The Scorching Sun - 49
The looks of the people around him were mocking and cutting, and Fang Yiming no longer knew how he was supposed to react.
He stood there for a while before turning back to retrieve twenty thousand yuan. He put the money into his bag, then took out his phone and tried to find the bank card Fang Zhuo had mentioned.
Years ago, he'd opened quite a few bank accounts for work. For a period of time, every time he walked into a bank, the tellers would try to sell him on opening yet another card.
There was hardly any money in those accounts, and he rarely used them. He'd tossed the cards wherever was convenient and never paid them much attention.
One thing he was certain of was that after divorcing Ye Yaoling, he had never seen Ye Yuncheng again, much less given him the number of any of his bank cards.
If Ye Yuncheng could transfer the money to him and somehow obtain one of his bank card numbers, Fang Yiming could think of only one person who might have been involved.
He hadn't memorized the exact number just now, so he had to go to the bank and verify the cards one by one using his identification. By checking the transaction records, he quickly tracked down an old card from years ago.
Apart from the transfers from Ye Yuncheng, there was almost no activity on that bank card. Whenever money was deposited, it would be withdrawn again soon afterward.
Fang Yiming had the bank print out the transaction records. He didn't know what good they would do, but he still wanted to show them to Fang Zhuo and make it clear that he hadn't done anything so shameless.
Yet when he was about to contact Fang Zhuo, he found himself facing the same helpless predicament as before.
He had no way to contact his own daughter, nor did he have any way to reach Fang Zhuo's homeroom teacher.
Most of what Fang Zhuo had said was true. Their worlds had been completely separate, and he had left his daughter with nothing but hardship.
In the self-satisfied world he'd built for himself, Fang Zhuo had never even existed.
Fang Zhuo wiped her face clean with a tissue and sat in the corner of the bus, her unfocused gaze resting on the back of the seat in front of her.
When the bus announced the stop "A High School," she suddenly realized she'd taken the wrong bus and hurriedly jumped off through the rear door.
Standing in front of the advertisement board at the bus stop, Fang Zhuo let out a long, heavy breath. She took out her phone and searched again for a bus route to the hospital.
Fang Yiming was selfish and self-serving. He liked to indulge himself. He was cowardly and irresponsible. And yet, when she'd finally left, he'd worn that pitiful expression on his face.
Because he wasn't truly rotten to the core. When someone pointed a finger at him and cursed him to his face, exposing the despicable things he'd managed to deceive even himself about, there was still the slightest trace of shame left in him.
Fang Zhuo wondered if Ye Yaoling had once been taken in by that fleeting tenderness too, believing in his romantic side before falling in love with the image he'd presented of himself.
Fang Zhuo followed the blue line on the navigation app, walking all the way forward when she suddenly stepped into the drainage ditch beside a repair shop and went sprawling onto the ground.
She hit the ground hard. Several red banknotes fluttered out from behind her with the force of the fall.
Fang Zhuo had no time to worry about the pain. She hurriedly braced herself with her hands and scrambled back up, gathering the money. Only then did she realize that she'd never zipped her backpack shut and had fled here in a panic.
She got to her feet. Her palms and knees burned fiercely, but fortunately, she hadn't scraped her face this time. She quickly checked herself over and found two conspicuous streaks of mud on her dark school uniform trousers that refused to come clean no matter how much she brushed at them. The friction from the small stones had also torn a little hole in the fabric.
Fang Zhuo knew she must look disheveled. She couldn't appear in front of Ye Yuncheng looking like this. It would only make him worry.
She glanced back, then changed direction and started walking toward the school again. She decided to return to the dormitory first, take a shower, and change her clothes.
Fang Zhuo stuffed her backpack into her locker, grabbed two pieces of casual clothing nearby, and went into the bathroom to shower.
After fifteen minutes, the dismissal bell rang. Morning classes had ended, and the campus instantly came alive.
Wei Xi and the others didn't want to queue at the cafeteria, so they bought some small pastries from the supermarket and trudged toward their dorm.
After swiping their access cards, they came face-to-face with Fang Zhuo in the narrow corridor. She was staggering as she walked.
Wei Xi smiled and raised a hand to greet her, but Fang Zhuo seemed not to see her at all. She swayed past without stopping.
Wei Xi grabbed her and said, "Fang Zhuo, why are you ignoring me? Yan Lie's been looking everywhere for you."
Fang Zhuo stopped woodenly and turned to look at her. Her hair hung damply over her forehead, her lips were unnaturally pale, yet the corner of her mouth was stained with blood where she'd bitten herself. The red was startling against her pallor.
Seeing that something was wrong, Wei Xi dropped her usual playful grin and asked, "What's wrong with you? What did you go out to do this morning?"
Fang Zhuo opened her mouth and answered something completely unrelated. "I lost my money."
"Huh?" Wei Xi asked. "How much? Is it serious?"
Fang Zhuo closed her eyes and said wearily, "Ten thousand."
"Ten thousand yuan?!" Wei Xi's eyes widened as she cried out, "Where did you get that much money?!"
The girls nearby all stopped in their tracks, pressing themselves against the walls as they listened to the conversation in alarm.
It seemed to take an enormous effort for Fang Zhuo to speak. She might not even have been able to hear herself, her voice trembling with a quiver she could barely suppress. "I can't explain it right now... I lost it while I was showering. I have to go to the hospital to see my uncle first. I just called the police. Try not to touch anything inside. Also, the lock on the balcony was forced. I'm leaving first."
Seeing that Fang Zhuo looked as though she might collapse at any moment, Wei Xi didn't even dare raise her voice. "We're not going inside. We won't disturb the scene. But you... are you okay? Do you want to rest for a while first?"
Fang Zhuo shook her head.
The dorm monitor followed alongside her and said, "Fang Zhuo, let me ask one more thing. Did anyone know you'd brought money to school? You were only in the shower for such a short time, yet it was still stolen. Whoever did it must have known you had money on you."
Fang Zhuo had a rough idea. "I fell near the side entrance of the school just now. Someone might have seen me." The dorm monitor tried to press the pastry into her hand, but when she caught Fang Zhuo's wrist, she noticed the injury on her palm. She froze for a moment, then slipped the pastry into her pocket instead and reassured her, "It's okay. We'll definitely get the money back! Leave things here to us. Remember to eat lunch. You have to eat! You look awful."
Fang Zhuo nodded perfunctorily and hurried away.
Wei Xi instinctively started after her, but the dorm monitor stopped her.
The dorm monitor said calmly, "Call our homeroom teacher and tell her what happened. Then check the area behind the dorm. There might still be footprints or something. We can cordon it off before the police arrive."
As Wei Xi reached for her phone, she cursed under her breath. "That shameless bastard actually followed a girl into the dorm just to steal her money! Fuck! That's so damn creepy! Can stealing ten thousand yuan plus sexual harassment get someone sent to prison for life?"
The homeroom teacher sat outside the operating room with Liu Qiaohong, talking about Fang Zhuo's grades and her plans for university.
They were just discussing A University's admission cutoff when the phone rang with the "Gong Xi Fa Cai" ringtone.
"Sorry about that. It's the troublemaker from my class." The homeroom teacher smiled and answered the call, but her tone immediately turned stern. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't confiscate your phone."
"Fang Zhuo's at school? I was wondering why she wasn't answering when I called. Remind her to call me back."
"What? She lost her money? More than ten thousand?"
Liu Qiaohong looked up, and the two of them asked at the same time, "Where did she get that much money?"
"We don't know!" Wei Xi said. "What do we do now? Does the hospital need money? Should everyone in our class chip in and raise some?"
The homeroom teacher pressed her lips together, her face troubled. "It's fine. The hospital doesn't need money. Don't cause any trouble. Listen to the dorm supervisor and don't go back into the dorm for now. Can you still find Fang Zhuo? Tell her to call me back immediately!"
Wei Xi said, "She runs so fast. She's practically a long-distance champion. She's already disappeared."
"Fang Zhuo."
Fang Zhuo kept her head down as she walked, feeling as though the day had stretched on forever.
Too many things had happened, one after another, so quickly that she barely had time to react. They kept crashing down on her in succession, as if determined to force her to the ground.
"Fang Zhuo!"
She had returned to being the unluckiest person alive. As expected, good fortune was always the exception.
The voice calling after her fell silent.
Fang Zhuo turned around and saw Yan Lie trailing behind her at a short distance. The moment he saw her stop, he hurried over and asked, "Where are you going?"
Fang Zhuo turned around and continued toward the bus stop. Yan Lie followed silently.
By the time they reached the stop, the previous bus had just pulled away.
Fang Zhuo watched the illuminated numbers on the back of the bus slowly disappear around the corner. The helplessness clawing at her surged back to the surface, filling her chest with a bitter, aching pressure.
Why was she always so unlucky?
Why did someone have to steal her money? Why did it have to be this particular money?
She told herself that she should accept these unfair things, just as she had every other time. She needed to understand clearly that she was someone fate had never favored, accept it, work hard, and then change her circumstances.
But all the straws piled onto her today had already exceeded what she could bear. Even something as insignificant as missing a single bus was enough to send the emotions she'd managed to suppress all the way here spiraling out of control again.
As her irritation gathered into something almost tangible and slowly began to overwhelm her, her impulse briefly overpowered her reason. So when Yan Lie approached, she shouted at him, "Don't come over!"
Yan Lie froze. He slipped the hand he'd reached out with into his pocket and lowered his head.
Fang Zhuo felt even worse.
How could she be such a terrible person?
The next second, Yan Lie rushed over, pressed his shoulder against hers, and shouted back just as loudly, "No!"
Fang Zhuo looked up at him, but Yan Lie only reached out and took hold of her wrist.
The two of them stood there in silence.
Yan Lie's palm was burning hot against Fang Zhuo's skin, leaving her with the almost unreal sensation of heat searing through her.
Fang Zhuo remembered how Yan Lie had once joked that he was her lucky star.
Unfortunately, his lucky-star powers weren't working this time. The bus still hadn't arrived even after more than ten minutes.
But Yan Lie kept holding on to her tightly, like an anchor thrown into deep water, and somehow, all at once, she had a direction again.
The midday sun had grown fierce, finally bringing a little warmth to the early spring wind.
Yan Lie said, "Don't snap at me. And you can't get angry with me."
Fang Zhuo looked at him.
Yan Lie said seriously, "Whatever you say to me, I'll take seriously."
It took Fang Zhuo two seconds before she finally muttered, "But you didn't believe me either."
Yan Lie said in utter despair, "Because I can't do it."
Fang Zhuo was silent for a moment, then curled her fingers into a tight fist. The sharp sting in her palm was painfully real, jolting her nerves and pulling her back from that unstable state where her emotions had been swinging wildly from one extreme to another.
"I'm really unlucky." Fang Zhuo sniffed. "Why is life so hard?"
"What's so hard about it?" Yan Lie said. "I think as long as you're alive, everything is no big deal."
Fang Zhuo lowered her voice. "Am I too selfish? Is that why I put so much pressure on him? I knew he wasn't in good health, but I still let him become like this... I'm so cruel. It feels like I've been draining him of his strength this whole time."
"Go say that to your uncle's face." Yan Lie gave a cold laugh. "Let's see if he doesn't beat you."
Fang Zhuo was rendered speechless.
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