Chapter 1

Take a bite.
When Ying Tao was thirteen, her parents started talking divorce. To fight for custody of her older brother, the two of them tore into each other so viciously it was like they’d become enemies.
But neither of them wanted her.
In her dream, she cried so miserably it was almost pathetic. She hid alone in the little study, tears smeared all over her face.
It was on that day that she met He Mingye.
Back then, the boy was all sharp bones and clean lines—tall and lean, with a clear, airy presence. He lounged lazily against the doorway. Those long, slender knuckles curled as he tapped the door lightly, then lowered his phoenix eyes to look at her. His tone carried a faint, careless impatience.
“Hey, shrimp. What are you crying for?”
Ying Tao lifted her head a second too late. Her thin cheeks were flushed from crying so long; her lashes were damp and clumped, blurring her vision. A veil of mist pooled in her clear almond eyes. She sniffled, voice trembling and small.
“Mom and Dad… they don’t want me anymore.”
The boy’s brow arched. A low, muffled laugh slipped out of him.
“Isn’t that great? I just picked up a little sister for free.”
“Shrimp—how about you come home with me?”
…
“Hss—”
Ying Tao woke up from pain.
By the time she opened her eyes, it was almost dark outside. The dorm was a four-person room; right now only Miao-miao was there. The other two still hadn’t gotten out of class.
Hearing movement, Miao-miao looked up. Seeing Ying Tao holding her right cheek, she brought over a cup of warm water and handed it to her, worried.
“Tao-tao, you still haven’t had that tooth pulled? Didn’t you go to the hospital a couple days ago? What did your little uncle say?”
Ying Tao hissed—drinking water was hard. She held it in her mouth for a moment before swallowing; it still hurt. Even her words came out blurred.
“He said we have to wait until the inflammation goes down before we can pull it.”
A few days ago, the toothache had gotten so bad she couldn’t stand it, so she’d made time to see a dentist.
After the X-ray, she found out that on the right side—besides the cavity—there was also a tooth growing in sideways.
Now the cavity had medicine packed into the hollow and a cotton ball plugging it; she’d have to wait another week before getting it filled. Worse, the wisdom tooth that had shown up out of nowhere also had to be removed.
Normally, she couldn’t really see it in the mirror; only by feeling with her fingers could she find a tiny tooth tip beside the back molar.
But Zhou Chaoli said this wisdom tooth was growing horizontally, and it was already inflamed. It would be best to pull it—but the tooth sat deep, very close to the nerve canal, and extracting it would be difficult.
She was terrified of pain. The moment she heard that, she looked like the sky had fallen and asked if she could just… not do it.
Zhou Chaoli smiled gently, holding the X-ray up for her to see.
“If there’s no inflammation, generally you don’t have to pull it. But yours is already pushing into the adjacent tooth, and it’s formed a pocket with the surrounding soft tissue—food can get trapped easily. If you leave it, it may keep getting inflamed, and it can damage the neighboring tooth. I suggest you think carefully.”
Ying Tao said gloomily, “Then… I’ll pull it.”
Better one clean pain than endless ones. Long pain is worse than short pain—might as well take it out once and for all.
But the thought of going to the hospital for an extraction still made her scalp prickle.
She gave a soft sigh and accidentally tugged the inflamed spot.
It hurt. So much.
She pressed a hand to her cheek; tears burst straight out.
Seeing her like this, Miao-miao grew even more anxious. “Did you take your anti-inflammatory meds? With you like this, can you still go to Senior Lu’s birthday party tonight?”
“I’m not going.”
Ying Tao didn’t like crowded places to begin with.
“Help me tell him happy birthday. And give him the gift too.”
Lu Ziyue had a wide circle. His birthday party wouldn’t just have their club members—he’d invited plenty of friends. Even students from the performance department next door were preparing gifts.
They’d rented a villa and planned to party all night. Ying Tao had never intended to go; she just owed Lu Ziyue a favor, and she had to repay it.
“You really won’t go?” Miao-miao sounded conflicted. “I heard Tang Mingfei is going too, and it seems like she’s planning to confess to Senior Lu at the party.”
“Oh.” Ying Tao didn’t have much of a reaction. “That’s good.”
“Good?” Miao-miao was stunned. “You’re not mad? Tang Mingfei competes with you over everything. The moment she saw you getting close to Senior Lu, she immediately dumped her old boyfriend and ran over to cling to Senior Lu. Aren’t you worried she’ll steal him from you?”
Tang Mingfei was from the performance department. Technically, the two departments were worlds apart—performance was on the new campus, while fine arts was still on the old campus, and wouldn’t move until next year.
But somehow Tang Mingfei seemed determined to pick a fight with Ying Tao. Whatever Ying Tao did, Tang Mingfei had to stick a foot in.
As for Tang Mingfei’s ex, if Ying Tao remembered correctly, he’d tried to pursue Ying Tao at the start of the semester.
But Ying Tao was slow. She’d been “pursued” for half a year and never even realized what he was doing.
Then Tang Mingfei seized the opening—manufacturing “coincidental” run-ins now and then. One thing led to another, and the two of them became boyfriend and girlfriend.
When Ying Tao found out Tang Mingfei got together with him, she couldn’t help rolling her eyes.
Not because Tang Mingfei shouldn’t date him—she was just disgusted by Tang Mingfei’s habit of locking onto Ying Tao and prying at the edges of her life, like she took special pleasure in stealing whatever was near.
Miao-miao was genuinely curious.
“What do you think she’s thinking? Why is she always against you? Don’t tell me she likes you—love turned to hate?”
She rubbed her chin; the more she thought, the more she felt it was possible.
Ying Tao’s tooth hurt too much for any elaborate expression. She only looked at her, speechless.
“Please don’t say something that terrifying in such a calm tone. Now I’m scared.”
Miao-miao shuddered. “Don’t. I’ve got goosebumps too.”
“But why does she keep targeting you? There has to be a reason.”
Ying Tao pressed her tongue against the cotton-packed spot again. Pain flared; she frowned.
“How would I know? You should ask her, not me.”
Miao-miao eyed her. “I bet she’s jealous of you.”
“Jealous of me?” Ying Tao was baffled. “What is there about me worth being jealous of?”
Maybe some people were just born incompatible. Jealousy sounded like too much.
Besides, jealous of what? What Ying Tao had, Tang Mingfei didn’t exactly lack.
After Ying Zhaohui and Wen Yalan divorced, Ying Zhaohui married Tang Mingfei’s mother. Tang Mingfei wasn’t Ying Zhaohui’s biological child, but he treated Tang Mingfei and Ying Tao the same—he never favored one over the other.
Whatever he bought, it came in two copies. Whatever he prepared, it was basically identical. There was no such thing as “extra.”
Ying Tao truly couldn’t understand what Tang Mingfei could possibly envy.
But she had one good habit: if she couldn’t figure something out, she didn’t force it to sit in her heart.
Miao-miao was at a loss.
“If anyone else said that to me, I’d think they were humblebragging. Do you even understand your own positioning? If you ask me, it’s perfectly normal for Tang Mingfei to be jealous of you.”
Ying Tao was pretty—a classic sweet-girl kind of pretty. Crescent eyes, cherry lips, and those watery almond eyes that seemed to hold a glimmer of spring. When she smiled, two shallow dimples hid at the corners of her mouth.
When freshman military training started, a candid photo of her had even been posted online and trended for a while. Marketing accounts reposted it like crazy; people said she was the most beautiful new student, and netizens even crowned her with a ridiculous title: “the nation’s first love.”
Tang Mingfei was different. She was already a small influencer who’d gotten famous through short videos—she came with her own heat. But she’d prepared for ages, posed carefully, curated everything… and in the end, Ying Tao stole the spotlight.
How could she not be angry? How could she not be jealous?
Miao-miao sighed. “Tang Mingfei staged everything so carefully, and you still took all the attention. If it were me, I’d be furious.”
Ying Tao found it funny. “You’re exaggerating.”
Trends came fast and vanished fast. There was nothing to base a life on.
“You don’t get it,” Miao-miao said. “Some things people can’t swallow. Who wants to be someone else’s foil willingly?”
She raised another example.
“Look at our club. Senior Lu’s great, right? But those upperclassmen still talk behind his back. They act like brothers with him on the surface, then turn around and complain to us, saying he’s putting on airs, acting like a saint. They say it’s only because he’s got money and family background that he can act high and mighty in front of them.”
Ying Tao went quiet.
Lu Ziyue really was warmhearted, and he trusted people without much guard. If he were truly a hypocrite, those upperclassmen wouldn’t have been able to ride his momentum and throw their weight around by borrowing his name.
Miao-miao sighed again. “Do you think there are people in this world who are just… effortlessly smooth? The kind who can adapt anywhere, no matter where they go?”
Ying Tao paused, then fell silent.
In her memory… there really was someone like that. No matter where he was, he lived well, as if you could never quite find a fault to pick.
In their compound, that gang of second-generation brats were all thorny little devils—hard to deal with, impossible to control. Even Grandpa He, before retiring, couldn’t keep those monkey-grandsons in line.
Only he was different.
He was like the Monkey King who could suppress the whole troop; those brats followed him like he was the only law that mattered.
If you called him wild, he didn’t touch anything illegal—at most, in his rebellious phase, he’d done extreme street racing a couple times.
If you called him obedient, that was even more impossible. The He family had been in politics for three generations, yet in this generation he’d been the singular odd one out.
In college, he formed an underground band. He played and played until he got famous. A media company spotted him, and he blew up overnight.
After that, it was unstoppable—he spread across the country, quickly taking over half the Chinese music scene, officially opening the era that belonged to him.
What did fans call him again? Young master?
He was no young master.
He was a dog.
He Xiaogou.
Ying Tao sniped the insult in her head.
As if thinking of him summoned him, after Miao-miao left, the dorm was quiet with only Ying Tao inside. She’d just finished showering when her phone rang.
Caller ID: Brother.
Ying Tao reached for it at once. She grabbed too quickly; the moment she opened her mouth, her tongue bumped the inflamed spot.
Pain shot up; tears sprang immediately.
“It… hurts…”
Then, from the other end of the line, a familiar voice drifted over.
The man chuckled low, voice deep and lazy, the syllables drawn out as if teasing her.
“Who are you acting cute for?”