She charged at An lili like a madwoman, flailing wildly, but she was quickly pulled away.
An lili got up from the ground furiously and kicked her in the stomach several times, "Are you fucking asking to die?!"
Xiang Wan was held down and couldn't move; she could only let An lili beat her.
Soon, she was knocked to the ground, unable to see how many others besides An lili were assaulting her. She tried hard to protect her head, her father's refined and gentle face surfaced in her mind... Tears flowed freely where others couldn't see...
"What are you all doing?!"
With a loud shout from the head teacher, the group led by An lili immediately ran away.
The head teacher helped Xiang Wan up, who could only see his mouth moving as if he was saying something, but she couldn't hear clearly, her ears ringing with a fuzzy noise.
She pushed the head teacher away, looking lost as she wandered through the school in search of her belongings.
Finally, at the abandoned fountain near the old teaching building that needed repairing, she found her backpack, now beyond recognition.
Her steps were unsteady as she stepped into the moss-covered, foul-smelling pool to retrieve her items. The phone inside had already been waterlogged and wouldn't turn on.
Under the setting sun's glow, even the dirty pool water could sparkle, but the warm sunlight could no longer reach into her heart, and there would be no light to warm her up again...
She dragged her heavy steps to a restroom to wash away as much filth as she could, but with little success. Gradually losing patience, everything before her eyes became a blur.
She left the school in a daze, alone and disheartened, not going to the driver who was waiting two hundred meters away but heading in the opposite direction instead.
After an indeterminate amount of time, she stood at the hospital entrance, bathed in the afterglow of the sunset.
She missed her mother, longed for her warm embrace, yearned for comfort, she was almost at her breaking point...
Xiang Wan's mother had not been moved out of the intensive care unit yet. Knowing she wouldn't be able to see her mother, Xiang Wan still entered the hospital and sat aimlessly outside the ICU.
Luckily, the medical staff in the intensive care area were mostly in a hurry, sparing little attention for the disheveled girl, which afforded her a bit of dignity.
Unbeknownst to her, she fell asleep in the chair, exhausted. When she woke up, the sky had already darkened.
The night seemed to have spilled ink over the sky, staining the entire city. The neon lights struggled like fireflies in the ink.
Xiang Wan was staring blankly at the floor when suddenly, the sound of hurried footsteps approached, and a tall figure appeared, blocking her view.
She looked up numbly, and paused.
The man's hair, normally meticulously styled, now hung disheveled over his forehead, adding a sense of decadent beauty. His collar was wide open, revealing an attractive Adam's apple and the perfect curve of his collarbone, which formed a tantalizing scene with his ragged breaths. Even the cuffs of his white shirt were rolled up, exposing his pale, firm forearms.
Most importantly, his eyes were full of urgency.
Xiang Wan was slightly taken aback. By the time she looked carefully again, the urgency in the man's eyes had receded like the tide.
Seeing Xiang Wan's dirtied body and the visible abrasions, Zuo Xingyun's entire demeanor turned cold, "Why didn't you call me?"