"Do I have to pay too?" Xue Ruihua frowned. She hadn't received any notice about a fee before coming.
Neither of her parents had been able to make it this time.
She could only turn to Wang Yiyang for help.
"I'll pay it first. Your uncle can reimburse me later." Wang Yiyang smiled, unconcerned.
"Okay. Thanks, Brother Yangyang." Xue Ruihua quickly thanked him.
She knew her basic manners, at least.
"By the way, Brother Yangyang, do you know any professionals who are good at graphic design and photo editing? We want to get some photos retouched and see how much it would cost."
"Photo editing? You mean a retoucher? How many photos do you have, and what kind of standard are you looking for? If you're not too particular, it'll only be a few yuan per photo. If you want a really high standard, the price will shoot up. Even one or two thousand per photo might not be enough." Wang Yiyang replied offhandedly.
Then he saw Xue Ruihua and the two girls beside her looking a little startled. The three of them quickly began whispering among themselves.
Wang Yiyang couldn't help smiling.
Xue Ruihua's two other classmates didn't look bad, either.
One was cute and dimpled, with her hair tied up in a bun. The other had a soft, alluring look and skin so pale it almost hurt to look at.
If the maximum score was ninety, both girls would easily score seventy or eighty.
Come to think of it, his cousin had a great figure, and she was probably considered one of the pretty girls at school. Did pretty girls tend to hang out in pretty-girl circles?
Wang Yiyang smiled, his idle thoughts wandering.
He might have had nothing to do, but Xue Ruihua and the other two were curious.
The parents' meeting was drawing to a close, and the atmosphere wasn't as strict as it had been at the beginning. The three girls began commenting on the parents of their classmates.
"Xiaoxiao, your mom looks so stern. Your grades were pretty good this time, so why does she look so scary? Is it because of her job?" the cute girl with the bun asked in surprise.
"It's all right. My mom's a lawyer. It's probably just a professional habit..." The alluring girl named Xiaoxiao smiled wryly.
"Doesn't being a lawyer mean dealing with all kinds of criminal disputes and cases? You have to think of ways to defend people from every angle. Isn't that exhausting?" Xue Ruihua wasn't as cold as she looked around close friends.
"It's not too bad. Aside from her logical thinking and an attention to detail so extreme it makes you want to die, she spoils me in every other way." Xiaoxiao sounded helpless.
"So your mom's the type you absolutely can't lie to?" The girl with the bun stared in amazement.
"More or less. Your dad looks pretty gentle, too." Xiaoxiao changed the subject. She clearly didn't want to talk about her mother any more; it made her feel exhausted.
"My dad... When he's being nice to you, he's super nice. But if you make him angry, hehehe..." The girl with the bun gave a few cold laughs and gestured with her hands to show the diameter. "The whip at home is this thick."
"...That's scary..." Xue Ruihua's face twitched.
"It's fine. He's been whipping me since I was little, so I'm used to it. At least he doesn't tie me to a tree and whip me anymore." The girl with the bun grinned, completely unconcerned.
"...Your dad sounds terrifying..." Xiaoxiao was at a loss for words.
"What's your brother like, Ruihua? He looks pretty refined." The girl with the bun turned her attention to Xue Ruihua.
"I don't know him very well. My parents really couldn't make it this time, and he happened to be nearby, so they asked him to come help. I didn't see him much before, either." She explained quietly.
"Is that so? Your brother looks like he has a good temper. He must be easy to get along with, right?" The girl with the bun asked curiously.
"I guess so..." Xue Ruihua hesitated.
As far as she could remember, her cousin Wang Yiyang had always worn a gentle smile, from childhood onward.
His smile always made people want to get close to him.
And as far as she could tell, her cousin Wang Yiyang never seemed to take a particular interest in anything. Even the things she heard about him from her parents were all much the same: plain and ordinary, like hearing the story of some other family's average student growing up.
He didn't stand out, but he wasn't falling behind, either.
"But I've been studying psychology on my own lately—the dark side of psychology. People like your brother, who seem gentle on the surface? Let me tell you, there's definitely a little monster hiding inside!" The girl with the bun lowered her voice and whispered, as if she were afraid Wang Yiyang might hear.
"What little monster?" Xue Ruihua was speechless. The girl with the bun was named Song Yuandu, and her nickname was Dudu.
She'd gotten hooked on psychology recently, and now she was always coming up with all sorts of bizarre psychological 'facts' from who knew where. She was even starting to seem a little dazed by it all.
"I mean he seems gentle on the surface, but he's incredibly dark inside," the girl with the bun continued. "I'm telling you, people like your cousin are the scariest. He might even have a hidden personality disorder!"
The more she talked, the more certain she became.
Then she stared fixedly at Wang Yiyang for a moment.
Wang Yiyang had been distracted, but he noticed her looking. He returned a warm, friendly smile.
!!!
The girl with the bun shuddered all over, as if she'd thought of some disturbing psychological case study, and quickly looked away.
But that only made her even more convinced of her own judgment.
"Did you see his smile? That perfectly practiced smile. Doesn't it make him seem really approachable?" The girl with the bun asked her two friends intently.
"Yeah... What about it?" Xue Ruihua asked, puzzled.
Xiaoxiao looked just as confused. She didn't know what was wrong with it, either.
"Exactly!" The girl with the bun said confidently. "That friendliness on his face is just a disguise for the darkness inside him!"
"..."
"..."
Xue Ruihua and Xiaoxiao were at a loss for words.
"You're overthinking it... My cousin's always been easygoing. He doesn't like arguing with people, and he's always patient and humble. I've never seen him get into a serious argument with anyone." Xue Ruihua objected.
But no matter what she said, the girl with the bun was convinced Wang Yiyang had to be the kind of person she'd described.
"Think about it. Everyone has a temper. What reason would someone have to go from childhood to adulthood without ever really arguing or losing his temper with anyone? Why would he do that?
"If he weren't so dark and cold inside, he wouldn't need to go to all that trouble to hide who he is, right?" The girl with the bun's reasoning flowed smoothly, but somehow something about it felt wrong.
Xue Ruihua and Xiaoxiao couldn't refute her, but after listening to their friend's string of twisted arguments, they looked at Wang Yiyang again and began to feel that maybe there was something hidden beneath his smile.
But they quickly corrected themselves.
They knew the girl with the bun's warped logic had led them to read too much into things. In other words, they were overthinking it.
And that had led them to the wrong conclusion.
"Dudu, you're overthinking it. My brother's just an ordinary office worker. He has a good temper and a good personality. He loves his family and his work. He's responsible. He's not nearly as dark as you say." Xue Ruihua argued.
"You've been reading too many novels, haven't you? People in real life are all pretty ordinary. Why do you think everyone's got so much going on?" Xiaoxiao nodded in agreement.
"Don't you get it yet? You can tell a lot from the little details. What you see on the surface is just the surface. What's hidden underneath is terrifying!" The girl with the bun tried to convince them.
But her two friends didn't believe a word of it.
The three of them chattered and argued for a long time, but Xue Ruihua and Xiaoxiao still shook their heads and refused to believe her. They thought Dudu had become obsessed with her own theories.
Dudu hadn't taken her analysis all that seriously in the first place. But arguing with her two friends made her more and more unwilling to give in.
She knew she was right. Her theory was flawless! So why wouldn't they believe her?
The more she watched Wang Yiyang, the more she felt something was off. But she just didn't know how to convince her two friends to see what was wrong.
"What's going on?" Wang Yiyang noticed the three girls kept looking at him, so he smiled back at his cousin and her friends. But when the three of them awkwardly looked away, their expressions strange, he couldn't help feeling puzzled.
He rubbed his face. His smile seemed perfectly natural.
He'd practiced it since childhood, and that warm smile had always been his secret weapon. It could raise people's affinity toward him by one point the moment they met.
Why wasn't it working this time?
But the parents' meeting was almost over. His task was done, and all that remained was to wait quietly for the people from Guixi Town to finish assembling.
The people from Mister had all arrived an hour ago. They were now waiting for the Limit Martial Artists from Yanhu Sect and the Martial Alliance.
Some of the Limit Martial Artists had gone out temporarily and were far away, so it would take time for them to return one by one.
At last, the homeroom teacher went up to give a summary. Everyone applauded, then scanned a QR code with their phones and paid the fee.
And with that, the parents' meeting ended successfully.
Wang Yiyang stood up too and turned to Xue Ruihua.
"Are you heading straight home, or are you staying at school for a few days?"
"I'm going back with my classmates in a little while. Don't worry, I bought my ticket online in advance." Xue Ruihua gave a brief reply.
"Okay, then I'll call your dad first." Wang Yiyang nodded with a smile, took out his phone, and called her uncle.
Xue Ruihua watched him make the call. Compared with the other parents around them, he didn't seem any different.
He was just a little younger and more energetic than the people around him.
She thought that Wang Yiyang had a really good personality to make time to come all this way and attend the parents' meeting for her. He was good to people, too. There was no way he could be the sort of person who was dark inside but gentle on the outside.
Xiaoxiao came to the same conclusion at the same time.
The two exchanged glances and shook their heads helplessly, unable to do anything about the girl with the bun's wild imagination.
The girl with the bun was just as helpless.
The more she watched Wang Yiyang, the more she felt her theory was right.
But her two friends wouldn't believe her, no matter what she said. She'd been talking for ages, all to no avail.
Before long, the parents' meeting ended, and the crowd dispersed, leaving the classroom.
Dudu's mother was in a hurry to get back to her law firm. She told Dudu to go have dinner with her classmates and head home afterward, then hurried off by herself.
That worked perfectly for Dudu.
With her meddlesome mother out of the way, she kept her eyes on Xue Ruihua's cousin, Wang Yiyang, and watched him leave the classroom. He walked calmly and unhurriedly toward the school gate.
There's definitely something wrong with him! Dudu decided to follow him for a little while and see if she could find proof that would convince her two friends her theory was right.
She followed him out of the school gate and toward the nearby taxi stand.
Then, halfway there, Wang Yiyang seemed to run into someone he knew: a young woman who looked about his age.
Dudu pretended to play a game on her phone as she walked slowly along beside them, keeping an extremely careful eye on Wang Yiyang.
Wang Yiyang seemed to be chatting with the woman.
She held a white student backpack. She wore light makeup and was, at best, moderately attractive. Her neatly tailored gray skirt suit suggested she worked in an office, too.
But what puzzled Dudu was that the woman looked exhausted, as if she hadn't had a good night's sleep in ages.
To avoid being spotted, Dudu pretended she'd forgotten something and turned back after walking a little farther.
Now the woman had her back to Dudu, so Dudu couldn't see her expression. But she could see Wang Yiyang smiling. The two of them seemed to be having a pleasant, peaceful conversation.
They didn't talk for long. The woman lowered her head slightly and fell silent, apparently checking the time on her phone.
Wang Yiyang smiled as he walked past her. A black sedan had just pulled up beside him.
He opened the door, got in, and the car started up soundlessly, driving away into the distance.
Dudu frowned. She knew she hadn't followed him for long enough to figure out what her cousin's true nature was.
She felt a little frustrated. After all, she was still a student and didn't have that much time or energy.
Since she'd found nothing, she glanced at the woman who'd been talking to Wang Yiyang and prepared to head back to school to find her friends.
But that glance made her realize something was wrong.
Even though Wang Yiyang had already left, the woman was still standing there, head bowed, completely motionless.
Curious, Dudu hurried forward a few steps, wanting to get a look at her from another angle.
But the moment she rounded the corner, she saw the woman's face, twisted and streaked with tears.
Pain, regret, anger, a fierce grimace... Dudu had never seen so many different emotions gathered on a single face.
But now she had.
Tap.
A raindrop struck the back of her hand. Soon, the drops came faster and grew heavier.
For a moment, Dudu couldn't move. Her gaze was fixed on the woman's contorted face.
The light rain quickly became a downpour. Through the curtain of rain, the woman clutched her face and slowly crouched down.
"Ah!!!"
Suddenly, she let out a piercing scream.
Dudu jumped. Wang Yiyang's warm, friendly smile flashed through her mind.
At that moment, the contrast between his gentle smile and the woman's contorted expression seemed unmistakable.
The smile that had seemed so friendly before now seemed tied to the woman's piercing scream, sending a chill through Dudu.
Her mind was a complete mess. She couldn't think about anything else. She turned and ran.
Thanks to Worried Fritter for the support! If you're interested, you can also check out his A Top-Tier Immortal Cultivator. He's an experienced author, so you can count on the quality! ┐(′-｀)┌
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