Chapter 24: The Submissive, Obsessive Top Student

In the sweltering heat of late August and early September, the oppressive waves made people’s hearts restless, even at ten o’clock at night, the lights in Grade 3 Class 7’s classroom still burned brightly.

A girl with shoulder-length golden hair by the window propped her head up, drowsy and listless, when she suddenly jolted awake and sat up straight.

The math teacher on the podium, who was slightly balding and always quite arrogant, had utter contempt for this academic failure who had bought her way in with money. Seeing her seemingly lost in a daze, he directly chucked a piece of chalk at her. His aim was spot on, and it smacked right onto her forehead.

Her fair forehead instantly reddened, and Shi Qingyi abruptly shot to her feet, ignoring the math teacher’s furious glare as she charged straight out of the classroom.

The summer night was stifling like a steam cooker, distant thunder rumbling in the sky. The teacher behind her bellowed in rage, “If you leave, don’t come back!”

But Shi Qingyi couldn’t care less. Her forehead throbbed faintly with pain as she gritted her teeth and demanded, “What day is it today?”

The System patiently repeated, “Today is September 23rd. You didn’t mishear—it’s the day Jiang Zhiyi jumps off the building.”

Shi Qingyi: “…”

As the second world’s mission, Shi Qingyi had fresh memories of September 23rd—memories etched deeply into her bones.

The villain of this world was named Jiang Zhiyi. Her mother had once been a beautiful rich girl who eloped with a poor boy for love in her youth. But the boy got into a fight, killed someone, and was thrown in jail for decades. Her mother gave birth alone and died from a serious illness when she was young.

Jiang Zhiyi was still small back then, passed around like a ball. No one wanted a child who remembered everything, the daughter of a murderer. Eventually, she had no choice but to be taken in by her uncle’s family.

Her uncle was a drunk who went mad when intoxicated, and her aunt was timid and never spoke up. She endured endless bullying from a young age. Fortunately, she worked hard and finally got into a good high school, thinking it was the dawn after the clouds parted. But she never imagined it would lead her down the path to true despair.

There, she met the rich delinquent underachiever girl Shi Qingyi. The beautiful girl’s vibrant life was like a blazing fire, illuminating her own dark and lifeless existence.

She unwittingly fell for her, harboring a secret crush, cherishing every bit of warmth the girl occasionally gave her.

But it turned out to be nothing but a massive joke. Her diary of the secret crush was stolen, photographed, and spread everywhere. In a panic, she rushed to find the girl she loved, only to overhear her mocking outside the door: disgusting, just toying with her for fun.

Her sincere heart was trampled, malice crashing over her like a wave.

She had once naively thought Shi Qingyi was an angel come to save her. Only later did she realize she was the final straw that broke her—the one who gave her a taste of false warmth before hurling her into endless hell.

From then on, atop her label as the murderer’s daughter, she gained another: the repulsive lesbian, someone everyone could step on and spit at.

Finally, her heart turned to ash. On a stormy rain night in her senior year, she chose to leap from the rooftop of the teaching building.

Shi Qingyi had just run out of the classroom when thunder boomed. Fine raindrops had already begun pattering against the windows.

To save time for senior-year students coming and going, the school had placed the senior classes on the first floor. Shi Qingyi dashed up to the sixth floor in one breath, her calves trembling slightly. She shoved hard at the rooftop door, but the rusty old iron door merely rattled without budging.

“Damn it.” Shi Qingyi couldn’t help cursing. Why didn’t she remember Jiang Zhiyi locking the rooftop door before jumping?

“It wasn’t her who locked it,” the System flipped through the world plot and said weakly. “Deng Sisi locked her on the rooftop…”

Shi Qingyi’s face turned icy cold. She couldn’t hold back a curse of “beast” before forcing the System to add a stamina boost. Amid bone-cracking agony, she finally rammed the iron door open.

The rooftop offered no shelter. Torrential rain poured down, and through the sheets of water, she could barely make out a frail figure standing by the railing.

Soaked through by the downpour, the figure hugged her own arms tightly, walking toward the railing in a dazed stupor.

Shi Qingyi’s eyelid twitched violently. Ignoring everything, she charged into the rain and shouted, “Jiang Zhiyi—”

Jiang Zhiyi stood in the pouring rain, her hair plastered to her eyes by the water, blocking her vision. Her ears rang with the roar of rain and thunder. Yet amid it all, she thought she heard someone calling her name.

But how could that be? No one would come to save her.

She had been locked up there for a full four hours, from six after school to nearly ten when evening self-study ended. Not a single person noticed she was missing.

No one cared about her, no one noticed her absence and came looking. She had waited alone from sunset to this deluge, and not one soul came to rescue her.

It must have been her imagination.

She paused for a moment before woodenly resuming her steps toward the railing.

No one would notice she was gone. Even if they did, it wouldn’t matter—no one would come. Wait for Deng Sisi’s conscience to kick in and let her out? She had probably forgotten she even existed.

Or wait until tomorrow to be released, after a night in the rain— she’d get sick, right? No money for medicine, just like countless times before, enduring it like a dog, scraping by in misery, pointed at and whispered about: faker, useless, dirty, sloppy. She didn’t even have money for extra toilet paper.

She was so tired, so very tired. Better to jump and end it all cleanly—

She slowly released her arms and gripped the old, cold railing. One leap, and it would all be over, right?

“Jiang Zhiyi, what are you doing?”

A shocked and angry voice suddenly rang in her ear. A panting girl ran over and grabbed her arm, halting her forward tumble.

She had been just that close to falling.

The force was too great. Half her body had already been over the railing, and now gravity pulled her backward. She was about to smash her head on the ground when a hand shot out from the side, catching her at an impossibly twisted angle.

Her head slammed into a shoulder, the pain nearly killing Shi Qingyi on the spot.

The expected gush of blood didn’t come. Her head hit the girl’s thin shoulder. Perhaps it was an illusion, but as she fell, that person had flinched her arm to cushion her further.

“…” She opened her mouth, but no words came out.

The girl had golden shoulder-length hair draped by her ear, a platinum earring on her fair lobe. She hissed in pain, and without looking up, she knew exactly who it was.

“Disgusting…”

“Lesbian…”

“How could she like girls?”

“No wonder she clings to you like a fawning dog. So gross…”

“Did she ever take advantage of you? Even touching her makes you want to puke, right?”

“…”

Endless curses seemed to swarm her ears. Wordless terror enveloped her body again, her limbs trembling uncontrollably. She wanted to get up—Shi Qingyi had called her disgusting. Being this close now, would it make her even more repulsed?

“You, you…”

No, that’s not it. I never thought you were disgusting.

Why are you here? Why the rooftop? Are you looking for me? Why, when you find me disgusting, did you come to save me?

She wanted to ask, but nothing came out. Only tears streamed down endlessly, her throat burning like it held hot coals.

“Why did you run off here? We couldn’t find you anywhere. Don’t you want to live? Do you know it’s pouring—” Shi Qingyi’s tone was fierce and impatient, but before she could finish scolding, a wave of wetness hit her shoulder. It was as if she had unwittingly flipped a switch—scalding tears poured nonstop, soaking her school uniform collar.

Shi Qingyi froze completely, not daring to move.

The rain hammered down relentlessly, lightning flashing through the thunderclouds, pelting their bodies with stinging drops. The thunder boomed so fiercely she could barely open her eyes, hearing only the suppressed sobs beside her, pushed to the extreme.

She didn’t even dare cry out loud. The only reason she cried was that someone had noticed her absence.

Even though the one who noticed and came looking was Shi Qingyi, who had just called her disgusting.

Shi Qingyi pushed herself up with her hands, about to say something, when the rooftop door slammed open with a bang. She twisted her head with effort and saw the old principal’s cloudy eyes light up. “Aiyo!” he exclaimed, hurrying over. “Qingyi, what are you doing here?”

Someone rushed up hurriedly to help her off the ground. The Shi Family wasn’t some prestigious clan, but in recent years, they’d made a few hundred billion riding the real estate boom. Shi Qingyi was a delinquent underachiever, but nouveau riche had money—at least donating a building or two to the school every year was no issue.

Such gullible, money-flush types who didn’t care about reputation were rare. They had to keep a close eye on this little ancestor.

So when the disciplinary director spotted Qingyi mouthing off to the math teacher and bolting during rounds, and she still hadn’t shown up by the end of evening self-study, they frantically searched the entire school.

Shi Qingyi hadn’t thought much of it at first, but as her homeroom teacher clumsily helped her up, her vision went black, and she nearly face-planted again.

The half-dead look tugged at the old principal’s heartstrings. He immediately wanted to rush her to the hospital, but Shi Qingyi finally steadied herself against the doorframe. She scanned around—no sign of the girl—and her mind blanked. “Where’s the person?!”

“Who?” The teachers were baffled, no one responding.

Shi Qingyi’s face drained of color. Before she could speak, a loud clang echoed—something heavy hitting the ground. She shoved off the supporting hands and leaned over the railing in horror, looking down.

A crowd had gathered below. The gatekeeper shone a flashlight and shouted, “Leaders, there’s old renovation planks up top—watch your step!”

Thank goodness, thank goodness—it wasn’t Jiang Zhiyi—

Shi Qingyi slumped back weakly, her back drenched in cold sweat, gripped by aftershock. For a split second just now, she had felt the urge to jump herself.

Jiang Zhiyi thought jumping was liberation, but it was only the start of the nightmare.

In the original plot, whether by good or bad luck, she snagged on tree branches below the building on the way down, cushioning the impact enough that she didn’t die on the spot. She suffered multiple fractures, but the terrifying part was she stayed conscious the whole time.

She had fallen on the secluded rear side of the building. No one noticed her missing and came looking. In the storm, she lay there in agony for two full hours, immobile, bleeding and weeping until the patrolling security guard found her and rushed her to the hospital. But due to delayed treatment, she was left half-paralyzed, never to walk again.

Her mind twisted after that. She drove everyone who had harmed her to ruin. The Shi Family, who had toyed with her feelings, went bankrupt. Shi Qingyi knelt before her begging for mercy, but during one of her torments, she met her end in a car crash—plunged off a bridge with the vehicle, drowning alive.

Shi Qingyi steadied her shaking legs and asked, “Where is she? Where’d she go?”

The System searched and replied speechlessly, “Just around the corner in the hallway ahead. Trouble you to look up.”

Shi Qingyi jerked her head up. The rain had eased. In the corridor stood a girl in a white dress, eyeing her warily. Beside her was the thoroughly drenched Jiang Zhiyi.

The girl wore a clean, neat long school uniform skirt and tugged at Jiang Zhiyi’s sleeve. “Sis, let’s go. Mom’s waiting at home for us to have dinner.”

This was the heroine of this world: the pitiful, beloved little white flower that made everyone pity her and flowers bloom in her presence—Jiang Zhiqing.

“Wait—”

Seeming to sense her gaze, Jiang Zhiyi evasively lowered her eyes, nearly panicking as she turned away.

Shi Qingyi let out a small sneeze, walked over, and tossed the school jacket her homeroom teacher had just draped over her onto the skinny girl’s body. “Put it on.”

The drenched girl had nothing to change into inside the classroom. She bit her lip until it turned white but said nothing, just trembling as she silently clutched the thin jacket tightly in her palms.

Jiang Zhiqing couldn’t stand this rich second-gen who looked like bad news from the start, and with all the rumors, she had no favorable impression. She urged Jiang Zhiyi to hurry.

Shi Qingyi watched Jiang Zhiyi’s figure vanish from sight, staring for several more glances to confirm she no longer seemed suicidal, before shivering as she followed her homeroom teacher downstairs.

“System, I have a question I don’t know if I should ask.”

“Speak if you have something to say. As your exclusive System, I know everything and will tell you everything.”

She was actually asking it ahead of time, and so politely too. This wasn’t like Shi Qingyi’s usual style at all.

“I’ve wanted to ask this for a long time. Isn’t Jiang Zhiqing famous for her bodhisattva heart? She starved herself to take in the male lead’s lost dog, and even when it bit her while she was feeding it, she held no grudges. She warmed up the silent male lead scarred by his childhood trauma, who grew up with her. So why didn’t she show any kindness to her cousin who grew up alongside her?”

The System fell silent for a moment. “Jiang Zhiqing and Jiang Zhiyi are like two sides of the same mirror. They grew up together in the same unbearable environment—one twisted in mind, paranoid and extreme; the other gentle, kind-hearted, and compassionate. Don’t expect one side to save the other. Too much comparison doesn’t lead to redemption; it just stabs at the heart.”

That was why, in the end, Jiang Zhiqing had success in both love and career—rekindling with her first love and achieving fame overseas in the arts—while Jiang Zhiyi was betrayed and hurt by the person she liked, ending up half-paralyzed and unable to stand for the rest of her life. The contrast shattered her mentality.

Tragically, she was originally supposed to be ruined by the male and female leads—family destroyed, dying on the run—but her blackening went too far. With her own power, she got the male lead’s assets frozen and kept the female lead trapped in her grasp amid tears.

—That was truly heartbreaking.

Shi Qingyi thought for a moment and asked, “When Jiang Zhiyi was locked on the rooftop earlier, where was Jiang Zhiqing?”

The System hadn’t expected her mind to jump so quickly and stalled for a second. “She was… delivering medicine to the male lead who had a stomachache?”

“That figures.”

“…Host?”

“Hm?” Shi Qingyi raised an eyebrow.

The System felt a bit of a toothache coming on. “I think your bias is showing a little obviously.”

“Is it?” Shi Qingyi neither confirmed nor denied it.

The System was certain. “Very much so.”

Shi Qingyi paused, then suddenly gazed in the direction Jiang Zhiyi had left and said, “I don’t know why, but I suddenly feel like she seems a bit like Xu Zhaosu. Is that just my illusion?”

The System’s core jolted. It responded righteously, “That must definitely be your illusion!”

“Oh?” Shi Qingyi lifted her gaze. It had only been a vague feeling at first, but with the System’s huge reaction, she suddenly thought it might not be so simple.

The System wasn’t sure if she believed it or not. It hurriedly changed the subject in a panic. “You didn’t catch a cold, so why are you buying so much cold medicine?”

Shi Qingyi picked out a few more types of medicine and put them in her pocket. The school pharmacy never closed, and she replied indifferently, “It’s useful.”

At the other end of the city, an old security door was pushed open. With a creak, even after it fell shut, the sound of a broken wine bottle hitting the ground rang out—like the prelude to a terrifying nightmare.

Jiang Zhiyi struggled to open her eyes. She huddled in the corner, trembling. Her back was drenched in cold sweat, and her throat felt like it was on fire. Outside, someone was drunkenly causing a scene. A weary middle-aged woman’s voice came through: “The kids are still sleeping. They have school tomorrow. You…”

Another wine bottle shattered on the ground. A thick, hoarse male voice roared, “Sleep? I haven’t even gotten back yet! I think you’re just asking for a beating!”

The noise outside grew louder and louder, mixed with the sounds of things breaking amid the thunder and rain. She buried her feverish forehead into the quilt, desperately suppressing her coughs. Don’t make a sound. Can’t make a sound…

The thin, damp quilt offered no warmth. She clutched the school uniform jacket tightly in her arms. A faint lemon water scent wafted from it.

—It was just like the smell on Shi Qingyi’s body when she had held her.

She desperately drew in the meager warmth. It felt like a nightmare, yet also like a beautiful dream. That person had said she was disgusting with disdain, yet pulled her back from the cliff…