After Saving My Possessive Best Friend, I Couldn't Escape (GL) - Chapter 8

Chunyang High School had a tight curriculum and started classes earlier than other schools.

Morning self-study started ten minutes early.

Fang Zhile stepped into the classroom, holding a corn cob she had bought on the way from the cafeteria.

Her food allowance was a modest three hundred yuan a month.

Trying to cover her daily expenses with that was genuinely tight. Plus, she only had time to work on weekends, and her wages were paid monthly.

Towards the end of the month, Fang Zhile’s meal standards would drop considerably—from light congee and small dishes to even skimpier portions of light congee and small dishes.

The sounds of recitation and chatter in the classroom intertwined, forming two distinct yet surprisingly harmonious streams of noise.

Fang Zhile walked towards the second row, the designated spot for “top students,” but she did not sit down.

She had noticed a hole in her chair.

A real, definite hole, as if someone had stomped on it but with so much force that the wood in the center had been hollowed out.

Not just the chair. Fang Zhile took her backpack off her shoulder, holding it as her gaze swept from the chair to her desk.

Every book seemed to be in its original place, yet they were disturbingly neater than usual.

She didn’t have the habit of tidying her desk; the previous day’s test papers and textbooks would be stacked haphazardly.

She would only organize them after the teacher went over the test, correct her mistakes, decide if the papers were useful, put the useful ones aside, and keep the useless ones together to sell at the end of the semester.

This unnatural neatness of the stacked papers was what made her feel deeply unfamiliar and uneasy.

Fang Zhile looked up at the people reciting in the classroom.

As her gaze moved, a few people met her eyes, then quickly and casually looked away.

Oh… so that’s it. Fang Zhile made her assessment, keeping a neutral expression while coldly sneering in her heart.

Things kindergarteners don’t even bother with, petty tricks that are beneath contempt—and I’ve run into them.

Fang Zhile nudged the desk with her foot. Its four legs wobbled, but it stayed put. She checked the chair again.

Aside from the hole, it was also stable. She sat down, holding her school bag, pretending nothing had happened.

She opened her mandatory textbook and pulled out a pen.

The required text to memorize today was Ode to Efang Palace. Fang Zhile quietly flipped through the book.

Her fingertip, moving across the page, suddenly stopped.

On the book’s title page, someone had pasted a photo covered in garish red paint. The person in the photo was her.

It was taken during a summer noon when she was sleeping soundly in the dorm, oblivious that the short summer school uniform, when she turned over, would expose a narrow strip of her waistline.

She had only buttoned one of the three modesty buttons, and the action of turning sideways naturally caused a squeeze, exposing a large area of skin beneath her collarbone.

A girl’s peaceful, quiet sleeping face should have created a tranquil and beautiful scene, but the narrow, voyeuristic angle of the photo made the entire image feel malicious.

Across that area of pale skin was a stark, scarlet “X.” A red marker, with undisguised malice, was used to scribble freely across her face and body.

She could almost see the vicious, evil smiles on the faces of the pranksters through the photo.

If it had been the previous Fang Zhile, she probably would have trembled in fear the moment she saw the picture.

Fang Zhile stared at the page for a long time without moving. Her deskmate subconsciously turned to look, and upon seeing the photo stuck in the book, she instantly shivered in fear.

“You, is that your book…”

Fang Zhile calmly closed the book and responded with a composed “Mm,” saying nothing more.

Her deskmate was a petite girl with thick, long bangs and blue-rimmed glasses, who spent most of her time quietly doing problems.

Fang Zhile’s movements were too fast; the deskmate only managed to see a photo covered in malicious scribbling but didn’t clearly see the content of the picture itself.

Even so, it was enough to infer the current situation.

The deskmate glanced at Fang Zhile, looking stunned. After a while, she gathered her courage and whispered, “Are you… being bullied by them?”

Fang Zhile shook her head. “Not yet, for now.”

This photo didn’t prove anything, and they were thoughtful enough to avoid covering her notes.

If it had been the clichéd plot of slashing her books, she might have been more troubled.

Her deskmate thought she was trying to be strong and looked sympathetic, stammering as she tried to say more.

“Are you going to the cafeteria after class?” Fang Zhile noticed her reaction.

The deskmate paused. “I think so. I haven’t had breakfast.”

Fang Zhile put the corn cob into her bag and said peacefully, “Then please bring me a cup of soy milk.”

The deskmate took a few seconds to process this before nodding and agreeing. Fang Zhile turned and smiled at her. “Thank you.”

When the bell rang to end self-study, a crowd surged out of the classroom like hungry tigers, sprinting toward the cafeteria in an 800-meter dash.

Suddenly, only a few people remained in the classroom.

“You were the ones who broke my chair,” Fang Zhile softly closed her book and walked directly toward those few people, her expression calm. “And stole my photo?”

Those people were very familiar—they were Fang Zhile’s roommates.

Li Zi let out a malicious laugh, slammed the textbook she was pretending to read onto her desk, and shouted, “You need evidence for accusations! Which eye saw me do it?”

Sun Li, on the other side, spoke up leisurely, feigning surprise. “Oh, your chair is broken? That’s really bad news. You should reflect on whether it’s your own fault. Why are other people’s chairs fine but yours isn’t?”

Liu Mei echoed the mockery, saying, “Yeah, didn’t you act all superior yesterday? If you’re so capable, why don’t you find the person and beat them up, hahaha.”

Faced with the trio’s provocation, Fang Zhile remained unusually composed, her expression unchanged from start to finish. “Did Zhou Meize instruct you to do this?” Fang Zhile pressed on.

Li Zi frowned. “Why are you bringing up Sister Meize?”

Fang Zhile watched them quietly for a few seconds. There was no expected panic or anger from her, only a calm, cold repetition of the question, “Did Zhou Meize instruct you to violate my privacy, steal my photo, damage my property, and subject me to intimidation and bullying, because I approached Ye Yu? Is that right?”

Her deskmate, who was jogging back with the soy milk, walked in just as she heard Fang Zhile’s words, nearly dropping the cup in shock.

Sun Li caught the underlying meaning and yelled, interrupting Fang Zhile, “Stop talking nonsense! You’re making false accusations!”

Fang Zhile then completely reversed her previous cold, calm state, acting as if she had suddenly succumbed to fear.

She staggered back a step, then another, her shoulders trembling, her voice shaky.

“I understand. There must be some misunderstanding. I will go and explain to her myself.”

Fang Zhile made a move as if bursting into tears and running out the door, covering her face as she sprinted away.

The moment she ran out, she saw her deskmate waiting by the doorway.

She looked up, her eyes slightly red, and said in a trembling voice, “Thank you for the soy milk. Please put it on my desk.”

With that, she ran to the class across the hall under the watchful eyes of the others and grabbed a person who was exiting, saying she needed to find Zhou Meize.

Her current appearance was highly suggestive of a distressed victim.

Before long, Zhou Meize emerged from the back door, frowning.