Wu Ya raised her palm high, but it hung in the air, never falling.
A hand gripped her wrist—slender fingers, delicate yet unyielding in their strength.
The fluorescent light was blindingly bright. Looking up, Wu Ya could clearly see the lean muscle on Zhou Zhi’s forearm, concealing an irresistible force. Because her skin was so fair, Wu Ya could even make out the faint blue veins crisscrossing her slightly tensed arm.
“You—!”
Wu Ya’s eyes flew wide. Panic crept in, and her arrogant, self-assured confidence vanished without a trace.
This wasn’t what she had expected!
Every time she had bullied someone before, no one had ever dared to fight back. Zhou Zhi was the first.
But the girl’s pitch-black eyes were like a night sky without stars—gloomy, oppressive, suffocating.
Her weakness lasted only a moment. Soon, humiliation and fury surged back.
Her trapped wrist throbbed with pain, and she couldn’t break free. In her fluster, Wu Ya reached out with her left hand, grabbing at the girl’s wrist.
Smack!
She was thrown off.
Zhou Zhi’s strength was immense. The momentum sent Wu Ya stumbling back two steps, slamming hard against the wall.
Forgetting to cry out in pain, forgetting to fight back, Wu Ya pressed against the wall, eyes wide.
Her gaze involuntarily drifted to Zhou Zhi’s right wrist.
An oversized, exaggerated hair tie bloomed like a vivid flower around the pale, slender wrist, dazzling under the harsh white light.
Remembering the texture she had felt just moments ago, Wu Ya couldn’t help but swallow.
A scar.
What did a raised, uneven scar on a wrist mean?
Zhou Zhi lowered her gaze. She raised her right hand and stared at her wrist, her long black hair falling to obscure her face, her expression unreadable.
The scar that had long since healed seemed to ache and itch again, dragging up memories she had deliberately buried and smoothed over.
Wu Ya wanted to run, but her legs had turned to jelly.
Before she could push herself up from the wall, a cold, gloomy voice laced with suppressed anger cut through the space.
—”What are you doing?”
Ji Xuanxu had returned to school from the boxing gym.
When he saw the dozen or so bodyguards appear, he didn’t resist.
At least for now, he still couldn’t completely shake off their control.
The night was pitch black, and the school’s darkness stirred an inexplicable restlessness in his heart.
Passing the restroom at the end of the corridor, a familiar voice reached his ears, impossible to ignore.
“We can solve this through the teacher?”
That actually came out of Zhou Zhi’s mouth?!
A habitual sneer curled at the corner of his lips. He almost wanted to laugh.
Who was the fool who went and provoked her?
The boy lowered his gaze, his lashes trembling slightly as he quickened his pace past the restroom door.
He wasn’t the type to stick his nose into other people’s business.
Wu Ya was terrified—she didn’t even know if she was more afraid of Ji Xuanxu suddenly appearing in the girls’ restroom, or of the hideous scar on Zhou Zhi’s hand.
Either way, the boy stood under the glaring light, which seemed to cast a layer of icy coldness over everything.
Wu Ya didn’t dare look a second time. She fled the restroom in a blind panic.
It was a rainy day in late September, and the evening wind carried a chill. Wu Ya broke out in a cold sweat, gasping for breath.
The restroom was spacious, hardly cramped, but Wu Ya still felt like she couldn’t breathe.
The class bell rang. Ji Xuanxu frowned, annoyed at his own indecisiveness.
“Is your hand alright?”
His voice was low, his tone stiff, carrying a hint of irritation.
Zhou Zhi didn’t answer.
She instinctively hid her right hand behind her back, her gaze fixed on the white ceramic tiles beneath her feet as a wave of dizziness crashed over her.
Noisy sounds poured into her ears like cement, solidifying and clogging her entire skull.
She knew she was having auditory hallucinations again.
The bathroom lights were too bright, just as glaring as the hospital corridor.
The prolonged silence dissipated the restlessness in Ji Xuanxu’s heart, replaced by a rising tide of worry.
Long hair fell on both sides as the girl lowered her head, her expression unreadable.
But her face was as pale as paper, making his heart clench suddenly—somewhat…
aching.
“What’s wrong?”
He changed his approach, his voice tinged with urgency and much gentler.
Still receiving no answer, Ji Xuanxu stepped forward a few paces, his heart pounding violently.
Who could possibly make her suffer?
But what if… what if she was crazy enough to actually not fight back just to be some so-called good student?!
When that thought surfaced in his mind, Ji Xuanxu felt he was about as crazy as she was.
He reached for the right hand she had hidden behind her back.
“Don’t touch!”
Her cold voice suddenly erupted, the ending tone sharp and piercing, as if a layer of jagged spikes had burst open.
Zhou Zhi shook off Ji Xuanxu’s hand and stepped back two paces, widening the distance between them again.
She didn’t want to sink into past emotions.
Nor did she want Ji Xuanxu to discover her secret.
The empty bathroom echoed with lingering reverberations. Ji Xuanxu’s hand froze mid-air, his long fingers curling slightly before clenching into a fist and withdrawing.
The boy’s thin lips were pale in color, now curving slightly upward into a faint, cold smile.
In the end, he couldn’t say a word.
His tense body suddenly relaxed, and as he turned to leave, a faint weariness lingered between his brows.
The bathroom fell silent, the ghastly white light flickering a few times.
After who knows how long, Zhou Zhi let out a soft breath and straightened up, bracing herself against the sink.
Her palm was ice-cold, with faint red marks pressed into the skin.
The dizziness hadn’t fully faded, so Zhou Zhi washed her face with cold water, trying to clear her mind.
She pulled the wide elastic band back onto her wrist, concealing the ugly, twisted scar—as if it could also bury the unforgettable past.
Zhou Zhi didn’t know when Ji Xuanxu had left.
It didn’t matter.
Just under a year.
She had returned to school to study, preparing for the college entrance exam.
Only to put her father’s mind at ease.
And also… to make Ms. Gu happy.
Zhou Zhi roughly wiped her face and returned to the classroom.
When she called out her report, the young English teacher tilted her chin slightly, signaling Zhou Zhi to take her seat.
No deliberate obstruction or interrogation.
Senior year was a race against time, not worth wasting on criticism.
Even so, the English teacher’s gaze occasionally drifted toward Zhou Zhi.
During the break, she spotted Zhou Zhi’s test paper in the back row.
The two error-correction questions at the end were completely correct.
If not for special circumstances, this student would be a promising talent for learning English—and for good students, teachers unconsciously tended to be more forgiving.
The class flow wasn’t interrupted, and the entire English test paper was nearly finished being explained.
Zhou Zhi absentmindedly copied the knowledge points from the blackboard, following the English teacher.
Wu Ya couldn’t focus either, though even if she could concentrate, she wouldn’t be listening to English class anyway.
She just felt a chill running through her body.
She truly wasn’t a good student, nor a good person by any measure, but she was scared.
She didn’t want to provoke Zhou Zhi again.
She was only eighteen and didn’t want to bear the weight of a life on her conscience.
If someone so fragile mentally couldn’t handle her bullying and ended up taking their own life, her own future would be ruined as well.