Qi Qi: …Sorry, this was my fault.
Thinking about these messy trivial matters, it wasn’t until a cold feeling came from her eyelids and between her eyebrows that she snapped back to her senses.
It was snowing.
However, before she could relax for long, she heard a loud sound of splashing water from the adjacent artificial lake, along with the sound of many people laughing and playing.
She felt strange and walked over curiously.
At this time, there were still people playing in the lake, couldn’t they feel cold?
In the center of the lake, something seemed to be thrashing around. A few people were riding in a small boat circling nearby, throwing things down every now and then, looking like they were having a lot of fun.
Vaguely, something could be seen popping its head up abruptly, only to sink down again quickly.
Looking from afar, it looked like a group of students riding a boat in the artificial lake, casually sprinkling fish food to watch the koi in the lake make a fuss to snatch the food.
Someone even took out a fishing rod and casually threw down an unbaited fishhook. The transparent, fine fishing line whipped out a full arc in the air, its reflection of light under the sunshine being somewhat dazzling.
The koi in the center of the lake seemed to have been stimulated, making even larger splashes, as if wanting to drag the small boat in as well.
Seeing this, the people beside laughed even more happily.
Qi Qi withdrew her gaze. Rowing a boat on the lake in deep winter, it was that idiot from the Shi family.
Better stay far away, if she got infected with the idiot virus, it would be all over.
The splashes in the center of the lake grew fewer and fewer. Even if someone reached their hand into the water to tease, it gradually lost all sound, and the lake surface gradually restored its tranquility.
“Out of energy so fast? Aren’t you usually quite capable of enduring? Try harder! Maybe if I’m touched, I’ll save you up! Hurry and grab the fishhook! As long as you pull it, you can come up! Look, it’s right here!”
“Don’t do that. What if she bites your hand? You’ll get rabies, hahaha!”
“It’s fine. She’s been soaked in the water for so long, if she still has strength, she’d really be a monster.”
The boy laughed playfully as he stirred the lake water as if teasing the koi inside, his other hand swinging the fishing rod up and down. The sharp metal fishhook and extremely thin fishing line were the best toys, as long as it touched, it would slice open a narrow wound, but if she didn’t grab it, she would drown.
Such a choice was cruel, but in their eyes, it was beyond interesting.
He turned back to look at his companions and laughed even harder, as if it were nothing more than normal play.
Someone was also worried. “She’s been soaked for so long, and there seems to be no movement down there anymore. Should we scoop her up? It’ll be bad if a life is really lost.”
“Tch, what are you afraid of? For trash like this that no one would pick up even if thrown on the roadside, she’s worth a few tens of thousands at most. My one month’s pocket money is more than enough.”
Slapping water splash on the lake surface, the fearless boy was named Shi Zhenyao. He was the late-born son of the Shi family, spoiled without bottom lines by the people around him as he grew up. He had no ability, yet he envied those who were more outstanding than him.
He liked bullying powerless good students the most and had caused many bloody incidents, even forcing someone to jump off a building. That matter caused a massive uproar back then, but in the end, it was forcibly suppressed by the Shi family. Ultimately, he merely stayed home for a few days before returning to school to continue classes, without any subsequent impact on him whatsoever.
It was just one dead person, after all.
Seeing no further movement on the water surface, Shi Zhenyao suddenly felt bored.
Shen Lu was the most stubborn hard nut he had ever seen.
Unlike those good students in the past who collapsed after just a little movement, crying and screaming to drop out of school, Shen Lu looked so frail she seemed like she could be blown away by a gust of wind, yet no matter what they did, this person could still come to school the next day wrapped in bandages, as if nothing had happened.
Probably because her cheap life was singular, she was extraordinarily tough instead.
However, the pleasure of destroying this kind of hard nut was a thrill different from torturing those other easy targets.
Originally, his next target was her, but he didn’t expect that before he could start, Qi Qi intercepted her.
Afterward, he wanted to contend with her for a bit, but due to family matters, he had to go back for a period of time, only returning to school a while ago.
The Qi family was one of the few families that could contend with the Shi family. Coupled with the fact that Qi Qi herself didn’t care about anything and gave face to no one, she was also a well-known freak in the circle, making people unable to figure out what she was thinking. But more importantly, as the successors of the two most famous families in this city, he was always forced to be compared with Qi Qi.
That eccentric freak Qi Qi, she clearly barely attended social occasions, wasting a good set of looks, and was often cursed behind her back because of that attitude, yet she happened to be born with a smart brain. After growing up, no matter what she did, even without trying hard, she was better than him, stubbornly overshadowing his fame.
Unpardonable!
This time he was going to torture Shen Lu properly, and could also find trouble for Qi Qi while at it.
However, Shen Lu was even more stubborn than he imagined; she didn’t even make a sound when thrown into the water.
Truly interesting.
He squatted down, trying to look through the bottomless lake water to see if Shen Lu had already sunk to the bottom.
Seeing Shi Zhenyao leaning half his body out of the boat to look at the lake bottom with a court death attitude, unable to listen to any advice, the surrounding small cronies didn’t dare to breathe out loud. They stared at him with wide eyes, their hands waiting on the side so that if this young master fell off the boat, they could pull him back at the first moment.
“Huh? Is this boat swaying a bit?”
Shi Zhenyao concentrated his gaze for a long time and saw nothing, and the lake surface had completely calmed down. Naturally thinking that Shen Lu had already sunk to the bottom, he raised his hand, just about to mercifully order someone to scoop Shen Lu up, when he suddenly heard the panicked voice of a crony.
He looked back discontentedly and glared at that fuss making useless piece of trash, “Why are you shouting so loudly? Do you want to scare me to death…”
Before he could finish his words, the boat swayed again. This time the magnitude of the sway was much larger than initially, and everyone noticed this abnormal movement.
What ghost of a thing?
This artificial lake originally only had ornamental fish like koi, and now it was winter, the school had already put the fish in the lake into indoor tanks for raising. There shouldn’t be any living creature in this lake.
“Could it be Shen Lu?”
“Are you stupid? It’s been so long, what kind of person can hold their breath underwater for thirty minutes? Besides, if Shen Lu had this much strength, it would be impossible for her to be dragged over by us so easily…”
The magnitude of the boat body’s sway became more and more violent, as if verifying his words.
“What do we do now?”
Shi Zhenyao was also a bit panicked and shouted: “What are you standing there for? Hurry up and row the boat, row back to the shore!”
The people on the boat scrambled into action.
In the panic, someone suddenly noticed an anomaly and shouted out.
“Where is Wang Ming and the others’ boat?”
As if hearing his voice, the lake surface suddenly restored its tranquility. That strange force at the bottom of the lake also disappeared as if it had never existed, leaving only shallow ripples echoing on the lake surface.
Only his tail tone, hard to conceal terror and confusion, trembled slightly, “There’s none on the shore either.”
They were originally a group of people divided into two boats coming down. The boat that should have been next to them had vanished without a trace at this moment.
Even if they rowed back to the shore at the first moment, they should have left the boat behind. It was impossible to run while carrying the boat, yet on the thin layer of snow fallen by the shore, there wasn’t a single mark at this moment.
“Could it be… it sank into the water?”
Under this abnormal quietness, someone said while crying and laughing.
Shi Zhenyao felt profound fear for the first time in his life.
Someone was scared out of their wits by the panic of this rapidly spreading strange quietness, losing the most basic ability to think. They simply threw down the oar, jumped into the lake, and swam desperately toward the shore.
A long, thin dark shadow whipped out from the lake water. As the water wave fell, that person instantly vanished without a trace.
Only a strand of red silk slowly floated up.
That couldn’t possibly be a human!
That last bit of luck also vanished in this eerie scene.
“Row faster!”
The people on the boat became numb under the stimulation of fear, and under this order, they calmed down instead. The small boat rapidly rowed toward the shore.
Everything went smoothly, the small boat slid very fast. The lake surface remained silent, and the monster at the bottom of the lake seemed to feel satisfied after eating one person. Everyone felt they had left the danger behind.
However, just when they saw hope, in the next second, before they could even utter a sound, the boat carrying several people was swallowed as smoothly as if sucked in by the lake water itself. Its entire existence was erased, instantly vanishing on the water surface.
Strands of red floated up on the lake surface, but were soon mixed into a large amount of lake water, diluted, and became transparent and clean again.
The last trace of evidence that those people had existed in this world also disappeared.
Qi Qi walked halfway while eating chocolate, when she suddenly felt her hands were empty, realizing she was so focused on eating chocolate that she had forgotten the bag of snacks she had just bought in the pavilion earlier.
She ran back in annoyance. However, when passing by the artificial lake, she saw that the two boats of idiots who were rowing in the center of the lake earlier were gone, leaving only two water soaked boats parked at the shore.
Looks like they fell into the lake, and even idiots could finally feel the cold.
In the pavilion, however, Qi Qi met an unexpected person.
Shen Lu was completely drenched, sitting beside her snack bag, looking up at the falling snow. Her long hair was messily scattered, snow mixing in her hair strands and quickly melting into water. Her eyelashes were frozen together, looking as if they had turned a snow-white color.
Coupled with those heterochromatic pupils that were different from ordinary people, it made the young girl look all the more like some kind of spirit or monster, or like a silent stone statue enshrined in a ruined temple encountered by chance on a mountain path.
Hearing footsteps, that stone statue suddenly came to life.
“Qi Qi, you’re back.”
Seeing her, the thinly clad girl’s face, which was reddened from the cold, bloomed with a pure smile.
“I missed you so much.”
The girl’s hoarse voice even carried a nasal tone; a cold was surely unavoidable.
Qi Qi knitted her brows and handed her the coat she was wearing. Looking at her pathetic appearance, a bit of guilt inexplicably rose in her heart.
In such cold weather, sitting outside wearing only a school uniform…
“Why are you drenched all over? You didn’t fall into the lake, did you?”
She suddenly thought of those people she had seen rowing in the lake earlier, and then looked at the frail girl who was wearing her clothes and obediently tugging at her hem. Something seemed about to link together.
In this season, would there be fish in the lake?
Whether intentional or unintentional, Shen Lu spoke up to interrupt her thoughts.
“Mm, I accidentally slipped while walking by the lake, but I stood up very quickly. It’s fine.”
“Did you see those idiots rowing over there? They probably fell into the lake too.” Qi Qi always felt she had forgotten something, but the thought flashed by, and when interrupted, she failed to catch that momentary idea.
“I saw them rowing, but when I stood up from the water, I didn’t see them anymore.”
The girl answered obediently word by word.
Looking at the person’s pale blue face, Qi Qi didn’t ask further and hurriedly led her into the warm indoors.
On the way, she also noticed the blue and purple bruises on her body, and soon asked about the situation where she had recently started being bullied again.
How dare someone bully my amusement, Qi Qi was immersed in anger, unaware that the girl beside her only kept her eyes on her the whole way, the color of her eyes growing deeper and deeper.
Only, Qi Qi didn’t expect that as soon as she opened the door, she would see Bai Zhi sitting on the sofa flipping through the novel she hadn’t finished reading.
Hasn’t she barely come recently? Why did she happen to come on this exact day!
“You’re back, I missed you so much…”
Bai Zhi raised her head with a smile, only to see her girlfriend holding hands with the special status student who was shivering while draped in familiar clothes, walking in.
“Shen Lu fell into the water and is wet all over, and it’s snowing outside. The artificial lake is too far from her dorm, so I brought her over to change clothes… Is that okay?”
Facing Bai Zhi’s smiling and gentle gaze, even though Qi Qi was merely being helpful, she somehow felt the sensation of being caught in bed for cheating, her voice explaining getting smaller and smaller.
When Shen Lu saw that girl she had met once before, that face as exquisitely beautiful as the most expensive doll seen in a street shop window when she was a child, she didn’t show much surprise.
Instead, it was a certainty of “as expected.”
“It’s fine, I can handle it myself. Qi Qi, don’t be put in a difficult spot…” Shen Lu gently tugged at Qi Qi’s clothes hem.
As the temperature rose, the frost frozen on her eyelashes by snow and water outside slowly melted, dampening her eyelashes and making them look extraordinarily long. Those pure and bright heterochromatic eyes, as if washed by water, welled up with hazy moisture, looking timidly at Bai Zhi, but soon withdrew her gaze, seeming a bit afraid.
“I’ll be fine by myself. I just need to pick a time when no one is in the classroom to go back and change clothes. The school uniform Qi Qi gave me has always been kept in the classroom.”
Shen Lu was surprised at this series of words she uttered without much thought, feeling uneasy in hindsight.
Would Qi Qi think she talked like this strangely? Would she think it was very artificial and disgusting?
However, she really wanted Qi Qi to look at her.
An understanding tone and words, an expression carrying hidden grievance, calculatedly using her bangs to cover the atmosphere ruining birthmark, yet her slender spine was held very straight, creating a contrast of pitifulness yet tenacity.
Bai Zhi critically and harshly evaluated the special status student’s clumsy performance, harboring deep disdain toward it in her heart. The perfect polite curve of her lips drooped slightly, but having performed another persona in life year round, she could still maintain a smile.
“You just finish taking a shower and change clothes here before going back, saving you from being bullied midway through changing.”
However, seeing a few bits of genuine compassion revealed in Qi Qi’s eyes, as well as the special status student looking at her with an expressionless face yet raised eyebrows in provocation, the smile completely left Bai Zhi’s face.
You merely won Qi Qi’s sympathy by relying on that pitiful look of a fallen dog, what are you being smug about?
“Thank you, Qi Qi.” Shen Lu covered the lower half of her face, her eyes containing tears when looking at Qi Qi, as if trying hard to restrain herself from letting the tears fall.
Wonderful, Qi Qi likes her like this.
However, from Bai Zhi’s angle, she could see the corners of the seemingly obedient and pitiful special status student’s mouth that weren’t fully covered by her palm, easily exposing the arc desperately turning upward.