Chapter 36: The Submissive, Obsessive Top Student

How could they blame her? They only had themselves to blame for their bad luck. She had merely given events a slight push. Who asked them to badmouth Qingyi like that?

Outside the window, rain pattered down, weighing the phoenix tree leaves low. The girl’s eyes were clear and innocent. Under Shi Qingyi’s frank gaze, Jiang Zhiyi completely lost her nerve and helplessly buried her head.

Jiang Zhiyi avoided her wound and shook her arm. “Let’s go.”

As they left the classroom, Shi Qingyi glanced back. Song Zhiming and Deng Sisi’s desks were piled half as high as a person with books earlier, but now they were completely cleared out, empty.

They probably wouldn’t be back for a while.

She lowered her eyelids and felt Jiang Zhiyi grip her hand a little tighter.

The autumn rain was slightly chilly. They couldn’t ride bikes in this weather, so Jiang Zhiyi took her to catch the bus.

It was nearly ten at night, and the bus was mostly empty. Shi Qingyi sat on the inside, with Jiang Zhiyi very close beside her. One earbud was plugged into Jiang Zhiyi’s ear as she listened intently to an English listening exercise.

She couldn’t afford a phone, and her family had no extra money for tutoring classes. She only got to practice listening during exams or English class. Her grades were excellent overall, but English listening was her weak point.

Qingyi cared about her. This girl seemed indifferent to everything, yet she always noticed the gentle details that couldn’t be overlooked.

Perhaps she was too tired, but Jiang Zhiyi fell asleep after a short while. Her head rested on Shi Qingyi’s shoulder, her breathing soft and steady. Shi Qingyi turned down the phone’s volume a bit and shifted to let her lean more comfortably.

“What’s her blackening value now?”

The System poked its head out from playing dead. “…Fifty.”

Shi Qingyi’s eyelid twitched. “I remember it wasn’t this high when I first arrived?”

The System sounded utterly pained and spoke weakly. “I think… you’ve intensified her blackening value…”

“So,” Shi Qingyi said with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, “it’s my fault?”

The System shrank back in fright and shook its head frantically. “No, no, no!”

Heaven and earth as witnesses, how would I dare?

The System hesitated, then started offering rotten advice. “I think right now, in front of you, she’s still that pitiful little cutie who hasn’t shed her skin. Why don’t you properly send her to university, stay by her side, protect her, until she lives out a safe and steady life?”

Shi Qingyi fell silent for a moment. Her slender fingers rested on the window edge and trembled unconsciously.

Living out her life was just one world to Shi Qingyi—nothing long. But to Jiang Zhiyi, it was her entire lifetime of striving.

The System continued its persuasion. “Logically, at fifty blackening value, she should be targeting others—going door-to-door for debts, bankrupting and acquiring companies. But look, because of you, she only secretly splashed a basin of water. What a huge concession for a villain! Didn’t she even promise you she won’t dare do it again?”

“Then if she doesn’t make a move on others, what happens? Will it follow the original plot’s ending?” Her finger curled, drawing a clear water trail on the glass.

In the original plot’s ending, Jiang Zhiyi failed to harm the protagonists and died on the run in a shipwreck, her body lost at sea. Jiang Zhiqing mourned her for three minutes by the seaside before the male lead sympathetically pulled her away. No one even thought to recover the body or erect a cenotaph.

The System stuttered. “If you can keep her from targeting the protagonists, with how saintly the female lead is, how could she attack her?”

Even as it said this, it lacked confidence. In the last world, the villain was powerful enough to deter the protagonists. Here, the villain was just a blackened little pitiful without the strength to back it up.

So… probably… maybe?

Jiang Zhiyi seemed to have a nightmare and started murmuring softly. Shi Qingyi couldn’t make out the words but reached out to pat her back. The girl quieted again and leaned even closer.

As if no closeness was ever enough, unless they fused into each other’s bones and blood.

When they got off the bus, Jiang Zhiyi held the umbrella. Under one umbrella, they stood very close. Jiang Zhiyi’s fingers twitched, wanting to hold Shi Qingyi’s, but she was too timid, afraid of rejection or disgust, so she quietly pulled back.

She didn’t succeed because Shi Qingyi took her hand.

It wasn’t the first time Shi Qingyi had held her hand, but this time it wasn’t to pull her along or because of an injury. It was just… holding hands for no reason.

Jiang Zhiyi’s heart suddenly pounded fast, drumming against her thin skin and flesh like thunder. Scorching heat surged from her heart through her limbs, gathering at her left fingertips where they touched.

For a moment, she could hardly breathe smoothly.

Shi Qingyi walked forward as if nothing had happened. “Is there any place you really like?”

“Huh?”

“The homeroom teacher said we should start thinking about schools we want to go to and planning our futures. Is there any place you particularly like?” Shi Qingyi tilted her head up, deliberately not looking at her.

Jiang Zhiyi was stunned for a moment and shook her head. “No…”

On the map, everywhere was just a name. She was born in this small place, and from the day her mother left, she had no home. She was rootless duckweed, so it didn’t matter where she went.

She just desperately wanted a home and to leave here.

They fell silent again. Jiang Zhiyi feared it was all fake and that her lack of opinion would displease Shi Qingyi, so she secretly pinched her fingertip.

Shi Qingyi didn’t resist, letting her pinch before she obediently pulled back. At the alley entrance, Shi Qingyi handed her the umbrella. The rain had tapered to fine threads, with only water dripping from the eaves into puddles, splashing up.

The silence stretched long. The golden-haired girl finally surrendered, her voice awkward and self-abandoning. “What I meant was… do you want to apply to the same school as me?”

Jiang Zhiyi’s umbrella-holding hand froze. She stood in the rain, timidly lifting her head, incredulous and uneasy.

The usually arrogant golden-haired girl looked uncharacteristically anxious.

Jiang Zhiyi didn’t know why, but though she was willing deep down, she still foolishly asked, “Which one?”

Shi Qingyi: “…”

As a genuine academic slacker with scores under 400 across six subjects, wanting to go to the same school as a perennial top-20 student—which school could handle that gap?

“Go south,” Shi Qingyi faced the alley’s shabby wall, not daring to look at her. “My mom left me a house by the sea. There are peach trees inside. In summer, we can watch the ocean together. Winters aren’t too cold. The city has great schools, and ones I can get into. They’re not too far apart…”

“You…”

Would you… go with me?

It was too hard for the awkward golden-haired girl to say it outright. Before she finished, the girl opposite lifted her head.

The deep alley was dark at night, but Shi Qingyi still saw tears in her eyes—dim, almost crying. In one blink, they were gone, like an illusion.

She stood there hugging her backpack, her voice full of anticipation. “Then… can I go with you?”

Shi Qingyi was caught off guard by the line being stolen. “…Sure.”

The System tsked in admiration. “What a great girl. She knows you’re thin-skinned and even asked you herself.”

…

Jiang Zhiyi still habitually watched Shi Qingyi leave. Sourness flooded her chest turbulently, but as she hugged her backpack and walked away, she felt inexplicably lighter.

Shi Qingyi’s future plans included her. She could accompany the girl she liked for a long, long road—maybe beyond just friends.

She quietly clenched her palm, where Shi Qingyi had held it. For the first time, she felt the future might not be all darkness.

She walked step by step into the alley, feeling the remaining half-year wouldn’t be so unbearable. Once endured, it would be better days ahead.

That good mood halted the moment she pushed open the door. Shattered wine bottles littered the floor amid cigarette smoke. Her aunt sat on the sofa, looking utterly dejected.

She remembered her aunt as once plump, but after days of buying and carting vegetables, she’d shrunk smaller and smaller, less able to resist the violence. Whenever her uncle got drunk, she and her aunt were the first targets.

A drunk wasn’t human. He might spare his own daughter some mercy, but for Jiang Zhiyi, the tagalong, it was different.

“Finally bothered to come back? Out all day without a home. Look what time it is?” The man spat as he cursed, his alcohol breath nauseating, but Jiang Zhiyi didn’t dare speak, or fists would follow.

She shrank into the corner, silent, sensing something off. Jiang Zhiqing wasn’t home, her aunt had closed shop unusually early, and the room reeked of thick smoke, the air foul.

“Zhiyi,” her honest aunt said, lips trembling after a pause, rough fingers unconsciously rubbing her pant leg, embarrassment on her face. “You know about Zhiqing’s matter, right?”

Jiang Zhiqing’s matter?

Jiang Zhiyi blanked for a second, then the man snorted coldly. “After raising you this white-eyed wolf all these years, you didn’t even know your sister got into a good school abroad? She’s leaving next month. We’re moving too. Sell this land to pay her tuition. We’ll go back to the countryside hometown.”

“Back to the old home?” Blood rushed to Jiang Zhiyi’s head with a buzz, her mind reeling, lips trembling. She could barely hear them. “What about… me?”

“You?” The man’s tone grew more impatient. “What about you? You don’t have a school admission like Zhiqing. What’s the point of all this schooling? We were gonna let you finish high school, but then what? Who’s paying for more? Quit school early and work. I’ve found you a factory job. Don’t whine about this or that. I’ve fed you this tagalong till now—now you work to save for your sister’s tuition? No?”

Her aunt’s head drooped lower, throat bobbing. “Old Jiang!”

“I won’t—”

The man slapped her away. “I’m laying it down: if you dare go back to school, I’ll skin you alive. With your reputation there, you still dare? Just like your dad, bah!”

Jiang Zhiyi’s nails dug inch by inch into her palms, nearly suffocating. In that moment, an intense powerlessness from fate’s oppression surged in her.

Some were born lucky. Jiang Zhiqing met someone she liked, mutual love despite poverty, nobles helping, exceptional talent—playing violin in grand halls, stunning everyone, elegant as a swan.

Others could only scrape by in the darkest corners under the lights. Even struggling to live was a luxury, collateral damage stripping even the right to strive.

Just now, the girl she liked asked if she’d go to the same school. Fate dangled hope, then mercilessly shoved her into the mud.

As if she didn’t deserve to live at all.

That night, she lay sleepless. After tears dried, she stared out the window. She desperately missed Shi Qingyi—wanted to talk, hug her, even just send a message.

But she couldn’t. She didn’t even have contact info.

As dawn broke, she suddenly calmed. She dressed, got out of bed, closed the door, and stepped out into the thinning moonlight.

The village clinic in the city was open twenty-four hours.