Cheng Lan still didn’t speak, staring blankly at the brilliant sunlight outside, while her heart felt moldy with dampness. Lai Hui could only discern some emotions from her eyes: anger, malice, mockery, and… There are people who, after being insulted or hurt, think not of recovery or reflection but of revenge; without a plan, they fall into a state of self-fantasy, imagining various ways to retaliate. The more she was hurt, the more she fantasized about revenge a hundredfold, a thousandfold, finding a twisted pleasure in the imagined torment of her enemies. Lai Hui saw that gleeful light in Cheng Lan’s eyes, a light she was very familiar with. In elementary school, the naughtiest boy in class bullied her, drawing a mustache on her face with a brush. After school, her arch-enemy, Xiao Lu, deliberately came over, bent down to look at her face, and exclaimed, “Wow, Lai Hui, look at your face, it’s so ugly!” The students around all looked at her curiously, some covering their mouths to laugh, others laughing out loud. Lai Hui ran home crying, and in the mirror, she was indeed ugly! After washing her face, she sat in front of the mirror, fantasizing about Xu Wenqiang from “The Bund” being her brother, beating up the boy who bullied her, and publicly scolding Xiao Lu: “You’re the ugly one!”
Now, recalling, the eyes in the mirror were no different from Cheng Lan’s. Lai Hui sat with her for a while before leaving, hoping Cheng Lan would, like her, forget about it in a year or two. Just like how the boy who bullied her became her good friend in high school, and Xiao Lu was only someone to compare hairstyles and outfits with, not a real enemy. Although as a child, she listed the boy and Xiao Lu as her arch-enemies, vowing to take revenge when she grew up! Did she get revenge? No! Life has too many hardships to remember them all. If Cheng Lan faced the loss of a loved one like she did, she wondered if she’d still think that giving up everything for love was worth it! One could say Lai Hui wasn’t loyal, but getting slapped was really just a small matter! Even though she was also scared yesterday!
