Chapter 7

A month later, a photograph was laid in front of Liu Lingling and Guo Yingying.

I’d taken it. It showed He Xiaorui walking into a hotel hand in hand with Lingling’s boyfriend.

Lingling’s face first went livid as she stared at it, then her eyes began to redden.

Like a victor surveying her triumph, Xiaorui watched Lingling photograph the picture and send it to her boyfriend, then fumble to call him.

When he answered, Lingling choked out a demand to know what was going on.

On the other end, her boyfriend stammered that, yes, he’d got a room with He Xiaorui a week earlier.

Before he could finish, Lingling hung up and burst into sobs.

She cried that her boyfriend must have been blind—and that she’d been blind, too.

“What did you do to get Lingling’s boyfriend under your spell, He Xiaorui?” Yingying demanded angrily.

Xiaorui looked utterly unconcerned. “Sister Yingying, you livestream for a crowd of men every day. Don’t you understand them yet? All I told Sister Lingling’s pretty boy was that he wouldn’t have to take any responsibility for me. The fool swallowed the bait.”

“You really will do anything, won’t you?” Yingying said coldly. “Throwing yourself away just to get back at us. What’s the point? Lingling’s boyfriend was only using you. They might get back together before long!”

Xiaorui ignored her. Smiling, she took a sheet of paper from her pocket and laid it before the two girls.

I knew the climax of her revenge was coming.

The contempt vanished from Yingying’s face when she saw the paper. She went white.

Lingling let out a cry.

It was a lab report, an HIV test dated a month earlier.

He Xiaorui. Age twenty. HIV positive.

Xiaorui spread the report out in front of Lingling and smiled.

“Your boyfriend doesn’t seem to like condoms. Three for the price of one. That was what I wanted all along!”

I’d helped Xiaorui fake the report using an image I found online.

But right then, both Lingling and Yingying seemed to believe it was real.

“Guo Yingying,” Xiaorui said, “you’ve been sleeping with Lingling’s boyfriend for a while, haven’t you? I suggest both of you get tested immediately.”

The moment she finished, Lingling dropped to her knees and began tearing at her hair, sobbing.

Yingying took a trembling step back. Almost crying, she asked Wang Fang, “F-Fang, where’s the… the nearest hospital?”

Hearing that, Lingling turned to look at her. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the hatred and despair mingled in her eyes.

Through gritted teeth, she said, “Guo Yingying. Guo Yingying. You really did… with my boyfriend? You… why would you do this to me?”

Then she suddenly stood and ran out onto the balcony. Pointing at Yingying and Xiaorui, she screamed, “Why would you do this to me? Why would you do this to me?”

Yingying paid her no attention. She hurriedly gathered her things into her bag, ready to take a taxi to the hospital.

“It’s no use,” Xiaorui taunted. “HIV has a one-month incubation period. A test won’t show anything now.”

Yingying’s eyes were filled with terror. Trembling, she said, “You’re vicious, He Xiaorui. You’re so vicious.”

“I’ve always been heartless,” Xiaorui replied.

Just then, a cry of anguish came from Lingling on the balcony.

Then she climbed over the railing and jumped.

Terrified, I was about to rush out with Wang Fang when Xiaorui caught me around the shoulders. “It’s the second floor. The fall won’t kill her.”

Then she said coldly, “Bitches are such drama queens.”

Winter was approaching, so Lingling had plenty of clothes on. She was barely hurt.

But her hysteria drew a large crowd. School security and teachers all came running.

Calm and unhurried, Xiaorui explained what had happened, then said she’d only been playing a trick on them.

At Yingying’s insistence, she was still taken to the hospital for a test. The result confirmed there was nothing wrong with her.

I’d known all of this already. I also knew that, although Lingling’s boyfriend had gone to a hotel with Xiaorui the previous week, shortly after they entered the room she’d knocked him out with a drugged drink. He’d spent the night asleep on the bed, naked.

When the man woke and saw Xiaorui beside him, he actually assumed he’d just drunk too much.

The school wanted no further trouble and tried hard to hush everything up. But the story of an internet celebrity sleeping with her best friend’s boyfriend spread anyway, along with Xiaorui’s shocking revenge.

Guo Yingying’s account came under relentless attack online.

Lingling broke up with her boyfriend and developed depression.

She seemed to hate Yingying even more than Xiaorui.

One day, the two finally came to blows in our room. Lingling slashed Yingying’s face with scissors, and both eventually withdrew from the college.

Watching Xiaorui turn the tables on them, one act of revenge after another, I couldn’t help believing she might really have been possessed by Zhen Huan.

After everything that had happened, Wang Fang was terrified, too.

Her attitude toward Xiaorui changed completely. With only the three of us left in the room, she was now the one who risked being excluded. She began desperately trying to please us, acting utterly meek and servile.

What happened after that seems to have slipped my mind.

I only remember that a few months later, Xiaorui passed the transfer exam and got into the university she’d wanted.

Which university was it? Why can’t I remember at all?

And after that, Xiaorui never contacted any of us again.

It was as though she had vanished from our world entirely.

Even the other students in our class seemed to have forgotten her.