When she sensed the glances of others occasionally falling on her, Chi Qingya quickly buried her face in her arms and lay down on her desk, letting out a muffled sob of grievance.
“Yaya, did someone bully you? Why are you crying?”
Just then, Chi Qingya’s girlfriends arrived together at the classroom.
Seeing her lying on the desk and the bustling atmosphere around her, they exchanged amused glances as if they had stumbled upon a juicy drama.
Upon hearing their voices, Chi Qingya started crying even louder, her sobs even more aggrieved.
It wasn’t until one of them gently patted her on the shoulder that she finally looked up at them, eyes brimming with tears.
“Yaya, did you just talk to Su Li?”
The girls in the classroom weren’t shy about gossip, and after overhearing bits of the conversations around them, Qingya’s friends quickly pieced together the rough story.
“Su Li’s just an ungrateful brat!”
“I was worried she had nowhere to go last night and tried to check on her, but she completely brushed me off.”
“She’s broke and homeless— where else could she even go at night? Who would even take her in?”
“The only thing she’s got going for her is that body of hers.”
“I was just worried someone would take advantage of her. I gave her a friendly reminder, but she didn’t even care.”
“I… I really just wanted to check in on her…”
Chi Qingya said with a trembling voice, refusing to admit that she’d actually missed Su Li. Instead, she tried to frame it as concern, hoping her girlfriends would understand her frustration.
They gathered around her and began to console her.
“Yaya, some people are like packages at the express pick-up station— some are small, some are large, some have no labels, some are already damaged, some are straight-up returns. They don’t know where they belong, but eventually they all have to be sent off.”
“Exactly. You don’t have to bother with Su Li. She’ll figure it out once she hits rock bottom.”
“Just wait— she might even come crawling back to you, begging for forgiveness. But don’t give her another chance, okay? Trash like that, who knows what she’s carrying— she might just infect you with it.”
“Yeah, Yaya, you’ve finally distanced yourself from that mess. Don’t let her drag you back down. Getting entangled with someone like her will only bring you karmic disaster.”
They spoke with heartfelt conviction, and slowly, Chi Qingya wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes, feeling that they were right.
After all, her girlfriends cared about her far more than Su Li ever did. Not like that heartless ingrate.
She spends money on her girlfriends, and they offer her advice and support.
She spends money on Su Li, and Su Li just makes her angry— angry enough to cry.
But for some reason, Chi Qingya still felt a strange emptiness inside as she listened to their words, as if something they said had accidentally struck too close to home.
After all, it was Su Li who had chosen to walk away from her.
And it almost felt like… the one who did something wrong, the real “toxic person,” might actually be her.
Of course, she would never admit that.
Soon, the teacher arrived and the classroom gradually settled into silence.
The usual chatter faded.
Chi Qingya couldn’t remember a single thing the teacher said that period.
Her mind was completely elsewhere.
From time to time, her eyes drifted toward Su Li’s direction, while her pen scratched meaninglessly at her notebook.
She wasn’t drawing anything in particular— just dense, tangled lines, layer upon layer.
Just like her current state of mind. A chaotic knot with no beginning or end.
The teacher’s lesson was actually quite interesting and easy to follow.
But Chi Qingya simply couldn’t take in a word of it.
Even the questions that once seemed so easy now looked like some kind of ancient script— completely incomprehensible.
Frustration began to rise in her chest.
She glanced again in Su Li’s direction.
Maybe it was because she was sitting near the back, but she noticed that many other classmates were also sneaking glances at Su Li.
The way they looked at her made Chi Qingya feel unbearably irritable.
It was like watching something she loved being taken away from her.
After all, she had found Su Li first.
It was also her— Chi Qingya— who had helped Su Li when she was at her most helpless, when she needed someone the most.
So why… why did things turn out so differently from how she had imagined?
At that moment, her reaction didn’t draw much attention from her girlfriends.
The three of them were absorbed in a game of mobile Dou Dizhu, occasionally whispering and giggling among themselves.
As for Chi Qingya’s shift in mood, they couldn’t have cared less.
They only occasionally glanced in her direction— when they noticed she wasn’t paying attention to class either, they finally felt reassured.
It wasn’t until the bell rang at the end of class that one of them seemed to remember Chi Qingya was even there.
She looked at Qingya’s hand, where the dried black ink from a gel pen had stained her skin, and casually said, “Yaya, your hand’s really dirty.”
Only then did Chi Qingya realize that, lost in thought, she had smeared her hand across the mess of black ink lines she had drawn, staining her fingers without noticing.
She instinctively looked toward the window seat in the front row— but it was empty. Su Li was gone.
“Yaya, don’t overthink it. Maybe Su Li just couldn’t handle staying in the classroom anymore and went to find somewhere to hide.”
“Who knows, maybe she went to secretly meet with one of her ‘clients.’ Looks like a good, studious girl on the outside— but who knows what she’s doing behind the scenes? Some guys love that kind of contrast.”
“Heh, maybe this whole act of being diligent and focused is just part of her branding strategy. Trying to raise her own price. After all, those people who never even finished middle school— they get off on having someone from a prestigious school servicing them.”
“Just imagine— those who spent half their lives slogging through books, only to end up beneath someone with no education at all… just thinking about it is so satisfying.”
“If Su Li cleaned herself up and was willing to sleep with me for free, maybe I’d consider it. But she’s too filthy. I’d be scared of catching something.”
The moment those words left their mouths, an even deeper frustration took hold in Chi Qingya’s chest.
She couldn’t stop imagining Su Li in someone else’s arms, whispering sweet nothings, doing those intimate things.
The thought filled her with such irritation that she violently scribbled across the page— but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get rid of the suffocating weight in her chest.
Where had Su Li gone now, after leaving the classroom?
Could it be… her sugar daddy was someone from their very own school?
If that were true… then maybe, just maybe, if she could expose Su Li’s little scheme, she could force her to face the consequences.
Make her see she was wrong.