In the end, the two of them returned to school together.
Lu Huainan remained silent the entire ride. But he was usually quiet anyway, so Ji Zhaoxi didn’t think much of it.
At that moment, Lu Huainan was utterly heartsick. He had done something incredibly stupid.
He had simply sat there with his mouth open for ages, blood all over it, and Ji Zhaoxi had witnessed the entire spectacle.
She was definitely laughing at him in her head.
Sure enough, Lu Huainan, who had his eyes tightly shut in the taxi, kept hearing laughter coming from beside him every now and then.
He choked back his embarrassment and opened his eyes to look at her.
Ji Zhaoxi was gazing out the window without looking at him, but her eyes were filled with amusement.
“Pfft.”
Suddenly, Ji Zhaoxi heard a laugh from beside her.
She frowned deeply and turned to him. “What are you laughing at?”
She was the only one allowed to laugh at him!
Lu Huainan let out another laugh. If she could laugh at him, why couldn’t he laugh at her?
Ji Zhaoxi: “…”
She had discovered that Lu Huainan was incredibly vindictive!
When they got back to school, neither of them said goodbye. They simply went their separate ways. Their relationship wasn’t close enough for them to say goodbye yet.
As soon as the inflammation around her wisdom tooth had gone down, Ji Zhaoxi didn’t dare delay for even a moment. Huffing and puffing, she rushed to the hospital to have it removed.
But the moment she arrived, she spotted a familiar figure.
She walked over in confusion, only to find that the figure kept avoiding her gaze.
Ji Zhaoxi hurried in front of him, her eyes lighting up. “Senior, what are you doing here too?”
After seeing so many people suffer from toothaches lately, she felt as if her own tooth didn’t hurt quite so badly anymore.
Her senior looked at her guiltily. “Junior, I’m here to have my wisdom tooth removed.”
He hadn’t wanted to come. He didn’t believe there was anything wrong with his wisdom tooth. Everyone knew that his wisdom teeth had always behaved themselves.
But the pain had kept him awake for two nights straight, leaving him with enormous dark circles under his eyes every day.
In the end, his pride had lost the battle against the pain.
“Senior, didn’t you say your wisdom teeth were perfectly fine?” Ji Zhaoxi asked in surprise.
Covering his cheek, he looked as if he were about to cry. “I didn’t expect it to suddenly start hurting either.”
He had always been proud of his wisdom teeth.
And then one of them had betrayed him.
Her senior looked at Ji Zhaoxi hesitantly. “Junior, could you promise me one thing?”
“Of course, Senior. What is it?”
His face reddened. “Could you not tell anyone else that I came here to have my wisdom tooth removed? Everyone thinks my wisdom teeth are perfectly healthy.”
He had already boasted about them too much.
Ji Zhaoxi sighed. Why was her senior’s need to maintain his image even stronger than hers?
But seeing the pleading look on his face, she nodded. “Don’t worry, Senior. Other than you and me, no one else in the lab will know that you had your wisdom tooth removed.”
Her senior looked at her gratefully. From now on, he would send free little hearts whenever his junior sister livestreamed.
He couldn’t afford to send paid gifts.
The display screen called Ji Zhaoxi’s name, so her senior went in with her. At their most vulnerable moments, people needed someone by their side.
The two of them entered the room trembling with fear, and came back out howling like ghosts.
Their faces were covered in tears. They wiped their eyes as they cried.
With ice packs pressed to their cheeks, the two of them took a taxi back to school, cursing their wisdom teeth the entire way.
That night, Ji Zhaoxi didn’t livestream. The pain was simply too much, so she very apologetically asked for the night off in the group chat.
She fell asleep without even eating dinner.
When she woke the next morning, sure enough, the left side of her face was swollen enormously.
But she still had to go to the cafeteria for noodles. The noodles at her school were just too delicious.
On her way there, Ji Zhaoxi kept feeling as though someone was watching her. Yet whenever she looked back, she saw nothing.
The sun was blazing over the sports field, making people’s faces feel hot and flushed. A man was crouching in the grass.
“What are you hiding out here for?” asked a bespectacled man as he approached, several résumés in hand.
Recruiting people was incredibly difficult these days, especially at A University. The major corporations nearby received stacks upon stacks of résumés.
The man showed him a photo, looking excited. “Ji Zhaoxi!”
The bespectacled man frowned. “What about her? She doesn’t want to do group livestreaming, does she? Didn’t we invite her before?”
The man zoomed in on Ji Zhaoxi’s swollen left cheek and sneered. “She looks nothing like she does in her videos. Her face is swollen into who-knows-what. No wonder she refuses to attend offline events.”
He had invited Ji Zhaoxi countless times, and she hadn’t given him the slightest bit of respect.
She wasn’t even that famous as a streamer, yet she acted as if she were some huge celebrity.
He had imagined she must be exceptionally beautiful. So this was what she really looked like?
He glanced at the photo and laughed. “Well, let’s let everyone see what Ji Zhaoxi looks like in an unedited photo.”
Within less than an hour, several candid photos of Ji Zhaoxi began spreading across the internet.
“V-Faced Beauty’s Perfect Image Shattered! Ji Zhaoxi Transformed into a ‘Bee-Stung Puppy’”
“Ji Zhaoxi’s Left Cheek Bigger Than Her Fist! Goddess Turns into Anpanman in One Second”
“Face-Changing Mystery? Ji Zhaoxi’s Left Cheek Swollen Like a Hamster!”
One gossip account after another reposted the photos.
“Guys, who else is speechless? Just now, the famously aloof goddess Ji Zhaoxi was exposed in an unedited photo. In the picture, she has lost the delicate V-shaped face seen in her online videos, with her left cheek swollen high.”
“Many netizens are speculating: Was this a botched plastic surgery, or has she always looked like this? According to an informed source, Ji Zhaoxi never attends offline events. Could it be that she’s afraid of exposing her left cheek?”
Her fan group exploded instantly. Everyone was ready to report those gossip accounts, but after taking another look at the photo, their anger vanished.
“Sorry to disappoint the haters, but Ji Zhaoxi had a wisdom tooth removed yesterday. [Attached: a screenshot of Ji Zhaoxi’s notice in the group chat]”
“You call this ugly? She’s obviously adorable!”
“The whole world took advantage of my absence to bully my girl!”
“Plastic surgery, plastic surgery, plastic surgery—would anyone only get one side of their face done?! Gossip accounts, please use your brains!”
At that moment, Ji Zhaoxi was happily eating noodles in the cafeteria.
As she ate, she kept glancing at the braised beef noodle stall nearby.
There weren’t many people around. When the auntie saw Ji Zhaoxi, she called out, “Sweetie, you’re not having noodles today?”
How strange. This girl had always been one of their most loyal customers.
She had been eating there ever since her freshman year, all the way through her first year of graduate school.
Ji Zhaoxi replied bitterly, “Auntie, I had a tooth pulled. I’ll have them next time.”
The auntie smiled. “Then next time you come, I’ll give you extra meat.”
Whenever she talked about her braised beef noodles, she was extremely proud. Every year, when the cafeteria held its popularity vote, their stall always ranked among the top few.
While eating, Ji Zhaoxi took out her phone. The moment she opened the fan group, she found it flooded with memes of her face.
She stared at the group in disbelief.
Who had secretly photographed her?!
No, wait. This was her fan group, wasn’t it? Why was everyone using memes of her swollen face?
She checked the group’s name several times. It was definitely her fan group, not an anti-fan group.
Meanwhile, the comment sections beneath those gossip accounts’ videos were also filled with memes of Ji Zhaoxi.
In a corner of the internet unknown to Ji Zhaoxi, L had unusually posted a nine-image grid, all of them memes of Ji Zhaoxi that he had just saved from various places.
