chapter 2
chapter 2
Jiang Ning transferred to our school during our second year of high school.
Her family were overseas investors who had donated several teaching buildings to the school board. Despite her mediocre grades, she was naturally placed in the top class and seated beside Xu Xinghe.
“I don’t like her,” Xu Xinghe suddenly said one day while we studied in the corridor.
He was gentle by nature. It was the first time I had ever heard him speak that way about anyone.
“Why?” I asked.
“She keeps leaning against me, borrowing my notes, and pestering me to tutor her.” He frowned slightly. “And she’s always saying strange things to me.”
“Why don’t you ask the teacher to move you?”
He thought about it, then shook his head. “Forget it.”
He came to my side, took my schoolbag from me, and smiled. “What do you want for breakfast tomorrow?”
We walked away hand in hand, laughing and talking, never seeing the hateful gaze fixed on us from behind.
After that, Xu Xinghe became increasingly busy. He was late for several days in a row, and I grew worried.
“Something happened at home,” he explained. “My father was suddenly fired, and we’re having trouble paying my mother’s hospital bills.”
We both suspected Jiang Ning was behind it. But what could we do?
One evening after study hall, I returned to the classroom with an armful of test papers and found Jiang Ning pinning Xu Xinghe against a wall.
“Bring me breakfast for a month,” she ordered maliciously, “and I’ll have the principal add five thousand yuan to your scholarship. Deal?”
Xu Xinghe turned his face away and said nothing.
The next morning, he brought her a portion of the breakfast he had bought for me. Our classmates hooted and teased them. As I took the paper bag he handed me, I glanced back just in time to see Jiang Ning holding a soup dumpling to his lips.
He tried to refuse, but she threw herself against his chest with a brazen laugh.
That summer, I heard that Xu Xinghe had accepted a job tutoring Jiang Ning. The pay was a hundred thousand yuan a month—enough to rescue his family from their present crisis.
I waited for him outside her villa complex beneath the blazing sun. When he finally appeared, I pushed the neatly folded bills from my pocket into his hand.
“Xu Xinghe, don’t beg her for help. I’ve taken more than a dozen commissions. Let me raise the money with you, all right? I don’t mind working harder. You don’t have to ask anything of her.”
By the end, my voice was trembling.
Xu Xinghe and I had grown up together and loved each other for ten years. For the first time, I felt as if he were about to leave me.
He looked at me for a long while, his eyes gentle. Then he pressed the money back into my palm and took my hand to walk home.
“What are you imagining? There’s nothing between her and me. Once my mother gets better, I promise I’ll cut all ties with Jiang Ning. All right?”
I said yes.
But from the corner of my eye, I saw a pink hair tie around the wrist of the hand holding mine.