By early evening, the third dining hall at Westbridge University was already packed.
The second-floor à la carte section was filled with the tempting aroma of freshly cooked food.
Compared with the noisy first floor and its large-batch cafeteria dishes, this area was a little quieter. The food was more refined, the prices slightly higher, and orders took a little longer to arrive.
Even so, plenty of students preferred eating here, especially during peak dinner hours, when almost every table was occupied.
Elena sat in a booth by the window, with a modest three-course meal and a bowl of soup spread out in front of her.
There was a serving of roast beef with a rich pepper sauce, a plate of crispy pan-fried potatoes seasoned with herbs, and a side of sautéed seasonal vegetables.
Beside them sat a bowl of creamy beef soup, sprinkled with chopped parsley.
The portions weren’t particularly large, but together they still made for a satisfying meal.
Elena, however, was starving.
She had eaten only once that morning. After classes, she had gone straight to dance practice and trained for most of the day without eating again.
She had burned through an enormous amount of energy.
If she didn’t get a proper meal into her stomach soon, she was going to pass out.
Her bank balance was painfully low, but she still had more than a thousand dollars left on her campus dining account, so food wasn’t exactly a problem.
The peppery roast beef made the tip of her nose glisten with tiny beads of sweat. Her lips had turned even redder from the heat, and every now and then she took a sip of the soup to cool her mouth.
The last rays of sunlight streamed through the glass windows, casting a soft golden glow over her lowered profile and slender neck. Her long, thick lashes left faint shadows beneath her eyes.
Even sitting quietly and simply enjoying her meal, she attracted glances from several nearby tables.
“Well, well. Isn’t this the campus beauty?”
A slightly slick voice suddenly came from beside her table.
“Elena, eating all that by yourself?”
Elena looked up.
A short, slightly overweight male student in a designer streetwear T-shirt stood in the aisle, staring at her with an unpleasant grin.
She recognized him.
Jason Miller, one of Adrian’s friends. His family was in the building-materials business.
Judging by the look on his face, he had probably heard about what happened that morning and had deliberately come over looking for trouble.
Elena ignored him.
Seeing that she wasn’t responding, Jason became even more obnoxious. He raised his voice deliberately so that everyone nearby could hear.
“Jeez, look at those three whole plates. And you’re eating that much meat, too?”
He curled his lip.
“Elena, don’t take this the wrong way, but haven’t you gotten a little… rounder lately? What are you now, over a hundred pounds? Look at your freshman-year photos. You were so slim back then. But now—your face, your arms…”
He clicked his tongue.
“You’re a dancer, aren’t you? You really should watch your figure. Wouldn’t want to get to the point where you can’t dance anymore.”
He burst into laughter.
With his limited imagination and pathetic collection of insults, telling a beautiful girl that she had gained weight and ate too much was apparently the worst attack he could come up with.
He was clearly waiting for Elena to lose her temper or hurriedly defend herself.
Instead, Elena calmly swallowed the food in her mouth.
She picked up a napkin, wiped the corner of her lips, and only then looked up at Jason.
There was barely any emotion in her eyes.
She slowly looked him over from head to toe.
His slightly swollen, oily face.
The faint curve of his stomach beneath his T-shirt.
Then his relatively short legs.
“Jason,” she said calmly, “you should probably make an appointment at the campus clinic first. Get a blood test and an ultrasound.”
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Jason’s smile instantly froze.
“What?! What are you talking about? What’s wrong with me?”
The corners of Elena’s lips curved upward.
“Tell me, how much taller are you than me? And how much more do you weigh?”
Jason’s face turned red.
He absolutely refused to answer.
“I have a perfectly normal build! Men are different from women!”
“How are men different?” Elena tilted her head.
“Whether you’re a man or a woman, a BMI over 24 is considered overweight.”
Jason’s expression became even uglier.
“That thing isn’t even accurate!”
Elena nodded.
“True. It can be different for very tall people or people who do a lot of strength training. But are you either of those?”
She glanced at his stomach.
“Go ahead. Show us your abs.”
A wave of laughter immediately swept through the surrounding tables.
Jason’s lips trembled.
He wanted to argue, but for the moment, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
The students at the nearby tables, who had originally only been watching for entertainment, began whispering among themselves.
Their eyes were now filled with amusement and barely concealed disdain whenever they looked at Jason.
“Exactly. Where is she even fat?”
Two freshmen looked visibly annoyed.
“If someone like her counts as fat, what are the rest of us supposed to do?”
Another pair of students exchanged irritated looks.
“He knows exactly what he looks like. How does he have the nerve to criticize someone else?”
“Seriously. Who goes around telling someone they eat too much in the dining hall? What a jerk.”
The whispers were loud enough to hear clearly.
The redness on Jason’s face spread all the way down his neck.
Humiliated and furious, he shot Elena a vicious glare.
But in the end, he had no face left to stay.
He turned and hurried away.
Elena lowered her eyes and continued eating.
“…Elena.”
Adrian walked over from behind her.
He had clearly heard at least part of the exchange.
His brows drew together, and his expression carried the unmistakable disapproval of someone lecturing a child for behaving badly.
“Did you really have to be that harsh?”
Adrian was actually in a fairly good mood.
Although losing his place on the competition team still bothered him, Victoria had stepped forward to help him. That had given him fresh hope—and potentially an opportunity to gain access to a much higher level of resources and connections.
“Jason’s just blunt. He doesn’t always know when to stop talking. You didn’t have to humiliate him.”
Elena stared at him for a moment.
“?”
She put down her fork and looked directly at Adrian.
“I told him to get a medical checkup so he could avoid high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and fatty liver disease. How exactly is that humiliating him?”
Her expression remained calm.
“And can you please stop going around spraying everyone with that patronizing, ‘I know what’s best for you’ attitude?”
“You!”
Adrian was caught completely off guard by her blunt response.
His face darkened.
At the next table, two freshmen stared at them wide-eyed.
One of them, apparently far more outgoing than shy, looked curiously at Elena.
“Are you two dating?”
Elena curled one corner of her mouth.
“Ex-boyfriend.”
“Oh…”
The freshman drew out the word in sudden understanding and nodded.
“No wonder he’s your ex. He comes over without even asking what happened and immediately starts lecturing you. Was he friends with that other guy too?”
“Seriously,” the other freshman muttered. “Taking someone’s side without even knowing what happened. What a turn-off.”
The surrounding whispers grew louder.
This time, the attention was clearly shifting toward Adrian.
Jason had already left, while Adrian’s sudden attempt to defend him was looking even more unpleasant to everyone watching.
Adrian’s expression turned cold.
He looked at Elena.
She simply lowered her head and went back to eating.
She showed no sign of wanting to make peace.
If anything, she seemed even more indifferent than before.
“Elena, don’t push it.”
Adrian’s voice turned cold.
“Keep this up, and don’t expect me to buy anything for you ever again.”
He thought that would finally hurt her.
The old Elena had cared deeply about the gifts he gave her.
The designer handbags, cosmetics, and jewelry had all been part of the image she used to maintain her vanity.
Yet Elena only looked at him as though he had said something incredibly stupid.
“Adrian, we broke up. From now on, we’re nothing more than classmates. I’d have to be pretty shameless to expect a classmate to keep buying things for me.”
Adrian was left speechless.
She was still putting on an act?
Back then, whenever she threatened to break up with him, hadn’t she always ended up crying and begging him to stay?
Once, she had even stood outside in the rain in the middle of the night just to make him soften toward her.
“Hey, Elena, who are you trying to fool with that innocent act?”
Another male student wearing designer casual clothes pushed his way out of the crowd.
He was also one of Adrian’s friends.
He immediately jumped in, his voice loud and full of indignation on Adrian’s behalf.
“Do you have any idea how much Adrian has spent on you? If you’re so proud, then pay every cent back!”
Adrian’s expression immediately darkened.
That wasn’t what he wanted.
At least, he certainly hadn’t intended to bring up money here.
There were too many people around. Making his girlfriend pay him back in front of everyone would make him look cheap.
Besides, he had made plenty of money for his family over the past few years. Whatever he had spent on Elena was only a small fraction of it.
“Wait!”
The freshman at the neighboring table raised her hand and looked at Adrian with curiosity.
“How much did you spend on her?”
Adrian didn’t answer.
His friend folded his arms.
“Designer bags, cosmetics, clothes, jewelry… At least fifty or sixty thousand dollars, I’d say.”
The entire section of the dining hall erupted.
Most of the students here came from reasonably well-off families, but even so, not many people could afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a girlfriend.
“Seriously?”
“She really is beautiful…”
“Damn, look at her face. If I had that kind of money, I’d probably spend it too…”
Shock, curiosity, disdain, and envy swept across the room as countless eyes turned toward Elena.
Adrian’s face grew even darker.
This was humiliating.
He wasn’t short of money!
But what would Victoria think if she heard that he had been publicly demanding repayment over tens of thousands of dollars?
“…Uh,” the freshman blinked.
“Really?”
A trace of sarcasm appeared in her expression.
“I don’t think so. Pretty much anything that girl is wearing is probably worth more than that.”
Adrian froze.
“What?”
At the same time, a bespectacled male student sitting at the table diagonally across from them slowly put down his fork.
“Actually, I’m not sure about everything else. But those earrings she’s wearing today…”
He pointed toward Elena’s ears.
“If I’m not mistaken, they’re a one-of-a-kind pair from Graff’s charity auction two years ago.”
He paused.
“The center stones aren’t particularly large, but the clarity and cut are both exceptional. They should be worth well into seven figures.”
The entire area fell silent.
He glanced at Adrian and his friends.
“So that fifty or sixty thousand dollars you’re talking about…”
His eyes shifted back to the earrings.
“Wouldn’t even be enough to buy one of the smaller diamonds in those earrings.”