2
As Sage said, after Lily moved out, our room’s schedule became more harmonious.
Basically, by 9 PM, when other rooms were still laughing and playing around, we had already cleaned up and were ready to turn off the lights and sleep.
However, one day, Wendy suddenly asked me, “Aria, what time did you come back last night?”
“Huh?” I was confused by her question, “Didn’t I come back right after dinner?”
Wendy said, “I mean when you left the room later.”
I was completely baffled, “Later? I didn’t. I went to sleep right after showering.”
“You didn’t go out after 9?” Wendy’s voice became strange.
I didn’t know why she was asking this, but I still answered, “No, I’ve always been a good sleeper, I don’t get up at night, I sleep straight through till morning.”
“Are you sure?” Wendy’s face looked troubled.
I sensed something was off and asked back, “What’s wrong?”
She stared at me for a while, then quickly averted her gaze, saying, “Nothing.”
She said it was nothing, but after asking me, she seemed distracted, stealing glances at me from time to time.
Whenever I caught her gaze, she would immediately pretend to be busy.
Her strange attitude made me uneasy.
That night, I had trouble sleeping for once, had a nightmare, and woke up in a cold sweat.
The room was pitch black.
It wasn’t dawn yet.
I didn’t know what time it was.
Still thinking about the nightmare, my heart was racing. Suddenly, I felt someone at the foot of my bed. Glancing over, I saw Wendy standing on the ladder of my bed, half of her body inside my mosquito net.
The expression on her face was strangely exaggerated, staring at me in terror.
“Ah!!!”
I screamed in fright, flipping over and bolting upright in bed.
“Ahhh!!!”
An even more terrified scream came from Wendy’s mouth.
Followed by a loud crash.
She fell off my bed onto the floor.
Sage and I rushed Wendy to the hospital in the middle of the night.
The doctor examined her and said, “It’s not serious, just a sprained leg, we’ll set it right and it’ll be fine.”
However, Wendy insisted that the doctor give her a CT scan to thoroughly check her brain.
I asked Wendy, “What were you doing sneaking up to my bed in the middle of the night?”
She avoided the question, not answering directly.
The day she returned from the hospital, Wendy secretly went to the counselor to apply for a room change.
The counselor called Sage and me for a talk.
“Aria,” she hinted meaningfully, “don’t focus so much on scholarships that you neglect getting along with other students. Dorm relationships also need to be carefully maintained.”
“What do you mean?” Sage heard the implication in the counselor’s words and indignantly said, “Isn’t Aria considerate enough? Knowing Lily’s family condition wasn’t good, she gave up her financial aid to Lily and worked hard for scholarships herself. What did she do wrong?”
“If anyone’s wrong, shouldn’t we ask Wendy?”
“Why did she climb onto Aria’s bed in the middle of the night?”
“What was she trying to do?”
“Why doesn’t she even give an explanation? Just because she fell and hurt herself?”
The counselor glared at Sage, as if too lazy to deal with her, and softened her tone to advise me, “Aria, when one person applies to change rooms, it might be that person’s issue, but when two people apply to change rooms, maybe we need to look for reasons within ourselves. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Counselor,” I asked directly, “Are they changing rooms because of me?”
“They didn’t say it explicitly,” the counselor paused briefly, “but when they mentioned you, their attitudes were consistently strange.”
“Okay, I understand, I’ll reflect on myself.”
“What’s there to reflect on?” Coming out of the counselor’s office, Sage folded her arms, looking annoyed, “The counselor just knows how to pick on the easy target.”
I didn’t respond.
I noticed the counselor’s choice of words.
She said “strange.”
The series of events that had happened recently gave me the same feeling.
I wanted to talk to Wendy and Lily, but they had blocked me, and the messages I sent showed glaring red exclamation marks.
I tried to find them during class time.
They always pretended to be chatting with others, deliberately ignoring my existence, their attitudes extremely cold.
After several attempts at friendliness were met with indifference, I had no choice but to give up.
