Let Me Sink - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

After that day,

Cheng Yu saw that I was helping Shen Qi, whether intentionally or not.

He did not give Shen Qi any trouble.

For some reason, the weather grew more and more extreme that week. Howling winds, torrential rain, lightning, thunder.

The classroom was damp and stifling all day long.

The other grades had already been given a short break.

Only the seniors were still holding on, fighting to the end.

At last, evening self-study ended.

I packed up my textbooks and notes and was about to go home. But the moment I stepped out of the school gate, I remembered I had left my keys on my desk, so I turned back.

As I passed a classroom, I heard the sound of vicious mockery. The person they were laughing at and bullying was Shen Qi.

My steps stopped. Through the corridor window, I looked inside. In the back row of the empty classroom stood several boys. Cheng Yu was at their head.

He was bent over, one foot planted on the person on the floor, his face somewhat twisted as he demanded,

“What are you pretending for?

“Being with me wronged you that much?”

In the novel, Shen Qi was quiet and beautiful, and he spoke gently, but he was an out-and-out straight guy.

Tonight, he would be humiliated by his bullies.

“What? Gone mute?”

Cheng Yu kicked him. Seeing that he still did not move, Cheng Yu simply sneered and ordered the thugs under him, “Fine. You guys strip him. Let’s see if he talks…”

“I called the police.”

The door opened with a creak.

I cut off Cheng Yu’s unfinished words and looked at the boys in the back row who were about to move. I raised the phone in my hand.

“The video I recorded has just been sent to the homeroom teacher. If nothing unexpected happens, they’re on their way over right now.”

Those boys seemed startled and froze where they were. One of the athletic students reacted first and strode toward me, cursing.

“Jiang He, you got a death wish?”

My expression did not change. I said softly,

“You can hit me. But the police will be here soon. As long as you’re not afraid of going to prison and paying compensation, or as long as you’re counting on Cheng Yu to fish you out.”

Those boys seemed to go rigid.

I looked at Cheng Yu. “You can go outside and get some air, or think about what story you’re going to tell the police when you see them later.”

As far as I knew, Cheng Yu had an illegitimate younger brother who was currently fighting him for the family estate. He would not be stupid enough to risk going to jail and needing his father to bail him out just to make things difficult for me.

Unwilling, he looked at Shen Qi, who was lying on the floor, then tugged at the corner of his mouth and gave me a smile that did not reach his eyes.

“Jiang He, you’re really something.”

I returned it with a gentle smile.

Cheng Yu sneered, grabbed the school uniform from the desk, and led his lackeys to the doorway, where they started smoking in irritation.

I walked toward the back of the classroom.

The beautiful young man had curled himself into a fragile ball. His face and arms were bruised to varying degrees, and his school uniform was covered in footprints.

“Shen Qi, are you… all right?”

I crouched down. The moment my fingers touched his face,

he shuddered violently as if triggered. Crystal tears slipped from beneath the loose hair covering his eyes. He bit hard on his red lips, that tragically beautiful sense of brokenness enough to stir the desire to destroy.

“Stop crying.”

Carefully, I helped Shen Qi up and let him sit on a stool. Then I bent down, took out the tissues I carried in my pocket, and wiped away the tears at the corners of his eyes and the blood from the scrapes on his pretty face. In a warm voice, I comforted him.

“You’re so good-looking. If you cry your eyes swollen, it won’t be nice anymore.”

Shen Qi turned his face away. His cool, pleasant voice was hoarse from crying. “Don’t touch me. I’m so dirty. So disgusting.”

I stroked his head and denied it.

“You’re very clean. Your school uniform is washed clean, your schoolbag is washed clean, and you look fresh and clean too.”

“The dirty ones were never you. It’s them, with their filthy thoughts. You’re just pretty and happened to be quiet. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He lifted his wet, reddened peach-blossom eyes and looked at me, lost and aggrieved, as if asking whether that was true.

Noisy reprimands and excuses came from outside the window.

I glanced toward it.

The homeroom teacher had hurried over, and behind them came Pei Huai, walking over with lazy indifference. He lifted his eyes in that careless way and met my gaze.

I lowered my lashes, avoiding his eyes. My fingertips intimately brushed away the tears at the corners of Shen Qi’s eyes. Holding him, I coaxed him gently.

“Of course it’s true.”

The young man raised his arms and wrapped them around my waist.

He buried his head against my waist and sobbed, pitiful and miserable, as if he were venting all his grievances at once and relying on me with his whole being.

Pei Huai withdrew his gaze, expressionless.

I patted Shen Qi’s back and sighed.

“In the future, you have to learn to fight back.”

“Fight back?”

Shen Qi’s long lashes trembled. Just as he opened his eyes, a sudden pain struck the back of his hand. Emerald-green vines emerged again, and even the slender new tendrils that had not yet grown fully were unknowingly curling lightly around my calf.

No.

They could not be discovered.

His pupils contracted. In panic and obsession, he held me tighter and ruthlessly tried to snap the vines off.

Feeling the force around my waist, I only thought he was uneasy. I stroked his back and said softly, “You have to know how to fight back against the people who bully you.”

Shen Qi’s motion of pulling out the vines stopped.

He lowered his crow-black lashes. On his delicate, striking face, beautiful as a doll’s, red spread through his dark pupils, making him seem beautiful, uncanny, and inhuman.

The young man blinked. His voice was strange.

“How do I fight back?”

Although it might not be of much use, I still told him, “Use every method you can think of.”

Beneath his loose hair, the young man’s eyes were scarlet, as if dyed in blood.

The pathological violence that had been suppressed deep in his heart was released.

The emerald-green vines turned dark, ghostly green and grew tough.

He lifted his head.

I lowered my eyes and was about to look back at him.

But Shen Qi rose first and hugged me, burying his face against my shoulder. Fine vines carefully twined through my hair. In a daze, he felt the tingling sensation of the ends of my hair brushing against his skin.

He liked it so much.

His fingertips pinched the corner of my clothes and curled slightly, his soul trembling uncontrollably with excitement.

Then, cruelly, he thought,

He wanted so badly to kill them all.