Kapitel 106: 1.3.28: Back to Square One

Even though Xiao Yunhua felt immense pain, she found herself slowly waking up. When she turned her head and gazed at her setting, the familiarity of it made her freeze. She was in her old room with her novels stacked and the familiar dust everywhere. The poor material of her bed covers and her hard bed made Xiao Yunhua assume that such was the source of her pain. She took a sharp breath. Slowly getting off the bed, she glanced and saw her short, chubby legs. The realization of the current reality hit her hard.

Xiao Yunhua dashed out of the room and went into the bathroom. The large mirror in the nearest bathroom was mere inches from her face. She didn't have the guts to look up and see the reality she would have to expect. Her breath was ragged and her hands were fisted tightly. She ignored the nails that dug deeply into her skin and ignored the dull pain that had yet to cease since the beginning. Finally, with a deep breath, she looked up.

And she saw the face that she had been teased for during her eighteen years of existence. It hadn't been the flawless face she grew used to ignoring, but the face that haunted her and her world. The face that had managed to get her in so much trouble. With its characteristics such as the acne, pores, crooked nose, small but deep eyes... the only thing that was the true abnormality was her frown and the warm tears that streamed down her cheeks. Her heart felt heavy and she clenched her shirt on the side of her heart, almost as though she was giving it relief. But really, what relief? She was back to square one. Everything was a lie. There was no system, no beauty, no love. It had all been her imagination playing a very cruel yet tragic joke on her.

"Xiao Taotao?" She called out softly, anxious for the reply. There was none. She repeated the name, even louder. Still, no one responded.

She felt her knees go weak and fell on the floor. Her silent tears transformed into something much more intense as she cried with every fiber of her being. "Why?" She whimpered softly. "I finally had a chance to be someone worth something..." Mindlessly, she stood up and walked back to her room. The silly, romantic novels that she constantly wasted her time over were piled up and all over her room. With dead eyes, she scanned the dreadful place that she had lived in for the past eighteen years.

Suddenly, the sound of keys jangling made her freeze. Quietly, she walked out of the room and glanced at the entrance of the house. The doorknob turned and someone entered the house. Xiao Yunhua's eyes met with the person that entered. That person's expression turned malicious, very familiar to Xiao Yunhua.

"What are you doing?" The person snarled angrily. The person made Xiao Yunhua shiver in fear. This was her stepmother, Meng Wan, the woman who made her life a living hell for the duration of living in this house. She had been surrounded by so many people that loved her that she forgot about her real world of how lonely she really was. Meng Wan dropped the bag she had in her hands and angrily stormed to the top of the stairs, where stood a frozen Xiao Yunhua.

"You vile leech! You were supposed to be cleaning the house, so why is it that I come back to see you standing like an idiot!? Look at the dust!" Her fingers swiped on imaginary dust on the stairway. Her footsteps stopped when she was standing in front of Xiao Yunhua. Seeing no reaction from her, Meng Wan grew angry. Grabbing and pulling her hair down the stairs, she pushed her down and demanded her stepdaughter to clean like she was supposed to.

"You're already eighteen and still being a stupid bitch. All the money and years I wasted on raising you, yet you can't even do a simple chore." By 'a simple chore,' Meng Wan really meant the long list she would always leave for Xiao Yunhua, to exhaust and humiliate her.

Xiao Yunhua, with shaking knees, stood up and used her hands to pull away the hair that covered her face. Her immense pain from earlier seemed to multiply ten tenfold and she felt even dizzier than before. "Hurry up or else there will be consequences. Xiao Xiu will be bringing over Jiang Rong for dinner."

"J-Jiang R-Rong?" Xiao Yunhua fearfully muttered, the number 512 and the incidents following it running fervently in her mind.

"Don't tell me you still have silly delusions... You will never be good enough."

'I know...' She thought sadly in her head. It wasn't about Jiang Rong, it was her life in general.

Living with such a bitter life, how could she not know.

That dream was beautiful.

All the people she met, all those who cared about her. It was brief yet enlightening.

Before she could do any type of cleaning, her stepsister, Xiao Huaxiu and her boyfriend appeared. Their cruel actions replayed in Xiao Yunhua's mind like a broken record. Xiao Huaxiu crinkled her nose in disgust. Albeit she was beautiful on the outside, she was rotten on the inside to the utmost levels; however, only a few knew this. She was still the angelic girl whom all girls at their school, including Xiao Yunhua at a certain period, aspired to be.

"Mother, tell her to hurry up or else I may not have the appetite for dinner." Xiao Huaxiu was demanding, but Meng Wan adored her daughter so much that she ignored the crude attitude. She did, however, didn't forget to yell at Xiao Yunhua to finish what she was doing later as they had already arrived. Xiao Yunhua turned around to leave, Xiao Huaxiu asked her one question that made her stop.

"So you really thought you had a chance?" She laughed and a malicious smile spread on her face. When she noticed that Xiao Yunhua did not react nor answer her, she yelled at her the question again.

By the tone of her words, it was like she knew everything that had happened in her silly imagination. Xiao Yunhua was tired of it all. She weakly murmured, "I did."

"A chance to be someone you're not?"

"I did."

A chance to be beautiful?"

"...I did."

Xiao Huaxiu's taunts did not cease and she mocked, "So you did all those awful things for superficial beauty? So desperate; no matter how much you buy your beauty, you will always be ugly on the inside because of your wicked deeds."

"I know! All a silly fantasy... I know." Her throbbing head felt like someone was hammering at her head. The pain was so overwhelming that everything began to spill rapidly and she felt her eyelids growing heavy. The pain even made her feel like her shoulders were being shaken; no longer able to tolerate, she passed out.