved by a prince and thus transformed into a princess. Only now did I realize how completely wrong I was. In her own eyes, she was probably the Lady of the Camellias, willing to lose everything for love.

So clearheaded, yet so utterly beyond saving!

“Then… don’t you want to become someone who can stay with him for a long, long time?”

“I’m already the girlfriend who’s stayed with him the longest.”

So you’re actually proud of that, huh?

“What about your future?”

“I’ll live until I’m eighteen, then die. I don’t have a future.”

What wonderfully edgy, melodramatic teenage angst…

I really wanted to record her and play it back for Yuan Lina ten or twenty years from now so she could feel the same secondhand embarrassment and toe-curling cringe I was feeling in that moment. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t even live that long.

I was the one who would die before I turned eighteen.

Seeing my speechlessness, Yuan Lina took the initiative to explain. “He’s the person who’s treated me the best in this world. He’s the only one who would descend from the heavens to save me, so nothing else matters.”

I had been completely baffled by her bizarre train of thought, so I said bluntly, “I’m planning to ask Zhao Linfeng to tutor me and help me improve my grades. Getting tutored alone would be too boring. Come with me.”

“Huh?”

“I think your current situation is very dangerous. There’s a good chance you won’t get into college. Since we’re classmates, I don’t want to see you end up so miserable, so…”

Yuan Lina said, “I don’t need your pity.”

“Oh, so only Feng Wendong is allowed to pity you, but I’m not? Is that it? Why are you so sexist? On one hand, you say no one’s ever been nice to you since you were little, but on the other, you won’t let me be nice to you. Only Feng Wendong is allowed to be nice to you. How is that any different from those gorgeous women who say no one ever pursues them when, in reality, they have tons of guys chasing them and they just don’t like any of them?”

“I don’t feel like talking to you!”

Since she wasn’t interested in the future, I decided to talk about the present instead.

I played my trump card. “Feng Wendong’s birthday is coming up, right? His friends will all be there at his birthday party. You can’t just give him something worth eighty or a hundred yuan, can you? How embarrassing would that be? Come to tutoring with me, and I’ll pay you a fee for keeping me company.”

Yuan Lina didn’t reject me outright the way she had earlier.

I struck while the iron was hot. “Two hundred per lesson.”

Yuan Lina said, “Deal.”

It seemed that when dealing with a stubborn love-addled brain, you really did have to fight poison with poison.