The looks of those around him were contemptuous and cutting. Fang Yiming no longer knew what expression to put on his face.

He stood there for a while, then went back inside and withdrew the full twenty thousand yuan. He put the money in his bag, took out his phone, and tried to track down the bank card Fang Zhuo had mentioned.

In earlier years, his work had required him to open quite a few bank accounts. And for a period of time, every time he walked into a bank, the teller would try to sign him up for a new card.

There was never much money in any of them. He rarely used them. He’d put them down somewhere and never given them another thought.

One thing he could say with certainty: after his divorce from Ye Yaoling, he had never seen Ye Yuncheng again and had certainly never given him any bank account number.

If someone had been collecting Ye Yuncheng’s money and held that bank card — Fang Yiming could only think of one person.

He hadn’t written down the account number just now, so he had to go to the bank and verify each one against his ID. Based on the transaction records, he quickly identified one old card in particular.

On that card, aside from the transfers from Ye Yuncheng, there was almost no other activity. Each time money was deposited, it was withdrawn soon after.

Fang Yiming had the transaction history printed out at the bank. He wasn’t sure what use it would be, but he wanted to show it to Fang Zhuo and make clear that he had never done anything as shameless as she believed.

When he tried to contact her, however, he ran into the same difficulty as before.

He did not have his own daughter’s contact information, nor the contact details of Fang Zhuo’s homeroom teacher.

Most of what Fang Zhuo had said was accurate. Their two worlds were separated from each other. He had left his daughter nothing — nothing except hardship.

In his self-contained world, Fang Zhuo had never existed.

Fang Zhuo dried her face with a tissue and sat in the corner of the bus, her gaze resting without focus on the back of the seat in front of her.

When the stop for “City A Middle School” was called, she jolted awake to realize she had boarded the wrong bus and quickly jumped off through the rear door.

She stood in front of the billboard at the bus stop, exhaled a long breath, and searched on her phone for the bus route to the hospital.

Fang Yiming — selfish, self-gratifying, cowardly, irresponsible. And yet somehow, in the end, as she turned to leave, he had worn that pitiful expression.

Because he wasn’t a genuinely terrible person through and through. When someone pointed a finger at him and said aloud the contemptible things he had done — the things he had even managed to deceive himself about — he still had just enough shame to feel it.

She wondered whether Ye Yaoling had also been lured in by that brief warmth of his, had believed in his romance, had fallen for the image he presented.

Fang Zhuo followed the blue navigation line on her phone, walking along the route, when she suddenly stepped into a drainage ditch beside a repair shop and went pitching forward onto the ground.

It was a hard fall. Several red banknotes went flying out from behind her, carried by the momentum.

Fang Zhuo ignored the pain and scrambled up with her hands first, collecting the money. Only then did she realize she hadn’t zipped her bag — she had fled in such frantic haste.

She got to her feet. Her palms and knees were burning with pain, but mercifully her face had been spared this time. She quickly checked herself over — the dark school uniform trousers had picked up two very visible mud stains that no amount of brushing would clear. The friction from a small stone had also torn a small hole in the fabric.

Fang Zhuo suspected she must look quite wretched right now. She couldn’t appear in front of Ye Yuncheng like this — he would worry.

She turned back, retracing her steps in the direction of school, and decided to go to the dormitory first to shower and change.

She shoved her bag into the storage locker and grabbed a couple of casual clothes, then went into the bathroom to shower.

About a quarter of an hour later, the bell for the end of morning classes rang, and the school grounds came alive with noise.

Wei Xi and the others had no desire to queue up at the canteen. They bought small bread rolls at the school shop and dragged themselves back toward the dormitory with heavy feet.

After swiping their access cards, they ran into Fang Zhuo in the long corridor — walking unsteadily, barely looking where she was going.

Wei Xi smiled and lifted a hand to greet her. Fang Zhuo passed by as though she hadn’t seen her at all.

Wei Xi grabbed her arm. “Fang Zhuo, why are you ignoring me? Yan Lie has been looking all over for you.”

Fang Zhuo stopped mechanically and turned to look at her. Damp hair was falling over her forehead. Her lips were abnormally pale, their corners marked by a red smear of blood where she had bitten through the skin — vivid and jarring.

Wei Xi saw that something was clearly wrong and dropped all traces of playfulness. “What happened to you? Where did you go this morning?”

Fang Zhuo opened her mouth and answered something completely unrelated: “I lost my money.”

“What?” Wei Xi asked. “How much? Is it serious?”

Fang Zhuo closed her eyes and said with great exhaustion: “Ten thousand yuan.”

“Ten thousand yuan?!” Wei Xi’s eyes went wide and she let out a shocked cry. “Where did you even get that kind of money?!”

The girls nearby had all stopped in their tracks, pressing themselves against the wall and listening to the exchange with wide-eyed alarm.

Each word seemed to cost Fang Zhuo significant effort. She may not have heard it herself, but her voice was faintly trembling: “I can’t explain it all right now… I lost it in the shower. I need to get to the hospital to see my uncle. I already called the police, so please don’t disturb anything in there. Also — the lock on the balcony has been forced open. I’m heading out now.”

Wei Xi saw that she looked like she could collapse at any moment, and kept her own voice low: “We won’t go in. We won’t disturb the scene. But are you — are you sure you’re all right? Do you want to rest for a bit?”

Fang Zhuo shook her head.

The dorm leader fell into step beside her and said quietly: “Fang Zhuo, I have to ask — did anyone know you had that much money on you? You were gone such a short time in the shower, and they still managed to take it. They must have known you had it.”

Fang Zhuo had a rough idea. “I tripped just outside the school’s side gate. Someone might have seen the money.”

The dorm leader tried to press a bread roll into her hand but, when she took Fang Zhuo’s wrist, saw the wounds on her palm and paused. She tucked the roll into Fang Zhuo’s pocket instead and said in a reassuring voice: “Don’t worry — you’ll definitely get the money back! Leave this to us. And make sure you eat lunch. You must eat! You look terrible right now.”

Fang Zhuo gave a perfunctory nod and walked quickly away.

Wei Xi instinctively moved to follow. The dorm leader stopped her.

The dorm leader said, calm and clear: “Call the homeroom teacher quickly and fill her in. Then the patch of ground behind the dormitory building — there might be footprints back there. Let’s cordon it off before the police arrive.”

Wei Xi groped for her phone while muttering under her breath: “Some disgusting creep actually tailed a girl into the dorms to steal from her! God! Can you go to prison for theft plus voyeurism? I hope they rot in there!”

The homeroom teacher and Liu Qiaohong were sitting outside the operating room, talking about Fang Zhuo’s grades and which university she might go to.

They had just gotten to the subject of City A University’s entrance score cutoff when the ring tone “Wishing You Prosperity” chimed from a phone.

“Sorry — that’s the troublemaker of my class.” The homeroom teacher smiled briefly, then her tone sharpened the instant she picked up: “Give me one reason not to confiscate your phone.”

“Is Fang Zhuo at school? No wonder she’s not picking up my calls. Can you let her know to call me back?”

“What? Her money was stolen? Over ten thousand yuan?”

Liu Qiaohong looked up, and the two of them asked in the same breath: “Where did she get that much money?”

“I have no idea!” Wei Xi said. “What do we do now? Does the hospital need money? Should we take up a collection from our class?”

The homeroom teacher pressed her lips together, a deep look of worry on her face. “It’s alright — money isn’t the issue right now. Don’t do anything that causes trouble. Listen to the dormitory supervisor. And don’t go back to the dorm for now. Can you reach Fang Zhuo? Tell her to call me back immediately!”

“She runs way too fast,” Wei Xi said. “Long-distance champion — she’s already gone.”

“Fang Zhuo.”

Fang Zhuo kept walking, head down. The day felt impossibly long.

Too much had happened. Far too much to process all at once. Wave after wave, as if determined to pin her completely flat.

“Fang Zhuo!”

She had returned to being the kind of person bad things happened to. Good fortune really was the exception.

The voice calling her name from behind fell silent.

Fang Zhuo looked back. Yan Lie was trailing a short distance behind her. Seeing her stop, he jogged up. “Where are you going?”

Fang Zhuo turned forward again and kept walking toward the bus stop. Yan Lie followed without a word.

When they reached the stop, the previous bus had just pulled away.

Fang Zhuo watched the numbers on the back of the bus recede and disappear around the corner, and the helpless, clawing feeling stirred in her chest again — sour and lodged against her ribs.

Why was she so unlucky?

Why did someone have to steal her money? Of all things, this particular money.

She told herself to accept the unfairness, the way she had accepted every other time before. To clearly recognize that she was someone fortune had not looked upon kindly. Accept it. Try harder. Then change things.

But the weight of everything that had piled up today had exceeded what she could carry. And something as small as a missed bus was enough to undo the calm she had held together the whole way back, to make her stop being rational.

In the moment when frustration became something solid and began to tip over inside her, she let impulse overtake reason for just one instant — and she shouted at Yan Lie, who was coming closer: “Don’t come near me!”

Yan Lie stopped and looked at her. He put the hand he’d been reaching out back into his pocket and lowered his head.

Fang Zhuo felt even worse.

How could she be so awful?

The next second, Yan Lie closed the gap between them, pressed in beside her, and shouted back, just as loudly: “No!”

Fang Zhuo looked up at him. But Yan Lie only reached out and wrapped his hand around her wrist.

The two of them stood there in silence.

Yan Lie’s hand was very warm. It pressed against Fang Zhuo’s skin, and there was a burning feeling — like being branded.

Fang Zhuo remembered that Yan Lie had once teased her by saying he was her lucky star.

As luck would have it, the lucky star effect failed to activate this time. The bus didn’t come for more than ten minutes.

But Yan Lie still held on tightly. Like an anchor — suddenly giving her somewhere to be.

The midday sun had grown fierce, finally putting some warmth into the early spring wind.

Yan Lie said: “Don’t bark at me, and don’t get angry at me.”

Fang Zhuo looked at him.

Yan Lie said, with great sincerity: “What you say to me — I take it seriously.”

Fang Zhuo was quiet for two seconds, then said flatly: “But you didn’t listen either.”

Yan Lie said with great desperation: “Because I couldn’t help it.”

Fang Zhuo fell silent for a moment. She tightened her fingers. The stinging pain in her palm was so real and immediate that it pulled her back — out of the jagged, volatile state she’d been in — and steadied her.

“I really am unlucky,” Fang Zhuo said, sniffling. “Why is life this hard?”

Yan Lie said: “What’s so hard about it? As far as I’m concerned, as long as you’re alive, everything else is nothing worth dwelling on.”

Fang Zhuo said quietly: “Am I being too selfish? Is that why I’ve put him under so much pressure? I knew his health wasn’t good, and still things ended up this way… I’m terrible. I feel like I’ve been draining his strength.”

“Go say that to your uncle’s face,” Yan Lie said with a cold laugh. “See if he doesn’t smack that nonsense right out of your head.”

Fang Zhuo caught her breath.