Chapter 12
Su Xiaowen, filled with excitement and trepidation, entered the □□ number into her home computer. She edited and revised the verification information several times before finally sending what she thought was a perfectly appropriate message: "Hello, Senior Ling Peng. I'm from the junior high dance class. Nice to meet you!"
To her surprise, the verification was passed the next night, and a simple system default dolphin avatar popped up.
She suppressed her excitement and carefully sent the first message: "Hello, senior! [cute expression]"
After a while, the other party replied, concisely: "Um. Hello. Is there a problem with the program?"
Su Xiaowen was stunned for a moment. A show? What show? She didn't think much about it, just thinking that the senior might have remembered the wrong person. She quickly replied, "No, no! It's just... I just saw that you are so good at playing basketball, and I wanted to meet you [blushing emoji]"
The other party replied: "...Oh."
The conversation then reached a deadlock. No matter how hard Su Xiaowen tried to find topics to talk about, whether it was basketball or studying, the responses from the other end were extremely brief: "Yeah," "OK," or "No," cold and almost perfunctory.
Su Xiaowen was frustrated. During recess the next day, she couldn't help but quietly complain to Li Yuanyuan and Wang Yufei, "Senior Ling Peng is so aloof. He only responds in a few words. At first, he even asked me if I had any questions about the 'program.' I have no idea what he means."
Zhao Jinglu listened from the side, her heart skipping a beat. An ominous premonition slowly emerged. Could it be...
Two days later, Su Xiaowen finally couldn't help herself and asked a question on the QQ that she thought would open up the situation: "Senior, I heard you mention a program earlier. Is the school planning a program? Is our dance class included?"
This time, the response from the other end was a little more specific: "No. I got the wrong person."
Su Xiaowen immediately seized the opportunity: "Ah? Then who do you think I am? Who do you know in our class?"
Her original intention was to create a topic, but she had an unexpected gain.
Ling Peng replied with his characteristic directness: "Zhao Jinglu taught us dancing before."
"Zhao Jinglu??"
"Oh, Zhao Jinglu."
"Zhao Jinglu"!
These three words were like a bolt of lightning, splitting all of Su Xiaowen's confusion!
That Zhao Jinglu who is always vague in his words!
The Zhao Jinglu who said, "Maybe I've seen him during rehearsal, but I don't know him very well"!
It turns out she's more than just an acquaintance! She's actually their dance teacher! They've rehearsed together so many times!
The overwhelming feeling of being deceived instantly overwhelmed her excitement. Arriving at school the next day, she immediately sought out Li Yuanyuan and Wang Yufei and unburdened them of their intimate conversation and her deductions. Her voice trembled with excitement and anger: "...Do you understand? He thought I was Zhao Jinglu! Zhao Jinglu has been hiding everything from us! She's known Ling Peng for a long time and even taught him to dance!"
During the break, when Zhao Jinglu walked towards them as usual, she was met with cold silence and a deliberate avoidance of gaze.
Su Xiaowen raised her head, her eyes red as she looked at her. Her expression was no longer as affectionate as before, but rather filled with disappointment and a cold, betrayed expression. "Zhao Jinglu, don't you have anything to say to us?"
The last bit of hope Zhao Jinglu had in her heart was shattered, and her face turned pale in an instant. She felt as if she had been suddenly pushed to the center of the stage, the spotlight shining on her, revealing her to nowhere, and in the audience below were the people she once trusted the most.
Li Yuanyuan sneered from the side, her voice quiet but sharp as a knife. "You're really good at hiding it. You're not saying a single word about something as important as teaching someone to dance. Watching Wenwen foolishly asking about it every day, don't you find it really amusing? Really proud?"
"I didn't!" Zhao Jinglu blurted out, her voice trembling slightly with anxiety. "I really just feel there's nothing to say. It's just a task assigned by the teacher..."
"There's nothing to say?" Su Xiaowen interrupted her, her voice filled with tears and incredible anger, "Can't you even tell me your name? Zhao Jinglu, am I still your friend? Or do you have any other ideas?" These words were like a poisonous needle, accurately piercing the corner of Zhao Jinglu's heart where she felt most guilty and could not speak.
She seemed choked by these words, momentarily speechless. She simply lowered her head, her fingers tightly gripping the hem of her school uniform. She felt a tangle of grievances and excuses, but it felt like a tangled mess stuck in her throat. She dreaded these kinds of situations the most: the confrontation, the scrutiny, the inability to defend herself.
Zhao Jinglu ultimately just shook her head and said nothing, tacitly accepting all the accusations. That familiar compromising feeling, wanting to smooth things over, overwhelmed her once again—never mind, it's all my fault. As if admitting my fault would bring this torment to a quicker end.
The class bell rang at the right time, like an amnesty, temporarily suspending the trial.
But the cracks had been created. From that day on, nothing was ever the same.
They no longer asked Zhao Jinglu to go to the bathroom with them, no longer asked her to walk around the playground at noon, and no longer waited for her to walk together after school. They formed a tight new circle of three, and Zhao Jinglu was completely excluded from it.
She tried to fit in as usual, but all she got was avoidance and cold silence. That kind of cold isolation was more suffocating than any heated argument.
Her heart was filled with grievance and bitterness. She had never intended to hurt anyone, she had just subconsciously kept a secret that she herself didn't quite understand, but she hadn't expected the consequences to be so serious.
Ling Peng, who was far away in high school and had no idea about all this, just answered a question he thought was insignificant in his simple world, but it was like accidentally pushing down a domino, triggering a series of chain reactions that he could not have imagined.
The first clear crack appeared on the porcelain of friendship, cold and glaring.
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