Chapter 116

Chapter 116

Fan Jiangnan had thought it was nothing more than an ordinary campus secret.

Until this exam, when the person who had entered the advanced class just like her, and had once ostracized her, ended up ranking dead last.

Fan Jiangnan knew that girl was not the kind of person who would jump off a building and kill herself because of academic pressure. This had to be connected to that campus secret.

She kept feeling that she ought to know more details than everyone else. For example, the You Ge they talked about-Fan Jiangnan always felt that she should know her.

Maybe from her dreams. Maybe from somewhere else.

She always seemed to see that girl dancing.

But she could not make sense of the details.

It was as if there were an order planted in her mind, telling her she should be in pain, that she should be grieving, even though she could not remember the reason for that pain.

—

Once again, Fan Jiangnan woke from a dream with a start. Her lips pressed into a tight line, and in the end, she went to class alone in silence.

It was already early May. Summer was clearly almost here, yet the morning wind still carried a chill.

Fan Jiangnan zipped up her school uniform jacket. Suddenly, someone patted her on the shoulder.

She turned back and saw the study representative from her class-the one who had nearly been bullied by the school bully.

The two of them were still buddies.

For some reason, Fan Jiangnan felt a pang of loss and envy. She had been lucky enough to stop one case of campus bullying, but it seemed that this was not the one she had wanted most to stop.

She asked Ning Shuo, “What is it?”

Ning Banxian-Ning Shuo’s nickname-told her to hold out her hand. “Someone asked me to pass something on to you.”

Fan Jiangnan froze. A slightly cool fragment was placed in her palm, and a faint warmth seemed to flow through her entire body.

Before there was any time for her to be altered by it, the logic program born from the System was instantly filled in with real thought.

Those nameless pains were peeled back layer by layer, finally revealing the truth she had racked her brain over, yet had only ever managed to glimpse from the outside.

—

Fan Jiangnan had started dreaming from the very first week she entered the advanced class.

Or rather, those could not even be called dreams. They were another stretch of spacetime she had accidentally entered back in the dull reality of her second year of high school, when she scored 667 points on an exam. Only inside the dreams could she remember the memories of the Second Timeline, memories she could not recall in reality.

In the dream, the girl who had no friends made a friend named You Ge.

You Ge was beautiful, and she was smart. When she danced ballet, she was breathtaking.

But later, she died.

Because her leg had been broken. Because she had suffered from depression for a very long time.

When You Ge’s leg was broken while she was still alive and conscious, Fan Jiangnan had been standing right beside her.

The bully crouched next to You Ge and looked at Fan Jiangnan with a mocking smile. “She actually thinks she deserves to have friends?”

How could You Ge not deserve to have friends?

Of course You Ge deserved them.

But Fan Jiangnan was terrified.

She was afraid of the sharp, bloodstained compass in the bully’s hand. She was afraid that if she stepped closer, she would see the shocking wounds on You Ge’s body.

More than anything, she was trapped in a body that had gone rigid, unable to move at all.

Fan Jiangnan had not known that this was called a catatonic response. More than once, she regretted it. In the dead of night, when dreams returned, Fan Jiangnan would often see that dance studio and see You Ge dancing gracefully in the mirror.

Every time she wanted to applaud or rush forward to hug her, the mirror would shatter.

You Ge would stand there with blood all over her face, staring at her expressionlessly.

Before this, Fan Jiangnan had not known why she had suddenly wanted to learn taekwondo. Now she understood: if she had been just a little stronger back then, could she have saved You Ge?

She had always hated her own cowardice, even though in reality, no one had ever condemned her for standing by and doing nothing.

That only made it even more ironic. It was as if no matter what she did, she could never escape that darkness.

Those were things that had happened in another stretch of spacetime. No one knew she had once had a friend named You Ge.

—

Ning Shuo saw Fan Jiangnan standing there in a daze, tears streaming uncontrollably down her face. As he took the fragment back from her palm, he said, “What are you-”

Before he could finish speaking, pain shot through Ning Shuo’s palm.
The lens shattered.

Ning Shuo’s brows drew together almost imperceptibly. He put the shards into his Backpack, hid his injured hand behind his back, and offered Fan Jiangnan a tissue with the other. “What’s wrong?”

Fan Jiangnan stared blankly at him. She didn’t take it, only answered her own question instead. “I… I’m a very bad person…”

“I’m a Bad Person.”

Ning Shuo wasn’t sure whether a plot NPC like Fan Jiangnan, after developing self-awareness, would be the same as a slaughter-type NPC like Mingzhi. Would she still mutate because of a Player going OOC?

He gave a tentative smile and took his first step toward OOC by comforting her. “Why would you say that? You’ve helped me before. I think you’re a good person.”

“Can you tell me why you think you’re a Bad Person?”

Fan Jiangnan instinctively tried to hide herself. She shoved him away and was about to leave when she heard the person beside her suck in a sharp breath.

She remembered that she had trained in taekwondo. Thinking she had hurt him with that shove, she hurriedly looked him over.

Then she saw the blood running down Ning Shuo’s fingertips.

Fan Jiangnan froze. She… she had made him bleed.

Seeing her stunned, Ning Shuo instead tucked his hand behind his back and forced a strained smile. “It’s fine. It wasn’t your fault.”

[It really wasn’t her fault, right???]

[Who are you putting on that pitiful act for? Ohhh~ setting another trap, are we?]

Fan Jiangnan grew anxious and wanted to drag Ning Shuo to the infirmary, but Ning Shuo really was like some kind of study machine. “Morning reading is about to start. We should hurry.”

“You’re just going to ignore your injury??”

“A couple of bandages will do. It’s nothing serious.”

As if.

It was his right hand that was injured. Science-track students had to do a lot of problem sets, and the sight of Ning Shuo awkwardly writing with his left hand was honestly hilarious.

But in Fan Jiangnan’s eyes, believing herself to be the culprit, that hilarity only made her heart ache more. “It’s all my fault. If not for me, you wouldn’t have ended up like this.”

Fan Jiangnan explained what had happened to the teacher, then switched seats with Ning Shuo’s NPC deskmate so she could help him put on bandages.

Ning Shuo comforted her. “It’s really fine. It’s just a little blood. What King doesn’t bleed and sweat?”

He went further OOC, then observed Fan Jiangnan’s reaction.

Fan Jiangnan burst out laughing. “How did I never notice before that you were actually pretty funny?”

Success.

In other words, an NPC who had developed self-awareness through a Water Moon Mirror Fragment had a very low chance of mutating because of a Player going OOC.

They were essentially the same as Luo Li now, just without any special abilities.

Ning Shuo was thinking one thing while acting out another.

To other people, this peaceful little scene was utterly blinding.

Take Ning Wang, for example. Yesterday, he had run seven or eight laps, then followed Wen Nuan around the school building all day searching for Schrödinger’s family fortune. In the end, he still had to keep up the excuse to Wen Nuan that the fortune must have been hidden by Jiang Shixian, finally managing to fool her into going back.

Seeing Ning Shuo chatting and laughing with Fan Jiangnan, Ning Wang stepped forward and said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, “What are you two talking about? You look awfully happy.”

At the sound of his voice, Ning Shuo instinctively pulled his hand back.

History always repeated itself.

The last time there had been a scene like this was when Ning Shuo and Rao Lin were newly married and pretending to consummate the marriage, only to be caught red-handed.

And now, even though he was only getting close to Fan Jiangnan to draw her out, looking at Ning Wang somehow gave him the inexplicable guilty feeling of facing the lawful wife.

Fan Jiangnan saw Ning Wang too. She immediately stepped in front of Ning Shuo. “We’re in the classroom right now. You can’t just hit him whenever you want.”

Ning Wang looked perfectly at ease, keeping his voice low enough that only the three of them could hear and the other NPCs wouldn’t. “Classmate, this is a little fun between me and my brother. How could it count as me bullying him?”