Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Emotional wounds are the swiftest and most decisive.

After returning from the hotel, I came down with a fever. In the midst of a groggy, fitful sleep, I saw it-the nineteenth year of our lives that Liang Yansheng had forgotten.

Liang Yansheng was blessed with striking looks. Even if he had possessed neither power nor influence, he could have hooked a crowd of lovers with a mere crook of his finger.

But as it happened, he also came from an elite background.

He had a preference for bold, glamorous women; from starlets to supermodels, there were no exceptions.

No one would have ever imagined he could take an interest in a good girl like me-someone who, aside from being disciplined and obedient, had nothing else to offer.

Yet, it was precisely because he had tasted every delicacy life had to offer that he happened to glance my way just as he was growing bored.

Twilight was falling over a secluded path on campus the first time I saw him. A girl was clinging to his arm.

It was Zheng Sijia. She was so beautiful that even though tacky things like “Campus Belle” polls had long since vanished, everyone still instinctively referred to her by that title.

He was generous to a fault. Though he was known by little more than his name, his reputation preceded him throughout the entire school.

Every time Zheng Sijia went out with him, she received gifts worth hundreds of thousands of yuan.

When she wanted to experience the dream of stardom, he simply waved a hand, and Zheng Sijia-despite having no portfolio to speak of-was immediately booked for magazine shoots and endorsements.

As Zheng Sijia clung to him, acting coy, I looked up for a brief moment.

Liang Yansheng’s expression was indifferent. The cigarette between his fingers flickered as it burned; perhaps he was growing impatient.

He tilted his chin toward me, diverting her attention. “Who’s that?”

Zheng Sijia immediately grew wary, reaching out to block his line of sight. “She’s a total good girl. She’s not our kind.”

I lowered my head and hurried past. Liang Yansheng gave a nonchalant smile and said nothing.

Since childhood, I had always been the most reliable “good girl” in everyone’s eyes.

My mother had raised me alone. Her love was wrapped in layer upon layer of rules.

My curfew was always nine o’clock. My hair could not grow past my shoulders. My bangs had to be trimmed above my eyebrows.

Under her suffocating protection, I grew into the most obedient version of myself.

Old-fashioned, submissive, and strictly adherent to every established social rule.

If I borrowed a book from the library, I would drag myself out of bed even if I were sick just to return it, terrified of it being overdue.

I thought my life would continue in this orderly fashion forever.

Until Liang Yansheng reached out his hand to me.

That hand was no different from the forbidden fruit Eve offered to Adam.

Temptation, surrender, and a blurring miasma.

When Zheng Sijia eventually found out, she was astonished. She repeated the same sentiment she had voiced before, only this time, the subject had changed.

She said, “Liang Yansheng isn’t our kind. Don’t let yourself fall for him.”

I told her I wouldn’t.

But later, that unrequited love became like thin iron wires, coiling tighter and tighter around my very bones.