Hearing Jiang Wei ask about her personal task, Lin Xiao realized that she was too quick to speak just now and carelessly exposed the fact that she had also received a personal task.
Lin Xiao couldn’t help but hesitate. “I… I… I received a personal task to…”
Seeing Lin Xiao’s embarrassed appearance, Jiang Wei just smiled. “It’s nothing. It’s not important. It doesn’t matter if you can’t say it.”
“No, I’m…” Lin Xiao’s expression looked like she was struggling.
Did she want to be honest that her personal task was to take the others’ lives to clear the world task?
But soon, Lin Xiao looked around and found that Wu Qing and his slaves had already left the shop. They exited into the darkness outside and disappeared.
So the people who remained in An Yu Yi Yu at the moment were people Lin Xiao was familiar with. That is, Jiang Wei and Ayu who were locked up with her for a long time on the third floor of the teaching building.
Although Ayu’s identity was unknown, Lin Xiao had always been faithful about the favorability he had gained. Coupled with the appearance of his thick thighs <sup>1</sup> as a functional NPC, Lin Xiao didn’t want to treat him as an outsider.
The only one who was an outsider would be…
Lin Xiao glanced at the man with the dark tattoos at the corner of his eyes standing in the darkness, and once again showed a conflicted expression that was familiar to Su Zimo.
From the first time he saw the face of that female student, Su Zimo knew that Lin Xiao was hiding a secret in her heart. She desperately wanted to confide in others, but she resisted and refused to say it in any way.
And now, Lin Xiao’s face showed that expression again, lowering Su Zimo’s favorability toward her by three points.
Su Zimo glances at the upright piano in the shop and spoke calmly. “Don’t be nervous. If you’re nervous, you can try listening to some soothing music.”
Just as he spoke the word ‘music,’ the cover on the upright piano suddenly opened, startling Lin Xiao who was standing next to it.
Then an amazing scene appeared. The keys of the piano were pressed without anyone touching them, and unfamiliar notes began to jump from the keys. The cheerful music flowed out like they were jumping in the rain, and the originally quiet An Yu Yi Yu became lively.
Peng Peng played as Su Zimo had intended, but instead of playing the chaotic version that made people want to vent their desires and tell the truth, he chose a cheerful version. It was a small adaptation of the original, so the originally sad song bounced cheerfully.
It sounded like an ordinary tune, but Su Zimo noticed Lin Xiao’s eyes gradually blurred under its influence.
“Uncle Jiang received such a personal task, it’s because Uncle is a good person, right?” Lin Xiao spoke blankly. Her eyes were unfocused and she seemed to be muttering to herself. “And I received such a personal task because I must be a bad person.”
Obviously Peng Peng didn’t play the version that had special power, but Lin Xiao still appeared to be affected.
There was only one explanation he could think of — An Yu Yi Yu was becoming more powerful, so Peng Peng, as a staff member, was also improving.
“I said before that the reason I want to return right away is because tomorrow… No, today is the repayment date for Jiele Hua, right?” Lin Xiao took a few steps back, lowered her head, and leaned against the wall by the piano. “Really, if I was just borrowing money from Jiele Hua, I wouldn’t need to worry.”
“In addition to the 10,000 yuan that can be overdrawn from Jiele Hua, I also borrowed a lot of money from messy and illegal external financial programs.” Lin Xiao didn’t dare look at the expressions on their faces at all.
“How much did you borrow?” Jiang Wei’s voice became serious.
“…A year after entering university, I paid back nearly 100,000 yuan, buy there’s still more than 100,000 left.” Lin Xiao said simply to all of them. “I acted glamorous in front of my classmates and friends, and I pretended to be happy in front of my parents. No one knows that there’s over fifty different loan programs on my cell phone.”
“You’re a student, why do you need so much money?” Jiang Wei couldn’t help but gasp.
“Except for the 7000 or so from the beginning, the other money is useless to me.” Lin Xiao bit her lower lip.
“From just 7000 to over 200,000?” Su Zimo couldn’t help but blink. “You mean, you borrowed around 7000 but owe over 200000 in debt?”
Su Zimo had been handling finances for a long time, so he could calculate the terrible interest rates and various issues involved in that. He heard that people had been deceived because of various loan programs, but it’s the first time he had actually met someone.
Lin Xiao nodded and continued.
“My family isn’t particularly well off, but they give me 2000 yuan per month for living expenses, which isn’t much compared to my classmates. But two of my roommates are girls with a lot of family money, and they often lend us expensive cosmetics and skin care products.”
“I don’t like borrowing other people’s things that much. I’ve been spoiled by my family since I was a child, and I don’t like feeling inferior to others. I started to borrow money from Jiele Hua and silently bought the same skin care products and cosmetics as them. Soon rumours began to appear that my family was well off.”
“Some lies start small, then there are hundreds of them, especially for people like me who can’t bear to see how different they are or the eyes of their classmates when the reality of the situation is discovered.” Lin Xiao pinched her arm harshly.
“Later, the latest Fruit phone went on sale. The two girls in my dorm had been talking about it for days. They wanted to ask their families for money to replace the phones they bought over summer vacation. They also said there was a way to preorder, and asked if I wanted to join them.”
“My cell phone was bought specially by my family after I entered university. It was a brand with high performance and good reputation. It was impossibly for my family to spend over 6000 to replace my phone at that time. I also knew there was no need to join them for that kind of meaningless thing, but I didn’t hold back and agreed to join them.”
“I’d long used up the borrowed money from Jiele Hua. I researched methods on the internet, then found programs for borrowing money.” Lin Xiao pinched herself again, as if she couldn’t express her own chagrin just once. “When I came to my senses, I had already borrowed 7000 yuan from the program, but because it would directly deduct the interest when withdrawing cash, I only had about 6000 yuan in hand.”
“I wasted all of my money to buy a phone that was completely unnecessary, and then I had to return 7000 yuan to the loan program within two weeks.” Lin Xiao laughed self-deprecatingly.
“My idea at the time was very simple. I had to go home every other week, so I was going to secretly take the bank card with my new year’s money from my parents’ room after going home, then withdraw the money and pay it back.”
“But as soon as I returned home, I found out that… my whole word had fallen apart.” Lin Xiao lowered herself slowly against the wall. “My mother was hospitalized for surgery while I was at school but didn’t tell me about it because she didn’t want me to worry. The operation went smoothly but my family wasn’t without any surgical fees. Because my family’s scheduled bank deposit hadn’t passed yet, my family borrowed my new year’s money so they wouldn’t accrue interest.”
“After returning home, my parents apologized to me. They felt it was wrong to do so without discussing it with me first, and they discussed with each other about taking out a bank loan to return it to me.”
“I didn’t know what to think… I looked at my parents’ apologetic expressions, and my mother’s weak face after surgery, and how much they cared about concealing her illness to let me study without worry. I couldn’t tell them that I wanted them to withdraw the money.”
“So I rejected their offer, saying that I had enough money and didn’t need the new year’s money I had saved. In the end, I could only run away from the relief in their eyes…”
“The time left for me to repay the loan was less than two weeks. I was desperately looking for some daily work, wanting to make more money to pay it back, but with two weeks… how would it be possible?!”
At that point, Lin Xiao’s voice was teary.
“In the last few days of the repayment period, the customer service representative from the loan program urged me to repay the money. After the other party knew it was impossible for me to repay that much money, they introduced me to another loan program that would let me borrow money to repay the other loan program. I would tear down the east wall to repair the west wall.”
“I didn’t want to do such a thing, but the customer service representative said that if I didn’t repay in time, they would immediately call my friends, family, classmates, and other people in my address book about debt repayment, so everyone would know what I had borrowed and not repaid!”
“That kind of thing… how could I accept it?”
“I thought it was just a scare tactic at first, but after I checked online, I found out that it was true. There are even a lot of news reports about that kind of thing.” Lin Xiao’s breaths became more anxious. “After confirming, I downloaded the program recommended by the customer service representative without much thought.”
“I originally only planned to borrow 7000 yuan from the other program, but that program also deducted interest in advance like the original, so I borrowed over 8000 yuan to repay the loan, deducting interest as well as the money I made over a few days.”
“But I didn’t feel relieved at all… my debt had increased again.”
“Each time I borrow money, it lasts for two weeks or even as short as a week. It’s impossible to pay off the debt. Each time the debt isn’t paid, a customer service representative will recommend a new program to me… The programs in my phone are becoming more and more numerous. What’s ridiculous is that the customer service representative of several of the programs turned out to be the same person. It was only then that I realized I had been tricked by a scam.”
“But even if I realized it, it was useless. I absolutely couldn’t let people learn about what I had borrowed from the internet to maintain my lifestyle.” Lin Xiao grit her teeth and said, “For the next year or so, I lived an inhuman life in order to save money.”
“I bought the cheapest milk powder and put it in a jar. Every morning, I secretly dissolve some when they eat breakfast. I only put a little bit in hot water each time to make it white, and I lie and tell them it’s the latest milk weight loss method. I only buy the cheapest vegetables from the cafeteria for lunch. I lie about losing weight by drinking plain boiled water and eating plain and tasteless food!”
“For a while, because I couldn’t bear living like that, I lied about moving out, but I actually found a restaurant far away from the school to work night shifts. I started work at 7pm and got off at 11pm. I also took over the work about checking over the store at night. After the store closed, I slept on the floor in there.”
“At the same time, I also got a job as a tutor. As soon as school ended, I would go to the student’s home and then go to the restaurant to work.”
“Although I’m exhausted, my monthly payment is more than my dad’s, and there’s enough food to eat every night.”
“During summer and winter vacation, I simply told my family that I had to stay at school for something, then found a temporary job where other students couldn’t find out.”
“In just half of a school year, I saved over 100,000 yuan, and all of it went into those bottomless pits that cannibalize people without even spitting out their bones!” <sup>2</sup>
“Aaaahhhh! If there weren’t any rich people at the beginning, it would have been great if I didn’t buy that phone!”
Su Zimo was also a bit emotional when he heard that — a girl who got herself into a cell phone loan scam for several thousand yuan actually relying on her own abilities to save 100,000 yuan in under a year by working part time.
The gap between before and after was really astounding.
“But this semester, I ran into a few classmates while working in the back kitchen of that restaurant. Although I quickly avoided them and they didn’t seem to notice when I saw them in school, I couldn’t fall asleep for several nights, so I grit my teeth and quit my job.”
“Without my job at the restaurant, I could only return to the dorm. I couldn’t raise my funds for a while, and the amount I borrowed rose day by day. Tomorrow is my next repayment date. With such a large amount of money, the matter can’t be hidden any longer.”
Lin Xiao hid her face. “Before entering the nightmare world, I had been begging the mother of the student I was tutoring, hoping she could pay me in advance for an emergency.”
“I begged for a long time before she relented… but then I arrived in thin ghost place the next second!” Lin Xiao couldn’t help but lose her voice from the pain.
After a while, Lin Xiao continued through her tears. “The advance tuition fee should have been paid, but the nightmare world has no internet at all! I can only pay back the money after I leave here!”
“But if it’s late… If it’s late, everyone will know about the money I borrowed. There won’t be a way to hide!”
“If that’s the case, what worth is the life worse than death that I lived in the past year! What worth is it!!!!”
Uncle Jiang Wei hated iron for not becoming steel. “You made a mistake at the beginning. The program you downloaded is full of nothing but loan sharks. They’re cheating you of money. You have evidence to report the crime. Why are you being stupid and making mistakes again and again!”
“If I report the crime, wouldn’t that still let everyone know?” Lin Xiao had tears on her face.
Su Zimo could see that from the perspective of the sophomore girl, her face seemed to be more important than her fate. That was the reason why she was so odd when she was trapped in the classroom.
“I know I’m a fool, I’m a terrible person! That’s why the nightmare world gave me such a personal task.” Lin Xiao crouched in the corner and buried her head between her knees. “This nightmare world seemed to know that I’m anxious to rush back. The personal task it arranged for me is…”
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“Every time I get rid of a fellow trainer, I can deduct the number of supernatural events for task clearance.” Lin Xiao’s voice was dull. “The worst thing about me is that I actually considered doing this task earlier, but there was no way for someone like me to get rid of another person. I even waited for a knife just to find out that I don’t even have the ability to get rid of myself.”
Peng Peng’s ‘Music of the Dead’ was still ongoing, and Lin Xiao seemed to be influenced by his special power to say something that she had been desperately trying to say but didn’t dare to.
After speaking, she continued crying and venting.
It was difficult for Su Zimo to imagine how she was feeling, so he wouldn’t comment on such things.
He said to Wu Qing long ago that ‘everyone has freedom to do everything. Just don’t think about controlling what others think of you,’ so his views weren’t important to Lin Xiao.
“This is the end of the matter. You can only take it one step at a time.” Jiang Wei was obviously not good at comforting others either. “Wu Qing and the others may have cleared the task. You can go back and do what you want, or you can choose… to turn back to the shore.” <sup>3</sup>
Lin Xiao curled up and cried, not answering.
The sound of the piano gradually came to a stop; the goal was achieved.
Su Zimo seemed to see a boy’s translucent figure making an ‘OK’ gesture at him.
“It shouldn’t be that fast.” Su Zimo glanced outside the store and looked at Jiang Wei. “Don’t you want to know which prop I would recommend to you?”
Jiang Wei came back to his senses, remembering what he had forgotten earlier. He remembered the terms he set with Su Zimo earlier, but was immersed in Lin Xiao’s depressing story and didn’t remember for a while.
“I thought that this prop fit Mr. Jiang’s personality. Now that I know Mr. Jiang’s personal task, I feel that it is most suitable for you.” Su Zimo picked up the contract paper on the counter and handed it to Lin Xiao. He then walked over to the few items on the mostly empty second shelf.
Footnotes
<ol>Thick thighs meaning Lin Xiao thinks SZ is powerful. They take advantage of people without caring about how it will affect them. To repent or make amends.</ol>