My Strange Tale Love Strategy Simulator

"Life would have continued uneventfully. Until..."

Xu Miaofeng's gaze shifted to Zhang Ying, and something seemed to shatter in his cloudy eyes. Her voice began to tremble, at first only slightly at the end of her sentences, but later the whole sentence trembled, like a withered leaf being blown by the wind.

"Until my relationship with her came to an end."

Zhou Ping followed up with those words. Her voice was very soft, as if she were helping Xu Miaofeng carry a stone that she herself could not lift.

"Our private relationship couldn't be kept secret forever. My family found out about what was going on between us."

Zhou Ping's eyes, too, were red and swollen, and tears welled up. The candlelight shattered into a small, blurry golden hue on the watery surface. She didn't look down or wipe her eyes; she just stared straight ahead, as if looking at a wall she hadn't been able to climb over back then.

"They can't accept it. As a woman, I'm having an affair with another woman. They think it's a disease, a disgrace, a shameful thing that makes the whole family unable to hold their heads up."

It felt like something was stuck in her throat.

"They gave me a choice. Between family, career, and her."

Zhou Ping's lips were pressed into a thin line, and that line trembled, running from the corner of her lips all the way to her chin. She took a breath, a breath that seemed to come with great difficulty.

"But in the end, I couldn't make a choice."

She lowered her head and looked at Xu Miaofeng in her arms. Her hand slowly slid from Xu Miaofeng's back to her shoulder, her knuckles tightening as she clenched a small piece of oil-stained fabric in her palm.

"So my family started causing trouble for her."

At this moment, Zhou Ping's voice finally lost its composure, breaking into several pieces, each of which was trembling.

"Xiaofeng ultimately chose to break up with me because of me. We..."

She couldn't go on. Her lips were still moving, but her voice had stopped. Tears finally rolled down her cheeks, onto her chin, and dripped onto Xu Miaofeng's matted hair.

silence.

The candle flame flickered for a moment, then straightened up again.

Zhang Ying didn't rush to speak. He lowered his head, digesting the weight of these words. After a moment, he raised his eyes, his voice steady, but slightly softer than before.

"And then? What happened next?"

Xu Miaofeng took a deep breath. It was a very deep breath, as if she wanted to pull something up from the soles of her feet.

"Later," she began, her voice suddenly slowing down, as if she were pulling each word out from the depths of her memory, "I fell into the sorrow of heartbreak. That feeling of something missing in my heart, no matter how hard I tried, it would never be filled. My personality started to become extreme. I would get angry over the smallest things, and overthink every single word. I tried hard to suppress it, desperately trying to tell myself to be normal, to be normal."

She lifted her hands off her knees and looked at her hands, which were covered in grease and tiny cuts.

"I want to avoid making mistakes."

Her hands clenched into fists.

"But Li Ziqing's appearance shattered the last bit of balance in my heart."

Her breathing suddenly became rapid. Her chest heaved more and more violently, and her heart was beating so fast that even Zhang Ying, sitting opposite her, could see the bulging veins on her neck.

Her tone began to rise, no longer the stagnant calm of before, but a fragmented excitement ignited by something.

"Li Ziqing. She was once a swan I could only look up to but never reach. Do you understand?" She suddenly looked at Zhang Ying, a glint of light that should no longer exist in her eyes. "I understood that she was destined to reach a higher level. To raise a child who would be famous throughout Dacang and all of China! Do you know how happy I was then? Even though I knew that she would eventually forget about me, this nobody."

Her speech became faster and faster, as if these words had been weighing on her heart for far too long, and once she started speaking, she couldn't stop.

"But in the process of teaching her, I gradually understood."

Her voice suddenly dropped, as if she were talking to herself.

"This child has reached the limit of her abilities. China has never lacked short-lived geniuses, and Li Ziqing is one of them. Her talent is too thin to support the stage she wants. But I also know that even a short-lived genius is still beyond my reach in this lifetime."

Her fingers unconsciously picked at the stains on the floor.

"Until I heard the news of her car accident."

Her tone took a turn here, shifting from excitement to something that was hard to define, whether it was regret or something else entirely.

"Back then, Ping'er and I hadn't broken up yet. I truly felt sorry for her. The future she had built up with her entire youth was just gone like that. What a pity. What a real pity."

She nodded, as if confirming her words.

"I thought I would never see her again in my life."

She stopped.

It stopped for a long time. So long that Zhou Ping couldn't help but look down at her face, so long that the candle on the table flickered again, and a drop of wax slid down the candle and solidified into a small white lump on the table.

"But the truth is..."

Xu Miaofeng raised her head.

"She's back. Once again, she's standing in the school dance team."

Her pupils appeared as two deep, dark holes in the candlelight, their bottoms unfathomable.

"At that time, my relationship with Ping'er had come to an end. I was on the verge of collapse."

She stretched out her hand and looked at it. The hand that once held the conductor's baton and commanded the dance studio was now covered in grease and grime, with black dirt embedded under her fingernails. She looked at them as if they were something unrelated to her.

"Look at this swan with its broken wings."

Her voice suddenly became soft. So soft it was as if she were talking to herself.

"A wicked thought arose in my mind."

Xu Miaofeng buried her face in her hands, her voice growing softer and softer until only the movement of her lips could be heard. The candlelight shone on her face from the side, illuminating every fine line as a deep furrow.

"Li Ziqing, who returned to the stage, was no longer as dazzling as before."

Xu Miaofeng's voice became very flat, as flat as a still lake. But everyone could hear what was pressing down beneath the surface.

"All that's left is a stiff body and a beautiful face."

She looked at her outstretched hands, as if she saw something in her palms that others couldn't see.

"It's certainly a pity that she lost all her dance skills. But for those team members who were once overshadowed by her, that pity became an outlet for their anger. They had finally waited for this day. The one who always stood in the middle of the front row, the one who was always praised by all the teachers, the arrogant white swan, was lame. They could finally step up to her."

Her fingers slowly curled up, her nails digging into her palms.

"In the school dance team, they were always against her. They would deliberately bump into her during rehearsals, no one wanted to partner with her when it came to pairing up, and they would say to her in the dressing room, 'What is a cripple doing dancing ballet?' They isolated her, mocked her, cornered her in the equipment room, and threw her dance shoes into the trash can. Li Ziqing, whose personality had become timid after losing her dance, became their easiest target. She didn't dare to fight back, she wouldn't complain, she would just lower her head and hold back her tears."

There was something pushing up in her throat.

"As a teacher, I know all of this."

Her fingers gripped even tighter. The veins on the back of her hand stood out.

"But by then, I had completely lost myself. Instead of stopping their bullying, I—"

She took a deep breath. It was a deep, rapid breath, like a drowning person surfacing for the last time, trying to fill their lungs with all the air they could ever breathe.

"I did something even more heinous."

The room was so quiet that only the faint crackling of the candle flame could be heard. Zhou Ping held her motionless, her fingers frozen on her shoulder, her nails digging into the dirty coat.

Xu Miaofeng slowly straightened up from Zhou Ping's embrace. She raised her face, letting the candlelight fully expose her face, stained with oil and fine lines, to the dim light. There were tears in her eyes, but they didn't fall.

It was as if she had made a decision, a decision that had been delayed for far too long and for which there was no turning back.

"I forced her to be my partner by threatening to kick her out of the school dance team."

Her voice, however, became steady. It was as if she were recounting a crime she had judged countless times, one that no longer required any explanation.

"During those days without Ping'er, I wanted to use Li Ziqing as her replacement."