After Dumping the Female Lead, It's My Turn to Cry - Chapter 43

The classroom was a hazy expanse of gray darkness. Unfamiliar Alpha pheromones surged through the small space, the acrid scent forcing physiological tears from Ruan Yubai’s eyes. Ironically, this oppressive smell came from the person she knew best.

Ruan Yubai’s throat felt dry. It was not out of fear, but a sense of the absurd.

At that moment, Ruan Yubai actually laughed. “Lin Yi, are you saying you like me? So much that you want to mark me?”

She gripped the pencil case in her bag tightly. Her heart felt as though it were being squeezed, secreting the bitter juice of sour plums. The treasure she had tried so hard to protect for so long had just shattered with a definitive snap.

“I can turn you into an Omega, Xiao Bai,” Lin Yi replied, dodging the question. “You are too lazy; it is a waste of the resources you have been given. But if you were an Omega, you would be an excellent wife. Are there not many Alphas at school interested in you? Were you not already trying to attract attention?”

“There is no need to feel ashamed.” Lin Yi’s eyes were dark and her breathing was heavy as she drew closer. Even through her sleeve, Ruan Yubai could feel the scorching temperature of her skin. “After you become an Omega, I will love you even more, including the share of love from before. Did you not say when we were little that you wanted to be with Sister Lin Yi forever?”

Outside, a gale howled. The violent wind seemed intent on overturning heaven and earth, shattering every floating dust particle in the air into stagnant, icy grains.

It was madness.

Ruan Yubai thought calmly that her Sister Lin Yi had likely gone completely insane. How did this even happen?

“Who gave you the injection for your secondary differentiation?” Ruan Yubai smiled, her voice raspier than she realized. “Nan Zhuti? Nan Zhuge? Or Li Si?”

At such close proximity, Ruan Yubai could see Lin Yi’s micro expressions even without light. her lips curled in understanding. “So it was Li Si.”

Li Si, the tech genius of the protagonist group, had not only developed the pinhole cameras for Nan Zhuti to use for peeping, but he would also successfully take down the Ruan family later in the story to become a new scientific miracle.

In fairness, those future events had nothing to do with Lin Yi yet, but it did not stop Ruan Yubai from feeling utterly discouraged.

At this point, there was no need to ask further questions. As Lin Yi reached out to grab her clothes, leaning in to bite her neck, Ruan Yubai spoke softly. “But I do not like you anymore.”

That single sentence caused Lin Yi, who was consumed by the instincts of her heat cycle, to freeze. Her sharp canine teeth retracted just as they touched Ruan Yubai’s skin.

Lin Yi’s breathing stopped. Before her heart could resume its thundering pace, she murmured, “I have become an Alpha. How could you not like me?”

Ruan Yubai never understood why Lin Yi, who had always appeared gentle and inclusive, held such strange ideas. She asked in confusion, “Even when I was little, the person I liked was the Beta version of you. I never wanted to be an Omega. What gave you such a delusion?”

Her lips moved, and she could not help but ask, “Is the person you like really me?”

Whether as children or adults, it was always Ruan Yubai who clingily followed her, asking to build Lego sets together or acting spoiled to get gummy worms. Even entering Lawress was Ruan Yubai’s one sided wish to be with her childhood friend forever. She had even planned to confess once she made it into Class B.

In reality, it was all Ruan Yubai’s unilateral emotion. Had Lin Yi ever truly responded to her passion? Ruan Yubai had never noticed until now. Therefore, during this intense confession, she felt no joy, only a deepening sense of strangeness.

Lin Yi fell into a brief silence. Ruan Yubai gave a self deprecating laugh, helping her find the answer. “Actually, I was just the most convenient option and the one least likely to reject you. You do not have to do this. I have no desire to become an Omega. I am just a Beta.”

The wind rattled the windows. Just as Ruan Yubai thought there would be no answer, she heard a dazed voice. “I do like you. I have liked you very much since the first time I saw you.”

When she was a child, Lin Yi was the second child in her family and the least favored. She was like a marginalized, boring stone. Her parents scolded the mischievous eldest and doted on the youngest “porcelain doll,” while Lin Yi was simply dull. No one liked a boring stone except for Ruan Yubai.

The young Ruan Yubai always had cheeks full of snacks like a hamster storing food for winter. Because she smiled so much, her almond eyes would almost disappear, yet she would cheerfully stuff sweet cookies into Lin Yi’s arms.

Lin Yi remembered the sweet, refreshing juice of an orange Ruan Yubai had peeled for her. Looking up, she saw the girl’s focused eyes, which looked like the small ball lamps hung on the highest branches of a Christmas tree. Those lamps belonged to the most favored children.

Lin Yi never told anyone that Ruan Yubai was her small ball lamp.

In the suffocating air of the classroom, Lin Yi felt her glands burning. Every drop of pheromone urged her to bite the girl’s neck, but she closed her eyes. Her voice was as gentle as it had been years ago. “How could anyone truly want to be a Beta?”

She believed no one would be content with being mediocre forever. To possess the beautiful ball lamp exclusively, Lin Yi had worked harder than anyone knew. She had fought a solitary war against the dragons of social status, all to become someone worthy of her lamp.

But the placement exams had been devastating. Her hard work meant nothing against the innate power of an Alpha’s pheromones. Reality told her she was just an ordinary Beta.

Ruan Yubai probably never knew that Lin Yi never wanted her to get into Class B. Lin Yi had discovered the exam tampering but chose to stay silent. She wanted the ball lamp to fall into a physical and social abyss where only she could reach it.

She had told Ruan Yubai it was okay to be a “salted fish,” while secretly hoping she would become even more useless and despised by others, so she would belong only to Lin Yi. When she learned of the chance to become an Alpha and mark Ruan Yubai as an Omega, she was overjoyed. She never expected Ruan Yubai to say, “I only want to be a Beta.”

Lin Yi’s first rut was sudden and violent. Her logic was being swallowed by Alpha instincts. She gripped Ruan Yubai’s arm, her voice rasping. “Xiao Bai, I really do like you.”

Everything she had done was for this intense, obsessive love. Ruan Yubai turned her head away, her weak mental power unconsciously gathering at her fingertips. “Lin Yi, calm down.”

It was a dialogue of the deaf, two people telling stories from separate universes.

Lin Yi let out a low growl of conquest. She pinned Ruan Yubai’s wrists and used her leg to crowd her into the remaining space. Her sharp teeth were inches from the girl’s neck when a ding dong sound echoed.

The familiar music of the school radio echoed, followed by a soft, clear voice that sounded like a flowing spring.

“Hello everyone, I am Qing Ling. This is an announcement: power to all Lawress facilities will be restored in five minutes. We apologize for the inconvenience and wish you all a pleasant weekend.”

The voice disappeared as quickly as it came. But the silence that followed was different. Through the narrow windows, lights began to flicker on across the campus. Rooms in the opposite building lit up one by one until the entire night was brightened. The two girls in the classroom were momentarily blinded by the sudden light, causing them to freeze.

Ruan Yubai recovered first. Seeing Lin Yi still in a daze, she pushed her away. Her stationery clattered to the floor as she stumbled out of the room. Her frantic footsteps echoed in the hallway. This was Ruan Yubai’s unilateral farewell to all her naive childhood fantasies.

Outside, the winter rain was colder and more biting than any summer storm. Ruan Yubai reached the stairs, soaked to the bone. Most students had left their coats in their lockers, and Ruan Yubai was no exception. Her thin shirt clung to her, outlining her shivering frame. She looked like a scoop of vanilla ice cream that was about to melt.

She had just faced the greatest crisis of her young life.

Qing Ling, passing through the corridor, opened her umbrella with elegant, quiet movements. She glanced at the shivering figure and began to walk away. What did this have to do with her?

Unlike others, Qing Ling’s brain prioritized logic over emotion. She was an expert at being a bystander. Even though she had felt a strange, “unhealthy” protective urge toward Ruan Yubai before, helping her with blood loss, tutoring her, and the incidents during her heat, she had attributed it to boredom or repaying a debt to the Ruan family.

Since Ruan Yubai had already rejected her quite decisively before, why bother? As she walked away, a drop of rain slid down her umbrella. But her path was blocked by a girl stumbling toward her.

Ruan Yubai, freezing and miserable, threw her arms around Qing Ling’s tall, slender frame. She was like a cold animal instinctively seeking a heat source. The scent of freesia pheromones was quiet and non-aggressive, miraculously calming Ruan Yubai’s heart.

Qing Ling stiffened. As she started to turn around, Ruan Yubai hugged her tighter, her lips trembling from the cold. “What happened last time was my fault. I was wrong. I owe you an apology.”

Qing Ling’s student council uniform was getting soaked by the girl’s wet clothes. Even more distracting was the sensation of Ruan Yubai’s wet hair brushing against her neck. It was an uncharacteristic itch.

“Let go first,” Qing Ling said flatly.

Instead of letting go, Ruan Yubai clung tighter like an octopus. “I was wrong! You were right about everything! My vision is bad, my brain is regressing, and my personality is as stubborn as an old man’s hollow cane!”

Qing Ling gave up resisting and tilted her head slightly. “I never said those things.”

Ruan Yubai looked into those dark eyes and felt like a rotten person. How could she have the nerve to cling to the female lead like this? But as she started to loosen her grip, a wave of intense sorrow washed over her. She began to sob uncontrollably, more childishly than a kid who did not get their candy. “Qing Ling, I hate you so much!”

Her peaceful salted fish life had been turned upside down since the female lead appeared. Weirdos appeared everywhere, and her best friend had turned into a different species. Logically, she knew it was not Qing Ling’s fault, in fact, the eldest lady had often protected her, but she could not stay calm anymore.

“Waaaaah, you are not allowed to leave!” Ruan Yubai grabbed Qing Ling’s sleeve, weeping without any dignity. “I should not have blamed you for the bad things that happened to me, but how can you just leave?”

“I am not leaving,” Qing Ling said. She took out a tissue and patiently wiped away the girl’s tears. “Stop crying.”

“I want to cry!” Ruan Yubai grabbed her hand.

The winter rain continued to fall, drowning out all sound. The cold environment eventually brought both girls to the same temperature. It was the end of everything they knew, but also the beginning of a brand new world.

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