Chapter 16: A Gift with Thorns
Page (1/3)
[Password: Your birthday.]
Those four lean, razor-sharp words were like a silent bolt of lightning, crashing into Xu Yuan’s already chaotic mind and reducing every thought to a charred wasteland.
The dormitory fell into an eerie, suffocating silence.
Lin Feifei’s usually bright, lively eyes were wide as bells. She looked from Xu Yuan to the brand-new phone in her hand and the note bearing a bank-card number. Her face held an expression of shock and absurdity unlike anything she had ever shown before.
“Who the hell is this?”
It took a full half-minute for Lin Feifei to find her voice again. It was painfully dry, every word squeezed out with difficulty through clenched teeth.
“Who would know your birthday? And… and send you things this way?”
Xu Yuan did not answer.
She merely stared fixedly at the note, as though she could find an answer in those slender strokes of handwriting.
But the answer was already obvious.
Who else could it be?
Who else but the genius who had memorized all her awards and personal information at a single glance in the library? Who else but the awkward boy who, in that dark alley, had stubbornly used money he had been humiliated over to buy medicine for her?
Who else but Jiang Yi?
“It’s him, isn’t it?” Lin Feifei’s voice trembled despite herself. She snatched up the note and studied the handwriting carefully, then slapped her thigh.
“Damn it! It is him! That infuriatingly stubborn, unbearably awkward, tsundere attitude—apart from that bastard Jiang Yi, no one else could possibly be this twisted!”
“What is he doing? Paying you off after the breakup?!” Lin Feifei paced furiously around the room. “What gives him the right? Who does he think he is? Trying to get rid of you with money? He’s broke himself!”
Xu Yuan remained silent.
She simply reached out and took the thin note back from Lin Feifei. Though it weighed almost nothing, it felt heavier than a thousand pounds. Then, with an almost numb, corpse-like motion, she picked up the new bank card.
“Hey! Xu Yuan! Where are you going?” Seeing her dazed expression, Lin Feifei panicked and hurriedly caught hold of her.
“I’m going to find out.” Xu Yuan’s voice was terrifyingly calm. “I want to know what he… is really trying to do.”
…
The campus was deserted in the dead of night.
Only the bluish glow of the ATM screen illuminated Xu Yuan’s deathly pale face.
Standing behind her, Lin Feifei was so nervous that she forgot to breathe.
With trembling fingers, Xu Yuan inserted the new, icy bank card into the slot.
The password-entry screen appeared.
She paused, drew a deep breath, and then slowly pressed the numbers of her birthday, one by one.
[0715]
She selected the balance inquiry.
After a brief pause while the screen loaded, a string of glaring crimson numbers slammed into her vision.
[30,000.00]
Thirty thousand.
Page (1/3)
Page (2/3)
Not a cent more or less. Exactly thirty thousand.
The prize money she had earned from the Starlight Cup competition.
The same figure she had screamed hoarsely in the karaoke bar to protect him—the number that represented all her greed and disgrace.
So that was what it meant.
Xu Yuan swayed, nearly losing her balance. Only Lin Feifei’s timely support kept her from collapsing on the spot.
“Holy shit… thirty thousand…” Lin Feifei stared at the figure and sucked in a breath. “Where did he get that much money?”
Xu Yuan did not answer.
She only stared at the string of numbers, feeling all the blood in her body rush to her head. A humiliation and fury countless times more intense than what she had felt when Li Wenfeng had thrown money in her face at the karaoke bar surged over her heart like an icy tide.
At last, she understood.
This was no gift with thorns.
It was a letter of repudiation written in money—the coldest, cruelest kind imaginable.
He was telling her:
You wanted money, didn’t you? Fine. I’ll give it to you.
You said our partnership was for the sake of those thirty thousand? Now you have the money.
From this day forward, we owe each other nothing.
So get out of my world.
He had used the weapon she cared about most—the weapon that also exposed her ugliest side—to deal her the most devastating blow.
All her careful restraint, all her feigned strength, every approach she had made in the name of money—he had assigned them an explicit price with those thirty thousand, then returned them all without mercy.
“Bastard! Jiang Yi is a complete and utter bastard!” Lin Feifei finally understood as well and began cursing furiously. “He’s humiliating you! Does he think having a little money makes him so important? We can’t take this money! Not a single cent!”
Xu Yuan said nothing.
She merely extended her hand, slowly—so slowly—and pressed the button marked “Return Card.”
The new, icy bank card was silently ejected by the machine.
She took it, turned around, and looked at Lin Feifei’s face, flushed crimson with anger. Then, with a calmness more unsettling than anything she had ever shown, she spoke each word distinctly:
“You’re right.”
“I won’t take this money.”
“But…” She paused. In her eyes, swollen and reddened from tears, a cold yet dazzling flame ignited for the first time. “This matter cannot end here.”
…
The next day was Saturday.
Xu Yuan did not get up at dawn to go to the library as she usually did, nor did she turn on her computer to work on the online testing job.
She slept until she woke naturally.
Page (2/3)
Page (3/3)
Then, using the wages she had received the day before, she bought herself a new dress.
It was the pale-yellow dress she had kept in her shopping cart, unable to bring herself to order—a dress that cost three hundred and ninety-nine yuan.
She washed her hair and applied a delicate layer of makeup, making herself clean and beautiful, like a sunflower blooming with all its strength beneath the morning sun.
“My God…”
Lin Feifei stared at her transformed appearance, so startled that the potato chips fell from her hand.
“Xu Yuan, what… what happened to you? Didn’t you say you wouldn’t buy this dress until you received your scholarship?”
“I’m not waiting anymore.” Xu Yuan smiled at herself in the mirror, radiant and utterly free of gloom. “I suddenly realized that a girl ought to be a little kinder to herself.”
Lin Feifei looked at that dazzling smile, yet an inexplicable unease welled up inside her.
She had the distinct feeling that the Xu Yuan standing before her was no longer quite the same.
It was like the strange moment of stillness before a storm.
“Where… are you going?”
“To find him.” Xu Yuan picked up the challenge-competition poster for Fengqi Technology from the table, along with the bank card containing thirty thousand yuan, and put them into her bag. “Some accounts have to be settled face-to-face.”
With that, she turned and walked out of the dormitory into the sunlight.
…
The computer lab in the East District.
When Xu Yuan pushed open the door, Jiang Yi was seated in the farthest corner, headphones on, typing code with complete concentration.
He seemed even thinner and quieter than he had been a few days earlier. His whole person resembled a statue forgotten by the entire world, buried beneath a thick layer of snow and ice.
At the sound of footsteps, he instinctively raised his head.
When he saw the girl standing in the doorway in a pale-yellow dress, radiant as a beam of light, his normally placid eyes went blank for several long seconds—the first time they had ever revealed such naked emptiness.
He clearly had not expected her to come.
Even less had he expected her to reappear before him in such a… dazzling state.
Xu Yuan gave him no time to react.
In high heels, she walked toward him step by step.
Then, under Jiang Yi’s startled and bewildered gaze, she slapped the bank card and the Fengqi Technology challenge-competition poster onto his desk, one after the other.
Smack!
The crisp sound rang through the quiet computer lab, especially sharp and jarring.
“Jiang Yi.” Looking down at him, she wore a sweet yet utterly distant smile. Her beautiful eyes no longer held any trace of humility or pleading—only a cold, unquestionable pride.
“Let’s discuss a new deal.”
Page (3/3)