Chapter Eighty-Eight

The girl who cut the line still had to pay for all the inexplicably extra items out of her own pocket. It was the punishment she deserved, and she would remember the lesson. The sight made both Huang Feifan and Xiao Jian laugh.

“Well, well, she looks pretty enough, and yet she’s an idiot. Hahaha.”

Xiao Jian covered his mouth, afraid his teeth would show and he might lose his composure. Huang Feifan said, “That person probably suffered plenty. I hope she remembers this lesson and never cuts in line again.”

At last it was Huang Feifan and Xiao Jian’s turn to pay. The two prepared to go home, but just then Huang Feifan began to tremble, frightening Xiao Jian beside him.

“Feifan, what’s wrong? Why are you shaking so badly?”

Feifan clenched her teeth and said, “It’s nothing. My stomach hurts a little, but it should get better soon.”

Hearing that it was stomach pain, Xiao Jian understood. No one knew her condition better than Huang Feifan herself. Since Huang Feifan was a girl, what she was suffering from was the monthly trouble girls had. Huang Feifan did not want to reveal it in front of Xiao Jian, so she gritted her teeth and ran straight back to the Zhang household. But that only strained her abdomen further. During menstruation, only moderate exercise was allowed; vigorous exertion was not.

Running home at full speed, Huang Feifan reached her limit after only five minutes.

Fortunately, Zhang Yi was not at home. If he had been, it would have been bad if someone else learned her secret. She dashed straight into the bathroom and was soon beyond help. Ten minutes later, Huang Feifan came out and, feeling drained, collapsed onto the sofa.

“This might be the most exhausted I’ve ever been. I didn’t expect it to hurt this much.”

Holding her stomach, Huang Feifan gasped for breath, sweat already beading on her face.

As for the paper stained with blood in the bathroom trash can, that was another matter. If Zhang Yi asked, she would simply say she had a nosebleed.

While she was thinking this, someone knocked at the door. When she heard the sound, Huang Feifan truly did not want to face them.

It was Wang Tianqi again, only this time Lin Zimo and Chen Siyu were not with her. She had come alone.

“Huang Feifan, I know you’re in there. Open the door!”

Wang Tianqi put on all the bearing of a young lady, but Huang Feifan thought she still had not changed her faults. In truth, Wang Tianqi had long since seen Huang Feifan enter Zhang Yi’s home, but she had not had the courage to face her. When Huang Feifan went inside, Wang Tianqi even regretted being so frightened that she had not dared to see her.

She had been pacing back and forth at the door, wondering how to speak to Huang Feifan. After hearing Huang Feifan’s strange cries from inside, she kept knocking, but Huang Feifan simply did not want to open the door for this young lady. The shadow in her heart remained.

Then Wang Tianqi began apologizing to Huang Feifan again.

“I know what happened before was my fault. I really didn’t mean to put makeup on your face. I’ve already reflected on it with Lin Zimo and Chen Siyu. As long as you’re willing to forgive us, we can still be good friends.”

Whether this apology came from Wang Tianqi’s heart or had simply been copied from the internet and memorized, Huang Feifan still refused to open the door. Did she deserve a door opened for her after the way she had spoken before?

Realizing Huang Feifan would not let her in, Wang Tianqi changed tactics. She took something from her bag: a small square box. It looked like an ordinary box, but it was actually quite useful.

It was a voice changer.

Without Zhang Yi’s recorded voice, Wang Tianqi searched through old chat logs to find earlier voice messages from Zhang Yi, then recorded them with the voice changer. The device analyzed the voice and, when opened again, made the speaker sound like someone else. To get this thing, Wang Tianqi had nearly pulled out three white hairs. All for the sake of seeking Huang Feifan’s forgiveness.

After recording Zhang Yi’s voice and letting the device process it, the analysis was quickly completed. When Wang Tianqi opened the voice changer again, her voice had become Zhang Yi’s.

“Zhang Yi, I’m back. Can you open the door for me?”

Hearing Zhang Yi’s voice, Huang Feifan hesitated. She remembered that Zhang Yi had taken his keys with him when he left. If he had lost them, that would make sense, but the tone of this voice sounded like he was asking her to let him in. Unsure, Huang Feifan tiptoed to the door and looked through the peephole.

Just as she had expected, it was still Wang Tianqi, only using a voice changer.

Huang Feifan breathed a sigh of relief. Certain it was not Zhang Yi, she called out through the door, “Go away, Wang Tianqi. I’ve endured you long enough. If you truly want to apologize to me, prove it with your actions instead of trying to be clever. What I want to see is a new you, not that so-called individualism.”

Having said that, Huang Feifan returned to Zhang Yi’s room and lay down on the bed to sleep. Her menstruation left her very weak, and the words she had just spoken to Wang Tianqi were spoken with the last of her strength.

After hearing Zhang Yi’s voice, Wang Tianqi felt somewhat pleased. Hearing Huang Feifan speak was only the first step. Next would be proving through action that she was truly sorry. After leaving Zhang Yi’s residence, Wang Tianqi immediately went to find Lin Zimo and Chen Siyu to discuss things. One person’s strength was always limited; with two or three more people, the odds of success would be much higher.

As she came out, she collided with someone. Both of them cried out in pain. The person Wang Tianqi had bumped into was Xiao Jian.

Getting up, Xiao Jian said irritably, “Tianqi, you need to watch where you’re going. You nearly knocked me into the road, and then I’d have been done for.”

Wang Tianqi apologized to him. “Sorry, sorry, I wasn’t watching. Are you all right?”

Xiao Jian noticed how sincere Wang Tianqi’s tone had become. Looking at her, then at Zhang Yi’s home, he immediately understood something and said, “So you want to apologize to Huang Feifan. If your attitude were better, that would be enough. There’s no need for such hypocritical apologies.”

That was Xiao Jian’s advice to Wang Tianqi.

Wang Tianqi snorted. “So what if I do? As long as I’m sincere, Huang Feifan won’t hate the three of us. Then we won’t do the same thing to him again.”

“What? You still want to mess with him next time? Fine, I’ll tell Huang Feifan right now not to forgive you.”

He made as if to head toward Zhang Yi’s place, but Wang Tianqi stopped him.

“Pah, pah, pah! There won’t be a next time, let alone a future one. If you dare tell him, I’ll cut ties with you.”

She used the threat of severing their friendship to keep Xiao Jian from telling Huang Feifan.

Huang Feifan felt both angry and amused. Could she really threaten him alone? If a whole group wanted nothing to do with him, then he would be afraid. But with Wang Tianqi alone, things were different. Xiao Jian had long since grown sick of her young-lady airs and wanted nothing more than to give her a beating, only he could not find a suitable excuse.

Seeing Xiao Jian slowly approach her, Wang Tianqi instinctively guarded her body, thinking he meant to assault her. Just as she was about to cry for help, Xiao Jian covered her mouth. That only made Wang Tianqi more panicked.