Ficorpio
Chapter 1
The heirs of the capital’s elite circle had started playing the Charity Game, covering their daily living expenses.
I had been assigned to Adrian Sterling, who supposedly suffered from aphasia.
To repay him, I had done everything I could to help with his treatment, but he had never managed to say a word.
I took a few days off to return to Meadowbrook Village and help my parents bring in the wheat harvest.
When I came back, I saw the floating viewer comments outside Crestmont Academy’s Private Lounge:
【The Charity Game is over. Why hasn’t the male lead come clean with that country girl yet?】
【The male lead stopped talking to the female lead out of spite, and she actually thought he was mute. She’s been soothing him like a preschool teacher every day. The fact that he managed not to laugh is incredible. I would’ve cracked ages ago.】
【Don’t tell me she’s fallen for him. Please, no. Kissing a country bumpkin like that is disgusting. The female lead needs to come back and take control already!】
I froze for a moment.
Then I turned around and fed the ribs I had brought for Adrian to the stray dog on campus.
At least puppies were better. They didn’t play games with people.
But after thinking it over, I realized it didn’t really matter.
Poor kids like us were already nothing more than entertainment for the heirs at an elite private academy.
The only thing that truly embarrassed me was what I had done to force Adrian to speak.
I had listened to advice from people online and used a few provocative phrases, following him around and calling him “baby” over and over.
I just hoped it wouldn’t become something he and the female lead joked about over dinner.
Once the dog finished the ribs, I stood and left.
Adrian and his friends happened to come out of the lounge at that moment.
The instant his friends saw me, the corners of their mouths lifted.
They looked as if they were waiting for him to finally tell me the truth.
But Adrian said nothing. He simply continued signing to me.
“Why did you feed the ribs to the dog? Weren’t they supposed to be for me?”
I was just about to question him when Mason Cross answered a phone call beside us.
“What? You’re asking whether I’m willing to let him off?”
“What kind of joke is that? He picked a fight with me and still expects to walk away?”
He made a slashing motion across his throat from across the room.
“Of course we’re taking him out!”
The accusation on my lips twisted into something else. I forced a sweet smile.
“I spilled them by accident. If you want some, I’ll have my family make more.”
Yes. I backed down.
I didn’t dare turn against them.
Chapter 2
At Crestmont Academy, if you crossed a group of wealthy heirs like them, getting expelled was already a punishment you were supposed to be grateful for.
And I couldn’t afford even the mildest possible consequence.
The floating comments began flashing wildly:
【That country girl is so calculating. She dumped the ribs out for the stray dog herself, but she’s pretending she spilled them.】
【How dare she deceive our male lead? She’s got some nerve!】
【Just wait. The female lead is transferring here tomorrow. I can’t wait to see the look on her face when she finds out the male lead isn’t actually mute!】
Adrian signed, “Don’t bother. You were gone too long this time.”
Then he took out his smartphone and transferred $3,000 to me.
It was the living allowance for the past two days.
I didn’t know whether I should accept it. After all, the Charity Game was already over.
We walked side by side toward the academic building, but our classrooms were on different floors.
Usually, whenever we parted, I would lean close to his ear and whisper:
“Baby, wait for me after class. We’ll walk home together.”
Today, my lips parted and closed again and again, but I couldn’t force those two words out.
I only managed to say the second sentence before running back to my classroom.
Nora Parker was just like me. She had been Mason Cross’s charity pick.
The moment I walked into the classroom, she hurried over.
“The Charity Game is over. What are you planning to do now?”
I didn’t understand.
“Planning? What am I supposed to plan?”
“Find your next wealthy sponsor, of course.”
She sat on the edge of my desk, grinning.
“Once you’ve lived on fifteen hundred dollars a day, who could possibly let that go?”
“Don’t tell anyone, but I confessed to Mason last night.”
She gestured across her chest.
“I’d even taken my clothes off down to here, and he actually told me to get lost.”
Nora was beautiful, and she had excellent grades. Judging by the living expenses Mason had given her, she should have made nearly ninety thousand dollars over the past two months.
“What about you?” she asked. “Did you try to stop Adrian Sterling from leaving?”
I shook my head and nudged her off my desk.
She kept pressing me.
“You really didn’t try to make him stay?”
“Besides, it probably wouldn’t have mattered. I heard Adrian’s idealized first love is transferring to our school from overseas any day now.”
“In the end, we were nothing more than entertainment to them.”
Her gaze fell on the speech-recovery workbook lying on my desk, and her eyes flickered.
“There’s another rumor, but don’t get angry when you hear it.”
I said nothing.
“I heard Adrian can speak. Someone heard him talking on the phone in the hallway.”
“Why do you think he went to all the trouble of pretending to be mute just to toy with you?”
Chapter 3
She was making my head ache. I pushed her back toward her own seat.
Then I pulled my smartphone from my bag and found a flood of messages from Adrian.
“You went back to Meadowbrook Village and met the man your family arranged for you to marry?”
“What kind of family is he from? What house does he live in? What car does he drive?”
“And why didn’t you call me ‘baby’ when you left just now?”
A notification appeared beneath the messages.
You have an unaccepted transfer.
“Seriously? Is that so hard to answer?”
I ignored everything above it and carefully typed:
“Is the Charity Game over?”
It took a long time before his reply arrived.
“Do you want it to end?”
“Fine. It can end.”
A light drizzle had begun by the time classes ended.
After a moment’s hesitation, I decided to wait for Adrian Sterling outside the academic building.
He took his time coming out. The crowd gradually dispersed, and the rain fell harder.
At last, his familiar figure appeared at the top of the steps, moving with his usual unhurried ease.
I was about to go over when a girl in a white dress burst out of a Maybach parked nearby. Ignoring the rain, she ran straight toward him.
“Adrian Sterling! I came all this way to pick you up in weather like this. You’d better appreciate it.”
“It’s been forever. Did you miss me?”
Her bright voice was like a shaft of sunlight piercing the gray, misty rain—and it stabbed straight through me.
Adrian’s gaze shifted from my face to hers.
The girl hurried up and looped both hands around his arm, rocking it playfully. Her eyes curved with her smile. They looked very close.
Adrian ruffled her rain-dampened hair. Then, right in front of me, he frowned and spoke.
“Vivienne Sinclair, it’s pouring, and you’re still wearing a short dress. Do you think you’re invincible?”
The instant I heard his voice, my heart seemed to stop.
So the floating viewer comments had been telling the truth.
Adrian didn’t have aphasia.
He could speak.
I opened my umbrella and walked away alone.
I didn’t even like Adrian, so why did my chest ache like this?
The rain came down harder and harder until I could barely see the road ahead.
But the floating comments before my eyes remained painfully clear.
[Ahhh! The leads are finally giving us something sweet! I can’t get enough!]
[This is exactly what I’ve been waiting for—a reunion after years apart, secret love finally returned, two people who are perfect for each other. Now that the country girl has seen it with her own eyes, she’ll finally give up, right?]
[Other than that pretty face, the country girl can’t compare to our female lead at all. Vivienne outclasses her in every possible way.]
That night, I lay on my dorm bed with Adrian Sterling’s chat window open on my phone.
From the bed beside mine, Nora Parker let out a sharp scream.