Content Warning:
The following text contains themes of bullying and harassment, including physical and emotional abuse. Reader discretion is advised.
Volume 1: Rise
To Know
This person is like a rainbow, you only know when you meet
“Xiaogui… your Teacher Lu… what kind of person is she, is she good to you?”
The two people squeezed on the narrow small bed in the hospital staff dormitory, head to head, Fang Zhiyou hugged Yu Gui to let her lie more comfortably.
Yu Gui squinted her eyes, burrowing into her embrace, feeling somewhat drowsy due to the effect of the medicine.
“Mm… can’t say good or bad…”
Fang Zhiyou kissed her forehead, feeling the temperature was no longer that hot, thus feeling relieved: “Then…”
Before she finished speaking, she lowered her eyes and looked down. The person in her arms had already emitted even breathing sounds, her eyelashes fluttering, and a certain soft spot in her heart was suddenly hit.
Fang Zhiyou reached out to turn off the bedside lamp and gently kissed the corner of her lips, speaking in a very light tone, afraid of waking her up.
“Good night, Xiaogui, I love you.”
Just as she was about to close her eyes, the screen of her phone suddenly lit up in the dark.
A person named 「You Are Right」 sent her a message: “Not going online today?”
It was a partner from the same guild who often played games together.
Fang Zhiyou smiled, carefully withdrew her arm from under Yu Gui’s neck, and replied to the message: “No, something came up.”
It was almost midnight, but the other person still replied quickly: “Not coming to JJC? We are short one player.”
「JJC is short for the arena in the game.」
Fang Zhiyou typed: “Not coming, my girlfriend is the most important in the world.”
After the message was sent, the chat interface displayed 「The other party is typing…」
But after waiting for a while, there was still no further response. Fang Zhiyou put down the phone, hugged Yu Gui, and gently closed her eyes. Before long, she drifted into a deep sleep.
Yu Gui had a dream.
She dreamed of that youthful year, the day Fang Zhiyou transferred schools, they hurriedly crossed paths.
“Classmates, today we have a new student in our class, Fang Zhiyou. Let’s give her a warm welcome with applause.”
Yu Gui followed everyone in clapping, but the person being welcomed was not that happy. Clearly a girl, yet she wore a boy’s school uniform. The zipper was open, revealing a somewhat dirty plain white short-sleeved shirt inside. Her hair was cut very short, like a bowl placed on her head. She bowed nonchalantly and walked down, knocking Yu Gui’s workbook off her desk as she passed by.
Yu Gui gave a small gasp, reached out to pick it up, and quickly withdrew her hand to avoid being stepped on. Her deskmate poked her arm and whispered, “The new girl today… hey, hey, hey… I heard she was kicked out of the city high school and transferred here to the county…”
Yu Gui had no interest in this gossip, because the teacher immediately called her name: “Yu Gui, please answer this question.”
Yu Gui quickly stood up and answered loudly. She glanced back at Fang Zhiyou, who was already lying on the desk asleep in the corner of the classroom.
From that day on, Fang Zhiyou and Yu Gui became classmates. If Fang Zhiyou was a delinquent girl, then Yu Gui was an ordinary person who couldn’t be more ordinary – average grades, average looks, and an average figure.
She and Fang Zhiyou sat one in front and one behind, respectively under the teacher’s nose and in the corner where the teacher didn’t even want to look. The reason she could sit in the first row was of course not because she was good at studying, but because she was short. While other students had started to develop, growing taller and with chests slightly protruding, she remained as thin and weak as a bean sprout.
So when the unremarkable Yu Gui received that love letter, she felt more fear than excitement.
At that time, it was just after the break exercises. Yu Gui reached into her desk to get the textbook to review, and along with it, she pulled out a pink letter.
Before she could open it, her deskmate had already snatched it away: “Wow! A love letter! Yu Gui, you can receive a love letter too!”
Yu Gui blushed, reaching out to grab it back: “Give it back to me!”
Her deskmate ran around the classroom holding her love letter, reading aloud while running: “I am Li So-and-so1 from Grade 8, Class 2. I have liked you for a long time. Every time I see you pass by our classroom window, my heart flutters…”
(If you're not reading on littlepandatranslations.com, it means this has been stolen)
Li So-and-so from Grade 8, Class 2, was one of the students with excellent character and academic performance. He was handsome, the head of the sports department, and had countless admirers.
Classmates all started to jeer. Yu Gui’s face grew redder and redder. She jumped to reach the love letter in her deskmate’s hand. Just as she was about to get it, her deskmate threw the love letter to another student.
Yu Gui chased after it again, and a game of cat and mouse unfolded in the classroom.
Fang Zhiyou, sitting in the corner, was awakened by the noise. She raised her head slightly, and just as the girl holding the love letter ran past, she stuck out her leg.
The girl fell to the ground, and Yu Gui snatched the pink letter from her hand, slightly panting, her eyes also red, looking just like a little rabbit.
“Did you do that on purpose? I just saw you stick out your leg!” The girl got up from the ground and glared at her angrily.
Fang Zhiyou stood up from her seat, her height casting a shadow over the area.
The girl took a step back: “You… what are you doing…”
Fang Zhiyou extended her hand.
The girl covered her face: “Ah!”
Fang Zhiyou showed a somewhat innocent expression: “Just stretching.”
The news that Yu Gui received a love letter from Li So-and-so quickly spread to the neighboring class. After school, Yu Gui was doing her duty in the classroom.
Someone knocked on the door: “You’re Yu Gui, right? Come out with us for a moment.”
A few boys and girls with brightly dyed hair stood there. Yu Gui felt a bit uneasy: “Wha… what do you want…”
Among them, a slightly chubby girl stepped forward and pulled her: “Why waste words with her! And Li So-and-so wrote her a love letter?! Pah, shameless!”
Yu Gui was stunned by this slap and started crying on the spot. Then she was dragged out of the classroom.
When Fang Zhiyou came out after finishing a cigarette in the bathroom, she happened to see a few girls dumping a trash bin over Yu Gui’s head.
“Sl*t!”
“Lowly!”
“Shameless!”
She threw the cigarette butt into the sink and walked past them with her hands in her pockets.
From that day on, Yu Gui’s life became a living hell. Her completed homework mysteriously disappeared, only to be found later in the trash heap.
Brand new and clean clothes were marked with various symbols using a water-based pen on the back.
The word “b*tch” was carved into her desk with a knife.
She took on duty tasks that did not originally belong to her.
Those people came to pick on her every few days. Every time Yu Gui went out during the break and came back, she always quietly walked in through the back door, so Fang Zhiyou could always see her face and eyes were red.
This situation continued for half a semester. Even after Li So-and-so personally came out to clarify the rumors, the situation did not improve, and even worsened. It seemed that bullying Yu Gui had become a habit.
She came earlier and left later.
One morning, Fang Zhiyou was napping in the morning sunlight, the bright light shining through the glass window onto her desk.
Yu Gui nervously knocked on her desk: “Classmate… Classmate Fang…”
Fang Zhiyou impatiently opened her eyes but didn’t get up, only revealing half an eye to look at her: “What?”
Yu Gui swallowed: “Um… your breakfast that you don’t eat… can I have it?”
(If you're not reading on littlepandatranslations.com, it means this has been stolen)
The school provided a nutritious breakfast every day: a carton of milk, an egg, and a sausage.
“Take it and get lost,” she replied in the same lazy and uninterested tone.
Yu Gui quickly took the breakfast and scurried back to her own seat.
Before the morning self-study session started, the slightly chubby girl who had hit her last time came again: “Hey Yu Gui, I came late and haven’t eaten yet, give me your breakfast!”
Yu Gui went out to deliver the meal, and the girl shoved her again: “Got any money?”
Yu Gui turned out all her pockets to show her, and only then did the girl reluctantly wave her hand, signaling that she could leave.
So, for the whole morning until dismissal, from Fang Zhiyou’s angle, it was clear that the breakfast in Yu Gui’s desk had remained untouched.
The girl turned over, facing the other side of her face toward the sun, and in the teacher’s drowsy lecture on the podium, she fell into a new round of sleep.
Until dusk, Yu Gui cleaned the classroom, with tiny dust particles floating in the air. She carried her backpack and quietly asked as she walked to her side: “Classmate, aren’t you leaving?”
Fang Zhiyou did not answer.
Yu Gui didn’t dare call her again. She gently closed the door and tiptoed away.
But she did not go home immediately. Instead, she detoured to the trash site beside the school’s back gate.
She pursed her lips and softly “meowed” twice. A weak little kitten stumbled out from a cardboard box in the corner of the wall.
Yu Gui quickly ran over, picked up the dirty little kitten, and cradled it, then took out some milk from her backpack, poured it into a small dish, and fed it.
The little kitten, unable to fend for itself, was emaciated from hunger. It quickly slurped up the carton of milk and looked at Yu Gui with its big round eyes.
“Ah, today there’s only one carton of milk,” Yu Gui said with some disappointment. After thinking for a moment, she still took out a sausage from her backpack.
“I don’t know if you can eat this,” she said as she broke the sausage into pieces and put it in the small dish. “Try it; it’s better than going hungry.”
As she said this, her own stomach growled.
Yu Gui touched her stomach, a bit embarrassed: “I’m a little hungry too.”
“So you skip breakfast every day just to save it for feeding the cat, huh?” A cynical voice sounded.
She looked toward the alley entrance. Fang Zhiyou was holding a bag of trash, standing against the light, her expression unclear, but the setting sun coated her whole figure in a layer of gold.
Yu Gui suddenly became nervous and shielded the little kitten: “You… what do you want to do?”
Fang Zhiyou pushed her aside and threw the trash into the trash bin: “Unbelievable, you do duty work but don’t even take out the trash.”
“Ah?” Only then did Yu Gui realize that she had completely forgotten about the trash, and she immediately felt her face flush: “Sorry, I’ll remember next time.”
Fang Zhiyou bent down, stared at the little kitten at her feet for a while, and suddenly reached out her hand.
“No!” Yu Gui became nervous.
This sudden sharp cry somewhat startled Fang Zhiyou, and her grip on the kitten’s scruff almost loosened. The kitten clung to her wrist, meowing incessantly.
Fang Zhiyou put the kitten into her front backpack and gave Yu Gui a cold glare: “Why are you screaming! Come to my house, I have cat food.”
Fang Zhiyou, being tall, walked quickly. Yu Gui struggled to keep up and occasionally had to jog: “You… wait… wait for me…”
Fang Zhiyou stopped and looked at her. It was a clear summer evening, and the sunlight filtered through the camphor trees, casting dappled shadows on the ground.
After a while, the sky darkened, and those shadows disappeared.
“Why don’t you fight back?”
Yu Gui was stunned for a while before realizing she was talking about being bullied. She nervously rubbed the hem of her clothes, lowered her head, and her face blushed a bit: “I… I do kind of… kind of like him…”
(If you're not reading on littlepandatranslations.com, it means this has been stolen)
“Your liking him has nothing to do with them bullying you.”
“Liking someone is a beautiful thing, you don’t need to feel guilty.”
“The next time they bully you, just hit back.”
By the end of her words, Fang Zhiyou’s tone had turned fierce.
Yu Gui didn’t understand why, at that age, she could say something as philosophical as “Liking someone is a beautiful thing, you don’t need to feel guilty.”
But at that time, her timid and cowardly self was inspired by her short sentence to muster a kind of courage to move forward without hesitation.
And this sentence became the force that continuously encouraged her to become a better person when she later realized her feelings for the other person.
To some extent, it was Fang Zhiyou’s words that changed her life. No, to be precise, it was Fang Zhiyou herself who changed her life.
The setting sun made her silhouette very long. Yu Gui stood in place for a while, and when she raised her hand to wipe her tears, the other person shouted again.
“If you don’t leave, I’m not leaving either!”
Yu Gui sniffed, forced her tears back into her eyes, and jogged to catch up: “Coming… coming… wait for me!”
LP: Sorry, I was sick ദ്ദി(˵ •̀ ᴗ – ˵ ) ✧
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