Redemption from the Abyss: The School Beauty Insists on Pulling Me Out of the Mire

The rain stopped.

The first rays of morning sunlight pierced through the dusty windows, breaking the old, dim light in the room.

Su Qinghe was awakened by that ray of light.

She opened her eyes groggily, her consciousness momentarily interrupted for a few seconds.

Beneath her was not the six-figure custom-made latex mattress from the Su family, but a hard cardboard box; the scent lingering around her nose was not expensive aromatherapy, but a faint, not unpleasant, mint tobacco smell.

She sat up abruptly, the thin blanket slipping off her body.

Memories return.

Heavy rain, pursuit, Xie Wang.

She instinctively reached for her phone in her pocket and pressed the power button.

The screen was completely black.

Still no power.

Su Qinghe sighed, turned his head, and looked at the center of the room.

Xie Wang has already woken up.

Or perhaps he didn't sleep at all.

The boy was still sitting in that broken chair, the old laptop still lit up, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, his slender fingers tapping on the keyboard, not fast, but with a strange rhythm.

The screen no longer displayed the green code stream from last night, but instead showed a complex image that resembled some kind of encrypted file.

In the bottom right corner of that picture, there is an inconspicuous gray logo—a pattern of a broken butterfly wing.

Hearing the noise, Xie Wang quickly closed the laptop lid.

With a "snap".

He turned around, his eyes bloodshot, and his face full of impatience: "Awake?"

Su Qinghe rubbed his slightly sore neck and nodded, "Mm."

She paused for a moment.

She suffers from severe neurasthenia and often suffers from insomnia at home, even with calming incense. But on this night on cardboard, she slept soundly without even a dream.

"Leave quickly once you're awake."

Xie Wang stood up, pulled the thin blanket back, and disdainfully patted off non-existent dust. "You expect me to provide breakfast? I don't have any money either."

Su Qinghe straightened his wrinkled school uniform and stood up.

Although she still looked disheveled, once she stood up straight, the aloofness that belonged to the eldest daughter of the Su family returned.

"Can I borrow your phone?" she said, holding out her hand.

Xie Wang frowned, looking at her warily: "What? Call the police?"

"Mine still won't turn on." Su Qinghe shook the black brick in his hand. "Can I borrow yours to make a call and have someone come pick me up?"

Xie Wang scoffed, "Miss, my crappy phone isn't even worth as much as your phone case. My phone bill is pretty expensive, so I won't lend it to you."

Actually, his phone had too many shady software programs and tracking devices installed, making it inconvenient for outsiders to touch it.

Su Qinghe pursed her lips and didn't insist.

Xie Wang glanced at her and sighed, "There's a small shop downstairs; you can make a phone call there."

"Oh"

She pulled a 2B pencil from her bag to answer questions and glanced at the table.

"I haven't forgotten that ten thousand yuan."

She casually tore off a corner of the instant noodle cup lid and quickly scribbled a string of numbers on the piece of cardboard.

"This is my WeChat ID. Please accept my request once I've charged my phone."

She handed the piece of paper over.

Xie Wang didn't take it, not even lifting his eyelids: "Just leave it there, I don't add strangers."

Su Qinghe's hand hovered in mid-air. A few seconds later, she pressed the piece of paper under the old notebook.

"Thank you, Wang. I don't like owing people things. Thanks for last night."

The door opened and then closed.

The sound of leather shoes stepping on the cement floor echoed in the stairwell, gradually fading into the distance.

The room fell silent again.

Xie Wang only relaxed and leaned heavily against the back of his chair after hearing her footsteps completely disappear.

He glanced at the piece of paper under the computer; the handwriting was neat and strong, and it contained a string of numbers.

"trouble."

He casually crumpled the piece of paper into a ball and accurately tossed it into the trash can in the corner.

Who wants to add this young lady on WeChat? Don't they want to die already?

He rubbed his temples wearily, his gaze returning to the computer screen, his fingers gently tracing the edge of the worn-out laptop.

This is the only memento left by my mother.

Besides the computer, his mother also left him something else—an "education trust fund" that was enough for him to finish college.

Three years ago, my mother, a top architect, passed away in a car accident.

She knew her gambling-addicted husband too well, so before she died, she set up a trap: the money was locked in a bank trust account, used to pay tuition and minimum living expenses monthly, and deposited directly into the school and cafeteria cards, so that no one could withdraw the cash.

That drunkard father once threatened Xie Wang with a knife and demanded his password, and even went to the bank to cause trouble more than ten times, but he didn't get a single penny out of him.

To escape his wicked father, Xie Wang took his mother's only possessions and moved to this little-known, happy neighborhood.

That's why Xie Wang was able to continue wearing the Jiangcheng No. 1 High School uniform and attending the best key high school in this "muddy pond".

This was also her mother's only last wish before she passed away: "Awang, no matter what happens, finish your studies. Only by studying can you get out of this quagmire cleanly."

"Clean and tidy..."

Xie Wang chuckled self-deprecatingly, looking at his hands, which were slightly pale from years of coding.

To pay off his worthless father's debts and to investigate his mother's death, his hands were already stained with the mud of the shady world of the internet. Because of working late into the night, even though he was originally a good student, he fell to the bottom of the class because he was sleeping in class.

"bite--"

My phone vibrated.

It was a text message from his alcoholic father.

"Son, lend me some money. I had a bad run of luck last night, just one more hand away from winning it all back! If I win this round, Dad will take you out for a nice meal right away, and we'll move to a bigger house!"

Xie Wang stared at the screen expressionlessly.

He receives about twenty of these text messages a month. His father, who was once an engineer and a graduate of a prestigious university, has now been completely drained of his backbone by gambling.

Xie Wang twitched his finger and replied with two words: "No money."

Then shut it down directly.

He stood up, rummaged through the corner and found a piece of dry bread, swallowed it in two or three bites, then picked up his empty schoolbag, pushed open the door and went out.

He has to go to school.

This was a promise he made to his mother, and it was also the final proof that he was still living like a human being.

……

7:30 a.m., Jiangcheng No.1 Middle School.

Xie Wang staggered into the classroom of Class 8, Grade 11, as the morning self-study bell rang.

Class 8 was a regular class, but also the worst class. It consisted of either rich kids who were just coasting through their studies or academically challenged students who were at the bottom of the class.

When he went in, everyone just glanced at him as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.

In their eyes, Xie Wang was a freak who relied on his "dead mother's welfare money" to stay in school, always ranking last in his class, sleeping in class, and disappearing after class.

"Oh, Brother Wang is here?"

Only a chubby boy sitting in the back row waved enthusiastically.

This chubby boy is the only person in the school who doesn't look down on him.

Xie Wang didn't say anything. He walked over, pulled out a chair, stuffed his schoolbag into the desk drawer, and skillfully lay down, ready to catch up on his sleep.

"Brother Wang, something terrible has happened!"

The fat boy leaned closer, lowered his voice, and said mysteriously, "Everyone in the school is saying that Su Qinghe from Class 1 went missing last night!"

Xie Wang kept his eyes closed, not even lifting his eyelids: "Oh."

"Hey, don't you believe me? I heard the Su family sent over a dozen cars all over town last night looking for her. Someone said they saw her being cornered by thugs outside the school. Do you think something might have happened to our goddess?"

Xie Wang changed his position, buried his face in his arms and started to sleep, but the image of that person flashed through his mind.

"Evil lives on for a thousand years, it never dies," he muttered.