Chapter 54: The Submissive, Obsessive Top Student Part 2

Everything seemed perfect; Father Shi adored her mother. The marriage satisfied everyone—except her mother. Just as Shi Qingyi began exploring the world, her mother met her true love.

—A woman, the café owner.

Then came the reckless divorce. She abandoned even the child for it. Father Shi had once used Shi Qingyi to threaten her to stay—a fact Shi Qingyi learned years later.

Her mother hadn’t softened at all. She had always been the one discarded.

She had been very young at the time. When her mother left, she had cried and begged her to stay, but it had been no use. She could not understand why a perfectly good family had fallen apart in an instant. She had tried to get her parents back together, but she had never succeeded.

Father Shi had hated the woman who stole his wife. Under Father Shi’s upbringing and the shadow of her mother’s departure, the young Shi Qingyi had developed the greatest aversion to homosexuality.

That was why she could not help but be kind to Jiang Zhiyi, yet she also could not help but lash out with hurtful words. She would not allow herself to make the same mistake, and she was even more afraid of breaking Father Shi’s heart. This was also why Father Shi had been so furious when he later learned about her and Jiang Zhiyi.

He had lost his wife, and now he had to watch his daughter kiss a girl and get into a car accident. Wordless rage had overwhelmed him; he could not accept it.

“I’m sorry. I was wrong. I was inconsistent in my words and actions back then, and I hurt you. For all these years, I haven’t given you enough sense of security.” She squatted in front of Jiang Zhiyi’s wheelchair and gently kissed her cold hand, cupping it to her lips.

“So, Miss Jiang, will you give me a chance to make up for my mistakes?”

Like a magician, she pulled her hand from behind her back. Her palm, which had been empty moments before, now suddenly held a bouquet of roses. Nestled in the petals in the center lay a ring, embedded with a bare diamond. The band was intricately patterned and engraved with her name.

—My love, Zhiyi.

She dropped to one knee in a marriage proposal pose.

Jiang Zhiyi did not take the flowers; she took the person.

On the indoor lawn, she wore the ring Shi Qingyi had just given her and kissed her ear, her face flushed as she asked, “Is this okay?”

“…”

This was not a question that needed an answer. Shi Qingyi covered her mouth, but she still nibbled on her fingers and spoke, “Qingyi, you said back in high school that you wouldn’t date, so why does the date on the ring say three years ago?”

She did it on purpose, insisting on talking at a time like this.

Shi Qingyi’s voice was slightly hoarse, her eyelashes trembling faintly. “I said I wanted to focus on studying in high school and not date. I didn’t say I wouldn’t after graduation. Are you silly…?”

The ring had been prepared three years ago, but it had taken three years to finally give it to her.

Even if she was called silly, she felt no displeasure at all. It turned out that Qingyi had liked her even back then. She leaned in to nibble her ear, speaking in a sticky, clingy voice, “You don’t need to buy me a plane ticket; my family has its own…”

What a little rich girl.

The little rich girl still had to coax her with sweet words: “What’s mine is yours.”

After it was over, Shi Qingyi finally released the System from the little black room. The pitiful System tearfully complained, “Host, don’t throw away the grinder after the rice is milled next time. You made me help with the magic trick to produce the flowers and ring, then locked me up again.”

Shi Qingyi did not respond, so the System could only hold back its tears. “Blackening value reduced by ten. Now at fifty percent.”

—

Jiang Zhiyi had a very strong dependence on sleeping pills, perhaps because of the domestic violence or something else. She often could not sleep at night and would wake up suddenly in the middle of the night. It had gotten a bit better after Shi Qingyi came along, and she began to wean off the medication.

Someone who had been stuck in the quagmire for so long had thought they would never see the sunlight again. Later, she quit her dependence on drugs and developed a dependence on Shi Qingyi instead—one so extreme that being apart for just ten minutes made her so uncomfortable she wanted to smash things.

To Jiang Zhiyi, Shi Qingyi was like a drug: she could only restrain herself, not quit it entirely. She learned to slowly let go and to live a normal life.

The honeymoon was sponsored by Shi Mother as a favor. The little rich girl grumbled about it for a long time, but Shi Qingyi just kissed her, and she was convinced.

Jiang Zhiyi was always very indulgent toward her, perhaps out of guilt or something else. She spoiled her almost without limits, drawing frequent sideways glances from onlookers.

Later, Shi Qingyi found a suicide note at their home, written in Jiang Zhiyi’s handwriting.

It listed all the assets under her name—from listed companies to street-side eateries. The scattered properties added up to a staggering figure. Shi Qingyi slowly counted the zeros in her mind for a good while. The System irritably spoke up: “Enough to keep you fed and clothed for hundreds of lifetimes.”

Below it read: To be transferred to Ms. Shi Qingyi.

After three years together, Jiang Zhiyi’s blackening value slowly dropped to thirty percent. The last bit stubbornly refused to disappear, leaving the System sighing all day in worry. Shi Qingyi, on the other hand, grew more and more at ease.

Regardless of whether Jiang Zhiyi was pretending or not, she was gradually improving. She became gentle, obedient, loved to act spoiled like a homebody cat, rushing home right after work. Sometimes, when Shi Qingyi picked her up, she would happily nuzzle into her neck all night.

She no longer monitored Shi Qingyi with near-obsessive strictness or forbade her from going out. Everything was getting back on track. In the third year, Jiang Zhiyi was diagnosed with leukemia. No suitable bone marrow match could be found, and her days were numbered.

Jiang Zhiyi was very ill but never gave up treatment. Shi Qingyi stayed by her side unwaveringly. Their luck was truly awful; even with Jiang Zhiyi’s current wealth and status, they could not find a match.

She endured chemotherapy and tried new drugs. It was extremely painful. She curled up trembling in Shi Qingyi’s arms, her tears kissed away one by one. She could not bear to part from Shi Qingyi or the hard-won happiness.

But there was no way to stay.

Chemotherapy caused hair loss. Feeling ugly, she refused to let Shi Qingyi see her, afraid she would stop liking her. So Shi Qingyi cut her own hair to match. On the day she did, Jiang Zhiyi cried fiercely.

“Where’s your hair? Qingyi… Qingyi…”

She shook all over from crying, endlessly stroking the spot around Shi Qingyi’s ear. Shi Qingyi coaxed her for a long time before she calmed down, speaking in hiccupping sobs: “I don’t deserve it… I don’t deserve this from you…”

Shi Qingyi said, “You deserve it.”

Her tone was solemn.

In the end, as Jiang Zhiyi gripped Shi Qingyi’s hand weakly, she whispered the long-buried truth into her ear: “Back then, if you hadn’t been willing to come back, I would have taken you down with me.”

She really was not a good person. If she had truly wanted to let Shi Qingyi go, she should have done it cleanly. Instead, she had her grandfather wait and her secretary call, making sure Shi Qingyi knew her whereabouts.

She had merely made one last bet—that Shi Qingyi would soften, that Shi Qingyi loved her.

Fortunately, she had bet correctly. She had found new life from the brink of despair, grasping that ray of light from the abyss of no return.

At the time, she had thought that if Shi Qingyi truly felt no love or pity for her at all, she would destroy Shi Qingyi and then jump off the building herself. Better to perish together than for you to truly not love me.

Right up to the end, she had been scheming against Shi Qingyi, staking her life on it, calculating her love.

At the very end, she was deeply conflicted. She was so selfish—she wanted Shi Qingyi to remember only her for the rest of her life, with no one else, yet she also wanted her to live well afterward, to forget her, this madwoman, and truly live her own life.

“I’m afraid you’ll forget me, but I’m also afraid you won’t be able to. Qingyi, what should I do?”

Shi Qingyi said, “I already knew everything.”

She knew all her careful arrangements, all her deliberate schemes and malicious intentions.

Even knowing how terrifying she was, Shi Qingyi willingly stayed by her side.

Jiang Zhiyi’s whole body began to tremble. Shi Qingyi held her tightly. In her final moments, she kept saying she loved her, incoherently, desperately professing her love, morbidly wanting to take her along yet desperately restraining herself. No, she could not.

She had been selfish her whole life, fantasizing countless times about perishing together. Her final words were: “Qingyi, you have to live well.”

She truly could not bear to take her along.

Before fully slipping into eternal sleep, she heard Shi Qingyi speak in her ear: “Next time, I’ll walk ahead of you.”

A pause, then a kiss on her forehead: “I love you.”

The world fell silent. She held the emaciated woman, did not cry, but her eyes were closed with rims bright red.

The wind rustled outside. She whispered it again: “Jiang Zhiyi, I love you.”

Very, very much.

—

“Blackening value cleared.” The System ultimately did not dare say congratulations. It cautiously asked, “Host, your emotions are very off. Do you need me to help regulate them?”

The deepest pain was perhaps silent. No one answered it. Only a soft plink sounded as a drop of warm liquid fell onto the ring.

The System was silent for a very, very long time before speaking again: “Host, you kept indulging her blackening value all the way to one hundred percent just for this moment of her guilt?”

She was different from the others. She had innate mental illness. Without reaching this point, she would not hand over that bit of true heart. In the end, a person like her finally softened.

“I thought… she would take me with her.” Shi Qingyi still did not open her eyes; only a single tear slid down her cheek. “Is she destined to die young in every life?”

“Theoretically, she is a major bug in the world line. Once the world realizes she poses no threat to the protagonist, it’s time to eliminate the virus,” the System answered cautiously.

The general plot of the world line could not be changed—for instance, the villain was fated to meet disaster, the protagonists would not die. They could not prevent major plot points. So three years ago, Shi Qingyi had begun laying the groundwork: the ring, Shi Mother. As the System, it sometimes wondered if an actress as skilled as Shi Qingyi had ever truly been moved.

Shi Qingyi’s voice was hoarse: “No exceptions?”

The System naturally continued: “Theoretically, it’s not impossible, but it requires a price—wait, what did you say?” The System suddenly jolted awake.

“What do you mean ‘every world’?!” Its mechanical voice trembled slightly, emitting frightened static.

The woman quietly opened her eyes, dark and bottomless. In a hoarse voice, she enunciated each word: “I said, the villain. What’s the problem?”