“…It’s true that you won the spot in this competition, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re the most suitable candidate.”
“Sometimes we have to consider the bigger picture, don’t you think?”
“It’s not that I’m saying your watercolors are bad—it’s just that most of the judges for this competition come from oil painting or traditional Chinese painting backgrounds, so there’s bound to be some bias in their scoring.”
“This is an unspoken rule everyone knows. You’re just too young and don’t understand these things yet.”
“How about this—Sun Miao, the second-place winner, specializes in oil painting. She’s a better fit for this competition’s requirements than you… Sui Mi? Sui Mi, I’m talking to you!”
Behind the desk, the academic advisor rambled on, having gradually shifted from subtle hints to outright suggestions.
Yet the girl sitting obediently in front of the desk, eyelashes lowered, appeared to be listening attentively, but was clearly absent-minded, her thoughts wandering somewhere far away.
The advisor raised her voice, frowning, trying to look as stern as possible.
“Sui Mi, I’ve said all this. What have you decided?”
The girl seemed to snap back to reality, pausing for a few seconds. “Oh.”
…What does “oh” mean?
Why is she like those higher-ups—asking him a yes-or-no question and getting an “or” back?
The advisor crossed her other leg, tapping the pen in her hand against the desk, and asked with her last shred of patience: “So you agree to give up your competition spot to Sun Miao?”
Sui Mi didn’t answer. She just blankly moved her hands resting on her knees again.
Her fingers were slender and pale, but there were two obvious red marks on the webs of her hands—clearly from pinching.
Sui Mi said nothing and pinched herself yet again.
It hurt quite a bit.
So she wasn’t dreaming.
But how could this not be a dream?!
An hour ago, she had inexplicably woken up on the single bed in her dorm, staring blankly at the blackout curtains for a while.
Then she received a call from her advisor, and, completely bewildered, made her way across the Jing University campus to the administrative building’s office, where the advisor brought up the spot for the Hualing Cup Painting Exhibition.
After repeated confirmation, Sui Mi had finally, slowly, come to accept one reality.
She had been reborn.
No natural disaster, no man-made catastrophe.
It happened right after she handed the divorce agreement, drafted by her lawyer, to Xi Jianbai when he came home from work.
She watched as Xi Jianbai silently took it, lowering his eyes to stare at the divorce agreement as if studying it carefully.
Not wanting to disturb him, Sui Mi felt she’d resolved a major problem. Relaxed in body and mind, she walked into the bedroom and opened her suitcase to start packing.
Clothes and jewelry—she crammed them all in, willy-nilly.
The things she couldn’t be bothered to move, she simply abandoned.
Before Sui Mi could even feel nostalgic about leaving the master bedroom she’d lived in for over three years, she heard familiar footsteps outside the walk-in closet, slightly more hurried than usual.
She turned to look.
Xi Jianbai appeared at the doorway, lips pressed thin, fingers clenched tightly around the snow-white agreement, the knuckles faintly white.
His light-colored eyes stared straight at her, and in a slightly hoarse, deep voice, he asked: “Have you made up your mind?”
Perhaps it was a matter of angle.
Sui Mi was crouching by her suitcase, looking up at him from below. All the bright light seemed to be blocked out by the man’s high, deep brow bone.
As a result, those usually indifferent eyes seemed steeped in the shadows cast by his long lashes, inexplicably taking on a cold, unfathomable look.
Must be an illusion.
Angles and lighting deceive people—how true that is.
…which made her stiff, serious almost-ex-husband seem oddly sinister, like something dark lurking beneath the surface.
Sui Mi thought this with some amusement, patted the nonexistent dust off her knees, and stood up politely to answer.
“Yes, I feel this marriage is no longer suit—”
She had been crouching too long, and standing up suddenly cut off the blood supply to her brain.
Sui Mi felt a buzzing in her ears, and a black shadow suddenly swept over her vision. She staggered uncontrollably.
Instinctively, she reached out to steady herself against the cabinet door beside her.
Her fingers grasped at the air twice before landing first on a man’s warm, broad palm.
Her vision kept going dark, and in the flickering light and shadow, she saw Xi Jianbai striding forward to catch her—and…
Something clasped tightly in Xi Jianbai’s other palm, its cold silver edge peeking out, a dangling lock glinting.
Sui Mi: “?”
Why did it look like… some kind of restraint… hand… cuffs…?
Her head was spinning.
Sui Mi opened her mouth to ask, her eyelids drooping shut, then opening again.
That dizzying, weightless sensation was rudely and abruptly cut off, as if someone had slammed down a stop button.
Sui Mi lay on a single bed in a dorm room, staring blankly, eye to eye, with the teddy bear plush beside her pillow.
“…”
Sui Mi replayed it all in disbelief one more time.
What—so now even low blood sugar could trigger a rebirth mechanism?
Or was this her punishment for asking Xi Jianbai for a divorce?
She must have been lost in her memories for too long.
Behind the desk, the counselor lost the last of his patience and slammed his pen down on the table with a clatter.
The feigned kindness vanished from his face, and he no longer bothered to dress things up in lofty rhetoric.
“Sui Mi, I’ll be straight with you. Forget about the Hualing Cup this time.”
“If you’re sensible and give up your spot voluntarily, Director Sun can still pull some strings for you and get you into other competitions. They won’t be any less prestigious, so it’s a good thing for you too.”
“But if you’re not sensible…”
The counselor gave a chuckle.
“Sui Mi, you’re a young girl—there’s really no need to make things ugly. After all, you’ll still have to take classes and exams in this college, apply for awards and honors. It never hurts to stay on good terms with your teachers, right?”
Having said his piece, he eyed the girl’s fair, soft, obedient-looking face, reached for the thermos at the edge of the desk, unscrewed the lid, and leisurely took a sip of tea.
“Your teacher has been around the block. I’m telling you all this for your own good.”
“Think it over carefully. Don’t let a moment of spite narrow the road ahead of you.”
The office had two desks.
The counselor sat behind the left one; on the right sat another administrative teacher from the College of Fine Arts.
Hearing the counselor’s seemingly well-meaning but actually threatening words, the administrative teacher didn’t so much as change expression, typing away at his keyboard, and chimed in with a laugh, “It’s only because Teacher Liu has such a kind heart that he cares for his students so much.”
Sincere to the point of sounding like pure sarcasm.
In the small office, amid contemptuous gazes and mocking laughter, a sharp malice quietly condensed, bearing down on the slender girl from all sides.
The counselor had used these tactics plenty of times.
Usually, at this point, students would show a look mixing anger and fear. At first they might still talk tough and hold their ground, but they would quickly come to terms with reality and, full of resentment, give up the spots, grades, and rewards that were rightfully theirs.
He set down his thermos and looked at the pitiful, head-bowed girl, about to press his advantage.
But unexpectedly, he met her gaze as she lifted her head—dark almond eyes as clear and clean as if washed with water.
Not a trace of nervousness or fear in them, only a hint of interest and curiosity.
“Director Sun?”
Sui Mi’s eyes curved slightly as she asked, “Because he’s connected to Sun Miao, you want me to give up my spot?”
Her question was blunt.
The counselor glanced at the phone she had flipped face-down on her knee, then only smiled, dodging the question with bureaucratic platitudes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. The department’s decisions are, of course, all made with the college’s overall interests in mind.”
His attitude said everything.
Sui Mi understood. She even had the presence of mind to recall—how had she handled this in her past life?
…It was too long ago, and it didn’t matter. She’d long since forgotten.
Honestly speaking, the Hualing Cup wasn’t some must-attend art exhibition for her.
As the pampered young lady of the Sui family, she had already participated countless times in the most prestigious exhibitions at home and abroad with her work.
A mere university student art exhibition—Sui Mi hadn’t cared about it at first.
But the qualification had landed in her hands, and now they wanted to coerce and cajole her into giving it up to benefit someone else.
That made Sui Mi very unhappy.
Who knew how many students who should have earned that honor had been targeted by these tactics?
Sui Mi unhurriedly took out her phone and began searching through her contacts.
Since this Director Sun wanted to use his position and power to make her give up her spot— what would he do if someone with even more position and power showed up?
She lowered her head, calm and composed, her slender white fingers tapping briskly at the phone screen.
The counselor, however, thought Sui Mi was refusing to give up and making a last desperate struggle. He immediately stood up and reached out to snatch her phone.
“Sui Mi, I’m talking to you. Who said you could play on your phone?”
Sui Mi clutched her phone and dodged backward.
Just as the counselor, looking ferocious, was about to come around the desk—
Knock, knock.
A knuckle rapped on the open door.
A cold, low voice sounded at the doorway.
“Teacher Liu, I’m here to deliver the basketball tournament schedule.”