Chapter 9: The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back

The harsh, persistent ringing of the phone echoed through the dead silence of the alley like a cursed incantation.

The five characters on the screen—“Aunt Zhang (Tutor)”—flashed wildly, each stroke searing into Xu Yuan’s retina like a branding iron.

It was over.

Those two words crashed into her already chaotic mind like massive blocks of ice, shattering every shred of hope and pretense she had left.

She had ruined the very job that was her lifeline, all to save someone who was nothing to her.

For a vague, elusive reward of thirty thousand yuan, she had lost a solid two thousand yuan—a lifeline for the coming month.

That two thousand yuan was the medicine money she needed to send home next month, her entire living allowance for the next thirty days.

A wave of humiliation and despair, far more intense than when Li Wenfeng had slapped money in her face at the karaoke bar, crashed over her heart like icy water.

She forgot she was still facing Jiang Yi, forgot they had just barely escaped a violent conflict alive. In her world, there was only that damned, death sentence of a phone call.

The phone kept ringing.

With trembling hands, in the last second before the call would automatically disconnect, Xu Yuan pressed the answer button with a tragic solemnity as if marching to her execution.

She didn’t even dare bring the phone to her ear, only switched to speakerphone. The faint electric hum sounded painfully clear in the empty alley.

“Xu Yuan! You still know how to answer your phone!” A sharp, cutting female voice pierced her eardrums like a poisoned dagger.

“Look at the time! Half past nine! Our lessons are from seven to nine! Where have you been? Where the hell are you?!”

“Aunt Zhang, I’m sorry, I…” Xu Yuan’s voice was humble, like dust ground into the earth. “Something urgent came up at school, I…”

“Urgent? What could be more important than tutoring my son?” Aunt Zhang didn’t listen, her voice rising eight notes, dripping with offended superiority. “Let me tell you, Xu Yuan, we pay you to teach, not to act like a diva! Who do you think you are? A student at Binda University? My son’s school is a hundred times better than yours!”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Zhang, I really was wrong, please give me one more chance…” Tears spilled uncontrollably, large and heavy.

She didn’t want to cry.

Especially not in front of Jiang Yi, showing such a pitiful, cringing appearance, begging for money.

But she couldn’t control herself.

This job was too important to her.

“Chance? You want another chance?” Aunt Zhang sneered, the sound full of contempt. “My son said you were distracted during class, didn’t take us seriously at all! We don’t need a tutor like you! And don't even think about this month’s salary—it’s compensation for the mental anguish you’ve caused us!”

What?

Even this month’s salary...

That was a thousand yuan she had earned, working half a month.

Her mind buzzed like a heavy hammer had struck it.

“Aunt Zhang, you can’t do this…” Her voice cracked with sobs and pleading. “I worked half a month, you can’t…”

“Can’t what? You stood me up and think you’re in the right?” Aunt Zhang’s voice grew extremely impatient. “Enough, I’m done wasting words! You’re fired! Don’t ever let me see you again!”

“Beep—beep—beep—”

The call was mercilessly cut off.

The cold busy signal was like a merciless slap, shattering the last bit of dignity Xu Yuan had.

The phone slipped from her powerless hands and shattered on the ground with a sharp crack—mirroring her equally broken heart.

Slowly, she crouched down, burying her face deep into her knees, releasing a desperate, stifled sob like a trapped beast.

That cry was suffocated and painful, filled with boundless grievance and unwillingness.

She wasn’t crying for Jiang Yi, nor out of fear from the earlier conflict.

She was crying for her damned, worthless poverty.

Before absolute poverty, all pride and pretense crumble so easily.

---

Only her heartbreaking sobs and the dead silence remained in the alley.

Jiang Yi stood there, motionless.

Like a silent sculpture born from the dark night, he quietly watched the trembling girl crying on the ground.

He watched her—from her initial attempt to hold herself together, to being shredded by the venomous words from the call, to finally begging for that thousand yuan with no dignity left.

His heart, long frozen, felt as if something had brutally and irrationally struck it.

So the things she said before were true.

She really needed money.

Not that elusive hundred thousand yuan, but every single cent and yuan that kept her alive.

That was why she had been willing to make herself look like a madwoman in the karaoke bar, to protect him, her "investment."

That was why she had recklessly thrown herself in front of Li Wenfeng when he was about to strike, shouting for compensation.

She wasn’t protecting Li Wenfeng.

She was protecting him, protecting that precarious "investment" that could net thirty thousand yuan.

All her unreasonable, contradictory actions suddenly had the cruelest yet most reasonable explanation.

A fierce, indistinguishable emotion, like molten lava, surged in his chest.

Was it guilt?

Because of him, she lost the job that kept her alive.

Or was it... anger?

Anger at a world that forced a girl who should shine like the sun into such a humiliating, wretched state.

He didn’t know.

All he knew was that the harsh words he had said before—those "the cooperation ends here" remarks—sounded so ridiculous, so cruel now.

He bent down slowly, picked up the phone with the shattered screen.

Then he walked to her side, crouched down, and gently placed the phone back into her hand.

Feeling the foreign object in her palm, her sobs paused, and she slowly raised her head.

Her tear-washed eyes, red and rabbit-like in the darkness, met his deep, unfathomable, and conflicted gaze.

“Done crying?” His voice was still hoarse but shed all its coldness and mockery, leaving only a clumsy awkwardness even he was unaware of.

Xu Yuan looked at him without speaking, wiping her tears roughly with the back of her hand, trying to regain some of the dignity long lost.

Jiang Yi said nothing more.

He stood, took off his gray sweatshirt, and without a word, draped it over her, wrapping her completely.

Xu Yuan stiffened.

The sweatshirt still held his crisp, faintly smoky scent, uniquely his own. That scent was a gentle, irresistible net that enveloped all her shame and misery.

“Let’s go.”

He uttered the single word, then without waiting for a response, grasped her cold wrist and led her out of the dark alley that had witnessed all her breakdowns.

His hand was large and dry, the palm calloused from years of typing.

His grip was firm, leaving no room for argument, yet carried a careful gentleness, as if afraid to hurt her.

Dragged along, Xu Yuan felt like a puppet who had lost all capacity to think, stumbling behind him.

She didn’t know where he was taking her.

All she knew was that at this moment, the boy who had just declared he wanted to sever ties with her had not abandoned her.

He didn’t take her back to school but instead entered a brightly lit, 24-hour pharmacy.

---

“Do you have ointment?” he asked the drowsy clerk.

The clerk pointed toward the shelves.

Jiang Yi took the best ointment, a bottle of iodine, and a pack of cotton swabs, then, to Xu Yuan’s stunned gaze, headed straight to the cashier.

“Sir, that’s fifty-eight yuan in total.”

He pulled a crumpled hundred-yuan note from his pocket, stained with dried mud spots.

Xu Yuan recognized that money.

It was one of the humiliating stacks Li Wenfeng had thrown onto his desk in the library yesterday.

Her heart was stabbed sharply.

He was using money that others had insulted him with to buy medicine for her.

Jiang Yi paid, pocketed the change and ointments, and pulled her onward.

Eventually, he stopped at a bench in a small park at the center of a street.

He released her hand, placed the ointment and iodine on the bench, and pointed at her hand.

“Hand.” His tone was terse, emotionless.

Only then did Xu Yuan lower her head to see the back of her hand, red and swollen from where Li Wenfeng had struck it with money.

She silently extended her hand.

Jiang Yi opened the iodine bottle, dipped a cotton swab, then lowered his eyes, focusing on carefully cleaning the wound little by little.

His movements were gentle and tender, a stark contrast to his cold, hard face.

The park was quiet, with only the occasional distant sound of traffic.

Xu Yuan watched his downcast, thick lashes, his focused profile tending to her wound. Her heart uncontrollably skipped beats.

“Why... didn’t you fight back?” she asked the same question again.

This time, he answered.

“If you get hit, you have to pay.” Without looking up, his voice was calm and steady. “I have no money.”

Her heart was painfully tugged once more.

“But they…”

“They have money.” Jiang Yi cut her off, lifting his eyes. His dark pupils shone brightly under the streetlamp. “In this world, having money means having the right. You know that better than I do, don’t you?”

He was referring to her wild talk about money earlier at the karaoke bar.

Xu Yuan’s face flushed crimson, ashamed, and she lowered her head.

Jiang Yi finished cleaning the wound, then opened the burn ointment, squeezed some out, and gently, evenly applied it to her hand with his fingertip.

The cool sensation soothed her burning hand considerably.

After finishing, he packed the items and stood up.

Xu Yuan expected him to say, “Our cooperation ends here,” and then leave.

But instead, he looked at her and said in a calm, unprecedented tone:

“I won’t renege on that thirty thousand yuan.”

He paused, as if making a significant decision, a complex gleam flickering in his dark eyes.

“Starting tomorrow, I’ll find a way to earn your tutoring fee as well.”