Chapter 1

“I like you!”

Mu Cheng wore a playful little bun on top of her head, and when she smiled, shallow dimples appeared at the corners of her mouth. Nervously, she stopped in front of a boy, bent forward, and presented with both hands the pink envelope she had spent an entire night preparing.

The boy held a basketball under one arm. He had just walked off the court and was covered in sweat. He glanced at the envelope and said awkwardly, “Let’s not.”

A clear and casual rejection.

Mu Cheng’s hand, still holding out the love letter, froze in midair. Her smile stiffened, and she stood there in a daze for a long while.

She had actually been rejected. He had clearly been hinting at her, intentionally or otherwise, all this time, so how had it ended up becoming a one-woman show?

The boy tossed the basketball back and forth between his hands, his expression careless and rude. “I’ll just tell you the truth. The main reason I’ve been getting close to you during this period is because I wanted to get to know Zhong Yingzhi through you. Aren’t you in the same dorm as her?”

Hearing this, Mu Cheng pressed her thin lips together tightly. A nameless fire rose in her heart. “For three whole months, you asked after me every single day, and in the end, the person you wanted to pursue wasn’t me, but Zhong Yingzhi?”

The boy shrugged. “Although it might not be very appropriate for me to say this now, I’m really too desperate. Just be understanding, okay? Can you help me? Help me win her over.”

Mu Cheng’s eyes filled with disbelief.

The boy ran a hand through his short hair, gave her a sunny smile, and said expectantly, “Didn’t you say you liked me? Since you like me, you wouldn’t be unwilling to help with even this little thing, right?”

Mu Cheng looked at him coldly. Her hands, hanging at her sides, slowly clenched into fists as she held back [unauthorized copy]the anger and humiliation in her heart. “I’m not close with her. I can’t help you with this. You’ve got the wrong person.”

Mu Cheng turned to leave, but the boy grabbed her and started pestering her unreasonably. “Come on. I spent so much time on you. If you don’t help me at all, wouldn’t I be losing out?”

“You’re losing out?” Rage burned inside her as she shoved him. “Where exactly are you losing out? Did I take advantage of you somehow? Or do I just look easy to bully?”

The boy curled his lip. “I just wanted you to help me with a small favor. Do you have to exaggerate it so much?”

Mu Cheng was so angry she laughed. Right then and there, she crumpled the love letter into a ball and threw it into the trash can as if she were throwing away garbage. “Jiang Zhengzhi, I’ll consider myself blind. They were right. You really are trash.”

Jiang Zhengzhi was a well-known “figure” on campus. Captain of the basketball team, one hundred ninety centimeters tall, sunny and handsome. But the stories about him were nowhere near as perfect as his looks. He changed girlfriends every three days, perfectly embodying what it meant to pass through a field of flowers and brush against every single petal.

It wasn’t that Mu Cheng had never heard those rumors. She had simply gotten carried away, trapped in her own little world, always feeling that they were only rumors. Now, this blow straight to the head had finally knocked her awake.

…

“Bang, bang, bang.”

Explosions sounded beside her ears. It was a party popper.

Mu Cheng instinctively covered her ears, and the bun on top of her head trembled along with her.

Her roommate Xiao Xiaoli, sporting a mushroom haircut and holding a party popper in her hand, danced around and shouted in celebration, “Congratulations to our eternal single dog! Today, you have successfully obtained one handsome man and officially left singlehood behind!”

Xiao Xiaoli rushed over, wrapped her in a bear hug, and cried noisily, “Congratulations, congratulations! You’re no longer single! You absolutely have to treat me to a meal today. I guided you through that love letter word by word. Not treating me would be totally unreasonable.”

Mu Cheng pushed her away, her face gloomy.

Xiao Xiaoli noticed something was wrong. “What’s with that expression? Don’t tell me your confession got rejected?”

Mu Cheng said, “Isn’t getting rejected a pretty normal thing?”

Xiao Xiaoli’s eyes widened in surprise. “Are you joking with me? How could you be rejected? He was so attentive to you and kept treating our entire dorm to food every now and then. If he didn’t have feelings for you, then he must have been too full and had nothing better to do.”

Mu Cheng gave a cold laugh. “Excessive attentiveness without reason means either treachery or theft. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to steal. It’s just that the person he wanted to steal wasn’t me.”

Just then, a light breeze blew over, carrying the faint fragrance of mint.

Someone walked past them. The girl was around one hundred seventy centimeters tall, with waist-length brownish-gold hair. Her face seemed carved, its contours distinct and her features deep-set, while her pale blue eyes added an even stronger exotic charm.

Xiao Xiaoli waved at her in greeting. “Hi, Yingzhi.”

Hearing her, Zhong Yingzhi glanced at her. Her gaze was cold, as though she were looking at a stranger. When she looked over, the temperature around them seemed to drop by several degrees.

Xiao Xiaoli swallowed and suddenly regretted greeting her.

Zhong Yingzhi withdrew her gaze, her expression indifferent, and continued walking forward.

Mu Cheng narrowed her eyes as she watched Zhong Yingzhi’s retreating figure, [read the original at bailiantales.com]her face full of hostility. “Look at her. We’ve been in the same dorm for almost more than two years, but whenever someone greets her, she never responds. It’s like she doesn’t know us at all. She walks around with that stinking face all day. Just looking at her is annoying.”

Xiao Xiaoli looked completely puzzled. “She’s not annoying. Although she’s icy, her face is still quite pleasing to the eye. A mixed-race beauty with blond hair and blue eyes—just looking at her can put you in a really good mood.”

“Shallow.” Mu Cheng glared at her angrily. “What’s the use of being good-looking? She doesn’t understand the slightest bit of manners. She looks down on people from the bottom of her heart, and her nose is practically up in the sky.”

Mu Cheng’s chest rose and fell as she kept cursing angrily without pause.

At the same time, Zhong Yingzhi, who had left, returned. She happened to hear every single word of Mu Cheng’s insults.

Xiao Xiaoli nudged Mu Cheng with her shoulder, winking and making faces to signal for her to look to the side.

Mu Cheng did not notice at all. “Is your eye twitching? What, am I wrong? What’s so great about her? She’s like some arrogant white swan. What right does she have to look down on us…”

Mu Cheng’s mouth was half-open, and the words got stuck abruptly in her throat.

She and Zhong Yingzhi looked straight into each other’s eyes.

The air seemed to freeze.

Zhong Yingzhi swept her eyes over her from top to bottom. A fluffy bun, loose brown denim overalls, and a pair of white sneakers on her feet. She was clearly going for a cute style, yet the way she cursed was no different from a shrew.

Zhong Yingzhi gave a cold chuckle, carrying a hint of mockery. Without saying a word, she walked past her, brushing by her shoulder.

Mu Cheng stood frozen in place and only came back to herself several seconds later.

After recovering, she wildly shook Xiao Xiaoli by the shoulders. “Stinky Pear, she was right there just now! Why didn’t you warn me?”

Xiao Xiaoli was shaken until she was dizzy and disoriented. Helplessly, she said, “You were cursing so enthusiastically. My eyes were almost twitching from all the signals I was giving you, okay?”

Mu Cheng stopped shaking her shoulders. She lowered her head and asked dejectedly, “Did I look especially lacking in character just now, talking badly about someone behind their back?”

Xiao Xiaoli nodded very honestly.

Mu Cheng frantically scratched her head on the spot. A deep sense of defeat welled up in her heart. What did her confession being rejected have to do with Zhong Yingzhi? She herself had been blind and bewitched by beauty, and now, the way she was taking her anger out on someone else was truly too lacking in character and too pathetic. She had utterly humiliated herself.

With everything going wrong, Mu Cheng ran back to the dorm, washed her face with cold water, climbed into bed, pulled the blanket over herself, and planned to sleep for a while to calm down.

She tossed and turned. One moment, Jiang Zhengzhi’s teasing expression came back to her; the next, Zhong Yingzhi’s mocking gaze flashed through her mind. After lying there for more than half an hour, she still had no sleepiness at all.

She opened her eyes and let out a long sigh.

What caught her completely off guard was that the moment she opened her eyes, she nearly thought she was hallucinating.

The scene in front of her was no longer the familiar dorm, but had changed into a completely unfamiliar place. A glass chandelier hung overhead, casting a soft, dim yellow light.

Mu Cheng wanted to climb up. She wanted to turn her head and look around at her surroundings, but she discovered that her body could not move at all. Never mind climbing out of bed—even turning her neck was completely impossible.

Pain spread through her whole body. It hurt down to her bones, hurt so much it made her suffocate.

The medical equipment beside the bed began giving off an intense beeping alarm.

Immediately after, someone pushed the door open and came in, their delighted voice ringing out noisily. “She’s awake, she’s awake! Miss Mu is awake!”

Mu Cheng really wanted to figure out what was going on right now, but even keeping her eyes open felt abnormally exhausting.

She could not hold on. Her eyes slowly closed, and the world fell into darkness. Only her senses remained. She could hear sounds, and she could feel the pain coming from every part of her body.

She did not know how long this state lasted. During that time, someone pried open her eyelids and shone a blinding flashlight into them. It was a man in a white coat. He was probably helping examine her physical condition.

Faint voices of conversation came to her ears. A man and a woman were speaking.

The woman’s voice was cool, but carried a trace of familiarity. “How are her injuries?”

The male doctor said, “Miss Mu fell from a tall building. Her injuries are very severe. The fact that she was able to wake up can already be considered a medical miracle. President Zhong doesn’t need to worry too much. Her body is recovering very well. She should wake up again soon.”

The conversation stopped. The click-clack of high heels gradually approached. The bed sank down slightly as someone sat at the bedside.

The woman held Mu Cheng’s hand and gently, slowly rubbed it, as though touching a porcelain doll that might shatter at any moment, cherishing it yet filled with fear.

A warm dampness spread over the back of her hand. Were those tears? Was this woman crying? Mu Cheng secretly guessed.

She suddenly wanted very much to open her eyes and look at the woman sitting by the bed. She wanted to, urgently.

Using all the strength in her body, she struggled and half-opened her eyes.

Her vision gradually went from blurry to clear.

The person sitting by the bed was actually Zhong Yingzhi!

Her tall, straight nose bridge, her sharply contoured face—compared to the Zhong Yingzhi in Mu Cheng’s memory, the person before her had gained a few traces of the unique charm of a mature woman.

To say she was Zhong Yingzhi, yet she also did not quite seem like Zhong Yingzhi. Someone as proud as her—how could she possibly cry?

But the person before her was truly, unmistakably shedding tears. Her pale blue eyes were filled with sorrow, and tears slid down silently, drop after drop, falling onto the back of Mu Cheng’s hand.

Seeing the scene in front of her, Mu Cheng could not help sighing inwardly. Even when this person cried, she looked like an immortal shedding tears—so beautiful that it was impossible to look away.

Maintaining the act of keeping her eyes open was truly too exhausting. Mu Cheng held on for three or four seconds before she could no longer endure it, and closed her eyes again.

“Xiao Cheng, promise me. You must survive.” Zhong Yingzhi’s choked words carried a hint of pleading, humble all the way down into the dust.

All of a sudden, Mu Cheng abruptly opened her eyes and shot upright from bed with a “whoosh.” The pain disappeared, and she had returned to the dorm.

She gasped for breath in huge mouthfuls, a thin layer of sweat forming on her forehead.

Xiao Xiaoli, who was gnawing on an apple, looked at Mu Cheng in confusion. “What’s wrong with ​Read on BaiLianTales​you? Did you have a nightmare?”

Mu Cheng wiped the sweat from her forehead and slowly came back to herself. “I did have a dream. Calling it a nightmare doesn’t really seem right, though. It was clearly a dream, so how could it hurt so much?”

Xiao Xiaoli’s eyes lit up. “You had an erotic dream?”

Mu Cheng rolled her eyes. “Can your train of thought please stop being so bizarre? The person I dreamed about just now was Zhong Yingzhi…”

Before she could finish speaking, Xiao Xiaoli was so shocked that the apple in her hand fell to the floor in one step. She cried out, “The target of your erotic dream was Yingzhi!”

Mu Cheng was momentarily speechless. How was this person’s comprehension ability so unconventional?

Mu Cheng was just about to retort, but the timing could not have been better—or worse. Zhong Yingzhi happened to return to the dorm after class, and just so happened to hear everything Xiao Xiaoli had said.

Zhong Yingzhi stood in the doorway, her long hair casually pinned up with a leather tie. She wore a white shirt paired with light-colored jeans, simple and cool.

Her gaze was as indifferent as ever. She glanced at Xiao Xiaoli, then looked at Mu Cheng.

Mu Cheng had just woken up, and with her thick hair, it inevitably looked messy, like a “chicken’s nest.” She was also wearing a bright red grandma-style pajama set.

Mu Cheng hurriedly reached out and explained, “It’s not like that. Listen to me. It’s a misunderstanding, purely a misunderstanding.”

Zhong Yingzhi withdrew her gaze, placed the books in her hand on the desk, pulled out her chair, sat down, opened a book, and lowered her head to read. She seemed to have no intention of listening to her explanation.

Mu Cheng jumped down from the bed and ran barefoot to her side. “I really did have a dream just now, and you really were in the dream, but it absolutely wasn’t that kind of dream.”

Zhong Yingzhi did not even turn her head. Her gaze remained on the book, and her voice was cold. “Got it. No matter what kind of dream it was, in any case, I’m not interested in you.”

Mu Cheng: “…”