Chapter 9
Chapter 9
I emailed my advisor and told him that I had lost my admission letter.
He said it didn’t matter, as long as I showed up for registration.
Cen Yuqi helped me change my name, arranged for a new ID card, and then sent me to the hospital.
My wrists were covered in fine lacerations from when I used a knife to cut the ropes. I also had a fractured arm from the impact of the fall, and my cheek had scraped so hard against the jagged rocks that the bone was nearly exposed.
It took several surgeries before the repairs were finally complete.
Every healing period was long and agonizing.
When I first returned to campus, I found myself unable to adapt to that kind of life.
During those three years by Zhou Jinyan’s side, he and his friends had ground my self-esteem and my dreams into the dirt, crushing them and mocking me at will.
They never even treated me as an equal human being.
I was plagued by nightmares. I would dream of Zhou Jinyan seeing some tabloid news about Lu Sisi, his face darkening as he hurled things at my head.
He would pin me down amidst the wreckage, venting his fury without a shred of mercy.
I dreamed of his friends jeering and forcing me to drink until I vomited all over the floor, my gastric juices streaked with blood.
And he would just watch me coldly, saying, “Useless.”
That wasn’t the life I wanted.
It never would be.
I poured all my energy into academic research, spending every holiday and weekend buried in the lab or the library.
It got to the point where my advisor would often sigh to my senior and junior classmates during group meetings, saying he had never seen a student more hardworking than me.
Yet, in the midst of such busyness and exhaustion, my heart-which had been drifting for so long-finally found solid ground.
I knew two years ago that Zhou Jinyan was looking for me.
Many of the leads he followed were cut off by Cen Yuqi.
She told me, “Focus on your studies. Pursue your dreams and your career. I’ll handle everything else.”
I once asked her why.
Cen Yuqi fell silent for a long time before asking me, “Do you know how I broke my leg?”
She was ten years older than me.
When she was young, she had dreams of her own.
Her parents had left the family estate to her brother to inherit, yet when the company faced a crisis, they tried to force her into an arranged marriage.
In the end, she said nonchalantly, “Since they’re a bunch of useless fools who need me to sacrifice myself just to keep the company afloat, they might as well just let me run the family business.”
Her leg was broken when her brother, driven to a fit of rage, pushed her down the stairs.
That night, she and I sat facing each other on the balcony.
She placed her hand over the back of mine and sighed softly. “If only I had met you sooner.”
“Then you wouldn’t have had to waste three precious years of your life on him for a mere three hundred thousand yuan.”
This time, when I returned to the country, I came back with patent projects under my belt.
A research institute hired me with an annual salary of nine hundred thousand yuan.
That was a figure the young Yu Ning, who had once been at her wit’s end, wouldn’t have even dared to imagine.
Five years later, I accepted the offer calmly, signed the contract, and bought a bottle of red wine to celebrate with Cen Yuqi.
She drank the wine; I drank milk.
My recurring stomach problems had forced me to quit alcohol entirely.
I held my glass of milk and thanked her.
She said, “There’s nothing to thank me for. I just saw my younger self in you.”