Chapter 69: Lun Sang High School (21)
After being entangled by the jealous Jiang Ting for another kiss, Ji Ning hurried back.
The break was only fifteen minutes, and it felt like the bell would ring any second. Ji Ning quickened her pace, taking three steps at a time and leaping up two stairs at once, arriving slightly out of breath at the door of Class Ten.
From the hallway, she could hear Class Ten was in a complete uproar. Ji Ning stood by the door and looked in; sure enough, her classmates were bullying Zhao Jiamin again.
Her blue-covered notebook was being tossed from the first row to the third, from the front of the class to the back, the pages rustling noisily in the air.
Zhao Jiamin, face flushed red, chased after the notebook, but it was passed around so quickly she couldn't catch up.
In the gap while she chased, the boy who had caught it held it up high, flipped to a random page, and read aloud: "During today's morning exercises, Teacher Xing smiled at me. He's so handsome, yet so easygoing and gentle..."
The boy mimicked in a shrill, affected voice, immediately causing the classroom to erupt in raucous laughter.
Ji Ning took a detour back to the rear of the third row and looked at Jia Shuang and Song Weiyang. "What's going on?"
Jia Shuang curled her lip. "Zhao Jiamin's desk got knocked over just now, and everything fell out. Yao Lu and the others found her diary, and that led to what you're seeing."
Ji Ning and Jia Shuang exchanged a look of disgust. Inwardly, Ji Ning thought this NPC Zhao Jiamin was simply too tragic, and was glad it wasn't all real.
"Writing about a secret crush in a diary is just too stupid." Song Weiyang leaned back lazily in his chair, hands pillowed behind his head, critiquing. He then looked at Ji Ning, raising an eyebrow. "Got your questions answered?"
Ji Ning thought to herself that he was playing the role of the delinquent campus heartthrob quite vividly. She also understood he was asking whether she had exchanged new information with Jiang Ting.
"Yes." Ji Ning nodded, sending a returning glance to Song Weiyang.
Jia Shuang nudged Ji Ning's shoulder. "You've been really diligent lately, sis."
Ji Ning tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled faintly. "Isn't the midterm exam coming up? My family said if I improve, they'll buy me the new season's bag."
Just then, the class bell rang, so Jia Shuang didn't ask further. Ji Ning successfully muddled through.
After the teacher entered the classroom, the harassment of Zhao Jiamin shifted from overt acts to being carried out covertly.
Her blue diary was passed from hand to hand. Not content with merely reading her private thoughts, some people even scrawled vile and unsightly words in it with a pen.
But because Zhao Jiamin had promised the head teacher she wouldn't cause any more trouble, she could no longer resist this situation.
The diary was passed to Ji Ning. She opened it and flipped through, trying her best to ignore the slut-shaming and lewd insults, focusing only on what Zhao Jiamin had written.
Fortunately, she hadn't written about the head teacher's molestation of her, only some daily reflections and her secret crush's little thoughts.
The last page of the diary seemed to have been written just that noon.
"I hate Yao Lu, I hate Wang Lei, I hate Teacher Xing, I hate the head teacher, I hate Mom and Dad, I hate the whole class, I hate everyone. You all deserve to die. Hurry up and die!!!!!!!"
The force of the writing was so heavy it had even torn through the paper.
Below this paragraph, different people had scrawled a mess of words: "Crazy," "Psycho," "With such a dark mind, no wonder she's bullied," "Pitiful people must have hateful traits," "Sick."
Reading it made Ji Ning feel a chill run through her body. She lamented that although this instance's plot wasn't bloody, its emotional impact was simply too heavy, leaving one with a deep sense of helplessness.
She passed the notebook to Jia Shuang, took out her phone, and sent a message to the three men.
The discovery of the diary was equivalent to tearing away Zhao Jiamin's last shred of dignity. The scandal spread like a fissioning virus, becoming known to everyone.
Zhao Jiamin became a rat on the street, despised by all, a target anyone could tread on.
Wherever she was, her classmates kept their distance; no one wanted to get close to her. Pranks against her became a daily routine for the students of Class Ten, a source of collective amusement that continued right up until the eve of the midterm exams.
And after the nerve-wracking two-day exams were over, the entire Feimeng International School welcomed its sixtieth anniversary. The day-long school celebration and evening gala became a rare moment of revelry in the monotonous high school life.
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