2,002

The summer had already been stifling, and the last class of the morning was physical education.

The trash can at the back of the classroom was soon filled to the brim with discarded drink bottles.

When the bell rang, the students all rushed to the cafeteria for lunch.

Shen Yi’s gaze naturally went forward as she called out, “Class monitor, I have a garbage-”

She broke off before she could finish.

The monitor’s seat was empty, the person nowhere to be seen.

Shen Yi instantly felt a surge of annoyance. It was too late now to turn around and drag Song Yang into doing the chore for her. The cafeteria was serving his favorite spicy crayfish today; that brat had already bolted out of the classroom first thing, eager to claim his food.

Her eyes shifted back to the trash can.

Shen Yi sighed, feeling a wave of misery in her heart.

Fine. She would just drag it downstairs slowly. Her life was truly miserable.

She was not the sort of person who liked to trouble others at random. Even if there were still some classmates in the room, and many would gladly help if she asked, Shen Yi felt that she was not close enough to them to owe them such a favor.

Her spoiled-lady temperament applied only to those she considered close.

So Shen Yi slowly wiped down the blackboard, planning to wait until everyone had left before dragging the trash can out by herself.

At last, she waited.

Just as she dragged the trash can to the doorway, a gentle female voice sounded behind her in surprise. “...Shen Yi? What are you doing?”

Shen Yi turned around.

What a coincidence—it was Jiang Yue.

Seeing Shen Yi wearing disposable gloves and straining to move the trash can, Jiang Yue immediately understood what she was doing and took the initiative to say, “Let me help you.”

Shen Yi instinctively wanted to refuse. “No need. Go eat lunch. I can do it myself.”

“Huh?”

Jiang Yue looked at the half-meter gap between Shen Yi and the trash can, then smiled. “I don’t think you can, actually.”

She reluctantly accepted Jiang Yue’s help.

Even with wheels, the trash can was heavy.

Jiang Yue pulled from the front while Shen Yi helped from behind, pushing with all her strength.

At last, they reached the disposal area.

Fortunately, it was mostly filled with plastic bottles, so it was not too difficult for the two girls to dump it all together.

They returned the trash can to its place and went downstairs to wash their hands together.

Shen Yi rubbed at the soap foam with her head lowered. “Thanks.”

“No big deal.” Jiang Yue shook her head, then said, “It should be me thanking you.”

Shen Yi naturally understood that Jiang Yue was referring to the cheerleading spot. After hesitating for a few seconds, she still apologized. “Sorry. I was cranky when I woke up this morning. I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

Which was to say, she absolutely had meant to.

But if she said she hadn’t, then she hadn’t.

“Huh?”

Now it was Jiang Yue’s turn to be surprised. She looked at Shen Yi in confusion and asked, “When did you take it out on me?”

“At the very end.”

Shen Yi was a little embarrassed to admit it, and in her heart she quietly complained about why Jiang Yue had to be so relentless.

“Do you mean this?”

After thinking for a moment, Jiang Yue stamped her left foot hard on the ground and imitated Shen Yi’s tone at the time. “Hmph!”

Shen Yi’s face flushed scarlet in an instant.

Although it was true, and she did have such a little habit in her everyday behavior, having someone imitate it was still far too strange!

“That counts as being mad?”

On Jiang Yue’s fair little face, an astonished expression appeared, and she laughed. “I thought you were being cute.”

Shen Yi: “...?”

That was not the case at all, okay?!

Shen Yi turned bright red and was too speechless to answer, when suddenly she heard hurried footsteps behind her.

A voice called out, “Shen Yi!”

She turned around.

It was the class monitor.

He had run so hard that sweat covered his face. “I just remembered it’s your turn to be on duty today. I was going to go upstairs first and help you empty the trash!”

The anger Shen Yi had been nursing immediately faded by seventy or eighty percent. “No need. Jiang Yue already helped me empty it.”

“Jiang Yue?” The monitor only then noticed Jiang Yue beside her.

It was hardly his fault. Standing next to someone as radiant and attention-grabbing as Shen Yi, anyone else would easily become less noticeable.

The monitor hurriedly handed the document in his hand to Jiang Yue. “What a coincidence that you’re here. This is the competition application form I just helped you request. There may not be much time left for the remaining training, but the final selection hasn’t been decided yet. You should still try—it might work out!”

Jiang Yue took the registration form with delight and thanked him. “Thank you, class monitor. I’ll do my best!”

The two of them grew more and more animated as they spoke, and in the end they actually walked back toward the classroom together, leaving Shen Yi alone where she stood.

Shen Yi froze.

Had the class monitor also forgotten her today because he had gone to help Jiang Yue apply for the registration form?

Never mind...

She should stop thinking about it.

In the end, Jiang Yue had been the one to help her. One could not repay kindness with ingratitude.

At dusk, in the car on the way home.

Shen Yu could tell that his younger sister was feeling down, and finally asked, unable to hold it in any longer, “I asked you to wait for me after school today because my birthday is tomorrow, and that made you this upset?”

Was it really that serious?

“It has nothing to do with you. Don’t be so insecure.”

Shen Yi shot back at her brother without the slightest hesitation, then continued staring blankly out the window.

Shen Yu knew his sister well. Though her temper was not exactly good, she was not the sort to lie very often.

So he dropped the teasing act and asked, “If not me, then who upset you?”

“No one upset me.”

Shen Yi shook her head. In the end she rested her forehead against the window and sighed, “My dark, jealous heart is beyond saving.”

Shen Yi was truly fed up with herself.

If not for the fact that her menstrual cycle had always been regular, she would really have suspected that her wild mood swings were being caused by hormones.

It had clearly been Jiang Yue who helped her, and she had already decided to let the earlier matter go and stop disliking her.

But then!

That afternoon, Wen Que actually came to their class on his own.

Amid the teasing cries of their classmates, Shen Yi shyly got up to leave, only to hear that Wen Que was calling Jiang Yue’s name.

It was about the competition class, and Shen Yi was too mortified to listen carefully. She could only pull some random girl along and awkwardly go to the convenience store.

From beginning to end, Wen Que had not looked at her once, but had kept speaking earnestly with Jiang Yue.

Envy?

No. This was jealousy!

“What?”

It was the first time he had heard his sister say something like that, and Shen Yu was genuinely startled. “You’re jealous of who?”

Shen Yi did not want to tell her brother about such a tangled, complicated feeling, so she could only blurt out nonsense on the spot. “May everyone in the world who is prettier than me disappear.”

Seeing that Shen Yi was in the mood to joke, Shen Yu stopped worrying so much. He cooperated by making a pained expression. “Sorry. It’s my fault for being too good-looking and making you feel inferior. Can I live through my birthday?”

“Don’t worry. If everyone in the world disappeared according to that standard, you’d still live to be a hundred.”

Shen Yi looked at him expressionlessly, then abruptly changed the subject. “Where’s my present?”

Shen Yu wanted nothing more than to smack her on the head. “Do you have no shame? Tomorrow is my birthday, and I still have to give you a present?”

“Of course.”

Shen Yi smiled sweetly and began to explain her crooked reasoning. “Mom said that back then she only wanted one daughter. If I had been born first, there wouldn’t have been a you. So you should be grateful I came a little late, giving you the chance to be my brother.”

Shen Yu was so infuriated by her that he nearly had a splitting headache.

“Fine, stop pretending. Didn’t I already order you a dress? I heard you on the phone. And this isn’t even the road home. You asked me to wait for you after school because you wanted to take me to get it, didn’t you?”

Because she had been loved without reservation, Shen Yi could say such things with absolute confidence.

Shen Yu had no way to deal with her. He muttered insults about her being a narcissist, but still did not deny it.

As expected.

The car drove on for quite a while before finally stopping at the entrance of a mid-range residential complex.

Shen Yi was a little weary. “It’s this far and you still couldn’t have delivered it to the house?”

Shen Yu winked at her, unusually putting on the air of a dependable older brother. “Just bear with it. Wen Que will be wearing this designer’s suit tomorrow. The one I ordered for you is a matching set. It’s also a suit dress, more everyday in style. It won’t look too exaggerated if you wear it tomorrow, but people will still be able to tell.”

Shen Yi’s face turned red again despite herself.

She stomped hard on Shen Yu’s foot and stammered, “What nonsense are you talking about!”

“Damn!”

Shen Yu nearly folded over from the pain. He stared at the sky and wailed in misery, “What nonsense? You two are engaged, so why are you being shy? Can’t you fix that ridiculous habit of blushing at the slightest thing?”

If nothing unexpected happened, then something unexpected was about to happen.

Shen Yi was too tired to get out of the car, so Shen Yu went alone to pick up the clothes.

But he came back empty-handed.

After waiting so long, the greater Shen Yi’s anticipation had been, the greater her disappointment was now upon seeing Shen Yu return with nothing.

“Where are the clothes?”

“Listen to me.”

Shen Yu explained with an ingratiating smile. “It was really unlucky. The neighbors were arguing just now. It seemed the mistress suspected the maid of seducing her husband. That maid looked about our age and was quite pretty too, a little girl. The man had a beer belly and a face full of acne so disgusting I could barely look at him, yet she treated him like some priceless treasure! Tch!”

“Then what happened?”

Shen Yi admitted she was curious, so she let Shen Yu off the hook for the moment.

Shen Yu spoke at length. “Then, by chance, there happened to be surveillance cameras installed outside the designer’s house, so we watched the footage together. Sure enough, it was that man trying to get handsy. He failed to take advantage and then bit back in retaliation!”

“How disgusting. What a shameless piece of trash.”

Shen Yi joined in, and the two of them cursed enthusiastically for a while before she changed the subject again and asked, “So where are my clothes?”

What did those two things have to do with each other?

“Cough, cough.”

Shen Yu rubbed his nose, somewhat awkward. “The girl was wearing a white shirt, and her clothes got soaked when that woman splashed water on her. That designer’s temper is also weird; he absolutely refused to lend me a piece of clothing. I couldn’t stand watching, so I had no choice but to...”

The answer was obvious.

Shen Yu immediately apologized. “Sorry. Next time I’ll definitely buy you a more beautiful matching outfit with Wen Que. It’s my birthday tomorrow, so please don’t hit my face, okay?”

Shen Yi was almost amused by anger, not because of the clothes, but because of what Shen Yu had just said. She asked, “In your heart, am I really such a petty person?”

Shen Yu honestly admitted it. “Usually not to that extent, but when it comes to anything involving Wen Que, yes.”

Shen Yi was truly a little unhappy.

Why was she such a figure in her brother’s eyes? Even if she did care more about matters involving Wen Que, she was not the kind of person who would see another girl bullied like that and not even spare a single outfit, was she?

Even if she did have some of those little thoughts, there would be countless opportunities in the future. She certainly would not be this stingy!

That night, the whole family sat around the dining table.

After learning the full story of how their son had upset their daughter, the mother’s usually gentle expression stiffened. She first praised Shen Yu for his act of courage and then gave him a thorough scolding.

You little brat! Did he think she did not know her own daughter and niece? How could he say such a thing!

Shen Yu obediently apologized to Shen Yi, and the matter was finally put to rest.

Even though tomorrow was Shen Yu’s birthday, their parents were more concerned about Shen Yi at the moment, asking her what she wanted for her own birthday next month.

Shen Yi only said, “No rush. We’ll talk about it later.”

Perhaps because they had been talking about birthdays all evening, Shen Yi had a nightmare that night.

In the dream, the world she lived in was actually a novel, and she was the vicious supporting character in it—a false heiress in a story about switched daughters.

On the day of her seventeenth birthday, that secret was discovered by everyone.

From then on, she became the public enemy that everyone wanted to denounce.

But her original family was far too poor. Knowing that this heaven-sent windfall connected them to the wealthy, they were determined not to take Shen Yi back, and in the end the Shen family could only leave her there.

But after that, as was only natural, her doting parents, her brother who quarreled with her every day, even her childhood friend Song Yang and her fiancé Wen Que—all of them were soon moved by the true heiress’s kindness, goodness, and beauty, and came to see more and more clearly that she, Shen Yi, was nothing but a selfish, bad-tempered brat. Naturally, they grew distant from her.

Until the year she graduated from high school.

Consumed by jealousy, Shen Yi saw herself push the true heiress down from the upstairs landing, and in the end she was sent to a psychiatric hospital.

The true heiress lived happily ever after, while the false one had done evil and thus met that fate. She had gotten what she deserved, hadn’t she?

At the end of the dream, Shen Yi broke out in a cold sweat and woke abruptly.

Because at last she had seen the true heiress’s face.

That person was no one else but her one-sided imagined rival, Jiang Yue.

The dream had been far too real, not like a dream at all, but more like a memory of something that had already happened.

In the middle of the night, Shen Yi wrapped herself in her blanket and, after hesitating again and again, called Song Yang.

At this hour, the only one who should still be awake was him.

Sure enough.

Within three seconds, Song Yang answered the call.

There was still game music in the background, mixed with Song Yang’s slightly surprised voice as he asked, “So late. What’s wrong?”

“Waaah—”

Shen Yi could not hold it in and burst into loud sobs the moment she opened her mouth.

After living nearly seventeen years, Shen Yi finally understood herself completely.

She was just a person with a strong jealous streak and a terribly petty heart.

She had actually been jealous of Jiang Yue to such an extent that she had gone and had such an absurd dream.

Was that necessary? It really wasn’t, was it?