Wen Xishu knew that this was probably the content of the second room.
He suddenly felt a bit guilty, this kind of emotion shouldn’t be there, which made him feel a bit irritable.
Tang Rui wiped away the tears at the corners of her eyes:
"Is my voice very unpleasant now?"
Wen Xishu didn’t shake his head to pretend to comfort her, he nodded and said:
"It is indeed very unpleasant."
Tang Rui’s smile turned a bit ugly, but she poured her glass full again:
"Again, again!"
"I’ll accompany you to the end."
Wen Xishu started to shake the dice.
The girl’s luck clearly started to decline, and this time it was another odd number. The count was seven.
"Name another similar event, one that you cannot forget because of the pain."
In the beginning, there were four doors.
This means that Tang Rui has experienced four events that could be called desperate. The beasts she encountered were not just her parents and Teacher Yan.
Perhaps influenced by this weird object, the glass, the red liquid inside was particularly intoxicating.
Tang Rui felt a kind of fragmentation and exhilaration. From her initial resistance, she gradually felt a desire to confide. After filling her glass again and pouring it down, there was a faint sorrow and confusion in her eyes:
"It was my best friend who made me feel like I had no place to stay."
This was just a very short sentence.
Yet presented in Wen Xishu’s eyes was a series of dense, oppressive memories.
"I’m Xiaoru, from now on, we are roommates."
"Mmm, you can just call me Xiaorui..."
"Hey, what’s up with your voice? It’s piercing and doesn’t match your appearance at all."
"No... it’s nothing. I was born with a harsh voice."
"Hehe, it’s okay, I don’t mind. By the way, we just met today, let’s go sing karaoke together?"
"I, I don’t know how to sing, I sing very badly."
"It’s okay, I don’t mind your singing being bad."
The scene quickly changed from the new dorm room to a private karaoke room, with both male and female freshmen singing songs.
Although Xiaoru didn’t sing well, her voice was at least normal. And with a bit of a lisp, although her singing wasn’t great, it was the kind of sweet voice boys liked.
She seemed to enjoy being teased and surrounded by the boys. To highlight her own sweet voice, she handed the microphone to her friend she just met today – Tang Rui.
The naïve girl didn’t know this was actually a form of humiliation. She simply thought that after compromising with fate and her parents and getting into college... she would be loved.
She took the microphone, singing while thinking she couldn’t refuse her friend’s kindness. Each of her singing notes could pull at the wound of despair from her high school times.
In the karaoke room, some people were covering their ears, some were frowning, some were recording the hoarse and unpleasant singing on their phones. Only Xiaoru smiled brightly, extremely happy.
Seeing Xiaoru’s smile, Tang Rui still finished a song, thinking, "This is great... she doesn’t mind my bad singing."
Tang Rui thought the smile on Xiaoru’s face was a sign of acceptance and non-judgment, not knowing it was merely a form of mockery and entertainment.
Sometimes life is just like that.
When you grasp at love like a drowning person holding onto a wooden plank, often what approaches you is the evil that pushes you into the abyss.
So from early on, Wen Xishu knew that people can only see love clearly when they no longer need it.
Tang Rui didn’t see it clearly.
Until she graduated from college, she always thought she and Xiaoru were good friends. She never imagined that she was just a prop to contrast with.
Her deep-seated inferiority made her believe that as long as someone liked her, she shouldn’t doubt it. If she encountered something uncomfortable, she just needed to endure it.
She was willing to hold onto such a friendship until death. But falsehoods are falsehoods; they can never become true.
After graduation, although Tang Rui didn’t pass the civil service exam her parents wanted her to, she was doing quite well.
In contrast, Xiaoru had high ambitions but low abilities, paired with poor academic skills, and couldn’t find a good job.
In the end, it was Tang Rui who arranged for Xiaoru to interview at the company she worked for. The two went from classmates to colleagues.
This was certainly not a continuation of a beautiful story of friendship. School is a microcosm of society, and the evils hiding in student days only become worse in the real world.
The seeds of evil took root and grew, consuming every bit of Tang Rui’s life. Finally, one day, the malice bloomed.
That day, when Tang Rui arrived at work, she found almost everyone pointing fingers at her.
"How could she be such a person?"
"Oh my god, I didn’t expect her to have such a past."
"Tsk, I knew it, the more aloof some people appear on the surface, the more promiscuous they are in private."
"During student days... Ah, I couldn’t tell, I really couldn’t tell."
In her memory, it was a stretch of dim candlelight, shadowy figures overlapping, forming wavy layers of darkness.
"Slut."
"Seducing the boss."
"Shameless."
"She did those things just to get a good price with the boss, right?"
The figures burst out with malicious words, one after another, like a flood of bats in the darkness, swarming through the girl’s spirit.
The girl had been diligent and conscientious for years, never getting into conflicts, working silently and working overtime quietly, taking on duties without complaints.
The boss also noticed this reliable and serious employee and began to assign her more important tasks.
She did every task well, putting in all her effort and care, afraid of being disliked, afraid of embarrassing others.
She originally thought this kind of life wasn’t too bad, thinking maybe the deity in charge of her misfortunes had forgotten her. Maybe a small bit of fortune would come her way.