Chapter 1

There were six of us in Room 2406, all hospitality management students at the same vocational college.

Apart from He Xiaorui and me, the other four girls were either rich or very pretty.

With our plain faces and ordinary families, the two of us looked like ugly ducklings beside them.

So I kept my distance from those four as much as I could, speaking to them only when necessary.

I knew we weren’t the same kind of people. Their immaculate makeup and expensive clothes left me feeling deeply inferior—and afraid.

I was much more comfortable around He Xiaorui, who seemed to have even less going for her than I did.

If the other four hadn’t disliked her so openly, I think we could have become very good friends.

Hardly anyone at this college took their studies seriously. Xiaorui, who attended every class, handed in every assignment on time, and spent her weekends either working part-time or in the library, was an oddity.

I knew it was because she was determined to pass the transfer exam and move into a bachelor’s degree program.

That might have been why the other four started excluding her.

But the main reason was that, not long after the semester began, He Xiaorui offended another girl in our room: Wen Yanan.

Unlike the meek, timid Xiaorui, Yanan was a flame.

A flame that burned rather than warmed.

She was the child of a government official, and her family had plenty of money. She’d probably been spoiled all her life; everything she said and did carried the entitled temper of a rich girl accustomed to getting her way.

She never bothered to hide whom she liked or disliked.

Her domineering personality made her the undisputed leader of the room, even though she wasn’t our dorm representative.

I remember her birthday fell soon after we returned from the National Day break. The other girls started organizing a collection to take her out for a nice meal.

Only Xiaorui made an excuse and declined.

I found out later that her family was struggling. Perhaps she simply couldn’t bear to spend the money.

Wen Yanan said nothing at the time, but afterward she quite clearly began targeting Xiaorui.

A pampered young lady like her didn’t care what anyone else might be thinking.

The other three followed her lead, joining Yanan in excluding Xiaorui, sometimes openly and sometimes less so.

Every so often, they mocked her in all sorts of ways, too.

Xiaorui loved watching Empresses in the Palace, so they called her Noble Consort Xi to her face and Nanny Xi behind her back.

She didn’t have a boyfriend, which gave them another favorite taunt. “Why hasn’t your darling Fourth Lord rescued you from the cold palace yet?”

The cruelest mouth among them belonged not to Wen Yanan, but to Guo Yingying.

She had Bed Two and was good friends with Liu Lingling in Bed Four.

Both were very pretty. Guo Yingying was even something of an internet celebrity and often livestreamed from our room at night.

On camera, she crooned “sweetie” to the men watching her, her voice sugary sweet.

When she mocked Xiaorui, though, she was vicious.

I remember one time—it must have been during the day—Xiaorui was memorizing vocabulary in our room.

She wasn’t speaking loudly, but Guo Yingying complained that she was disturbing her and sneered:

“What the hell do you study so hard for, day in, day out? With your brains and your looks, what difference will a bachelor’s degree make? Even if you find a job, you won’t earn as much as I do in a single livestream.”

He Xiaorui said nothing. She quietly put her vocabulary notebook away.

But I noticed her eyes had reddened a little.

Later, I went over to comfort her in private.

“It’s all right, Lili,” she told me. “Once I pass the transfer exam and get out of here, everything will get better.”

That evening, Xiaorui, who rarely talked much, did something unusual: she told me about her high school years.

She said she’d actually been a good student, but something had happened at home during her final year, and she’d done badly on the college entrance exam.

Her family hadn’t wanted her to repeat the year, which was how she ended up here.

Now she was determined to transfer to a good university so she could make something of herself through her own efforts.

“What was that line in Empresses in the Palace? It doesn’t matter how other people look down on you. What matters is that you don’t look down on yourself. Lili, I believe the harder you work, the luckier you get!”

She looked at me as she said it, utterly serious, her eyes seeming to shine.

It suddenly struck me that He Xiaorui actually had quite lovely features.

If she learned to put on makeup, she might even be as pretty as Guo Yingying and the others.

Yes, Xiaorui!

You can do it!

You’ll get into the university you want, and you’ll be better than Wen Yanan, Guo Yingying, and all the rest!

Back then, I could never have imagined what would happen.

During the very first set of final exams after we entered the college, Xiaorui was caught cheating on the spot.

And from that point on, the four girls’ bullying only got worse.