Chapter 49

He Lele's bitter crying seemed endless... as if she intended to shed all her tears until she died.

"Enough! Stop crying! I didn't order anyone to do it! Your friend getting hit was purely an accident! It was my buddy who took her to the hospital! I didn't want to hurt her! And I never thought about doing anything to your parents!"

"..." The wailing stopped abruptly, the twitching continued, and the tears still fell like rain.

"I beg you... stop crying, I'm afraid of you. I'll count it as my fault, count it as me being petty, please stop crying..."

"Wuwu... wahahaha..."

"—My grandmother! I beg you to stop crying!"

Author's Note:

Actually, it's so late tonight~~ mainly because I wanted to seize the time to code this chapter and post it together~~

☆, Chapter 59: Best Friend

"Look! That girl is..."

"Huh? She looks... very ordinary!"

"Right? If my sister hadn't told me, I wouldn't have been able to tell."

"I heard she seduced a teacher into bed when she was in elementary school, and was caught on the spot by the teacher's wife!"

"More than that, I heard she was already pregnant at the time and wanted to seduce the teacher to pin it on him. Later, when the matter was exposed, she took a year off from school to have an abortion and recover her body!"

"What? Can elementary school students get pregnant?"

"Use some common sense, will you! You can get pregnant once you start your period! Don't interrupt! Later, in junior high, she was called to the principal's office countless times because of puppy love. Even when condoms were found in her bag, she refused to admit it, and her mother just kept covering for her!"

"That's right, that's right. I heard that in junior high, she deliberately went to the No. 1 Middle School, which was far from her original elementary school. At first, she pretended to be aloof and acted like a good girl, even tricking quite a few little boys into writing her love letters. As a result, it wasn't long before people discovered she was messing around outside of school! At the time, the principal saw her hanging out with some hoodlums outside of school and wanted to persuade her to stop, but he was beaten until his head was bleeding, so she was expelled!"

"Then how could she still come to our high school?"

"Do you know? After being expelled from No. 1 Middle School, she was actually able to transfer to the best No. 2 Middle School in the city. You don't know! She was simply the biggest disgrace to No. 2 Middle School at the time!"

"Why didn't No. 2 Middle School expel her?"

"It's said that she was keeping a triad boss outside, and the school leaders were afraid of revenge."

"My god! No wonder the hoodlums in school walk around her!"

"But her grades seem pretty good, right?"

"That's the most disgusting part! Think about it, what if she gets into the same university as you? She's been a rotten person since she was a child. Will people think all the girls here are like her? People know we were in the same high school as her, hmph..."

"..."

"Can you tolerate this kind of thing?"

"Tell me, what should we do?"

"What else can we do? A girl like her should have gone to the red-light district to hang up her sign long ago; she could still earn some money before she rots. Of course, we have to help her out and 'persuade' her to drop out of school voluntarily!"

He Lele opened her sore, swollen eyes and slowly wiped away the images of those people in her mind. She thought she had forgotten, but she didn't expect their faces to still be as clear as yesterday.

Public opinion is a powerful force that can destroy a person.

When she first learned this phrase, she had hidden in an abandoned factory and cried just like last night.

She never considered herself the most miserable person in the world, but... in terms of the number and duration of times she had been misunderstood, there probably weren't many among her peers who had more than her.

In the fifth grade of elementary school, she fainted during PE class. When she woke up, she found the PE teacher taking off his clothes in front of her. Before she could react to what was happening, the PE teacher's wife rushed in and cursed her—"Little slut."

The next day, everything changed. The homeroom teacher who had loved her removed her from her position as study committee member and canceled her performance at the Children's Day party. Every teacher looked at her with an abnormality she couldn't understand, and her classmates also became very strange.

The partners who used to go home with her every day avoided her, saying, "Mom told me not to play with you anymore."

Some boys mimicked the PE teacher's wife's voice, calling her "little slut" while laughing loudly.

Her textbooks, stationery, and even completed homework often disappeared.

On the way home from school, there were always uncles, aunts, grandpas, and grandmas she didn't know pointing at her.

The lights in her parents' room would still be on very, very late, and the sound of her mother crying would come out from time to time.

Gradually, she knew everything.

That was also the year she developed a fear of being watched and took a year off from school. Her parents accompanied her for a year before letting her walk out the door, even if her whole body was trembling, and she persisted in studying while enduring everyone's discrimination. At that time, besides her parents, there was one other person who would smile at her—Xiao Ya.

Xiao Ya was the only classmate who came to see her during her time off from school, the only friend who said she believed in her and hoped she would pull herself together.

When she returned to school, Xiao Ya had already gone to the best No. 2 Middle School in the city, but she would occasionally come back to see her. Although in front of others, Xiao Ya would keep her distance, when it was just the two of them, Xiao Ya would smile at her, bring her delicious food, and tell her interesting things about middle school.

Later, she went to No. 1 Middle School. At first, it was good, but soon rumors about her spread throughout the campus. One day after school, she was dragged by a few hoodlums with their hands over her mouth to the street alley behind the school's teacher apartment. There... she saw the principal. When the principal was beaten, she bit the hoodlum who grabbed her, broke free, and went to call for help. The next day—she was expelled.