Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Before I saw Gu Yushi again, I had imagined countless times what she must look like now.

I thought bad people always got what they deserved. I thought she must be living miserably, broke and down on her luck.

But she wasn’t.

In the videos she posted, today she was at Cheval Blanc in the Maldives, where rooms cost tens of thousands a night. Tomorrow she had flown to Iceland to watch the aurora. The day after that, she was on the West Coast, speeding along in a convertible under the sunset.

In her latest photo, she was sitting inside a black Rolls-Royce, dressed in a Chanel suit, smiling boldly at the camera without the slightest trace of worry on her face.

She looked like she was doing so well.

But why did she get to?

I stared hard at her smiling face on my phone screen. Slowly, that smile turned into the face of her in a school uniform, laughing as she slapped me across the face again and again. When her hand hurt, she let the people behind her take over. She stood to the side, giggling as she aimed the camera at my swollen, bleeding face.

“Smile, Li Yan. Aren’t you always so eager to flirt? Why aren’t you smiling now?!”

She yanked my hair up hard, the curve of her smile deepening.

“Smile!”

Gu Yushi’s malice toward me began when the boy she liked gave me a birthday present.

On my birthday, he gave me a bag. I heard his mother had brought it back from Hong Kong, and that it cost over thirty thousand. I was so frightened I refused to take it no matter what. In a fit of anger, he threw the bag at me and said if I didn’t want it, I could throw it away.

I was standing there helplessly with the bag in my hands when Gu Yushi walked in.

She snatched it from me, looked at it for a while, then suddenly smiled. But no matter how you looked at that smile, it was twisted enough to send a chill down your spine.

“I asked him for this bag for three months, and he never gave it to me. Turns out he was saving it for you.”

She looked up at me. The look in her eyes made every hair on my body stand on end.

“Li Yan, you’re pretty impressive.”

After that, Gu Yushi started targeting me nonstop.

The thing I feared most every day was the end of school, because I never knew when she would bring people to block me in the bathroom. After that came the beatings and humiliation.

During that period, I lived in constant fear and had nightmares every night, but I didn’t dare tell anyone.

My parents had divorced when I was little. Both of them had new families. Only my grandmother, whose leg was lame, was willing to take me in.

She ran a braised-food shop, getting up before dawn and working late every day to pay for my schooling.

I was one of the few students at that private school who had been specially admitted with a tuition waiver because of excellent grades.

I didn’t dare tell the teachers, because Gu Yushi threatened me with my grandmother. And I knew the school would turn a blind eye for Gu Yushi, whose family had money and influence.

All I could do was study even harder, thinking that if I got into a good college soon, I could leave this place behind.

But in the end, I didn’t even manage to hold on to that tiny bit of hope.

The night before the college entrance exam, Gu Yushi locked me in the bathroom again. This time, she had people strip off my clothes and take photos.

I was locked in that bathroom all night and couldn’t leave, so I didn’t know that those photos of me had appeared in every local group chat that very night.

I also didn’t know that Gu Yushi had deliberately sent someone to my grandmother’s shop to show her those photos.

My grandmother was frantic, but she waited and waited, and I still didn’t come home. Dragging her lame leg, she stumbled all the way to the school to look for me.

Then, because she was too anxious and didn’t look carefully while crossing the road, she was hit and run over by a heavy truck driven by an exhausted driver. She was gone on the spot.

I only learned the news the next morning, after a school janitor let me out.

Stars burst before my eyes. My head spun. I collapsed on the floor, my mind completely blank.

When I woke up, I was already in the hospital.

In a single day, I lost my chance to change my fate through the college entrance exam, and I lost the grandmother who had depended on me as much as I depended on her.

I barely remember anything about what happened afterward. Maybe my body was in too much pain and activated some kind of self-protection mechanism, sealing away that part of my memory. I only remember that a teacher came to see me, and I heard her say regretfully to someone in the hallway:

“She had the makings of a Tsinghua or Peking University student. What a pity.”

Nothing happened to Gu Yushi. She was merely called to the principal’s office and scolded.

Because her father was a well-known local entrepreneur and major taxpayer, even the principal didn’t dare offend him.

I used the last of the money at home to arrange my grandmother’s funeral. I had no money to repeat senior year, so I could only find a factory job and work to support myself.

Meanwhile, Gu Yushi was sent to the United States for college, beginning her brilliant life.

…

I sat on my bed. The bedroom lights were off, and I stared blankly at the pitch-black ceiling.

During those hardest years, I often stared into space like this.

In truth, life got much better later. After I started making money, I got an adult bachelor’s degree. I saved up some money and opened my own online women’s clothing store, modeling the clothes myself. Luckily, I was good-looking, and I caught the market at the right time. Business grew bigger and bigger, and by now I had achieved financial freedom.

I thought I had forgotten everything from the past. I thought I could start a new life.

But the instant I saw Gu Yushi’s face, I suddenly understood.

It turned out I had never let it go.

I hated her. I hated her so much it hurt.

I sat there until dawn. At last, with stiff fingers, I tapped open the account she had tagged.

It was a male profile picture made up of a few simple lines. There wasn’t a single video posted.

But I still figured out who he was very quickly.

Qin Xing, Gu Yushi’s fiancé.

The Gu Family had nearly gone bankrupt while she was in college. In the end, they had come back to life through a marriage alliance. The Qin Family was the powerful backer the Gu Family had latched onto.

That was also the guarantee behind Gu Yushi’s current life of luxury.

Gu Yushi no longer recognized me. It was truly laughable. She had once pushed me into hell with her own hands, and her smiling face appeared in every nightmare I had. Yet she had already forgotten me, and even tagged Qin Xing in my comment section to come take a look.

I tapped the chat icon beside Qin Xing’s profile picture. After thinking for a moment, I sent him a private message.

“Are you there?”