The emotions of young people change easily. One moment, they are upset due to the intrusion of an outsider, and the next, they are filled with joy because of a word from someone they care about.
Xu Tingbai said her cooking was delicious…
On the way home, Lin Qingle’s steps felt much lighter. Every time she thought about the compliment Xu Tingbai had given her before she left, she felt as if she were floating.
And this good mood even lasted into the next day. When Lin Qingle stopped to buy breakfast on her way to school, she even ordered an extra tea egg for herself.
“Qingle.” Near the school gate, she ran into Jiang Shuyi and Yu Tingting, who were having breakfast nearby.
After their visit to the library, she and Jiang Shuyi had reconciled.
Lin Qingle greeted them, “Good morning.”
“Good morning!” Yu Tingting adjusted her scarf. “It’s so cold, my hands are all red.”
Lin Qingle said, “Then hurry up and eat, let’s go back to the classroom quickly. I’m also freezing.”
“Alright, this horrible weather is unbearable.”
The three of them quickly finished their breakfast at the school gate. As they were chatting and laughing on their way into the school, Jiang Shuyi suddenly stopped and waved at someone.
“Dai Rong, good morning.”
Lin Qingle’s steps faltered when she heard that name. She turned her head and saw Yan Dai Rong walking through the school gate at the same time. Their eyes met as Lin Qingle glanced at her.
Yan Dai Rong gave her a cold look, said nothing, and then turned to walk toward the teaching building.
Jiang Shuyi, who had greeted her enthusiastically, froze for a moment. “Huh?”
Yu Tingting, taken aback, widened her eyes. “What the heck, why is she so arrogant? She doesn’t even respond when you greet her.”
Jiang Shuyi said, “What’s going on with her today?”
Yu Tingting replied, “What do you mean ‘what’s going on’? She’s just acting high and mighty! She’s like a young lady with her nose in the air, too good to greet us common folk. You get it?”
Jiang Shuyi scratched his nose awkwardly. “She’s not usually like this. Last time I greeted her, she—”
“She was probably just pretending,” Yu Tingting interrupted. “When she wants to greet someone, she does. When she doesn’t, she doesn’t. You think she’s as nice as Yu Jiayou? They only share a little bit of blood, but they’re totally different.”
Yu Tingting often heard the boys around them complain about Yan Dai Rong, so she wasn’t fond of her and seized every opportunity to talk about her.
Jiang Shuyi shot her a look and said, “Alright, alright, don’t be so loud, someone will hear you. Stop.”
“What if someone hears?” Yu Tingting scoffed, then turned to Lin Qingle. “Qingle, what do you think? Doesn’t she seem two-faced to you?”
Lin Qingle glanced at Yan Dai Rong’s back. Two-faced… That made her think of the conversation she had overheard the previous day at Xu Tingbai’s house.
Yu Tingting pressed, “Qingle, what do you think?”
Lin Qingle looked away. “I’m not familiar with her.”
Yu Tingting teased, “Aww, come on, you two really…”
Since the beginning of school, Lin Qingle had enjoyed peaceful and fulfilling days. She liked this calm feeling—it allowed her to focus on her studies.
But she hadn’t expected that the peace she loved would eventually come to an end.
That day started as just a regular Thursday. Before the first night class, she had returned from the teacher’s office.
The moment Lin Qingle entered the classroom, she felt something strange, as the usually noisy classroom suddenly fell silent. Everyone, either blatantly or discreetly, turned to look at her.
Confused, she instinctively glanced at Yu Tingting, who was sitting in the front row, closest to the door. But Yu Tingting quickly avoided her gaze.
Lin Qingle froze for a moment and glanced at Jiang Shuyi, who was not far away. She noticed that Jiang Shuyi’s eyes flickered slightly, and she seemed to want to say something to her. However, in the end, she lowered her head and said nothing.
Lin Qingle looked down at her clothes—she hadn’t put them on incorrectly…
The class bell had already rung, and this wasn’t a time when students could move around freely. So Lin Qingle didn’t ask further, only sitting back in her seat, still somewhat puzzled.
After sitting down, she secretly used the reflective part of her pencil case to check her face. It was clean, with no smudges or stains.
Lin Qingle put her pencil case down and looked around at the others.
At this moment, everyone around her had their heads down, working on their assignments. No one was looking at her anymore, as if everything that had just happened was just a figment of her imagination.
But maybe, it was just a figment of her imagination…
Lin Qingle didn’t dwell on it any further. She picked up the pen on her desk, intending to start on the test paper, but when she was about to write, she realized she had drawn the wrong auxiliary line for the question earlier. Since she couldn’t find an eraser at the time, she had left it for later. Then, she had been called to the teacher’s office to look at a few test papers, so it had remained unfinished.
“Chen Ning, can I borrow your eraser for a second? I—” Lin Qingle lowered her voice, intending to borrow an eraser from her deskmate. But before she could finish her sentence or even extend her hand, her deskmate suddenly flinched, as if she had been frightened, and moved sideways.
The sudden movement of her deskmate made a sharp scraping sound between the chair legs and the floor, causing the entire class to glance over at them.
Lin Qingle’s hand froze in midair. “…What’s wrong?”
Chen Ning seemed to have been startled. “Huh? Nothing. What did you say just now?”
Lin Qingle said, “I said I dropped my eraser. Could I borrow yours?”
Chen Ning seemed embarrassed by her earlier reaction. She nodded and pushed the eraser over to her. “Here.”
“Thanks…”
Lin Qingle took the eraser and corrected the wrong auxiliary line. When she looked around again, everyone had returned to their own business.
Though she felt a bit strange about the situation, since the evening study session had already begun, she didn’t want to talk. In the end, she just focused on her homework.
But the strange feeling persisted, and she was left feeling quite confused.
It wasn’t until after the first period when the class ended that an unexpected visitor appeared outside the classroom…
“Hey, Lin Qingle, doing homework? Come out for a second—”
Lin Qingle, who was sitting in the middle of the classroom, heard someone calling her from the hallway. She turned to look.
It was Zhang Yikun, leaning against the window, waving at her.
Lin Qingle didn’t like him, and since she had no idea what he wanted, she didn’t intend to acknowledge him. This chapter was copied from novelping.com without permission.
“Lin Qingle, I’m talking to you. Why aren’t you responding? Don’t you have any manners?”
“…”
Seeing that Lin Qingle was determined to ignore him, Zhang Yikun stopped trying to chat with her and directly said, “Hey, is what we talked about on the forum true? Lin Qingle, it must be true, right? The newspapers back then even posted about it. I didn’t expect you, this little girl, to be so tough… Tsk… Don’t tell me, now I’m starting to get a little nervous… Hey, hey, I’m talking to you, can you hear me?”
Lin Qingle originally thought Zhang Yikun was just trying to provoke her, so she planned to ignore him, knowing he couldn’t do anything to her. But then he mentioned something about news and newspapers…
Her heart skipped a beat, and she suddenly had a bad premonition.
“Lin Qingle, your dad is Li Minshan, right? The one who killed someone?” Zhang Yikun’s voice was loud enough for everyone to hear. “I heard that when you were little, you almost followed your dad’s path, is that true?”
Everyone was staring at her.
So that’s why she’d felt strange since entering the classroom—it was because of this.
Lin Qingle’s face immediately turned pale. She hadn’t heard about this for so long, it was a nightmare from the past. She had thought it was a nightmare long gone, but today, in the way she feared the most, it came back.
After that, she didn’t even know how she stood up from her chair. As she walked toward the door of the classroom, her mind was a blur. All she knew was that she couldn’t let Zhang Yikun continue shouting like this, she wanted to stop him.
Zhang Yikun said, “Finally, you’re out. Satisfy my curiosity, will you? Was it really true that you tried to kill the victim’s family’s child just because they came to make trouble?”
Lin Qingle looked at him and gritted her teeth. “I didn’t…”
“But someone who knew the story says it’s true. Your dad killed someone, and then the victim’s wife and daughter came to make a scene. You were just a kid and wanted to kill their daughter with a knife. Wow… no wonder you’re so fierce. It seems like this kind of aggression runs in the family.”
“Don’t say that! I told you I didn’t… I didn’t want to kill her!”
“Fine… you didn’t kill anyone, but the fact is, your dad did, and the news reported it.”
“So what? What are you trying to say?” Lin Qingle felt incredibly embarrassed under everyone’s gaze. She forced herself to speak. “You dug this up just to insult me? Well, you’ve done that. Can you leave now?”
“Dug it up?” Zhang Yikun said, confused. “I just saw it on the forum. I’m not taking the blame for that.”
Lin Qingle stared at him, her eyes red and filled with tears, but none had fallen.
Zhang Yikun frowned. “Whatever, it’s not my fault. Hey, don’t go spreading this around in front of the teachers.”
“Zhang Yikun!” Yu Jiayou came out of the classroom and stood between them. “Stop talking nonsense, go back to your own classroom.”
Zhang Yikun lazily said, “I’m not talking nonsense. Didn’t you see it on the forum? The whole school knows, it’s a hot post.”
Yu Jiayou had indeed seen it. At first, he didn’t believe it, but after seeing the newspaper clippings and many recollections from people who knew about it back then, he had no choice but to believe.
Yu Jiayou frowned and turned to look at the girl behind him, whose eyes were red but whose tears hadn’t fallen. “Qingle, you…”
Lin Qingle didn’t let him finish his sentence. She turned around and walked quickly down the hallway.
She moved fast, passing through the long corridor and heading down the stairs… In that moment, her first reaction was simply to escape. She couldn’t immediately convince herself to return to her seat with a calm expression.
The fear in her deskmate’s eyes, the way Yu Tingting avoided her gaze, Jiang Shuyi’s hesitance to speak, and the strange looks from her classmates…
Everything seemed to pull her back to the way she was when she was little, back in school…