Forced into a romantic relationship

Chapter 431 Love and Hate

If Mo Yixia hadn't wanted to avoid seeing Han Zhou suffer, she wouldn't have immediately sought out Lin Anyu after discovering Gu Zheng's parents at school, and hastily devised a plan using Ya Ya, who happened to be with him, to temporarily help Han Zhou escape the crisis.

Even though that guy clearly needed to be taught a lesson and was bound to suffer the consequences sooner or later, she still subconsciously wanted to avoid seeing him suffer, otherwise she wouldn't have stayed in the gymnasium and delayed appearing in front of everyone.

As for what love truly is, Mo Yixia still can't give a precise definition like in the book, but she has some of her own thoughts on it.

Compared to love, hate is also an interesting emotion worth studying. She has no experience of hating anyone, and she rarely sees this emotion around Han Zhou, which is why she is somewhat interested in the girl named He Ling in front of her.

...It's perfect for killing time.

According to He Ling, she was Gu Zheng's best friend in junior high school. During Gu Zheng's early years in junior high, when the latter knew nothing, she offered her boundless care and help, even spending a great deal of time and energy tutoring her, sacrificing her own grades to help Gu Zheng improve. She truly embodied the phrase "extreme kindness and righteousness."

These weren't He Ling's exact words, but it's easy to understand the meaning from between the lines.

Mo Yixia recalled that Han Zhou seemed to have mentioned this before. It was on the night they climbed the snow-capped mountain. After expressing his ambition to have his cake and eat it too, Han Zhou tried to introduce Gu Zheng, but she interrupted him before he could say more than a few words.

She has no interest in rivals who are destined to fail.

However, she's interested now, so she listened quite attentively just now.

In He Ling's later account, the image of the guzheng is quite detestable.

She clearly has a friend who is genuinely good to her, but she is unwilling to reciprocate that kindness. The difficulty of junior high school knowledge is not high. The reason why Guzheng was able to improve her grades so quickly must be because she has mastered some kind of trick, but she has never thought of sharing it.

Boys at that age like to joke around and make silly jokes. Even though there was no need to pay attention to them, Guzheng always liked to fight with them, and sometimes even her friend He Ling would get involved.

What's even more infuriating is that even though she has already scored nearly a hundred points higher than the second-best student in the entire grade in guzheng, she is still not satisfied and continues to study from morning till night. He Ling doesn't care (according to herself), but the other students are suffering under the pressure of this atmosphere. After all, the feeling of not being able to surpass someone no matter how hard you study is really unpleasant.

Mo Yixia was somewhat uninterested in these statements. People tend to present facts from a perspective that is advantageous to themselves, and only He Ling herself probably knows how much of these descriptions are exaggerated.

She did not comment.

Fortunately, after a lot of buildup, the other party finally said something that was somewhat interesting—

"In my third year of junior high, my family required me to be in the top ten of a competition, and at that time, the guzheng had become a shadow over everyone in the class, including me."

"Studying, exercising, even looks... you simply can't understand the feeling of being inferior to the other person in everything... Forget it, you don't need to understand."

"In short, once Guzheng also participates in this competition, I see no hope of winning the top ten. So I approached her, hoping that, for the sake of our friendship, she could give up the competition and give me the winning spot. You may not know this, but with Guzheng's strength, she would definitely win first place if she participated. So if she is willing to give up the competition, one of the top ten spots will be available, and my chances of winning will increase dramatically."

“At that time, I was already somewhat depressed because I clearly considered Guzheng as a friend, but she seemed to have never considered me a friend. I almost never saw her do anything for me, but I still had hope that she wouldn’t refuse such a small thing.”

"But I was wrong. No matter what I said, she was unwilling to quit the competition for me. In her eyes, being number one was more important than anything else, even her best friend. You simply can't understand what I felt at the time... Never mind, you don't have any friends, so it's normal that you can't understand how I felt."

"I transferred schools after that."

"I posted the message in the class group, and everyone in the class was very reluctant to see me go. They even took a graduation photo with me in advance. On the day I left, everyone came to see me off, except for Guzheng. She didn't even bother to pretend... Ha, I guess she's studying somewhere." "I never want to see her face again, never want to hear her name again, and never want to hear any news about her again."

"But I just couldn't resist, and one day after I started high school, I asked a friend from junior high about her, and guess what happened?"

"Ha, she hasn't changed at all since junior high, and she's even worse. Apart from a sycophant, almost no one is willing to talk to her."

"I gradually forgot about this person, but she never let me go. She wouldn't let me win in competitions before, and she even went against me in the college entrance exam!"

"Linyi University has always been my ideal university. I studied hard every day, getting up early and working late, just to get into this school I dreamed of. But in the end, I failed the exam by just one point. Do you know why this happened?"

"I know what you're trying to say. Are you suggesting it's because I didn't work hard enough? Ha, I used to think that too, until recently I learned the real reason—"

"It's because of that guy who could have gone to Peking University! Or Yenching University! He could have gone anywhere he wanted! But he just didn't go anywhere and insisted on applying to Linda University like a madman, stealing the spot that should have been mine!"

"I've been avoiding that girl for so long, but she still won't let me go, she still won't let me go! How can I not hate her?"

Mo Yixia still remembers the expression on He Ling's face when she finished speaking. It was a crazy expression that was a mixture of grievance, resentment, and anger, more complex than any expression she had ever seen before.

...Is this the emotion of "hatred"?
I wonder what kind of expression she'll have if she finds out there's actually someone else who took her spot.

As a high school student of good character, Mo Yixia kindly chose to keep the matter a secret.

"So today's match... is this your 'revenge' against that guy?"

She pulled down her hat brim and looked down at the running track outside the window.

In a sense, the competition could already be declared over.

Apart from the team with the guzheng, all the other teams had finished the race and were now resting outside the track, bending over and holding their knees.

Like most people, their gazes invariably fell on the two remaining people on the track—

A man, dragging his injured body, limped toward the starting line, determined to finish the last stretch of the race.
One stood there with their head down, seemingly unable to hear any sounds from the surrounding area.

The playground was filled with a jumble of noises, some encouraging, some insulting.

Mo Yixia shifted her gaze and looked in the direction where Han Zhou was.

The wheelchair that was supposed to be there has disappeared.

It seems that a lot happened on the playground during the time I was learning about "hatred".

(End of this chapter)