The four of them smoked their cigarettes in silence.
When Ning Che’s silhouette was almost out of sight, Xu Fan tossed her cigarette butt onto the ground and crushed it hard under her foot.
“Come on, let’s follow her. Don’t let her do anything foolish.”
The four of them quietly trailed behind her.
Ning Che kept walking, following along the outer wall of Federation University.
After walking for a very, very long time, the four followers began to grow exhausted.
Xu Fan stopped first and said, “We can’t keep going like this. I’m going to go call out to her.”
Right at that moment, Shen Qingzhi suddenly pointed at Ning Che’s receding back and urged, “Look quickly!”
The four of them looked over in unison. They saw that Ning Che had finally stopped. She stood frozen on the spot for a short while before changing her direction.
The four of them hurriedly kept up, crossing an intersection and walking past two more streets until they arrived beneath an apartment building.
Xu Fan let out a sigh of relief. “This is the place where Ning Che and Senior Sister Xie live.”
As soon as she finished speaking, the other three stared at the apartment entrance with highly complex expressions.
Seeing Ning Che enter the apartment building, Xu Fan glanced at her watch and let out an exclamation.
“Holy crap, it’s already eleven o’clock. Let’s go, my treat, let’s grab some food.”
Ding.
The elevator doors opened on the top floor.
Ning Che walked out, staring at the single entrance door on the floor, standing frozen without moving.
She didn’t know what she was supposed to do, nor did she know what would be best to do, she had simply found herself returning to this place entirely by instinct.
After a brief moment, the entrance door swung open.
Xie Yuqi’s assistant stepped out and said, “Miss Ning, if you have something to say, please come inside.”
Ning Che snapped her head up. The assistant stepped to the side, clearing the doorway.
Ning Che stared blankly for a second before finally lifting her heavy feet to step inside.
The moment she crossed the threshold, the assistant immediately closed the heavy front door.
The apartment had originally been dark, but now, all the lights suddenly flickered on at once.
Xie Yuqi was sitting on the living room sofa, staring at her with a thoroughly grim and frigid expression.
Ning Che slowly walked up to the dining area and came to a halt.
An invisible barrier seemed to block her, making it impossible to move even an inch closer.
She stared intently at Xie Yuqi, and Xie Yuqi stared back at her, but her gaze was entirely devoid of warmth.
A deathly silence enveloped the apartment.
The assistant stood behind the sofa, head lowered.
After a prolonged silence, Ning Che drew the small, elegant box from her coat pocket.
She opened the lid, presenting the exposed diamond ring directly toward Xie Yuqi.
Xie Yuqi’s gaze remained completely icy.
Ning Che’s lips trembled with agonizing pain as she forced out a single sentence. “Yuqi, the diamond is real. It took me four years of saving to buy it.”
Once she finished speaking, she looked at Xie Yuqi expectantly, desperately hoping that she would believe her.
Not a single line on Xie Yuqi’s face shifted. In the deepest depths of her heart, she didn’t care about this explanation or the authenticity of the diamond at all.
She looked at Ning Che and said coldly, “Ning Che, you still don’t understand exactly what you did wrong tonight.”
Ning Che froze in shock for an instant, a wave of panic washing over her. Though her body remained still, she appeared completely helpless and flustered.
Xie Yuqi continued, “Just a few days ago, I told you with my own lips that I was thoroughly disgusted by an obnoxious person who confessed to me in public. And what did you do? You copied that person’s exact behavior, proposing to me in public, intentionally humiliating me and putting me on the spot!”
Ning Che grew even more frantic, hastily pleading, “It wasn’t like that, Yuqi. I was completely sincere, I wasn’t trying to copy.”
Xie Yuqi cut her off frostily, “If you were truly sincere, you shouldn’t have brought shame upon me on such an important day!”
Hearing the words “brought shame,” Ning Che felt a sudden wave of dizziness wash over her eyes, completely unable to comprehend the meaning behind those words.
How could she ever bring shame upon her? How could she ever bear to let her feel ashamed?
She was still trapped in her struggle to understand, but Xie Yuqi continued to speak with piercing coldness. “I always believed that you fully respected and understood me. But I never imagined you would go behind my back to organize such a ridiculous, farcical proposal. Do you think that was appropriate?”
“Ning Che, you and I are different. I do not come from some insignificant, ordinary family where marriage can be treated like a game!”
“Behind my back stands an entire clan, hundreds of corporate enterprises, and tens of millions of employees. Do you honestly believe I can just casually accept a public proposal from someone in front of a massive crowd?”
“While you were planning this whole thing, fully expecting to give me a pleasant surprise, did you ever stop to think about the endless trouble it would bring me?”
“When my parents see the overwhelming trending topics online, how are they supposed to face the questioning from the family council? When the major shareholders of my Xie Corporation see these rumors, what do you think they will do? Will they withdraw their investments and dump their shares, causing the stock prices of the Xie Corporation to plummet?”
“Ning Che, did you ever think about any of this?”
“What you thought was a surprise was actually an entirely selfish act. You didn’t put yourself in my shoes to think for me even a single bit!”
“And now, I am the one who has to clean up the mess you left behind, dealing with all the upcoming negative press.”
Each sharp, cutting phrase pressed down like a blade, carving away at Ning Che’s heart.
The hands cradling the diamond shrunk back and trembled, and her posture involuntarily slouched. She felt exactly like a clown.
The diamond ring she had worked so hard to save up for over four long years suddenly became completely insignificant, it even began to make her feel deeply ashamed of herself.
“Ning Che, you have deeply disappointed me.”
Immediately following that, Xie Yuqi threw out one last cold remark. It felt like a heavy sledgehammer, violently smashing directly against Ning Che’s heart.
She fought with everything she had to keep herself from hanging her head.
Those eyes, which usually looked like serene lakes, were instantly flooded with tears in a split second. However, they were fiercely held back by their owner, refusing to let them spill over.
She had simply never been able to forget the time when Xie Yuqi had publicly confessed her feelings back then. She had carried that gratitude and love all this time, wanting to use the exact same method to express her own heart, so how did it end up becoming something ridiculous and farcical?
She didn’t understand.
Her lips twitched as she tried over and over again, but she still couldn’t make a sound.
Her head buzzed and rang violently, with Xie Yuqi’s final words echoing on an endless loop.
“Ning Che, you have deeply disappointed me.”
Her vision suddenly blurred.
She strained her eyes open, clearing her vision slightly.
But very quickly, it blurred all over again.
An unknown amount of time passed before she finally conquered the onslaught of tears. When she finally saw her surroundings clearly again, Xie Yuqi was no longer sitting on the sofa.
Ning Che stood frozen for a long moment. Then, she slowly turned around, walking toward the front door step by painful step.
The assistant rushed after her. “Miss Ning, where are you going?”
Ning Che ignored her completely.
She walked toward the elevator one step at a time, pressing the button for the first floor.
Stepping out of the apartment building’s main entrance, she came to a halt.
The dormitory was out of the question, she couldn’t go back there.
She didn’t even need to think to know that right at this moment, Liu Xinxin, Ling Shiya, and that entire crowd would be using the foulest, most toxic words to mock her.
Kicking her while she was down, gloating over her misfortune, fabricating fabrications, flinging mud… those were the things they excelled at the most.
And the apartment behind her was a place she could never return to again.
She stared blankly up at the pitch-black sky, suddenly realizing that despite how vast the world was, there didn’t seem to be a single place left that could accommodate her.
She really had become nothing more than a stray dog drenched in the rain.