Lu Zhizhi had just come downstairs.
Watching the backs of Su Ning and Lu Xiaoran as they walked away, she couldn’t help gaining a deeper understanding of the two.
Su Ning was a typical spoiled rich girl, arrogant and domineering.
Lu Zhizhi had only been at the school for a few days, yet she had already seen plenty of people like Lu Xiaoran flattering Su Ning.
The reason this school had such a bad atmosphere was because of people like Su Ning.
It was just like the school she had attended before.
The pretty girls there were always thinking about dating boys, and the relationships between people were a complete mess.
Lu Zhizhi noticed that Su Ning had come out of Room 302.
Bu Zhongyao had gone to so much trouble to organize a welcome party for Lu Zhizhi, so naturally, Lu Zhizhi cared a little more about her.
She had heard that Bu Zhongyao had been in a bad mood after returning last night.
And since Bu Zhongyao and Su Ning didn’t get along, Su Ning must have come to kick her while she was down.
With concern, Lu Zhizhi knocked on the door of Room 302.
After someone opened it, she went straight to Bu Zhongyao and said, “I just saw Su Ning.
Did she come here to give you trouble?
I heard she has a lot of power in this school, and a whole bunch of followers around her.
She’s also involved with a lot of boys.
If she gets those followers, or one of those boys, to bully you behind your back, I’ll definitely help you.”
Lu Zhizhi spoke indignantly.
“A girl as sinister and vicious as her—”
“Sinister and vicious?”
Bu Zhongyao was sitting in front of the mirror doing her makeup.
She had been listening absentmindedly to Lu Zhizhi rambling on, but when she heard those four words, she finally looked at Lu Zhizhi.
The girl with shoulder-length hair was sitting on the bed playing with her phone.
She had heard Lu Zhizhi too and quietly rolled her eyes.
Lu Zhizhi became a little uneasy.
“Yes.
Someone who can only rely on her family background and men to use underhanded tricks behind people’s backs and bully others.
She’s sinister and vicious, despicable and contemptible…”
Bu Zhongyao put down the comb in her hand with a heavy motion and laughed.
“Who do you think you are?
What gives you the right to talk about Su Ning like that?”
Lu Zhizhi froze.
The short-haired girl beside her pursed her lips.
This new student really was clueless.
She had come to this school without understanding the survival rules here at all.
Lu Zhizhi kept criticizing Su Ning as sinister, vicious, despicable, and contemptible, but how could she know that Bu Zhongyao herself had pulled plenty of those same tricks in the past?
After all, you couldn’t live peacefully at this school just by relying on the words kindness, goodness, and beauty.
Bu Zhongyao regarded Su Ning as her archrival.
Although Bu Zhongyao had badmouthed Su Ning plenty of times herself, it was different when someone else said something bad about Su Ning.
For Lu Zhizhi to belittle Su Ning was equivalent to belittling Bu Zhongyao.
It was the first time in all these years that their school had seen someone this naively sweet and clueless.
Bu Zhongyao smiled.
“‘Green Pepper Stir-Fried with Ham Is So Delicious.’ That author who’s been caught up in an online plagiarism controversy recently…
Didn’t she write some book?
I think the protagonist was called Song Xueyao.
I heard that everything from the title down to the specific character descriptions was suspiciously similar to someone else’s work.”
Bu Zhongyao stood up and approached Lu Zhizhi with a smile.
“Then, after the original author found out, she immediately apologized and said she’d only done it to attract traffic, claiming she’d merely borrowed ideas after browsing through other people’s writing.
After rewriting it overnight, she turned around and denied it again.”
Cold sweat appeared on Lu Zhizhi’s face.
“I…
I…”
“Who would’ve thought our school had such a great literary genius.”
Bu Zhongyao laughed mockingly.
“Lu Zhizhi, what kind of pure and innocent white lotus are you pretending to be?
We’ve already investigated your background thoroughly since the day you entered this school.”
The incident had caused quite a stir online.
There had been plenty of readers who attacked the original work and praised the so-called “traffic-driving” novel.
They kept saying they had read the original, yet still thought the plagiarized work was better. Find the original chapter at g.com.
People constantly put one down while praising the other.
Later, those people all somehow met with trouble.
Some went crazy, while others became foolish.
Lu Zhizhi grew increasingly frightened, which was why she eventually followed her family’s arrangement and transferred schools.
Lu Zhizhi’s whole body turned cold, and she couldn’t say a word.
Yes, she had written a novel online, but that was only borrowing ideas.
It had absolutely nothing to do with plagiarism!
Why were the people at this school so vicious and sharp-tongued?
Why did everyone still have to bully her even after she came to a new environment?
Why…
was the whole world so malicious toward her?
Lu Zhizhi backed away step by step before running out of the room.
After leaving the dormitory building, Lu Xiaoran knew Su Ning was going to spend some time tutoring her boyfriend again, so she sensibly left first.
Lu Xiaoran was in charge of the school newspaper, and she had a school history feature to work on recently, so she still needed to look up some materials.
From Monday to Friday, Su Ning chose the place for their tutoring sessions.
On weekends, Shen Ji chose the location instead.
Compared with the normal places Su Ning chose, such as the library and study rooms, Shen Ji’s choices were much less normal.
He was unpredictable.
One moment, he would choose the rooftop of the teaching building, where the strong wind would blow Su Ning’s carefully maintained long hair into a complete mess.
He called it experiencing the freedom of the wind.
Another time, he chose the area by the back window of the cafeteria, saying that the smell of food would give him more motivation.
Unfortunately, the cafeteria happened to be serving pickled cabbage fish that day, and Su Ning felt like she had almost been pickled herself.
Yet what she couldn’t understand was that no matter how ridiculous the places he chose were, Su Ning would still go along with him and play along with his antics.
This time, the location Su Ning received on her phone was the abandoned general building.
Thinking about the dust covering the place, her expression immediately turned unpleasant.
Even so, she put on a beige wide-brimmed hat, wore a mask, covered herself up from head to toe, and went to the abandoned building.
The moment she stepped through the iron gate, the first thing that appeared before Su Ning’s eyes was a brilliant, vivid red.
Beautiful roses climbed all the way up along the stair railings.
By the time they reached the fourth floor, they stretched along the corridor walls all the way to the end.
This building had been burned by fire and was covered in blackened marks.
Yet with the flowers and green leaves decorating it, it was as though life was burning freely amid the ashes.
Su Ning was both surprised and delighted.
She followed the trail of flowers step by step until she finally arrived at the door of the art room.
The door was slightly ajar.
She only needed to give it a gentle push for it to open completely.
The moment her little white sneaker stepped into the art room, she stopped in her tracks from the overwhelming visual impact.
Just last night, under the faint light, the art room before her had been a ruined, pitch-black place burned by fire, like a prison cell.
But now, the surrounding walls and ceiling were covered in brightly colored paintings of the evening sky.
The overly vivid and beautiful colors transformed the enormous sunset scene into something dreamlike and unreal.
Anyone standing inside felt as though they had stepped into another wondrous and magnificent world.
This was the first time Su Ning had realized that a painting could possess such powerful charm.
It was as if everything unrealistic from a fairy tale had suddenly become real.
She couldn’t help looking up at the setting sun painted on the ceiling, half-hidden among the clouds.
The afterglow of sunset spread in every direction.
She reached out her hand, as if trying to catch that warm light.
And someone really did catch her hand.
The young man behind her held her hand and leaned against her, laughing softly.
Su Ning relaxed and leaned back against his chest.
She took off her mask, her eyes reflecting the dazzling colors around her.
She was still immersed in this dreamlike world created by all that radiance.
After a long while, she turned to look at him and asked excitedly, “Did you paint this?”
Shen Ji smiled, his eyes curving as he nodded.
His fingers hooked around a strand of the girl’s black hair, looking just like a child who had shown off something and was now waiting to be praised.
“Ning Ning, do you like it?”
Su Ning nodded as hard as she could.
“I love it.
It’s so beautiful!” Get faster updates on g.com.
She was incredibly excited.
Turning around, she jumped up without caring about the skirt she was wearing that day.
Without the slightest concern for her image, she wrapped herself around him.
She didn’t even notice when the hat on her head fell to the ground.
“Shen Ji, you’re amazing!
How did I never realize before that you were this talented?”
Shen Ji steadily supported her by the hips, looking smug between the brows.
Somehow, he seemed even more childish than a teenage boy.
“I’m good at plenty of things.
What does painting count for?
I can build blocks and do jigsaw puzzles too.
No matter how badly something gets broken, I can put it back together.”
He wasn’t like Xiao Hong, who would even put one corpse’s head onto another person’s body.
Su Ning asked him, “After you left my dorm last night, did you come here to paint?”
“Yeah.
I wanted to finish it as soon as possible so I could show you.”
He must have spent a lot of time on it.
He might not have even gotten much rest.
Su Ning touched his face.
“Why did you suddenly want to paint?”
Shen Ji comfortably rubbed his face against her hand.
“I thought you’d like it, so I wanted to paint it.”
He still remembered how Su Ning had picked up the painting board that had been smashed into pieces in this messy place yesterday.
That painting wasn’t good.
This one was.
There were no cages or charred marks in the painting he had made for her.
Such a huge painting was filled with bright colors everywhere.
Just like the colors in her eyes.
Su Ning pressed her lips together.
She sniffed, and her eyes turned red.
She buried her face against the young man’s neck and pinched his waist.
“Don’t do this.
You’re going to make me think you’ve already fallen in love with me!”
Shen Ji blinked in confusion.
He kissed the side of the girl’s ear.
“Ning Ning, I already love you.”
He loved her so much that he even wanted to eat her.
Su Ning said in a muffled voice, “Liar.”
She still hadn’t received the notification that she had cleared the route.
There could only be one reason: he didn’t love her enough yet.
She raised her head, cupped his face, and said firmly, “You need to love me even more, understand?”
He obediently nodded.
“Okay.”
But if his love reached its absolute peak, would she suddenly clear the route and be transported out of this world?
Su Ning looked at his fair, jade-like face.
She couldn’t bear the thought of it anymore.
“No, forget it.
Don’t love me too much!”
Shen Ji looked completely confused.
Even someone as clever as him couldn’t understand what girls were thinking.
Su Ning swung her legs and said, “Kiss me.
Make it exciting.”
Shen Ji’s eyes lit up.
When the girl’s red lips parted slightly, he lowered his head and opened his mouth as well, and their warmth became tangled together with ease.
The sunlight today was truly warm.