Entanglement

Ye Mian finally turned her head to look at him, her eyes carrying a rare gentleness usually reserved for normal classmates. "Classmate, I'm very busy."

Fu Zihang smiled. "Oh, alright. Today we're strangers; I'll come find you after a while, and then we won't be strangers anymore."

From that moment on, Ye Mian knew.

This notoriously infamous junior was very likely a fool.

Other people's blunt and unsparing rejections seemed to roll right off him as if nothing had happened.

She smiled and walked past him.

Fu Zihang called out a goodbye to her retreating figure.

Without a second thought, Ye Mian walked out of the school.

The early spring breeze in Wencheng carried the pale glow of the moon. Even without the streetlights, it managed to soften the night. Just as she stepped out of the campus gates, a disheveled woman came running frantically towards her, wrapped her arms tightly around Ye Mian's waist, and refused to let go.

Startled, Ye Mian instinctively grabbed the intruder's wrist and shoulder, then executed a swift backward flip.

A standard law enforcement take-down.

The woman who was holding her flipped over and crashed onto the pavement, letting out a cry of pain, "Ouch."

Ye Mian stepped aside, her heart pounding. She still felt a lingering sense of fear from the sudden assault.

Fortunately, ever since those sickening incidents started happening one after another, she had bought a gym membership. Her strength had caught up, and technique was no longer an issue.

She stared stiffly at the woman on the ground, whose figure felt vaguely familiar.

It wasn't until the woman finished groaning and regained her breath that she bothered to look up.

"Ye Mian, please help me."

Ye Mian frowned, finally recognizing her face.

It was Dong Yulian. Why was she here?

The March night wind stirred an irritable restlessness in people's hearts.

Dong Yulian stumbled to her feet, one of her high heels snapped at the heel. Instead of reprimanding Ye Mian for the throw, she cried out tearfully, "Aren't you dating my son? Help me, get some money for me, or give me money yourself. Once I get the money, I'll never come back."

Hearing these words, an unnamable fury ignited in Ye Mian's chest. "Who is dating your son? Whose mother are you supposed to be? And why on earth should I give you money?"

Dong Yulian's fingernails dug almost into her palms. "Fine, none of you care about me, is that it? Then I'll just start shouting right here at the school gates."

Ye Mian cast a sidelong glance at her, thinking that Dong Yulian and Jiang Chen's father were cut from the exact same cloth.

It just went to show the old saying: birds of a feather flock together.

It had been a long time since Ye Mian had been threatened like this. She despised such cheap tactics and said coldly, "Go ahead and shout. Jiang Chen doesn't even study here anymore, and you and I are complete strangers. People will just take you for a mad dog."

With that, Ye Mian turned and walked away.

It wasn't that she was cold-hearted or didn't care about her own and Jiang Chen's reputation.

It was because she had deduced that someone like Dong Yulian would never do something so counterproductive.

The moment she left, Dong Yulian definitely wouldn't linger here.

On the contrary, if she stayed, she would be the one easy to manipulate.

In this spring night, the air still held the lingering chill of winter, and someone's heartbeat slowed.

Dong Yulian watched the young woman's back and tentatively shouted, "Does anyone here know Jiang Chen?"

Ye Mian paused for a fraction of a second, then kept walking.

"I'm his mother! I loved and cherished him since he was a child..."

Before she could finish, the young girl turned around.

Thinking she had a chance, Dong Yulian felt a surge of smugness, believing that young girls were indeed much easier to manipulate than someone like Jiang Chen.

Just as a smile formed on her face, she heard the young woman ask in a voice strained past its breaking point, "You claim you cherish Jiang Chen?"

Ye Mian was so angry her eyes turned red.

At that moment, a rush of blood flooded her head, completely stripping away her rationality.

She raised her bag and hurled it straight at Dong Yulian.

There were no hard objects in her bag, but it contained a heavy textbook, packing quite a punch when thrown.

Dong Yulian's attention had been entirely on the motion of the bag, never expecting it to be used as a weapon against her. She stepped back two paces and shrieked, "What are you doing?"

Ye Mian stood there with a freezing expression, firing back, "What am I doing? I've tolerated you for a long time. I really want to beat you up right now, and if you ever dare to insult him again by claiming you're his mother, I will definitely beat you up."

Seeing a student arguing with a civilian outside the school, the campus security guard stubbed out his cigarette and walked over. Strictly speaking, since it was outside school grounds, it wasn't really his business.

Yet standing idly by didn't feel quite right either.

So he stepped in to mediate.

"Stop arguing, stop arguing. Talk things out peacefully if there's an issue."

Ye Mian picked up her fallen bag without a word. She truly had nothing to say to someone like this.

Dong Yulian's face remained flushed with suppressed rage.

Seeing the two of them at a stalemate, the security guard stood nearby. Whatever happened, as long as it was within his line of sight, no actual fighting was allowed.

After a tense five-minute delay, Ye Mian's patience ran completely out, and she turned to leave.

Dong Yulian clung to her like a stubborn plaster, following close behind.

She said, "Jiang Chen is nothing but a liar. I advise you not to get too close to him. He promised to give me a house, and what happened? He just had people chase me out! If he doesn't keep his promises, why bother being serious with him? Let me teach you how to handle a man, how to extract money from a man."

She trailed behind Ye Mian the entire way, and Ye Mian endured her the entire way.

Several times, she wanted to stop and slap her hard across the face, but was repulsed by the thick, patchy, cakey powder on Dong Yulian's face.

Indeed, Dong Yulian must not have touched up her makeup in a long time.

Her usually carefully painted face, marred by fine lines, was now a patchwork of white and yellow.

Ye Mian found it utterly ridiculous.

What made Dong Yulian think Jiang Chen was deceiving her, rather than simply letting her off easy?

In Ye Mian's understanding, the terrifying side Jiang Chen occasionally revealed was genuinely chilling.

His murderous aura was heavier than that of death-row inmates in prison.

Beneath his gentleness lay a pair of gloomy, sinister eyes.

It was just that he had never directed that kind of look toward her.

Yet this woman was exploiting Jiang Chen's self-restraint to act wildly, trampling and insulting him at will.

It could almost be considered blatant bullying.

"Ye Mian, think about it. It's just the two of us here, stop putting on an act. He's been a little psycho since he was a kid. To put it bluntly, he's never been loved by anyone, his mind is definitely warped and twisted. As women, we should just aim for the money. Surely you aren't actually after him as a person?"

Dong Yulian spoke with absolute certainty.

She had known since the old district that Jiang Chen had a crush on this little girl ever since they were kids, and even then, anyone with eyes could see the girl didn't like Jiang Chen.

Therefore, in her eyes, Ye Mian was just another gold-digger throwing herself at Jiang Chen now that he had money.

Every word she uttered sounded like she was grooming an innocent, naive gold-digger.

Yet her remark about his mind being warped and twisted struck a raw nerve in Ye Mian once again.

No matter how good someone's temper was, they could never endure hearing the person they loved being subjected to such vile insults.

Ye Mian looked straight into her eyes, her gaze filled with boundless disgust as she asked, "If his mind is warped, whose fault is it? Who forced him to eat cigarette butts? Who beat him? Who starved him? Who forced him to scavenge through garbage bins since he was a child? Do you really think those things ceased to exist just because you left the old district?"

Dong Yulian choked, a strange look flashing across her eyes.