Chapter 2

Afternoon class.
Jiang Wei held a crumpled note between her fingers.
On it was a single line: After school. Behind the field; Ling Ze
Her expression flickered, first confusion, then something close to dread.
She and… Senior Ling? How was that even possible?
The girl beside her leaned over, curious.
“Is that a love letter?”
Jiang Wei shook her head quickly, balled up the note, and tossed it into the trash, silently gesturing that it was nothing, just scrap paper.
The teacher’s voice grew distant, fuzzy, because she couldn’t stop thinking about last night’s nightmare.
“Weiwei, be my girlfriend. Say yes… please?”
“Weiwei, I love your profile the most. That angle, you look perfect.”
“We had our little transaction. Why are you clinging to me now? I’m marrying Zhi Ning next month. She won’t like this…”
“Here’s twenty million…”
“You think you can compete with me? Trash!”
A shrill female voice followed, laced with fury, barking commands.
They say people forget dreams the moment they wake, but hers remained painfully clear.
Was that woman… her?
And that face, ruined and scarred?
Jiang Wei suddenly shivered and subconsciously raised her hand to touch her face.
Everything's fine, everything's alright.
She was so distracted she walked straight into someone after class.
“Do you not watch where you’re going?”
A lazy, irritated voice snapped above her.
She looked up, and froze.
That familiar face from the school bulletin board: sharp, handsome, rebellious.
The notorious second-generation rich kid, Mu Yang.
Rumor had it his family donated two whole buildings to the school, and the principal personally welcomed him at the gate.
Whether that was true or not, his background was powerful.
And rumor also said his temperament… wasn’t great.
Jiang Wei went stiff with fear, stammering out an apology.
“S-sorry, Senior Mu… I, I need to hurry home.”
And then, because the nightmare had shaken her so deeply, she blurted out something utterly absurd:
“Senior Mu, c-could you… tell Senior Ling that I, I won’t be able to meet him behind the field after school? I just… want to focus on studying.”
The moment the words left her mouth, she wanted to die on the spot.
What was she saying?!
That dream wasn’t even about Ling Ze!
Mu Yang spit out a mouthful of soda.
He stared at her like she’d grown a second head.
This yellow-haired little girl, sallow face, shabby clothes, nothing remarkable except those large watery eyes, Ling Ze… asked her to meet?
“Say that again?”
“I, I didn’t say anything!”
Because of his tall and muscular physique and his expertise in fencing, Mu Yang always exuded a sharp aura. Coupled with his well-known reputation, Jiang Wei was somewhat afraid of him and turned to run away.
After school, Ling Ze, Mu Yang, and their friends planned to have a get-together at the "Royal Dynasty" restaurant in the southern part of the city.
It would be more convenient to go out through the back door. As he passed the playground, Mu Yang suddenly remembered the joke from earlier that day.
"Hey Ze, some ugly girl suddenly came up to me today and said you asked her to meet you at the back playground, is that true? Hahaha..."
"Now that we're here, don't you want to go see her?"
Mu Yang winked and teased.
This annoyed Ling Ze. Yesterday, his father brought back another illegitimate child. Thinking of this, he couldn't help but sneer.
His mother was a huge joke. Luckily, she died early, otherwise, he would have been so angry yesterday.
"Go ahead, why wouldn't you go?"
When Jiang Wei left the school, she originally planned to go around the back playground, but little did she know that the people who wanted to bully her would not let her off so easily and had been following her all along.
They dragged her to the infirmary in the back playground.
They were a group of young female delinquents who often followed Ling Ze around. The one in the lead was strikingly beautiful, with an arrogant expression. She had altered her school uniform into a low-cut top, was smoking, and had a cold, sinister look in her eyes.
She threw the cigarette butt forcefully on the ground, then rubbed it with her pretty little lambskin shoes, her tone impatient.
"You're moving so slowly. My dad is still at the school gate, waiting to pick me up to go to Lanshan County."
Seeing Jiang Wei's pathetic, weak appearance annoyed me. She was dressed in dirty, tattered clothes, yet she was in the same class as me. She wouldn't even let her copy her homework, and she even used the teacher to pressure her.
Doesn't she know her uncle is the school's dean of students? Which teacher would dare disobey her? Doesn't she even realize that?
The thought that such a piece of trash dared to steal her man made her even angrier, and she raised her hand to slap him.
Although Jiang Wei usually tolerated these young masters and ladies, she wasn't stupid when the punishment was about to fall on her own. She immediately started struggling to break free of the restraints, but she was never hit.
"You actually dared to hide? You've gotten bolder, haven't you? I'll make you regret this today. You think Senior Ling Ze would even notice you? Dream on!"
Jiang Wei's ears twitched slightly; she heard several footsteps. She secretly rejoiced, thinking they were probably teachers coming to pack up their things.
Because of this distraction, she was immediately kicked twice, which aroused the anger deep in her heart. She remembered that she had always been very tolerant of these second-generation rich kids.
So she rammed her head into the girl's abdomen. The girl screamed in pain, and the two henchmen reacted and started fighting. The scene became chaotic.
Outnumbered, Jiang Wei was eventually pinned to the ground, perhaps because her earlier resistance had angered the leading girl even more.
Shee squatted down, grabbed her hair, almost tearing her scalp, and slapped her several times.
"You think nothing will happen if you don't talk! What are you always doing hanging around the basketball court! Why did you come over when I wrote you a note using Senior Ling's name!"
The girl in the lead was consumed by jealousy whenever she thought about the humiliation she suffered on the basketball court that day.
Hearing the girl say that she impersonated Ling Ze to write notes and invite classmates out to bully them was just like in her dream, and Jiang Wei was almost terrified.
Those half-remembered images, the man’s breath, the begging, that disfigured face…
Was that really, her?
The girls began tearing at her clothes, ready to film everything and upload it to the school forum.
“I’m telling you, it was Senior Ling who told me to teach you a lesson, you bit, ”
Their voices carried clearly through the door, and outside, someone froze.
Ling Ze frowned sharply.
He had never ordered anything like that.
He looked at Mu Yang, who raised his hands innocently.
How was he supposed to know someone was using Ling Ze’s name?
Either way, having someone pull dirty tricks under his identity left Ling Ze disgusted, irritated and ready to intervene.
Bang!
The door was kicked open and golden sunlight flooded in.
All eyes snapped toward the entrance, toward the tall, clean lines of a girl’s silhouette, slim waist framed in the glow of dusk.
The bruises mottled across her skin bloomed in shades of blue and violet, an almost fragile, violent kind of beauty. Mu Yang, who was the first to step inside, froze for a heartbeat.
A strange pull stirred in his chest, an instinctive flicker of pity. He strode forward, shrugging off the training jacket slung over his shoulder and draping it around Jiang Wei. Only then did he notice the thin line of blood still trailing from the corner of her mouth.
Because she had been desperately shielding the front of her body, some of her injuries had gone unseen; now he realized the freshman girl had taken heavy blows to her abdomen as well. Her limbs trembled faintly, signs of shock.
When Jiang Wei lifted her gaze toward him, stubborn and frightened all at once, Mu Yang felt a stab of awkwardness. This mess… honestly had something to do with him and Ling Ze.
And the way she looked at his cousin, there wasn’t an ounce of infatuated schoolgirl in those eyes.
More like someone who had been dragged into disaster for no reason at all.
“I’ll take her to the infirmary.”
Moved by a rare pang of conscience, the illustrious Young Master Mu decided to perform an uncharacteristically charitable act.
He lifted her easily into his arms.
So light, like carrying a bundle of cotton.
Even held snugly against Mu Yang’s chest, Jiang Wei still caught, out of the corner of her eye, the figure not far away, Ling Ze, standing beneath the dying ember of sunset.
And curiously… she felt nothing.
The elegant, refined senior from her nightmare, obsessive, deranged, pursuing her to madness…
She couldn’t even imagine such a version of him.
Was that really supposed to be her?
Ling Ze’s eyes, dark and cold like polished obsidian, simply watched the chaos unfold, expression unreadable.
And in that single glance, Jiang Wei understood one thing: whatever else the dream had twisted, his icy indifference had been no lie.
Mu Yang’s tone snapped across the courtyard:
“Several of you junior sisters lured someone out using Ling Ze’s name, beat her like this, shouldn’t you explain yourselves?”
The gentle school nurse peeled back Jiang Wei’s clothes.
The bruising was dramatic, but after checking her carefully, she discovered the injuries were not as dire as they appeared.
Some swelling on the back, a bright red slap mark across the cheek.
Nothing like what the boy outside had described, he’d looked ready to weep, she thought wryly.
But when the nurse glanced at Jiang Wei, her stern expression softened.
The girl’s head was bowed, her body trembling lightly…she was afraid, afraid the nurse would notice just how not injured she actually was.
The nurse understood instantly.
“Today… they lured me out. I knew it wasn’t Senior Ling, but I, I didn’t want to be beaten again.” Jiang Wei’s voice wavered. “If they use Senior Ling’s name, and something happens, it’ll drag him into it. And once he hears about it, he’ll punish them for endangering his reputation.”
“Teacher, I was just so scared, please help me…”
She began to kneel.
It hadn’t even occurred to her earlier, but with so many witnesses, an idea had struck, finally, a way to deal with these young heiresses who used her as a punching bag whenever they pleased.
The nurse sighed heavily and held her up.
In prestigious international high schools, bullying was a constant, festering presence.
The children of the ultra-rich boss around the children of the merely wealthy, and the children of the merely wealthy trample the ones at the very bottom.
“Teacher, please… I beg you… could you tell them my injuries are a bit more serious…”
With her pallid face and fragile frame, poorly nourished, chronically exhausted, she looked as though she might faint at any moment.
The nurse let out another sigh and nodded.
There were many things she could not change, this, at least, she could.
Outside, Mu Yang listened as the nurse gravely described Jiang Wei’s “severe injuries” and the need for daily treatment.