Chapter 4

Mingxi noticed the way Zhao Yuning hesitated although he obviously looked like he wanted to say something. However, she couldn’t be bothered by it.

She was a decisive person. She would either have everything or nothing at all. She would put in all her effort for just one thing, but when her efforts are not reflected in the results, she would stop before she suffers a loss.

Currently, for her, the Zhao family was precisely the one ‘loss’ she wanted to stop.

Whether or not Zhao Yuning could get used to this was a matter for him to deal with.

No matter what, it was impossible for her to be like how she was in her past life, whereby she would still prepare his lunch beforehand just because she thought of him as her biological younger brother.

After Mingxi sat down, He Yang also quickly filled up her plate and came over. She brought two pieces of dessert and gave them to Mingxi. “You made these at my family’s shop last weekend. You’re really good at this, even my dad said that it was delicious! You haven’t even tried these two yet, so I used some dry ice to preserve it and brought it today for you to have a taste!”

Mingxi was driven by hunger. Just as she was about to open the packaging, she thought of something and kept the delicate package instead. “I’ll eat it in class later.”

“Sure, little pauper.” He Yang laughed.

As Mingxi looked at her, she couldn’t help but to recall her best friend He Yang’s ending in her past life.

In the novel, He Yang could be considered as an average cannon fodder villain. Due to the fact that she had a short temper, was always on her side and hated Zhao Yuan, every time she saw Zhao Yuan she would say a few mean words.

Then, as a brainless female supporting character, she would be forced to eat her words by Zhao Yuan and the people around her— As this occurrence continued to repeat itself, her family’s business began to deteriorate and she no longer had the time to pick on Zhao Yuan.

Although this was way better than her terminal illness ending, when she thought of how pitiful Uncle He looked with his hair half gray a few years later, Mingxi felt anguished.

“There hasn’t been any problems with your dad’s business recently, right?”

He Yang rolled her eyes at Mingxi while biting on her chopsticks. “What problems could there be? You should worry about yourself instead. You still have a lot of matters to settle. Has Zhao Yuan recovered from her allergy?”

It was only three years later when He Yang’s family hired a new marketing manager did problems start to arise in their business. As this person who will betray He Yang’s father had yet to appear, there shouldn’t be any huge problems for now.

However, in this life she will definitely keep an eye out for He Yang. She will never allow anything bad to happen to He Yang and her family anymore.

“I moved out. I’m living in school now.”

“What the heck? Just because of a small matter of Zhao Yuan’s allergy, your family kicked you out? Who exactly is the biological daughter here?!” He Yang almost exploded out of anger.

“Lower down your voice!” Mingxi hurriedly pulled her to sit down. “They didn’t kick me out, I wanted to move out on my own. Speaking of this, I need your help to find a way to earn money.”

He Yang got even angrier. “The Zhao family even cut off your financial resources? I’m so pissed off. I think this whole thing must’ve been plotted and acted out by that b*tch Zhao Yuan. Although I hate her, it’s not to the extent of triggering her allergy— But I do want to try.”

“It wasn’t her,” Mingxi said.

The amazing part of this female protagonist Zhao Yuan was that she had innate luck. She didn’t need to try to take anything and all the love and affection would still be hers.

Thus, she didn’t need to plot and act in order to harm Mingxi.

In her past life, as no evidence could be found, this matter came to an ambiguous end with Mingxi’s fight with her family.

But in this life, Mingxi who had read the whole book had a person in mind.

“It could have been E Xiaoxia.”

He Yang’s eyes widened.

E Xiaoxia was Zhao Yuan’s best friend in the earlier part of the novel. She would always protect Zhao Yuan, and when it came to arguing with Mingxi she would always be at the frontlines.

However, a huge part of her hate toward Mingxi stemmed from how she considered Mingxi as her love rival.

Last Friday, Mingxi saw her giving a bottle of water to Shen Liyao by the side of the basketball court. It was only then that she realized that E Xiaoxia also liked Shen Liyao.

“But this is merely a guess,” Mingxi said. “So many people walked in and out that day, it’s impossible to actually find any evidence.”

“It must have been her. She’s just jealous that you and Shen Liyao had been promised to be married to each other since both of you were born,” He Yang said. “Then you should explain this to your family!”

“Even if I did, they won’t believe me. Even if they believed me, they would still feel like I had some responsibility somehow,” Mingxi said helplessly. “Because you are my friend and this incident happened in your family’s shop, it means I did it on purpose.”

For a moment there, He Yang’s heart was so stuffed that she couldn’t say a single word.

Mingxi was right. Even if she tried her best to explain herself, it would be useless because Mingxi’s existence was a threat to Zhao Yuan.

No matter what she did, it would look as if she was trying to take away their affection.

The core matter of this incident was not who caused Zhao Yuan’s allergy or who was responsible.

Instead, it was the problem of how everyone in the Zhao family leaned in favor of Zhao Yuan.

Although Mingxi was very upset about this in her past life, in this life, it didn’t matter to her anymore.

Rather, it was He Yang who could no longer swallow her food. She pulled a long face.

“Just you wait. I’ll definitely find a way to help you prove your innocence! Whoever was doing all these evil things behind the scenes will certainly get what they deserve from me!”

“Just eat your food.” Mingxi regretted telling her all this. She couldn’t help but to pinch He Yang’s cheeks. “Don’t bother. Besides, I’ve already decided to draw the line with the Zhao family. What you can do to help me is to find some sort of way to earn money.”

He Yang was rather updated as she was always on social media.

She immediately took out her phone. “You asked the right person. I’ll send you a few links so you can take a look at them during the afternoon class. Helping someone to do their homework, replacing someone for their piano class, taking an exam for someone, there’s anything and everything out there. A few days ago a rich person posted a job saying that they were sick and needed someone to take their exams for them— The offer price was as high as 8,000 yuan.”

“That much?” Mingxi was kind of shocked. If she could take this, she could use it to cover one semester’s tuition fees.

She looked at the person who posted this. Their ID was Handsome J. It looked familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on who it was.

Mingxi was a hardworking person and her results were good. Back when she was in her small town in the North she never got anything lower than first place in school.

However, after she was found by the Zhao family— which was also when the terrible luck of a villain began to circulate around her, there would always be problems whenever it was close to the exam term in this school. She would either have a migraine or stomach ache. Thus, everyone only saw how she didn’t do well in her exams as her results for the first half of the year were only average.

She could only force herself to work even harder and do sample tests until the middle of the night. Only if she was more capable could she complete her papers before her stomach ache appeared in the middle of the exams.

It was precisely through this method that she managed to obtain the result of No. 3 among the twenty something Normal Classes in her last exam.

The better her results were, the higher the offer price would be for tasks like helping to complete homework or replacing someone for an exam. Furthermore, if she wants to get even better results, she would have to spend more effort on freeloading luck.

It shouldn’t be a problem!

Mingxi took a glance at the 3⅕ buds she obtained in exchange for 30 laps, and the small flame of fighting spirit in her heart burned vigorously.

*

After Mingxi and He Yang were done eating, they left the canteen.

At a spot not far behind her sat the students of the Varsity Team.

Mingxi’s voice was soft, but through He Yang’s loud exclamations, a few key words could be heard by them.

“Looks like something happened to the Zhao family over the weekend. E Xiaoxia from the Evergreen Class triggered Zhao Yuan’s allergy and pushed the blame to Zhao Mingxi. As no one in their family believed Zhao Mingxi, she had a huge fight with her family before moving out to stay in school.”

Everyone in the Varsity Team was smart, including Ye Bai. He very quickly obtained some information from the two girls’ conversation.

It paid off for him to force Shen Liyao to sit at this corner.

Of course, while Shen Liyao appeared indifferent, he didn’t refuse. This in itself was a surprise to Ye Bai.

“Therefore, now it can be explained why Zhao Mingxi transferred to the International Class and decided to pursue that guy with the surname Fu.” Ye Bai looked at Mingxi’s retreating figure before turning to face Shen Liyao with an expression full of interest. “She must be jealous of you and E Xiaoxia!”

Shen Liyao furrowed his eyebrows. “Who is E Xiaoxia?”

Ye Bai was speechless.

“Last Friday! Basketball court! The girl who gave you a bottle of water after our second match. Zhao Mingxi was right there!”

Shen Liyao skimmed through his memories with a blank expression. Finally, he remembered.

He was pondering something as the look in his eyes went cold.

A short while later, Shen Liyao said coldly, “She forced the bottle into my hands and ran away right after. There were no trash cans nearby and I couldn’t just throw it anywhere.”

After a pause, he looked at Zhao Mingxi’s figure. No one knew who he was explaining this to, but he spoke nonetheless, “Besides, I didn’t drink it. I tossed it to you right away.”

“There is an 80% chance that Zhao Mingxi didn’t see what happened afterwards. Furthermore, she had a fight with her love rival E Xiaoxia over the weekend. The more she thought about it, the angrier she got, hence she purposely transferred to the International Class.”

Ye Bai analyzed with his hand over his chin. Finally, with a firm voice, “Yep, this was definitely what happened. No one understands girls better than I do.”

Shen Liyao was silent for a while.

“This has nothing to do with me.”

He looked away from Zhao Mingxi, his eyes still as blank as ever. “Eat quickly. We have special training after this.”

“God Yao, are you not going to do anything about this? What if she really stops following us around?”

Ye Bai felt that it was a pity.

When Zhao Mingxi came to find Shen Liyao she would always bring various delicious foods and desserts. They were all made by her and it tasted absolutely delightful. Even though they couldn’t eat it, even smelling it was good enough.

Shen Liyao gave no response.

Ye Bai raised his head and saw that Shen Liyao didn’t look happy.

Just as Ye Bai was going to say something, Shen Liyao took his plate, moved his long legs and  left the table.

“Isn’t this a good thing? She should have been placing her focus on her studies a long time ago.”

However, Ye Bai wasn’t sure if it was just a moment of misperception, but he felt that today’s Shen Liyao had a hint of impatience between his brows.