“Ah.” An amused gleam flickered across Ji Fanyin’s eyes. “Answer my question first. Are you asking this question in your capacity as Ji Fanyin’s friend?”
“We aren’t friends.” Cheng Lin snorted. She stubbed her cigarette forcefully against the ashtray located at the top of the rubbish can. “I absolutely despise her and her weak personality. She’s always letting others trample all over her and exploit her. She deserves everything that happened to her!”
Li Mingyue let out a soft sigh, but she didn’t stop Cheng Lin’s angry outburst.
“… That’s why I know that you aren’t the Ji Fanyin I knew. She would have never been able to handle the situation the way you did.” Cheng Lin pressed the cigarette butt even harder against the rubbish can, refusing to look at Ji Fanyin. “If she had even half of your temper, she would have never been bullied by me or Ji Xinxin!”
“But I am Ji Fanyin too,” replied Ji Fanyin.
Li Mingyue widened her eyes whereas Cheng Lin froze in astonishment.
“… Split personality?” mumbled Li Mingyue.
“No, we just happen to share the same name.” Ji Fanyin stepped forward and threw away the cigarette that Cheng Lin had cruelly tortured throughout the conversation. “You’re the first one to have noticed the switch… Ah, I mean the second one.”
Ji Xinxin could be counted too.
The designated smoking area plunged into silence.
It was a long time later that Cheng Lin finally broke the silence with a weak murmur, “What about her?”
Ji Fanyin hesitated for two seconds before replying, “She’s not around anymore.”
The moment Cheng Lin heard the answer, she covered her face as though she had already anticipated the answer. After several seconds of stifling silence, a sob escaped through her hands.
Ji Fanyin stared at Cheng Lin.
Having looked through ‘Ji Fanyin’s’ memories, she knew that Cheng Lin had been a domineering person from a young age. The Cheng Family believed that girls needed to have a strong character so as to not be taken advantage of by others.
That was why Cheng Lin couldn’t stand the sight of ‘Ji Fanyin’s’ weakness, similar to the situation with Bai Zhou.
It was just that their approaches were a little different.
Cheng Lin preferred to actively confront ‘Ji Fanyin’ to see how cowardly she was, but ironically, the one who got frustrated at the end of the confrontation was always her.
One day, Cheng Lin stumbled upon ‘Ji Fanyin’ writing in her diary. It reminded her of the rumors circulating around the cohort about how ‘Ji Fanyin’ had a crush on the then graduated Senior Song, so she decided to steal a peek.
What she saw shocked her.
The pages were filled with esoteric Mathematical formulae that appeared to have been dug out from some advanced textbook. So, she snatched the diary away to take a closer look, though it didn’t make a difference at all. In the end, she turned to Ji Fanyin and questioned, “What is this?!”
“I-it’s nothing!”
“Who are you trying to scam? Are you going to tell me that it’s a ghost talisman next!” Cheng Lin quickly flipped through the pages of the diary.
“… Fourier transform…”
“Four… what?!”
Just like that, Cheng Lin confiscated ‘Ji Fanyin’s’ diary.
She did some investigation on the internet, and to her shock, the spineless coward she had been bullying all this while was in fact a prodigy! That overturned Cheng Lin’s world.
“I was so mean and cruel to her! I berated her and forced her to fight back, but she told me that she didn’t dare to. She said that she only wanted to be normal!” Cheng Lin cried hoarsely through her sobs, “I was a fool. I never stopped to wonder why she didn’t dare to fight back. I thought that everyone should be as reckless and brainless as me… The last time we spoke was the day our university application results came out. It was yet another one-sided quarrel.”
Ji Fanyin remembered the event that transpired. “She applied for the same course as you.”
Both of them majored in English at Lakeside University.
Li Mingyue calmly interjected from the side, “At least the diary proves that my brother was blind to have gotten the wrong person.”
Cheng Lin glared at Li Mingyue with a tear-stained face.
Ji Fanyin patted Cheng Lin's hair and pulled her into her embrace. “Don’t cry. I know, I know.”
“What the fuck do you know! You aren’t her!” bellowed Cheng Lin.