Seduced By My Omega Stepsister - Chapter 5

Wildly Growing Envy

After lunch, there is a two hour break. Typically, Fu Zhou sleeps for two hours and ten minutes, only waking up when Zhou Heyu hits her right as the first afternoon class begins.

Today, Fu Zhou did not sleep.

Gazes from the surrounding area drifted toward her constantly. Fu Zhou met each one, her dark eyes filled with a trace of impatience and warning until the feeling of being watched vanished.

She was looking at her biology textbook. Out of all her subjects, she was most interested in biology plus the teacher had mentioned that elective subjects were easier to boost one’s grade in.

After scanning a few genetics problems, she crumpled a piece of paper into a ball and tossed it onto Zhou Heyu’s desk.

“How do you do the third problem on page twenty of the workbook?”

A moment later, the paper ball was tossed back.

“I don’t know. I’ve never earned a single point in genetics. Why don’t you ask Qi Wen?” Fu Zhou pursed her lips and threw the paper ball into the trash can behind her.

Yet, her gaze drifted uncontrollably toward the girl in the front row, whose back was ramrod straight.

Qi Wen’s features weren’t actually that striking, but she looked clean. She was poised and excelled at socializing with everyone. She was the opposite of Fu Zhou, who only liked interacting with a familiar circle of people.

Fu Zhou couldn’t quite explain why she liked her. Perhaps it was because when she first transferred and was being crowded by curious onlookers, Qi Wen had squeezed into the crowd, joking with those around her while naturally leading Fu Zhou out of the fray.

Or perhaps it was from a PE class, looking toward the shade of the trees and seeing that, out of the entire group, she was the only one who seemed to glow.

She had liked her for over a year, ever since the start of the school term.

But secrets are hard to keep. Once Qi Wen sensed her feelings, she began to slowly distance herself.

It started with feigned ignorance and ended with cold, isolating sneers. The person in her memory seemed different from the reality, the girl accepted all of Fu Zhou’s gifts and gestures of goodwill but never offered an appropriate response.

Yet, always, always just as Fu Zhou was about to sink into silence. Qi Wen would give her something. Sometimes it was a hand-knitted scarf, sometimes it was a keychain that matched her personality.

Right at that moment, the girl in the front row suddenly turned her head. Her gaze landed steadily on Fu Zhou, but the moment their eyes met, she jerked her gaze back as if she had been burned.

The corners of Fu Zhou’s mouth twitched.

Why are you hiding? Afraid I’ll cling to you?

The more she thought about it, the more frustrated she became. Fu Zhou simply pulled her hood up and used the workbook as a pillow to sleep.

When she woke up, there was a piece of scratch paper on her desk. Written in elegant, beautiful handwriting were detailed step by step solutions.

Qi Wen hadn’t known which specific problem she was stuck on, so she had neatly and densely filled the entire page with solutions for all of them.

When she went to the restroom after class, she passed the doorway, and Zhou Heyu suddenly told her that Qi Wen didn’t seem to have napped at noon and looked a bit exhausted.

“What does that have to do with me?” Fu Zhou felt irritable. A wave of frustration was lodged in her chest, making her feel restless.

If she didn’t like her, why did she keep showing her so much care?

“I saw Jiahao go to the tuck shop downstairs to buy coffee. I don’t know who it’s for.”

Fu Zhou: “…”

A minute later, Fu Zhou ran breathlessly into the convenience store. It wasn’t very crowded. She rushed to the counter, grabbed a bottle of hot coffee, paid, and sprinted back to the fifth floor.

Qi Wen had just returned from the restroom. Fu Zhou stepped sideways to block Zhang Jiahao’s shadow and handed over the hot coffee: “Qi Wen, this is for you.”

The boy beside her, who was just about to offer his own coffee, froze. A few drops of coffee spilled from his hand due to the sudden jolt.

“Fu Zhou, are you freaking crazy? Why are you pushing? Is there not enough room for you to walk?”

Fu Zhou turned and gave him a fleeting glance.

Zhang Jiahao wasn’t particularly handsome, though he wasn’t hideous either. His face was covered in acne, and there was a pink scar on his forehead.

When he first joined the class, he claimed it was a battle scar from fighting off twenty people. Later, rumors revealed he just wasn’t looking where he was going as a kid, tripped, and was too afraid of the pain to apply medicine, leaving the scar behind.

“Mhm, sorry,” Fu Zhou replied flippantly. The girl in front of them looked at the two of them with some trepidation. Her eyes scanned the scene before finally settling on Fu Zhou.

“Thank you,” she said softly, her eyes curving into crescents like shimmering clear water.

Fu Zhou’s heart felt an inexplicable pang of sourness. Then, subconsciously, she looked away. In her peripheral vision, a pale blue sleeve fluttered by.

She looked over through the bustling crowd.

A girl in a light white and blue school uniform stood there, holding a workbook. Her pale pupils cast a casual glance. Though they weren’t close, Fu Zhou felt the weight of that gaze, it landed directly on her.

Her breathing hitched for a moment. Her body, which had been almost pressed against Qi Wen, instinctively retreated a few steps.

Before she could say anything, the bell rang. By the time she looked back, only a sliver of a sleeve remained. Chu Xiyu walked back to her classroom. Her face was clearly devoid of expression, yet Fu Zhou felt that she wasn’t happy.

She didn’t know why she felt that way, she and Chu Xiyu weren’t even close.

In Class B of the Strong Foundation Program, Chu Xiyu sat in her seat. Her fingers turned to the page she had been working on last period. Her pen touched the paper, and a blot of ink quickly spread, yet she didn’t start writing.

After a long while, she finally wrote the word “Solution” as if waking from a dream, only to fall still again.

She seemed trapped in that moment, trapped in the second where Fu Zhou squeezed past that boy to hand over the warm coffee.

She understood this emotion better than anyone. It was envy. Like looking at other people’s parents or toys as a child like looking through a window filled with the scent of a warm breeze at a table laden with food as a teenager.

From now on, among the beautiful things she could not obtain, there was one more: Fu Zhou.

She was so envious. Why could someone be so radiant, as if the entire world favored them? Chu Xiyu lowered her eyes to hide the dark light within and finally wrote the first character on her workbook.

Fu Zhou held a pen between two fingers, spinning it clumsily. The steps for the genetics problem on the scratch paper were very detailed. She read quickly and finished the page within half a class period.

In the gaps of her thoughts, she remembered a pair of pale eyes, and a sudden ache rose in her heart.

She had thought of Chu Xiyu so many times today.

She let out a long breath, trying to dispel the heavy feeling in her chest. She leaned back, tilting her chair until the back tips touched the wall behind her.

For the rest of the period, she did nothing.

During the ten minute break between classes, she saw Chu Xiyu at her classroom door. The newly transferred Omega was quickly surrounded by a group of people, some hitting on her, others holding out scraps of paper asking for her contact info.

Chu Xiyu didn’t take a single piece of paper. She simply wore a gentle smile, engaging in idle chat.

Then, Fu Zhou clearly saw her gaze land on her, direct and unwavering.

The people around her quickly noticed where her eyes were fixed. Some of them looked back and forth between the two of them before drifting away from Chu Xiyu’s side.

Fu Zhou felt as if her heart were being suspended by a rope over a cliff. After her breathing missed a few beats, she steadied herself.

“Zhou Heyu, I think I need to go to the hospital,” Fu Zhou said to the girl beside her as she packed her desk and headed out.

“Why? To check your brain?”

Fu Zhou shook her head. “To see if there’s something wrong with my heart.”

Otherwise, why does it keep jumping like this?

As Fu Zhou reached the doorway, the people crowding around Chu Xiyu instinctively parted to create a small path.

“Chu Xiyu, are you looking for me?” Fu Zhou leaned against the railing with a relaxed posture, a warm, bright smile on her face as always.

Even her dark, puppy-like eyes were filled with a soft, gentle light.

“No,” Chu Xiyu shook her head. “I just got surrounded the moment I got here.”

“Because you’re pretty,” Fu Zhou’s smile was brighter than the sun, and more piercing.

Chu Xiyu’s breathing faltered. A suppressed, rampaging impulse to destroy sprouted from her heart and grew wildly, only to be torn out by its roots by its owner.

The original gloom in the girl’s eyes turned into a faint confusion.

But what did Fu Zhou do wrong? She just happened to possess everything in this world that Chu Xiyu wanted but couldn’t have. What fault was that of Fu Zhou’s?

The flicker of dark flame in her heart went out. A soft smile returned to Chu Xiyu’s face: “Perhaps. I’m going back now.”

She left in a hurry, her gait appearing somewhat unsteady.

“Still looking? Your ‘sister’ is gone,” Zhou Heyu patted Fu Zhou on the shoulder, signaling for her to go inside.

“I wasn’t looking. I was just wondering if her leg still hasn’t healed. She walks a bit strangely.”

“Sure, let’s go with that.”

Chu Xiyu didn’t go home with Fu Zhou today. Fu Zhou was the only one in the car. The driver, Uncle Zhang, said she had called Fu Li to say she had some business at school and told them to leave first.

Sitting in the car, Fu Zhou slowly rolled down the window.

Leave first? Chu Xiyu was so beautiful and a newly differentiated Omega at that. Letting her go home alone even if it was only a ten minute drive was impossible.

So, she sat there and waited.

She flipped through books and looked out the window until the sky grew dark and the streetlights flickered on. When the girl’s slender silhouette appeared under the car’s headlights, Fu Zhou waved from behind the window.

“Chu Xiyu! I’m here!”

The girl’s figure paused. It was dark, so Fu Zhou couldn’t see her expression. Even the stiffness of her posture was hard to discern, appearing almost like an illusion.

But Chu Xiyu had heard her. She walked over quickly and stood outside, looking down at the dazed, slightly stunned Fu Zhou inside the car.

She lightly gripped the door handle and opened it.

“Aren’t you going to slide over?” The cool tone traveled from Fu Zhou’s ears to her brain. It took a few seconds for her to process it. Chu Xiyu did not rush her.

Then, she watched as Fu Zhou’s face turned bright red while she scrambled toward the other side.

Amidst a string of apologies, Chu Xiyu turned to close the door, masking the unreadable smile at the corner of her lips.