She was in tears, staring fixedly at Lucas Walter: “But I didn’t do it. Even if you kill me, I won’t admit to something I didn’t do.”

Charlotte Lee walked out of the office without looking back.

A wave of overwhelming exhaustion and despair surged back, swallowing her whole.

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12. The Happiness of Blending into the Crowd

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When the exam bell rang, Zoe Young shot up from her seat. For a split second, Ray Cindy thought Zoe Young was about to rush over and tear her apart—she had never seen Zoe Young so angry.

No, maybe she had. But back then, she was too busy curling up into a ball, afraid to lift her head, only able to hear Ethan Xavier’s insults and Zoe Young’s indignant rebukes.

Mia Waters once said that Zoe Young was an indomitable Seiya. In her heart, there was always an Athena. For a moment, Ray Cindy was her Athena.

But right now, Zoe Young just looked at her with endless sorrow.

“I know it was you. I know for sure it was you.”

Ray Cindy instinctively wanted to defend herself, but defending herself had never been about the truth—just self-preservation.

But Zoe Young didn’t listen, nor did she speak, as if she couldn’t even be bothered to look at her. She grabbed her bag and rushed out the door.

This was only the first subject; the qualification exams were far from over.

But in this exam room, she was the only one left.

Ray Cindy’s heart sank heavily.

“Andrew Lane?”

“…Zoe?” Andrew Lane’s voice was tinged with surprise, and a joy he himself hadn’t noticed.

He gripped the phone tightly and scratched his head. “Um, the Chinese questions were kind of tough. What kind of weird, obscure stuff were those questions…”

He had already told himself long ago: since she rejected him, he would never bother her again, never.

And this wasn’t playing hard to get, definitely not. He told himself that in his heart.

“Cut the nonsense,” Zoe Young’s voice was urgent, with a fighting spirit and determination that Andrew Lane found both familiar and strange. “Charlotte Lee is in trouble. Which exam room are you in? I’m coming to find you now!”

Andrew Lane listened blankly as Zoe Young gave a brief explanation. After hanging up, he immediately dialed Charlotte Lee’s number.

Powered off.

He started to panic a little. Charles Johnson’s phone was also off—probably just finished the exam and hadn’t turned it back on yet.

“How did you do? The Chinese questions were a bit tough.” Thomas Chase had already reclaimed first place in the subsequent exams. Facing Andrew Lane, he was still magnanimous and calm, smiling amiably.

Andrew Lane didn’t know how to bring it up to Thomas Chase. Charlotte Lee seemed to have had no contact with Thomas Chase afterward, and out of consideration for Charlotte Lee’s pride, he had never asked.

In the end, he said it: “Zoe Young told me that Charlotte Lee was falsely accused of cheating and left the exam room.”

Thomas Chase tilted his head. “What? Falsely accused?”

As he spoke, Zoe Young had already climbed the stairs and rushed over.

“I just called our homeroom teacher. He said the punishment hasn’t been decided yet, and Charlotte Lee already left the school with her bag.”

“…She won’t do anything drastic, will she?” Andrew Lane was a little panicked. He had always known Charlotte Lee’s temperament—though she had learned to act more obedient as she grew up, at her core, she hadn’t changed at all from when she was a child.

Zoe Young shook her head. “I don’t know. I have a really bad feeling.”

Andrew Lane made a snap decision: “Let’s go. I’ll pack up my things, and we’ll go look for her together.”

Thomas Chase stood there awkwardly. When Andrew Lane grabbed his bag and ran back, he was stunned, and for the first time, spoke his mind directly: “Are you crazy? Aren’t you going to take the exam?”

Andrew Lane smiled. “Well, Thomas Chase, do your best.”

Zoe Young gave Andrew Lane a meaningful look, grabbed his wrist, and dragged him away.

Thomas Chase leaned against the door, unable to understand. He stood there in a daze for a while before remembering he still had a few pages of biology left to review, so he returned to his seat, took out his textbook, and gently opened it.

But the image of those two running out with their bags, abandoning the exam, lingered in his mind. Thomas Chase had always known he hadn’t done anything wrong. He was always a kid who knew what was important, who knew what really mattered.

But those two figures kept stepping across the pages of his biology book, leaving a trail of confusing, unsettling footprints.

When Charlotte Lee walked out of the office, she suddenly felt a ridiculous sense of freedom.

On the road, she saw Jason Carter. He was complaining about the Chinese exam questions in a shrill voice. When he saw Charlotte Lee, a mocking smile appeared at the corner of his mouth.

“How did you do, princess?”

Charlotte Lee suddenly laughed. She looked into Jason Carter’s eyes. His hostility had tormented her on and off for two whole years, but now, she was finally free.

“Jason Carter, can you shut up? Just hearing your voice, like a cat’s tail being stepped on, gives me a headache.”

For the first time, she felt like she could breathe easily.

After leaving the school gate, she didn’t know where to go, so she randomly got on a bus, rode it to the end of the line, then got on another, and rode that one to the end as well…

From one terminal to another, she always sat in the back corner, staring blankly out the window at the changing scenery. The ground in winter was covered with dirty black snow, and the gray city felt cold and grimy.

When she finally looked up, she was surprised to find herself standing in front of the music academy on the outskirts of town.

She remembered that when she was little, she, Andrew Lane, and Charles Johnson would come here almost every summer to take music exams. After two years, they reached level five, then the next year level six, the third year level eight. In the fifth year, she and Andrew Lane went for level ten, while Charles Johnson dutifully took level nine.

The last summer, the music academy was being expanded. There were large patches of weeds around the buildings, and the endless wilderness made all three of them forget to breathe.

Someone once said that musicians need to be close to nature to understand the true meaning of heavenly music. But inside the hall, the children were nervous and anxious because of the exams, like mass-produced machines, and there wasn’t a trace of soul in the notes they played—they really didn’t understand what they were playing.

Charlotte Lee could no longer find that wilderness. The old field had been built over with new teaching buildings, and then those new buildings became old. The sky that once stretched freely was now chopped into tiny fragments. She looked up and couldn’t see her childhood anymore.

Be a good child. The exam results must be “excellent,” and she must be first place. At dinner parties, the children were brought out to sing and say polite things to liven up the atmosphere, while the adults below commented on which child was the most poised, the most well-behaved, the most mature—she had to win at least one “most.”

But it seemed no one remembered that the goodness of a good child was really about the heart.

At the most critical moment, no one said, “I believe you didn’t cheat.”

No one believed her. She really wanted to know, when her mother fainted, was her heartbreak because she was hurt for her daughter, or just because she was panicking about losing face?

Charlotte Lee realized she wasn’t actually that sad. She seemed to have gone numb long ago, just standing in the middle of the plaza surrounded by buildings, letting the cold wind blow, thinking of nothing.

A few minutes later, she left the campus, got in a taxi, and told the driver, “Provincial Government Kindergarten.”

The scenery outside the window flowed by. The provincial government kindergarten was still the same as before—old but familiar. Charlotte Lee thought of the old lady in charge of the hot lunch boxes, who must have passed away by now. Back then, they always competed to see who could eat the fastest and cleanest, showing off their empty aluminum lunch boxes to the teacher. Charles Johnson always ate slowly, and Charlotte Lee would scold him for holding back their group, but Charles Johnson would leisurely say, “If you eat too fast, it’s bad for digestion.”

And the swings. They always fought over the swings, but once she got one, the boys would all crowd around, eager to push her. She would glare and say loudly, “I can swing really high by myself, I don’t need you!”

Back then, the evening sky always looked like grape ice cream. They ate doll-head popsicles and popping candy, talking about what they would do in the future.

In the end, all those “what ifs” turned into the reality of this moment.

Charlotte Lee was freezing, so she ducked into a nearby department store. The cosmetics counter on the first floor was always bright and soft. There were very few people in the store, just a few female students in white uniforms with “29 中” printed on them, wandering around, not buying anything, as if, like her, they were just trying to keep warm.

Suddenly, she heard a girl say, “Fiona James, Fiona James, come look, doesn’t this necklace look like yours?”