“No way, Brother Che. What the hell is wrong with Lin Wanwan? She just dumps you out of nowhere?”
“I’m telling you, Lin Wanwan definitely treated you like just another fish in her pond. Listen to me, delete her right now!”
“Relax. I was going to anyway.”
Jiang Che’s face remained blank as he blocked and deleted her in one smooth motion.
His roommate Wang Kai snorted coldly, tossed his phone onto the desk, and leaned back against it with his arms crossed.
On the screen was a post uploaded just one minute ago.
A single photo. A man and a woman pressed their heads close together, smiling sweetly.
Jiang Che didn’t recognize the man, but he knew the girl very well.
Wasn’t she the campus belle he had chased for two years, Lin Wanwan?
There was no caption beneath the photo. She had only tagged a name—Zhang Yang.
You couldn’t even properly tag someone on Moments like that. It was completely unnecessary.
Jiang Che wasn’t stupid. Of course he could tell she did it on purpose.
Wasn’t this basically announcing to the whole world that they were together?
So Jiang Che, just like the other classmates watching the drama unfold, tapped “like,” then blocked and deleted her.
He glanced at Wang Kai, who was still fuming beside the desk, and couldn’t help laughing. “Between the two of us, who exactly got dumped? Why do you look angrier than I am?”
Wang Kai let out an awkward sound, his expression stiff, but he still clicked his tongue and cursed, “How can I not be angry? Brother Che, we’ve been friends since we were kids. If you get dumped, it’s the same as me getting dumped!”
“I told you from the start that woman didn’t look like a good person. If I’d known it would turn out like this, I would’ve dragged you away in our first year and stopped you from doing something so stupid!”
Wang Kai went on cursing Lin Wanwan without restraint.
Everyone at Lincheng No. 1 High School knew that Jiang Che had chased Lin Wanwan for two full years, from first year all the way to third year.
Lin Wanwan never agreed to be with him, yet she never rejected him either. She simply allowed him to stay by her side.
They had even made an agreement. As long as Jiang Che passed all her “tests,” they would officially be together after the college entrance examination.
But now, before the exam had even begun, Lin Wanwan had already run off with another man.
Jiang Che’s face showed no emotion. After Wang Kai finished venting, he unlocked his phone, typed out a new post, and hit send.
There was only one line: [I’m not a doctor. I can’t cure princess syndrome. Wishing you and your beloved a lifetime of happiness.]
He did like Lin Wanwan. That was true.
In the past, he had endured her unreasonable tests because he liked her.
But that didn’t mean she could string him along while publicly announcing her relationship with someone else, trampling on his two years of sincerity.
And now she still expected him to wag his tail and go looking for her?
Was she dreaming?
Jiang Che had grown up with everything going his way. His pride was sky-high.
From the moment Lin Wanwan posted that photo, it was completely over between them.
She already had a boyfriend. If he kept clinging to her, wouldn’t that make him nothing more than a pathetic simp?
Jiang Che let out a faint laugh and stood up to stretch.
He wasn’t going to bark like a dog in this lifetime.
Wang Kai stared at him, stunned by how calm he looked.
When he finally snapped back to his senses and refreshed his phone to see Jiang Che’s post, he exclaimed, “Brother Che, you’re just giving up like this?”
Jiang Che raised an eyebrow. “What else should I do?”
“I’m not saying you should act like a simp. It’s just that you wasted two years. And now you’re just letting that cheating pair off so easily? Isn’t that too much of a loss?”
“Let’s just say my sincerity fed a dog,” Jiang Che replied with a dismissive wave. “I don’t have the energy to argue with Lin Wanwan. The college entrance examination is coming up soon. This isn’t the time to worry about this nonsense.”
That’s what he said aloud, but inside, he couldn’t help swearing.
Just two days ago, Lin Wanwan had accepted the money he transferred to buy herself the latest phone. Today, she was holding hands with another man and announcing their relationship.
She probably even used the phone he bought to post that photo.
Anyone treated like an ATM would find it hard not to be angry.
A nameless fire surged up in Jiang Che’s chest.
Whenever he tried to chat with her, she would reply once out of ten messages at best. Her excuse was always, “I’m studying. I’m busy.”
Jiang Che gave a cold laugh.
To hell with her so-called tests. He was done playing.
Not long after he posted, his Moments was flooded with comments and private messages, but he didn’t read a single one.
Grabbing his phone, Jiang Che walked straight out of the school.
His family had bought him a large apartment in the upscale residential complex across from the school to make commuting convenient.
But in order to chase Lin Wanwan, he had specifically applied to stay in the dormitory and rarely went back to the apartment.
After leaving the school gates, Jiang Che stopped at a convenience store and bought two dozen bottles of beer before heading directly to his apartment.
To say he wasn’t hurt would be a lie.
He had chased her for two years. Long enough that his circle of friends had joked that he must have been cursed, a classic love-struck fool.
But Jiang Che felt perfectly clear-headed.
He could chase Lin Wanwan however he wanted, but there was one condition. She had to be single.
At that thought, his expression turned completely cold.
Back at the apartment, he unlocked the door with his fingerprint and stepped inside.
The curtains were drawn. The living room was dim.
He felt the atmosphere suited him just fine.
Since it was the weekend, Jiang Che stayed in the apartment and drank alone all night.
It wasn’t until the next evening, when his stomach ached from hunger and woke him up, that he staggered out to find something to eat.
He didn’t go to his usual upscale restaurants. Instead, almost unconsciously, he wandered toward the dirty, chaotic snack street behind the school.
He used to come here often with Lin Wanwan. Maybe he still wasn’t used to it. Without realizing it, he had walked back to this place.
As soon as Jiang Che turned into a pitch-black alley, he heard bursts of laughter and curses.
“Get lost! You filthy beggar, don’t touch my trash!”
“Haha, look at her. Scraping through garbage like a dog!”
Several gaudy, delinquent-looking young men surrounded a trash can, pointing and laughing at a figure curled up on the ground. From time to time, they even kicked at her.
The figure was thin and small, filthy from head to toe, her original appearance impossible to make out.
She was desperately rummaging through the garbage.
Jiang Che frowned. Already irritated, he intended to walk around them.
A bunch of human trash. He couldn’t be bothered, and he had no mood to play hero.
But just as he turned to leave, one of the thugs impatiently grabbed the person’s hair and yanked her face up from the pile of trash.
“Damn it, giving you face and you don’t appreciate it?”
Under the dim streetlight, that dirt-covered face suddenly crashed into Jiang Che’s line of sight.
Even with her hair tangled and her face smeared with grime, he recognized her at a glance.
Su Qinghe?
Jiang Che froze in place. His mind buzzed.
He knew her. She was the campus belle, Su Qinghe.
He remembered that during the first-year opening ceremony, Su Qinghe had become famous throughout the entire school with just one piano performance. Her grades were excellent, and she won awards constantly. Later, she was even praised as the “Piano Goddess.”
But hadn’t she gone missing a month ago?
Jiang Che remembered how the school forum had nearly exploded with rumors. Some said she had been kept by a wealthy businessman. Others said she had gone abroad for further studies. Some even claimed she had offended the wrong person and been kidnapped.
She had been gone for a month. How could Su Qinghe be rummaging through a trash can here?
Jiang Che stared at her.
The thug’s rough pulling forced her head up, but her once clear and bright eyes were now empty and unfocused.
She wasn’t looking at the men bullying her at all.
Her eyes… couldn’t see?
Shock flickered through Jiang Che’s mind. What had Su Qinghe gone through in this past month?
“Hey, kid, what are you staring at? Trying to play hero and save the beauty?”