Her slender, fair fingers slid across the phone screen. Under the halo of light, the girl’s slightly pale complexion seemed to reveal traces of veins, like a freshly peeled egg, exuding a beauty on the brink of shattering.
In a somewhat dim room, the girl lay in bed, absentmindedly scrolling through her phone, her eyes frequently losing focus, indicating that she was often daydreaming.
Ding dong!
With the sound of a WeChat notification, a new message popped up in the group chat "Colorful Era Sisterhood."
Yu Duo noticed it but wasn’t really inclined to open it.
Whereas before, she had been the most enthusiastic one.
She still remembered, not knowing exactly from what age in her childhood, her parents always took her and her brother along when they moved. From the original state-owned enterprise’s dormitory to later high-rise apartments, then to row houses, and finally to a single-family estate.
She and her brother Yu Fei’s schools kept changing too, from public to private, from monolingual to bilingual, with tuition fees growing ever more expensive, making the journey to school increasingly solitary...
Each time Yu Duo had just made new friends, she was forced to follow them to a new environment.
She remembered the funniest moment was the day she borrowed one hundred yuan from a newly met deskmate, and the next day she transferred schools. That hundred yuan still hadn’t been reclaimed...
Her parents wanted to cultivate some hobbies for her, so she learned cello, painting, and singing. Unfortunately, whatever she learned was half-baked, and Yu Duo often felt lost about her life.
Until she didn’t do well in the college entrance exam and entered "Colorful Art" under her parents’ arrangement. As they put it, they didn’t expect her to be outstanding but just to learn something easy, with the family business left for her brother to manage, and for her to find a suitable partner to marry in the future...
Yu Duo didn’t have any ideas of her own, so she listened to her parents, came to Colorful Academy, and became a freshman in the Broadcast Hosting Department.
However, the college life Yu Duo had envisioned didn’t go smoothly during her freshman year.
She initially thought that if she treated others wholeheartedly, they would do the same for her. Aren’t sisters and best friends in TV dramas, novels, and comics all like that?
Initially, her three roommates really seemed nice. They ate together, attended classes together, and chatted about who was the most handsome in class, which senior hooked up with whom, and which senior got a role in Hengdian...
Yu Duo couldn’t remember when things started to change.
Maybe it began one day when her brother Yu Fei picked her up for dinner in a McLaren P1; her roommates looked thrilled, saying not to forget each other in times of wealth. But when they heard it wasn’t her suitor but her big brother, their expressions changed.
Or perhaps it started one day when Yu Duo planned a shopping trip with them. Her intention was to gift each of them a bag as a "friendship token," but when they saw she headed to the designer brands’ Golden Mall, they all hesitated at the entrance...
Then Yu Duo suddenly discovered they no longer invited her to attend classes or gossip together. The dorm’s group chat grew cold until Yu Duo accidentally found out they had made a separate smaller group and chatted lively in it every day, including plenty of "bad talk" about her.
"Did you see it? In today’s PE class, Yu Duo played the victim again. Only she can’t run, only she can pretend to be pitiful!"
"Those guys like Yu Yang still wanted to take her to the infirmary; it’s ridiculous. Her brother should have driven the McLaren to pick her up!"
"She said she’s never been in a relationship, but she’s obviously a flirt always fishing around..."
"I heard these rich girls play dirtier than anyone else; I think I saw her sneaking to a pharmacy. Do you think she’s buying that stuff?"
"..."
Such conversations seemed to be their daily bread, or rather, only when the topic was "Yu Duo" did their messages become particularly frequent.
That day, Yu Duo ran alone to the rooftop and cried all afternoon.
She didn’t know where the problem lay. The inexperienced girl longed for friendship for the first time and was utterly shattered by it.
Later, Yu Duo took a three-month hiatus and returned to school during the sophomore start. With Yu Fei’s guidance, Yu Duo approached her counselor, offered a small gift, and ended up paired with Shen Yutong and Su Yajing, who also didn’t get along well with their roommates, plus Cui Min’er, the exchange student from Korea, forming a new dorm.
Initially, Yu Duo was cautious, even not daring to reveal that her monthly allowance was fifty thousand yuan, until one day, when Yu Fei picked her up at the school gate, Su Yajing and Shen Yutong happened to see it.
Yu Duo’s anxiety lasted until the evening when she returned to the dorm when Shen Yutong and Su Yajing sat her down on a chair for "interrogation."
"N-not that much money... My parents, I don’t know about them; I just have over a million yuan in New Year’s money on my Alipay..."
Faced with intense questioning from the two girls, Yu Duo weakly confessed.
New Year’s money... over a million?
Shen Yutong and Su Yajing gasped in disbelief, then began to accuse Yu Duo of her "crimes," mainly of "pretending with them," "being a fake friend," and "hiding to eat alone," among other things.