Chapter 3

When Mu Yang heard that Jiang Wei’s injuries were “serious,” he was genuinely stunned.
He never imagined girl-on-girl scuffles could end up like this.
After the nurse finished her explanation, Jiang Wei stepped slowly out of the infirmary, her posture still bent.
Her lips were drained of color, her face thin and wan.
“Thank you, Senior Mu. I feel much better already. Since school is over, I’ll go home first.”
“I’ll take you.”
The words slipped out before he could stop them, and Mu Yang nearly startled himself.
He wasn’t the type to volunteer kindness.
Delivering a girl he didn’t even know to the infirmary was already an act of enormous charity.
And now he was offering to escort her home?
What the hell had gotten into him?
His expression must have shown something, because Jiang Wei offered him a small, strained, but sincere smile.
“There’s no need to trouble Senior Mu. I really appreciate what you did today. I’ll treat you to,
I mean… I can give you my notes another day. Finals are coming. I hope you do well.”
Mu Yang felt a stab of embarrassment, she was strangely perceptive.
She’d wanted to say she would buy him dinner, but retracted it, probably afraid he’d think she was trying to cling to him.
He strode after her, steadying her shoulder so she could walk more easily.
“It’s fine. We’ll get dinner another day. Come on, my family’s driver should be here. I’ll take you home.”
Only now did he notice just how small she was, bent over, her head barely reached his chest.
Despite insisting she was “much better,” she still couldn’t straighten up.
She must have been in real pain.
What a tough girl.
He remembered she lived somewhere far, near the outskirts.
If he didn’t take her, she’d probably collapse halfway.
“Th-thank you, Senior Mu.”
A faint blush warmed her pale cheeks, giving her a delicate sort of beauty.
This whole scene, rescuing a damsel in distress and escorting her home, felt strangely novel.
And those shy pink ears of hers… they put him in an unexpectedly good mood.
“What’s your name?” he asked suddenly.
“Oh, um, Senior Mu, I’m Jiang Wei.”
She looked startled, then answered softly.
“How do you write it?”
Mu Yang didn’t yet know that these two characters would, in the decades to come, write themselves boldly across the grand arc of his life.
By the time they reached the school gate, the Mu family driver had been waiting for a while.
Seeing the young master supporting a girl, one who looked clearly from a struggling household, the driver was surprised, but dared not comment.
“Uncle Zhang, go…
Where do you live?”
Only now did Mu Yang realize he had no idea where her home actually was.
“Inside the alleys of West Street, South City. Thank you, Senior.”
Her voice was weak, but audible.
Mu Yang watched her sit stiffly in the car, clutching her backpack and taking up barely a corner of the seat, tense to the point of trembling.
He studied her with growing curiosity.
If he hadn’t stepped in earlier, she would’ve limped all the way home alone.
His world… had never included a girl like her.
A wild daisy, fragile to the eye, yet impossibly resilient.
Uncle Zhang glanced at her through the rearview mirror.
West Street’s inner alleys… wasn’t that the most notorious slum in City C?
Two houses had collapsed during the last storm, several people died.
If the master and madam found out…well, that wasn’t his business.
He focused on driving.
It took almost two hours of jostling along uneven roads before they reached her home.
For Young Master Mu, accustomed to sleek city rides, this was the most miserable car trip of his life.
Neighbors poked their heads out of every window.
Millions-worth of luxury car rolling into their alley?
Impossible.
When Jiang Wei stepped out, while Mu Yang remained inside, whispers exploded.
They envied that she knew someone wealthy.
They sneered that she must have sold herself to some seventy-year-old rich man.
“Thank you for today, Senior Mu.”
Jiang Wei hugged her backpack, head lowered, her voice as thin as a mosquito.
From his angle, Mu Yang could only see the elegant slope of her nose.
He watched her walk away, then he scanned the alley, those hungry, covetous, ugly eyes lingering on her.
A sudden irritation rose in him and he lit a cigarette.
The poor were like this, afraid to love, terrified to accept kindness, and quick to tear apart anyone from their own class out of jealousy.
“Uncle Zhang, let’s go. And don’t tell my Ma about today.”
“Yes, young master.”
Jiang Wei felt the stares, envy, suspicion, resentment.
Her steps quickened.
This dark, lightless alley always made her feel stripped bare, watched by a hundred unseen eyes.
Those gazes were cold serpents, coiling around her.
These people were always calculating, wondering if they could squeeze a little advantage out of her.
One day, she promised herself, she would leave this place on her own power.
“Hey, our Weiwei’s home? Come on, come have dinner at your brother’s place!”
As she climbed the stairs, she was stopped by a group of local dropouts, idlers who spent their days loitering, stealing chickens, lifting bikes, doing nothing of worth.
Their eyes roamed over her; their words were crude.
Jiang Wei followed her rule: If they didn’t touch her, she wouldn’t provoke them.
She pretended not to hear and walked faster.
“Grandma, I’m back! If the light bulb breaks again, wait for me, I’ll change it for you.”
The moment she entered the apartment, she saw her grandmother teetering on a stool, struggling to replace a bulb.
Jiang Wei rushed forward, heart pounding, helping her down.
Grandma was her only family.
“Grandma, sit down first. Listen, I talked to my homeroom teacher. If I get first place in the finals, all my school fees next semester will be waived. I will get first place. Then you won’t need to weave so many baskets every day.”
Jiang Wei beamed.
Every night she fell asleep to the flicker of candles outside, the silhouette of her grandmother weaving late into the night.
She’d tried to help, but Grandma always refused, even sneaking outside to borrow the neighbors’ light so Jiang Wei wouldn’t worry.
Summer or not, mosquitoes were vicious.
Jiang Wei hadn’t known until she saw the swollen bites covering her grandmother’s legs.
All she could do was work, and work and keep on working.
“Weiwei’s back. How’s school?” Grandma’s voice floated from the small, dim room, warm and scratchy. “You’re talking a bit more today. Ever since you went off to that Qingteng High School, you come home and barely say a word. You’re so happy today, did you make a friend?”
“No, Grandma. It’s just… the teacher covered easier topics today. I don’t feel as much pressure.”
When Jiang Wei finished changing the light bulb, Grandma took her hand, her fingers rough and trembling with age.
“If only your parents were still here…”
Jiang Wei wrapped her arms around her, trying to chase away the sadness. Right then and there, she silently made a promise, to get into the best university she could and give Grandma a good life.
When she returned to school, she noticed the girls from that day were absent. Her seat was toward the back, and her classmates kept sneaking glances over their shoulders at her.
“Jiang Wei, are you feeling better? I copied the notes you missed while you were out,” her deskmate said quietly, turning to face her with her last monthly exam paper in hand. “I marked the questions you got wrong last time and organized everything for you. Here.”
He sat by the window, the sunlight spilling across his clear, handsome features, making him look impossibly gentle.
“Ah, Wen Ji, thank you.”
Lost in a daze, Jiang Wei was jolted back by her stunning deskmate’s voice. She suddenly thought of something, and a flush crept over her cheeks.
Wen Ji looked at her small frame swimming in the school uniform, it seemed even looser now. She must have lost weight again. He sighed inwardly.
Dark smudges under her eyes. It seemed she hadn’t been sleeping well either.
He studied her with a mild, steady gaze, a hint of worry in his eyes.
Jiang Wei, in turn, stole a closer look at him. His brows and eyes were soft as water, his face clean-cut and still boyish. Yes… he really was quite good-looking.
Before this, she’d focused on only one thing, beating him to become first in the entire year. She was so single-minded she’d never even taken a proper look at his face.
But lately she kept having the same dream, over and over again.
In it, Wen Ji was the youngest top cardiothoracic surgeon in City C, a backbone of the Central Hospital, with a blazing future ahead of him, and then, death at the peak of his youth.
And in that tangled, chaotic relationship… he was her lover.
Wait. No. That was impossible.
That he’d become a brilliant surgeon? She believed that easily.
But her lover? What kind of nonsense was that?
Dreams really were the domain of ghosts and madness.
Jiang Wei turned her head away, pressing the cool cover of her textbook against her burning face to calm down.
“I accidentally brought too much breakfast today,” Wen Ji said, pushing a small thermos of millet porridge and a neatly packed osmanthus cake toward the middle of the desk. “Help me out, otherwise I won’t finish it anyway.”
“Wen Ji, you ‘accidentally’ bring too much every day,” Jiang Wei replied.
Still, she accepted the breakfast obediently, sipping the porridge in small mouthfuls. She couldn’t help pressing her lips together, fighting the upward tug of a smile.
“N-not every day.”
Caught off guard by her teasing, Wen Ji blanked out for a moment. Then he caught the glimmer of mischief in her apricot eyes and finally realized she was joking with him.
He pushed his glasses up, ears tinged red, looking slightly flustered.
She really was livelier than before. Normally she barely responded to him.
He still couldn’t believe Liu Feifei and the others had gone that far, and even used Senior Ling’s name to lure Jiang Wei out. If the incident hadn’t blown up, he might still be in the dark.
Did she like Senior Ling?
She’d never said a word to him about it.
“Eat up. Class is about to start,” he urged gently.
The bell rang, ding, ding, ding, dragging Wen Ji out of his thoughts. He watched her eat a little faster.
In the days that followed, because her monthly exam results had dipped, Jiang Wei shamelessly begged Wen Ji after every class to tutor her for a bit.
She wanted to beat him, yet still made him tutor her.
Truly, no shame at all.
Finals season arrived as always, tight and fast.
Liu Feifei’s forced suspension gradually faded from people’s gossip.
Jiang Wei’s study schedule grew heavier by the day.
Taking first place in the joint exams would be no small feat.
Not to mention the academic tyrant sitting next to her, holding onto the year’s top rank like it was welded to his name. There were others as well.
Children from wealthy families weren’t all spoiled and useless. Under parental pressure, many of them polished every aspect of themselves, becoming far stronger than ordinary students.
The flood of information left Jiang Wei dizzy.
What tortured her most was Chinese, definitely not a subject that could be boosted in a few days.
Because she’d been out recovering at home, she’d fallen behind in several chapters. Recently, whenever Wen Ji saw her practice book, his shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. He kept giving her that look, like he wanted to say something, but didn’t.
Over on the basketball court, Mu Yang’s thoughts drifted.
The image of that day, kicking open the door to the infirmary, kept flashing in his mind, leaving him uncharacteristically unsettled.
Would she… come to watch Ling Ze play today?
But she’d denied it last time. Maybe she wasn’t here to see Ling Ze at all.
Hmph. Maybe she’d come to see him, Mu Yang. He wasn’t exactly lacking in charm, was he?