“I’m sorry! It’s too dark, and you’re wearing dark clothes—I didn’t see you!”
The young man bent down to help her up, but Zhang Fan sat on the ground, staring at the shattered phone with a look of loss.
It was a gift from her grandmother.
Her grandmother favored boys over girls, and she especially disliked Zhang Fan, the granddaughter who had been foisted upon her.
But the day before her grandmother passed away, she spent eight thousand yuan to buy a knockoff phone and placed it in Zhang Fan’s hands.
Leaving behind one sentence: Live well!
At that moment, Zhang Fan was immersed in the sudden joy and hadn’t noticed anything unusual about her grandmother.
The next morning, her grandmother’s body was already cold.
Although her grandmother had disliked her, she was the only person in this world who was willing to keep her!
Even though Zhang Fan hadn’t liked her grandmother either—no one likes someone who dislikes them.
But at this moment, she was utterly heartbroken.
She let out a “waah” and collapsed onto the ground, sobbing uncontrollably.
All the grievances of these years, all the bitterness, all the pain of never being liked or accepted by anyone—it all burst through like a breach in a dam, and her composure quickly crumbled.
“I’m sorry! Are you hurt anywhere? I’ll call an ambulance!”
The young man’s voice sounded panicked: “Don’t scare me!”
Maybe he was genuinely frightened, and realizing that calling an ambulance would take forever to get through the school gates, he steeled himself, scooped Zhang Fan up in his arms, and rushed toward the school infirmary.
“Let me go, let go!”
Zhang Fan struggled free from his arms and accidentally fell to the ground again.
She stumbled and limped back, picking up the pieces of her phone one by one.
So it was about the phone!
The young man breathed a slight sigh of relief—at least she wasn’t hurt.
“This phone means a lot to you, right? I’m sorry. Can I try to fix it for you?”
He crouched in front of Zhang Fan, and then—”crack”—it sounded like some electronic component had been stepped on.
Uh…
Zhang Fan looked up and glared at him, her eyes quite intimidating in the darkness.
“I… this part can be bought, really!” The young man gave an awkward smile. “I know how to fix it. I promise I’ll make it look as good as new!”
Seeing how serious he was, Zhang Fan wasn’t the type to push her advantage.
She wiped her tears with her hand and said with a hint of defiance: “So is it ‘fixed to look like new’ or ‘bought to look like fixed’? This phone of mine isn’t easy to find on the market!”
“Huh?”
The young man was momentarily confused. He took out his own phone to check and noticed that the apple logo on the back cover had two leaves.
A knockoff!
He didn’t mock Zhang Fan for it. Instead, he swapped the two SIM cards and handed his own phone to Zhang Fan: “Use mine for now. Once I fix yours, we’ll swap back!”
Staring at the phone being offered, Zhang Fan looked at the young man as if he were an alien creature.
“Your phone… you’re just letting me use it like that? Without formatting it or anything?”
In an instant, the young man understood what she meant.
“Ahem! It’s fine, just use it. There’s nothing shameful on it.”
“But I have things! You fix the phone, but don’t go snooping around!”
The young man laughed: “Deal!”
He extended his hand: “Get up. If the dorm gates lock soon, we’ll have to sweet-talk the auntie for ages.”
He walked her all the way to the dormitory entrance, watched her go inside, and only then turned and left.
“The dormitory door was closed. She tried the handle—locked.\n\nAt this hour, the girls in the dorm were absolutely never asleep this early.\n\nOne would be on the phone with her boyfriend until late into the night. One would be binge-watching dramas. One would be doing her skincare routine. And the last one might be studying.\n\nNo matter what, none of them ever went to bed at this time!\n\nShe knocked on the door. No response.\n\nIf she kept knocking, she’d get cursed out by other dorms that had already settled in for the night. If she didn’t knock, she couldn’t get in, and she couldn’t sleep.\n\n”Hey, is this Qin Jiawei? Your girlfriend saw you buying stuff at my stall today, and she got jealous. Now she’s locked me out of the dorm. Could you give her a call and explain, please?”\n\nThe moment the words left her mouth, the door swung open.\n\n”Zhang Fan, are you insane?”\n\nJiang Manning’s roar echoed down the entire hallway.\n\nBut Zhang Fan just stood there, her phone’s screen not even lit up.\n\n”Excuse me, thanks!”\n\nShe reached out, pushed past Jiang Manning, and went inside to grab her toiletries. “I’m going to wash up. You’d better not close the door. Otherwise, I’ll personally go to Qin Jiawei tomorrow and tell on you. I don’t believe he trusts you that much!”\n\n”You!” Jiang Manning glared at her, but couldn’t find the words.\n\nNo one paid her any mind. They all lived in the same dorm—who was she to act superior?\n\nAfter years of swallowing her pride, Zhang Fan was done being a pushover.\n\nAfter a quick wash and brush, she returned to her bed. The tiny bed creaked at the slightest movement. Before, she’d lie there, barely daring to move.\n\nEven now, turning over was done with caution.\n\nThinking about the two hundred thousand in her account, she couldn’t stand this life for another second.\n\nTomorrow, she’d go look at apartments!\n\nShe opened her phone, instinctively reaching for Douyin, only to find the interface incredibly clean. Aside from a mobile game and basic social apps, there was nothing.\n\nBetter not mess with someone else’s phone.\n\nFor once, she went to bed early. In the middle of the night, she heard a clatter of dings in her head.\n\n[Ding! Reward: a 360-degree phone stand! Stored in the Item Warehouse!]\n\n[Ding! Reward: an off-season down jacket! Stored in the Item Warehouse!]\n\n[Ding! Reward: a canvas tote bag! Stored in the Item Warehouse!]\n\n[Ding! Reward: a spinning pinwheel bubble machine! Stored in the Item Warehouse!]\n\n…\n\nThe sound kept going, and going, until Zhang Fan’s dreams were filled with mountains of products, nearly drowning her.\n\n”Ha!”\n\nShe shot up in bed. Turning around, dawn was already breaking outside the window.\n\nThe phone must have been fixed. The Spatial Warehouse was already piled high with all sorts of junk.\n\nBy the end, there was even a full cosplay outfit, and figurines of various characters stacked like mountains.\n\nOh my god, that man was still scrolling Douyin—didn’t he need to sleep?\n\nZhang Fan was about to lose it. She had to get her phone back.\n\nJust as she was about to call, she suddenly realized she didn’t even know his name, let alone his number.\n\nNo choice. She’d have to find his friends through his contacts.\n\nShe scrolled through and spotted a contact labeled “Best Bro,” figuring it must be someone close to him, right?\n\nThe call connected, but she was stumped. How was she supposed to explain this?”}
“Hello, I’m Zhang Fan. Yesterday your friend smashed my phone, and he said he’d fix it for me… Um, I don’t know who he is, could you tell me?”
The person on the other end of the line was clearly taken aback for a moment, then replied with a voice that was both amused and exasperated: “Sorry, that’s hard for me to tell you!”
You don’t even know yourself—I have so many friends, how could I possibly know who it is?
“Uh… his phone is here with me. How about you take a look at it and see if you recognize it?”
“Oh, in that case, sure! The football field!”