Chapter 2

It was a long story, but I had been able to see those floating comments since I was little. Back then, I had no idea what they were.

I told Gran I could see things no one else could.

She marched me straight to a spirit medium, made me sit through a shamanic ritual, and asked if I was cured.

Gran raised me. She was the person who loved me most in the world. Seeing her so worried about me that she could barely eat broke my heart, so I lied and said I was better.

But I could still see the comments.

They did not affect my life much, though. I had been practically illiterate since childhood. I hated studying and could not recognize half the words.

Sometimes, in secret, I wondered if I was intellectually disabled.

Over the past two years, my parents had made money in construction and brought Gran and me to live in the city.

Gran said, “Taozi, now that we’re in the city, you study hard, you hear? I heard all the kids who go to college get computers. We’ll buy you one too—a good one. I asked around. It’s called an Apple, ain’t it? Gran’s saving up for you.”

Her warm, rough hand rubbed my face hard. Her eyes brimmed with love, as if I were the most precious treasure in the world.

After my parents left the countryside, they had my little sister. The three of them had built a happy life together.

They treated Gran and me well after we moved in, but we had not lived together while I was growing up. I could feel the awkward distance between us.

Affection was not something that sprang up overnight.

In my heart, Gran was still the only person I could truly depend on.

Her hopes for me were so high that I lay awake all night, terrified she would discover I was stupid.

Fortunately, it turned out I had only been too playful before. My intelligence was perfectly normal, and after studying hard for a while, my grades improved noticeably.

Just as I was celebrating in private, the comments, absent for so long, appeared again.

At last, I realized this world was one enormous romance novel.

And I, Yu Taozi, was the vicious supporting girl from the countryside: a greedy clown who would be driven out of school by the male lead for making the heroine cry, then crushed by the second male lead and discarded as cannon fodder.

Damn his daddy, damn his mama, damn his uncle, and damn the weasel living beside his ancestral grave!

I, Yu Taozi, a simple country girl, wanted only to study hard, become an educated person, and get into a good university!

For several days after the mistress fiasco, Zhou Fanjun kept trying to approach me.

He wanted me to clear his name, since everyone now thought he was trashy.

If he offered to keep a female classmate and she greedily accepted, he would merely be the novel’s future scumbag CEO heartthrob.

But if he bullied a country girl and humiliated her with money, then he looked like a genuine piece of filth.

The school heartthrob’s popularity had plummeted overnight. Of course he was anxious. Of course he wanted me to restore his reputation.

But I, Yu Taozi, was literate now. I could read the comments, and I absolutely had to stay away from the main cast.

One day before school let out, Zhou Fanjun tried to block my path again.

I stood in the classroom doorway and watched him approach. In a flash, I raised my hand, ready to slap my thigh.

Zhou Fanjun shuddered from head to toe and grabbed my wrist.

“Yu Taozi, don’t get worked up.” Through clenched teeth, he said, “Could you please not slap your thigh?”

I said, “Damn your uncle! I’m trying to go home! Why won’t you let me leave? Is there no justice left in this world? Help, I’m being bullied! Won’t somebody do something? Someone in charge! Someone in charge! I demand an explanation!”

Yes, he was still naive. I could shout without slapping my thigh. It lost a little of the rhythm, but otherwise made no difference.

Zhou Fanjun clapped his other hand over my mouth.

“Stop shouting. I’m begging you.” On the verge of a breakdown, he said, “Can we please just talk?”

I had helped Gran with farmwork since I was small and was plenty strong, but he had practiced taekwondo from childhood and loved basketball and swimming. He was built like an ox and no weakling himself.

So we began wrestling in a perfectly even match.

Just as the struggle reached fever pitch, a sob came from the corner of the classroom.

Yao Yao’s nose and eyes were bright red. Tears pattered down her cheeks, each one bigger than the kernels I rubbed off corncobs back home.

“Zhou Fanjun, you’ve gone too far. I’m still standing right here. What do you take me for?”

She choked the words out, her reddened eyes fixed on us.

Honestly, I was deeply relieved.

See that, Gran? I’m not stupid. The real fool is somebody else.

I was practically tearing Zhou Fanjun’s hair out, and she thought we were caressing each other with passionate tenderness.

“I’ll explain later,” Zhou Fanjun said, harried beyond belief.

Yao Yao came over to us, crying. “Now that it’s come to this, what is there left to explain?”

She turned her gaze on me. Looking as though she might shatter, she lifted her chin and said proudly, “I wish you both happiness.”

What the hell? What did she have to be so proud about?

Having delivered her devastating line, she spun around and left. The student guarding the door did not dare stop her after seeing that.

Quick as lightning, I stuck close to her back like someone slipping through a subway gate without paying and squeezed out with her.

Zhou Fanjun hurried after us. He looked back and forth between the two of us, unable to decide whom to chase first.

I had vocabulary words to memorize at home. Like I was going to let him catch me!

I hoisted Yao Yao onto my shoulder, laid her sideways across the corridor like a speed bump, then turned and ran.