I save a pathological girl with a twisted love story.

She said that.

Risa Yajima slowly stood up, leaning against the door frame. Her body ached, and her eyes twitched. She was unable to react for a moment.

Aoi Asahi, anxiously awaiting Risa Yajima's tirade, noticed a white object on the ground.

"Just hand this to her, let her scold you, and then you can leave."

She hurriedly prepared to pick up the white object from the ground and hand it to Risa Yajima.

But the moment her fingertips touched that thing, she immediately felt a tremor.

It's a very high-end material; even such a small piece of cloth is quite valuable.

But more importantly

—She recognizes this!

She watched as her mother sewed up the corners of the handkerchief, sprayed it with perfume, and put it in her bag.

A chill that sent shivers down her spine crept up like a snake.

"No, absolutely not! Absolutely not! Absolutely not!"

Trembling, shaking.

Trembling, she tried to unfold the crumpled handkerchief, wanting to see if it was really the same handkerchief.

Even though I had a premonition in my heart, I was still unwilling to accept it.

Hey! What are you doing?!

Risa Yajima, seeing Aoi staring at her handkerchief, panicked and angrily snatched it away, yelling at Aoi, "Get out!"

Her companions also scolded Aoi, telling her not to touch their things without permission.

"Your gloomy aura is like a germ, it'll infect us! Get away! Don't touch our stuff!"

The girl with wild, unruly hair was scolding Aoi.

The students around her straightened their necks slightly to take a look, only to be angrily scolded: "What are you looking at? Haven't you seen this before?"

These people were so frightened that they all lowered their heads.

"Get out of the way!"

Risa Yajima gave the inconvenient Aoi Asahi a disgusted look and shoved her away.

The girl with the wild, unruly hair gave Aoi a disgusted look and returned to her seat.

If Aoi Asahi weren't a good student, she would have definitely kicked her hard.

Pushed outside the door, Aoi Asahi stood in the corridor, feeling dizzy and her vision blurring intermittently.

The surrounding noise and laughter enveloped her like a prison.

It made her dizzy and disoriented, her heart pounding like a drum, yet she didn't know where to look or where to go.

Chapter 28 Happiness Rippling Like the Surface of a Lake

"Asahi, what are you doing standing here?"

Jun Yokokawa, who was passing by, noticed Aoi Asahi's strange appearance and walked up to her, saying in confusion, "Why do you look so lost and disoriented?"

Asahi Aoi was still in shock and fear.

When Yokokawa Jun asked that question...

She forgot to look down, and her delicate face appeared from her thick bangs.

Junichi Yokokawa was taken aback.

"Such a beautiful girl, she can be called a beauty. Ah, Xia Wuzhao is really lucky. But he is also really heartless."

Seeing that Asahi was still confused, she patted her shoulder with pity: "Asahi, you should hurry up and find a member for the gardening club. The May Day holiday is coming soon."

Aoi Asahi finally came to her senses and listened to Jun Yokokawa's reminder.

A sense of unease rose within me once again.

"The May Day holiday is coming soon, but there are exams before the holiday, so I don't have much time left."

"But more importantly, it's Risa Yajima who got the handkerchief. I have to get Kai Natsugiri to agree to my request before noon ends."

"Otherwise, everything about me will be exposed."

"Everything I own will be blown away as easily as dust."

"No, absolutely not. I absolutely do not want to see any of this, I absolutely do not want to."

She bit her lip tightly and bowed slightly to Yokokawa Jun.

Tears almost welled up in my eyes.

If the only happiness I hold in my hands, as bright as light, disappears, what will I have left?

She started running with all her might, the half-person-high corridor walls winding and undulating like snakes.

Exclamations of surprise rang out, and strange gazes were cast down repeatedly.

But Aoi didn't care; she just kept running.

Her rapid breathing caused a tearing pain in her throat, while the throbbing in her head made her stumble and stagger as she ran.

She started running so fast, but the closer she got to the club building, the slower she became.

Until the very end, his feet were firmly planted on the ground like nails.

Hesitation and worry, like weeds in my heart, quickly depleted the courage squeezed out from sorrow and panic.

She covered those hundreds of meters in just a moment.

But those few steps in front of her were something she could never take, even after a lifetime.

Hesitant and uneasy.

She actually took a few steps back.

But all I could see was the glass display window with the advertising board hanging next to me.

There is its own reflection in it.

Asahi Aoi carefully examined herself, a pitiful and frail girl.

She silently wiped away the tears that were about to fall.

He tidied his hair and pulled at the corners of his mouth.

She looked at herself in the mirror—a strong smile on her face, but cunning and mockery in her eyes.

Finally, Aoi took a few quick steps forward.

Following the dusty stairs upwards, in the stairwell piled with tables and chairs, she finally saw Xia Wuzhao holding a lunchbox.

She couldn't quite describe the feeling in her heart; she only felt as if she were in a dream.

When he came to his senses, he was already standing in front of Xia Wuzhao.

She looked at Xia Wuzhao, a relieved and triumphant smile finally appearing on her face: "Xia Wuzhao, our competition needs to add a wager."

"The stakes?" Xia Wuzhao asked casually.

“That’s right, it’s a bet.” Asahi Aoi sat down next to Natsumi Kai with a mix of nervousness and confidence.

She tilted her chin slightly and said, "Losing only proves who's the most arrogant, and this kind of competition is so boring. I can't get excited at all, so adding a wager is very important."

After finishing speaking, Aoi tossed a strand of hair and said, "If you're scared, you can give up now. But there has to be a wager. Because it's important, and it's normal."

Even with an upturned tone and a nonchalant expression on his face.

But she felt increasingly uneasy, and didn't even realize that she had used overly obvious provocation and explained the necessity of the bet too many times, as if she was afraid that Xia Wuzhao would give up.

It was all in a huge rush.

"can."

Xia Wuzhao simply responded with a flat "yes".

"You agreed?"

Asahi Aoi was initially delighted, but then said in an angry tone, "You're very confident, aren't you, Natsugiri Kai? Are you sure you've won?"

Xia Wuzhao said calmly, "Probably."

"Hmph, then I'll tell you what the bet is," Aoi said. "The bet is that if you lose, you have to join the gardening club."

"If I lose, you can make one wish to me."

She brushed aside her thick bangs, revealing her charming face.

"How was it? Pretty profitable, huh?"

Asahi Aoi deliberately provoked him, but she kept her eyes fixed on Natsugiri Kai's eyes.

Xia Wuzhao merely glanced at Asahi Aoi, yet Asahi Aoi was overjoyed.

"If you just want to recruit people to join the gardening club, you can just recruit from within the class."

He said casually, "There are plenty of people willing to be members of the Ghost Department."

“I don’t want to be associated with those people.” Aoi tilted her head back, sunlight streaming down her face. “They’re all so boring and dull. I don’t want to have anything to do with them.”

As she said this, she seemed to have thought of something.

"It seems my approach was very successful. By simply putting on a gloomy expression, I was able to easily avoid them."

Asahi Aoi said smugly with a boastful tone, "Even you were fooled by me, Natsugiri Kai. You were just babbling on and on about how arrogant you were."

Do you regret it now?

"We can only draw conclusions about this after the competition," Xia Wuzhao said calmly. "If it's just about joining the horticulture club, then there's no need for a competition."

"Ok?"

Aoi's heart skipped a beat, and her fingers trembled slightly.

I was about to say something provocative, but I couldn't bring myself to say it.

“If it’s just about joining the horticulture department, then I can join now,” Xia Wuzhao said casually. “When I go home, all sorts of people always come to my door.”

"If we had a room to stay in, we could perhaps avoid being harassed by those people."

"Even the horticulture department will do."

Hearing Natsumi Kai's words, Asahi Aoi felt extremely fortunate.

“That’s just your excuse,” Aoi Asahi said, but Kai Natsugiri did not answer.

She simply picked up a lunchbox from the side and held it out to Asahi Aoi: "I originally intended it for dinner, but I brought it to school by mistake. Since there's no refrigerator to store it, I'll just consider it an offering to the Horticulture Club. Anyway, it won't be edible by tonight."

"If you don't eat it, you can bury it in the soil as fertilizer, which is a barely acceptable way to dispose of it."

Chapter 29 The Hard-Won and Fleeting Cherry Blossoms

Xia Wuzhao spoke casually, without looking at Asahi Aoi.

Instead, he casually glanced at the advertising frames on the wall.

—Every school has these things, mostly famous quotes, paired with portraits of elderly people.

These things alone filled the school with an atmosphere called knowledge.

Most of the items in the stairwells are narrow, while those hanging on the corridor walls are mostly wide.

From this corner, you can see into the corridor through the reflection in the shop window.

It's like a submarine using its periscope to pierce through the heavy, dark seawater and look at the sky reflected on the surface.

"If you don't want it, then just throw it away."

Xia Wuzhao did not hear Asahi Aoi's reply.

So he slowly loosened his grip, and the wooden lunchbox wrapped in blue cloth with chopsticks stuck in it tilted little by little.

However, Aoi Asahi was simply bewildered, unable to discern whether what Natsumi Kai said was true or false.

"But how could Xia Wuzhao lie? He's an eccentric man with incomprehensible thoughts. He's an 'outsider' just like me, only he's far more dazzling."

The girl suddenly woke up as the wooden lunchbox tilted slightly.