Chapter 7

Chapter 7

But it was all your fault.

Xie Yu.

I thought sweetly to myself.

You were the one who smiled at me. You were the one who let me go to your house. You were the one who gave me that pendant…

It was your gentleness that fed all those unspeakable, filthy thoughts of mine.

-It was all your fault.

I sank into that false sweetness.

Until one day.

I saw Yu Xue get into Xie Yu’s car.

Through the crowd of students leaving school,

I watched as she and Xie Yu got in, one after the other.

Classmates passed by in twos and threes. Someone recognized the car and started whispering.

I stood frozen in place.

Huh?

Why?

Why?

Why why why why why why why-

The car drove away.

I stood by the road,

keeping the perfectly normal expression of a student who had just gotten out of school.

I got home an hour later than usual.

I put down my schoolbag.

Then went to the kitchen to cook.

I threw something together.

Then I tasted it.

I almost threw up.

I’d added sugar instead of salt.

My throat was cloyingly sweet.

But my heart ached in sharp, twitching spasms.

As if it were fighting my throat.

It was bitter beyond belief.

I tossed and turned, thinking over and over: why?

How could he let someone else ride in his car?

How could he smile at someone else like that too?

Anxious, I bit my nails and opened Yu Xue’s Moments.

I wasn’t her friend.

I couldn’t see a single post.

Then I scrolled through our classmates’ Moments.

Nothing.

So boring I didn’t even want to open them a second time.

My teeth ground together.

Restless, I returned to my bedroom, took out my books, and started doing problems.

I pressed down hard with my pen.

I calculated the same problem again and again.

But when I got to the final step, the answer that appeared was two neat Chinese characters.

Xie Yu.

Densely packed together.

One after another.

I couldn’t tell if it was obsession.

Or a curse.

The next day, I went to school with dark circles under my eyes.

Yu Xue was already there.

A circle of people surrounded her, chattering away, apparently asking why she’d gone home with Xie Yu yesterday.

As I passed by, I heard her saying something, drawing out her words with a deliberate, coquettish lilt:

“Of course it was-”

She suddenly stopped. When she saw me, she tossed her hair.

Yu Xue had permed her long hair into waves. It was very pretty.

Elite high schools weren’t that strict.

I pretended to lower my head and put away my schoolbag, but in reality, I pricked up my ears to listen.

The others urged her, “Come on, tell us.”

“Oh, it was just-”

“Our parents arranged to have dinner together.”

A boy’s smiling voice cut in, gently adding,

“So Yu Xue and I rode together.”

“So that’s all it was-”

A few girls sounded relieved.

So that’s all it was.

-But I was even angrier now.

“Maybe we’ll even have dinner together again in the future~”

Yu Xue twirled a strand of hair around her finger.

Xie Yu smiled politely, then sat down beside me.

“Good morning, Xiaocui.”

“Good morning.”

He looked at me and tilted his head slightly. “You have dark circles again. Didn’t sleep well?”

“It happens sometimes.”

I smiled.

Slut.

I thought to myself.

You clearly gave me a token of love, yet you still go around provoking other people.

Xie Yu.

You’re awful.

Maybe-

Only if I lock you up will you behave?