An Rong brooded alone for a long while before finally rubbing her face with both hands, deciding it was better to be self-reliant.
She changed into a set of clothes to go out. Not just the coat worn on the outside, but even the underwear worn inside had been bought by Pei Chongxi.
As An Rong looked at herself in the full length mirror, feeling the smooth fabric of her clothes, she suddenly recalled her sophomore year of high school.
She had encountered a group of thugs who climbed over the school wall. They stole her underwear from her dorm room.
Two of them were stuffed into the pocket of the lead thug, who insolently flaunted them at her, before he was struck in the head by a stone thrown by Pei Chongxi.
Where did those two pieces of underwear end up afterward?
An Rong hadn’t asked carefully back then, instinctively assuming they were kept at the police station as evidence. But every time she brought it up, Pei Chongxi would steer the conversation away.
The more she recalled past events, the wider An Rong’s eyes grew.
A sudden loud buzzing sounded in her head, and an uncontrollable suspicion surfaced.
Could Pei Chongxi have secretly kept them?
But that was far too bizarre and perverted. Lacking proof, An Rong warned herself not to blame Pei Chongxi based on mere suspicion.
An Rong muttered under her breath, “If not for Sister Pei, how could I be living in a house like this right now? A person still needs to have a conscience.”
An Rong rubbed her still flushed cheeks. She actually wasn’t entirely averse to being flirted with by Pei Chongxi.
They used to share a blanket in the past, and she would initiate kisses with Pei Chongxi too, but that was mostly out of a friend’s affection.
Now that she was suddenly treated in a way that clearly exceeded friendship, An Rong had no experience, didn’t know whether to push her away or get angry, and was left in a total state of confusion.
It wasn’t until she left the villa area that An Rong managed to sort out her emotions.
Holding Pei Chongxi’s old phone, she opened the navigation map, it was a two kilometer walk from here to the nearest bus stop.
An Rong pulled her coat tightly around herself. She wore a mask covering the lower half of her face, terrified that others would spot the wound on her lip, an obvious case of overcompensating.
In the past, to save money, she had walked much longer distances. Waiting in the biting cold wind, An Rong boarded the bus and transferred several times before arriving at a commercial center closest to the villa district.
The overwhelming hustle and bustle nearly drowned her.
She grumbled in her heart: If someone asks about my education, I’ll just say I graduated high school. They shouldn’t ask me to show a high school diploma, right?
An Rong stood in front of a grilled fish restaurant.
She had worked in a grilled fish restaurant before and had experience.
“Hello, excuse me, are you hiring waitstaff here?” An Rong stopped a middle aged woman wearing a uniform.
She offered a bright smile, her two drooping pigtails tied with little cherry patterned hairbands. She wore a coat that clearly looked expensive, with a silk bow tie of the same color tied at the collar of her white shirt inside, looking every bit like a well to do young lady.
The middle aged woman paused, scanning An Rong up and down. “You want to apply for a waitress job?”
An Rong smiled timidly. “Um, are you short on hands? I have experience from before.”
The middle aged woman looked at her closely. “We’re not short on people right now. What’s your educational background?”
An Rong felt guilty and flushed. “I… I graduated high school.”
The middle aged woman repeated, “High school graduate… Why didn’t you keep studying?”
An Rong pursed her lips. “My family didn’t have the money.”
The middle aged woman went silent and turned back to ask the store manager.
The manager shouted a few words from inside, and the middle aged woman returned, saying, “Nowadays everyone orders by scanning QR codes on their phones, so we don’t need that many waitresses. Tell you what, leave your phone number first. If we’re short staffed, our manager will call you.”
“Oh, okay.” An Rong held out her phone with both hands and wrote her number down on a sticky note.
The middle aged woman remarked, “You don’t look like someone who needs to work. Using such a good phone, your family really spoils you, huh?”
An Rong had never liked being probed, so she lowered her head and said, “I just want to earn my own money.”
“Sigh, it’s not my place to say, but you young girls should study more. Only by studying more can you get a good job.” The middle aged woman pulled An Rong along and babbled a few more lines before An Rong found an opportunity to slip away and free herself.
She asked at several other stores later. Some indeed lacked staff, but the work involved heavy manual labor in the kitchen.
The store manager would take one look at An Rong and immediately say she wasn’t suitable.
An Rong protested, “I work very efficiently!”
The 1.8 meter tall manager looked at An Rong and said, “A clean, neat girl like you should go be a clerk in some company.”
An Rong gave a dry response, “Okay.”
Several hours passed, and she failed to find a single place that would hire her.
Standing in the huge shopping mall, An Rong temporarily felt the urge to give up.
Just as that pretty lady had said, why bother going out to look for a job? Wouldn’t it be great to just be taken care of by Pei Chongxi? But the moment she thought of that overly deep, savage kiss, An Rong shuddered all over.
An Rong walked toward a boba shop with a queue.
“Hello, miss, what would you like to drink?”
Just as An Rong opened her mouth to ask if they were hiring, the person standing behind the register suddenly looked up, staring at An Rong in a daze.
An Rong was also stunned upon seeing a pair of familiar eyes.
She had pulled her mask down to the tip of her nose, exposing most of her face.
“Are you… An Rong?!”
The woman behind the register was filled with disbelief, looking as though she had seen a ghost and wanted to scream.
An Rong blurted out, “You’re Xiao Yan’er!”
Xiao Yan’er was their former roommate. After An Rong and Pei Chongxi moved out, they had drifted apart.
Xiao Yan’er used to know that An Rong and Pei Chongxi were struggling financially, so she would occasionally bring local specialties from home for An Rong and buy her meals in the school cafeteria.
Fearing her manager would catch her chatting on the job, Xiao Yan’er leaned forward and whispered, “When you called me before, I thought it was a scammer. You’re not dead?!”
An Rong laughed dryly, “Why are you working here?”
Xiao Yan’er sighed, “What choice do I have? I have a daughter, and everything for her costs money. Just one extracurricular class costs three hundred yuan. So I had no choice but to come out to work, just to save some money for my husband, it’s tough for everyone out there.”
An Rong gave a faint nod.
“How about I treat you to a boba? Call me later if you need anything,” Xiao Yan’er paid with her own phone, winking at An Rong. “It’s work hours right now, so I can’t chat much.”
Xiao Yan’er could only snatch a brief moment to add, “Among all our classmates, Pei Chongxi turned out to be the most successful. A while back, I even saw her on the news donating art classrooms to kids in some mountain region.”
“I mean, we all lived in the same dorm, how is she the only one who became so rich?”
Holding the warm milk tea in both hands, An Rong no longer had any desire to look for a job here.
An Rong responded softly, “Pei Chongxi really is quite rich now.”
“Yeah, I really envy her. If my husband were as rich as her, I’d just lie at home every day spending money, hahaha, endless money to burn!”
“Honestly though, why donate money to mountain kids? Does she just have money to burn?”
An Rong opened and closed her mouth, but ultimately couldn’t squeeze out a single word.
When the queue thinned, Xiao Yan’er pulled out her phone. “Look, isn’t my daughter cute?”
A chubby little girl smiled at the camera. An Rong forced a smile. “She really is very cute.”
An Rong originally wanted to say they could talk after her shift ended, but before she could finish, the other girl was called to the back room by a coworker to boil boba pearls.
An Rong: ?
Holding the milk tea with both hands, An Rong was rendered speechless.
It felt as though she truly didn’t belong in this world, like an extra person who shouldn’t exist.
Standing bewildered amid the crowd, her phone suddenly rang. She hurriedly picked up the phone, thinking a store was calling to offer her a job, only to see the caller ID displayed the name of that pretty lady named Yu.
“Wait… You’re saying your hallucinations have worsened again?”
The therapist sat opposite Pei Chongxi, writing down medical notes with a deep frown.
“Could you please describe the condition of your hallucinations in detail?”
Pei Chongxi remained silent.
“Please try to be candid. We are in the treatment phase.”
The therapist was a curly haired woman in her fifties. She looked gentle and kind, yet possessed an authoritative, highly professional air.
Pei Chongxi recounted everything that had happened that morning in front of the entryway shoe cabinet, word for word.
Even though the therapist had seen many patients and was no stranger to handling visual and auditory hallucinations, the more she listened, the stranger it sounded.
“So you’re saying… you forcibly kissed her, and after she fled and slammed the door, the person you imagined asked your manager to help get her an ID card?”
This had almost exceeded the therapist’s understanding of hallucinations.
Pei Chongxi’s behavior seemed completely rational. As the popular saying went. After becoming mentally ill, she actually seemed much more energetic.
“My lover is willing to appear before me, does that mean deep down she actually still likes me and doesn’t completely hate me? Is there still a chance for us?”
The therapist asked, “Have you really not considered the possibility of schizophrenia?”
Pei Chongxi’s answer was the same as last time. “I’m not considering it at the moment.”
Her response sounded like a polite rejection to an overzealous insurance salesperson.
Pressing her aching temples, Pei Chongxi added, “However, my sleep quality has been quite good recently. I used to never dream of my lover, but ever since the hallucinations started, I occasionally dream about things that happened between us in the past.”
Speaking up to this point, a deeply gentle, happy smile touched the corners of Pei Chongxi’s lips. “Although they aren’t all good memories, at least I can see her in my dreams and in reality. That counts as a good thing, doesn’t it?”
The therapist’s advice remained the same, hoping Pei Chongxi would increase her dosage but she was declined by Pei Chongxi once again.
She was an extremely uncooperative patient.
“Then what is your main request right now?”
Pei Chongxi stroked the necklace on her wrist. “I hope my lover won’t be angry with me. How can I make it up to her and soothe her?”
Emotional issues like this were destined to receive no satisfactory answers in a therapy room.
Deep down, Pei Chongxi didn’t want the hallucinations to disappear either, putting her fundamentally at odds with the doctor’s goal.
“Let’s end today’s session here. I have other matters to attend to, so I’ll be taking my leave.”
Pressing her temples, Pei Chongxi picked up her handbag.
Waiting by the entrance while handling work calls, Yu Shan saw Pei Chongxi leaving in a hurry.
She glanced inside at the counseling doctor who was sighing while typing electronic medical records, then looked at Teacher Pei strutting away in high heels.
“Where are you going? The association has a meeting this afternoon and they hope you’ll attend.”
“I’m not going. Help me decline it. I have nothing to say to those old fools.”
Pei Chongxi stepped out of the elevator and paused by a flower shop on the roadside.
“Please wrap a bouquet of white chrysanthemums for me. I’m going to visit my lover.”
Dressed entirely in black, Pei Chongxi stood at the entrance of the flower shop. Her eyes were cast downward, her attire as conservative as ever, looking as though she were holding a lifelong vow of chastity for a long departed lover.
Although Yu Shan didn’t know the name of Teacher Pei’s deceased lover, she knew that every time Teacher Pei returned from the cemetery, her state would be terrible, either binge drinking or lying on the sofa smoking cigars all night.
Holding the bouquet of white chrysanthemums, Pei Chongxi said softly, “I’m heading to the cemetery. Send me a message if anything comes up.”