Shen Ji had not slept for a very, very long time.
Sleep was necessary for humans, but for him, it was optional.
Perhaps because he had obtained something that could satisfy him, he had actually fallen asleep while holding the girl in his arms.
In his dream, he seemed to have returned to the day Su Ning had bathed him.
Her fingers had brushed over every part of his body one by one.
The tingling sensation was so intense that it seemed to reach his very soul, making even his soul tremble.
It felt so good that he did not want to wake up at all.
Su Ning sat on top of Shen Ji and covered his mouth and nose.
Yet he did not wake up even when he could not breathe.
She ran out of patience and bit down hard on the young man’s shoulder.
Shen Ji sleepily opened his eyes a crack.
Being bitten awake so rudely first thing in the morning did not make him angry.
Instead, he raised a hand and placed it on the back of Su Ning’s head, even pushing his shoulder farther into her mouth.
The way he let her bite him without resistance made it hard not to wonder whether, if she had been holding a knife and tried to stab him, he would still have thought she was simply playing some little game with him.
He did not even care about the pain and was about to fall asleep again, but Su Ning was already tired of biting him.
She reached out and held his face.
“Shen Ji, wake up!”
Shen Ji was still bleary-eyed and confused.
Having only just woken up, his voice was thick with sleepiness.
“Ning Ning, what’s wrong?”
Su Ning asked, “When did you come over last night?”
Shen Ji rubbed his face against her hand.
“When Ning Ning fell asleep.”
Su Ning thought, Just as I thought.
Her expression immediately fell, and tears gathered in her beautiful eyes.
The next second, she looked as though she was about to cry.
Shen Ji panicked.
He sat up and stroked her little face, speaking anxiously.
“Ning Ning, don’t cry.
Did someone bully you?
Or did someone make you unhappy?
I’ll go kill him.”
Su Ning’s tears finally fell.
Shen Ji’s eyes reddened too.
Tears blurred his vision as he cried along with her.
His watery eyes looked even more pure and innocent than Bambi’s, making him look unbearably pitiful.
Su Ning said, “I’m crying.
Why are you crying?”
Shen Ji rubbed his chest and said pitifully, “My heart hurts.”
Her lips trembled as she cried, “I’m going to die!”
Shen Ji said, “Huh?”
Shen Ji was kicked out of the room.
No matter how much he knocked on the door and called Su Ning’s name from outside, she refused to soften and let him back in.
Meanwhile, Su Ning lay alone on the bed, taking out her phone and searching through the Zero Degrees search engine.
[What does it mean if I can’t feel my heartbeat?]
[What should I do if I can’t feel my heartbeat after waking up in the morning?]
[Can you die from not being able to feel your heartbeat?]
The answers were all kinds of things.
Obesity, low blood pressure, heart failure, myocardial infarction…
In short, after searching further and further, she had apparently already developed a terminal illness.
Su Ning looked at the message she had sent to her family not long ago.
She had told them that she seemed to be dying and wanted to leave school to get checked out at a hospital.
Her family had only replied with one sentence:
Study properly.
You are not allowed to leave school before graduation.
Su Ning finally understood how those people who had wanted to take leave and leave school but were not allowed to must have felt.
She curled up under the blanket and buried her head in the pillow.
The scent of the young man seemed to still linger beneath her nose.
She could not help thinking of Shen Ji again.
He was so foolish, and he was not smart at all.
If something happened to her, there would be no one left at school to protect him.
He would definitely have a hard time.
Su Ning crawled out from under the blanket and walked to the door in her slippers.
When she opened it, Shen Ji was indeed still there.
He was sitting on the floor with his back against the door, his arms wrapped around his legs.
The moment he saw Su Ning, he immediately raised his head.
His eyes were still red, and they were wet with grievance, making him look like a big dog abandoned beside a pile of trash.
He blinked his misty eyes and wanted to reach out and tug at her, but he was afraid she would get angry again.
His helpless expression made him look utterly pitiful.
Something inside Su Ning suddenly made her feel that she had to be strong.
At the very least, before she left this world, she had to protect him.
She put on a stern face.
“Get up.”
Shen Ji obediently stood up from the floor.
He was clearly tall with long legs, while Su Ning only reached his shoulder, yet in terms of presence, he was genuinely small, pitiful, and helpless.
Su Ning put her hands on her hips and said fiercely, “Listen carefully.
Starting today, I’m going to increase the intensity of your training.”
Shen Ji cautiously reached out to hook his finger around hers, but she slapped his hand away.
“Being cute won’t help either.
I won’t go easy on you!”
Su Ning took out paper and pen and wrote Shen Ji a study schedule on the spot.
Wake up at 6:30 a.m., breakfast at 7:00, enter the classroom for self-study at 7:30…
The schedule continued all the way until 10:00 p.m., when he was finally allowed to go to bed.
When Shen Ji received the schedule, he counted on his fingers.
He had less than an hour a day left for snacks.
The math problems and reading reflections written into the schedule were enough to make his head spin.
He looked at Su Ning pitifully.
“Ning Ning…”
Su Ning raised her hand and covered his mouth.
“It starts today.
No arguments.”
Shen Ji let out a muffled whimper.
Because she had spent the entire morning arranging her “affairs,” Su Ning did not arrive in the classroom until after the second period.
There were plenty of students at this school who skipped class or cut lessons, but Su Ning being absent was still unusual.
Lu Xiaoran saw that Su Ning looked unwell again.
This time, she genuinely asked out of concern, “Ning Ning, are you sick?”
Su Ning lay facedown on her desk, both hands covering her chest.
In a miserable voice, she said, “I have a heart problem.”
Lu Xiaoran looked completely confused.
In the old girls’ dormitory building, the gloomy rooms had been without sunlight for years.
Ever since there had been a rumor that a girl had hanged herself in Room 402, no one had set foot here for many years.
And now, inside the cold, damp, dark Room 503, a rope hung from a beam outside the bathroom door.
A human figure hanging from it swayed quietly with the momentum of its own weight.
Any normal person who saw such a horrifying scene would have been scared half to death.
But this time, the one who was frightened was a ghost.
The red-clothed female ghost and the white-clothed female ghost huddled together in the corner, trembling in fear.
Water continued to seep up across the floor beneath the white-clothed female ghost’s feet.
The red-clothed female ghost held onto her head, which was almost falling off.
Together, they stared at the figure hanging from the rope.
The person hanging there was quietly sobbing.
“Why?
Why is Ning Ning angry with me?”
Shen Ji’s neck was caught in the rope, his feet hanging above the ground.
Tears fell one after another.
Unable to bear it any longer, he raised a hand and covered his chest, saying sadly,
“Does Ning Ning not love me anymore?”