Derailment - Chapter 18

That night, Qi Lian indeed took Jiang Xiaoyuan to a low-key hotpot gathering. He mingled with the crowd, shining brightly, and seemed to be able to chat with anyone.

Following closely and anxiously, Jiang Xiaoyuan asked, “Are you really my… her… you know – fellow villager?”

Qi Lian didn’t even turn his head, “Within a few dozen kilometers, if you want to count it, then sure. But I just said that to get closer to them.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan was momentarily choked, “How do you know everyone here?”

“I don’t recognize any of them, not even half.” Qi Lian replied matter-of-factly, “They’re no harder to fool than you.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan: “…”

Which of his words was true? Is there no reliable partner left?

The people who came were all kinds of people, doing all kinds of things, and didn’t seem as familiar with each other as Jiang Xiaoyuan had imagined. It felt more like an online forum or a hometown-themed meetup where no one knew she wasn’t the original one.

Jiang Xiaoyuan tugged at Qi Lian, “You said someone is looking for me, is it…”

“I contacted the person,” Qi Lian said, “They haven’t arrived yet. Don’t worry, go grab some food first.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan was incredibly anxious, thinking, “How can I eat? Am I that carefree?”

… Fifteen minutes later, after finishing a plate of beef alone, Jiang Xiaoyuan realized that she was indeed that carefree.

Eating hot pot with strangers was something Jiang Xiaoyuan thought was too pretentious. It was a big broken pot, filled with fishy smells, meaty smells, purines, gutter oil, and saliva. Chopsticks were used to fight each other like a hail of bullets.

However, at this moment, Jiang Xiaoyuan couldn’t complain about this hotpot with meat, vegetables, and shrimp balls, because her diet for the past few days was as follows:

At the internet café, she couldn’t spend more than five yuan per meal and couldn’t leave for too long. She had to eat nearby the internet cafe, so she devised two meal plans: set A was soy milk and pancakes, and set B was buns and bottled water. Rotating between these three times a day for a week, she turned yellow and black, looking like a pancake herself.

After arriving at Boss Chen’s shop, she ate the same pre-ordered boxed meals every day. The lunch boxes were sponsored by a shady local kitchen. The sanitary conditions were worrying. There was an all-inclusive insect museum in the lunch box every day. Occasionally, there was a special treat—one boy even found a steamed gecko in his rice and was so touched he cried and fasted for three days.

In comparison, this hotpot was a feast—she wouldn’t have been able to afford it herself.

Halfway through the dinner that day, several middle-aged people hurried over.

Qi Lian whispered to her who those people were, and Jiang Xiaoyuan quickly wiped her mouth clean, lowered her eyes, and greeted them obediently, listening to their nagging.

Feeling guilty, she dared not say much, fearing she’d give something away.

From their rambling complaints, she gradually pieced together what the original Jiang Xiaoyuan was like.

n this world, Jiang Xiaoyuan’s parents had long been divorced. Her mother had been out of contact for many years, and her father had died of an illness from his early years of work, leaving only an old grandmother to live with her.

Her elderly grandmother, who was in poor health and required constant medication, causing their financial situation to deteriorate. Jiang Xiaoyuan dropped out of high school to tend to their small land and do odd jobs in local factories, earning a meager wage. But as her grandmother’s medical expenses grew,  she gradually became unable to continue. So she decided to leave home and find work, hoping for better luck.

Unfortunately, luck was like an eggshell. You can’t touch it. If you touch it, you’ll be done for.

The self-proclaimed third aunt, slightly tipsy, draped her arm around Jiang Xiaoyuan’s shoulder and scolded her incessantly, “If you have no money, you can borrow some. If you get into university and find a proper job, won’t you be able to pay it back? Isn’t that better than struggling for little gain? Think about it carefully, will you regret it later?”

Jiang Xiaoyuan casually replied: “Anyway, I’m not good at studying, it’s a waste to study…”

This statement was theoretically sound. After all, Jiang Xiaoyuan in the parallel universe is still Jiang Xiaoyuan, looks the same, has the same genes, and Jiang Xiaoyuan knows her level very well.

Before she could finish, her aunt slapped her on the back, “Nonsense! If you can’t do it, who can? You ranked first in the county in the high school entrance exam and got half your tuition waived!  Oh, everyone praised you back then, saying you would go to Tsinghua or Peking University in the future. What happened to you… sigh!”

Jiang Xiaoyuan was knocked forward by the slap, and the half-burnt cake in her hand fell to the ground and shattered with a “crack.”

“First in the county,” she exclaimed, her eyes wide with disbelief, “Me?”

This must have been someone else taking the exam for her then, right?

Her aunt rolled her eyes, “Of course.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan gasped blankly, raised her hand to wipe the crumbs of the burnt cake from the corners of her mouth, and unable to resolve the shock in her heart, she could only look up at the sky, hoping to have a good talk with the spirits in the other dimensions.

It took Jiang Xiaoyuan a full five minutes to digest this news, and a wave of uncontrollable sadness welled up in her chest after the realization – it turned out that there was a version of her in another dimension who was so successful. Yet, despite her success, fate still refused to show her any kindness, first making her struggle to survive and then letting her die young.

In exchange for this fake product, she had to take the fall.

Jiang Xiaoyuan’s mood plummeted, lasting until she returned to the shop, reeking of hotpot.

She got out of the car absentmindedly and was greeted by a face full of the cold indifference of the night wind. Qi Lian rolled down the car window and said, “Sigh.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan turned back to look at him, her expression somber.

Qi Lian handed her a wallet, “I noticed you need some autumn-winter clothes. Take what you need. This is all the cash I have today. If you need more, come to me later.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan looked at him in shock, then at his unremarkable Volkswagen. “Are you rich?”

Qi Lian tapped the car door with his wallet. “Not as rich as your family, but I’ll do my best. After all, I owe someone a favor, and now I have to repay it.”

Jiang Xiaoyuan didn’t understand what he meant at first. She stood in the cold wind for a while before she slowly realized it.

“Wait,” she looked at Qi Lian in disbelief, “do you think I can’t live without money, that I’ll run back to the lighthouse and commit suicide like those people, ruining your plans?”

“I didn’t mean that,” Qi Lian said. “Don’t overthink it.”

For the first time in her life, Jiang Xiaoyuan could read someone’s face. Qi Lian was saying the opposite of what he meant.

“What do you think I am, a useless waste who can’t live without handouts?” Jiang Xiaoyuan looked at Qi Lian’s handsome face and suddenly flared up. “I get it. In your eyes, I’m just a more manageable burden than those people before. As long as someone pays for me to live, I can just stay here and be a deadbeat, right?”

Qi Lian: “…”

Understanding why Xu Jingyang chose Jiang Xiaoyuan, Qi Lian indeed saw her as an easier task—compared to the previous ones, her situation was indeed the easiest to deal with.

Jiang Xiaoyuan: “Let me tell you, I’m not short of money!”

She was a lazy princess, but before she was lazy, she was a princess first.

After this outburst, Jiang Xiaoyuan stormed off, not wanting to see Qi Lian or his lousy car again.

“Hey, I heard that your grandmother in your hometown needs medical treatment too,” Qi Lian quickly stopped her, “Medical treatment costs money too, or do you not want to take care of her at all because she’s not your biological grandmother?”

Jiang Xiaoyuan shouted without looking back, “None of your business, I’ll figure it out!”

Jiang Xiaoyuan barged into the store with a head full of anger – the room Chen Fangzhou had arranged for her was in the back. As she pushed the door open with force, she was still making unrealistic vows in her heart: “One day I’ll be successful, and I’ll throw that broken wallet in your faces!”

The two people who had been chatting inside the store stopped and turned to look at her.

Jiang Xiaoyuan had an impression of both of them. One of them was Helen, the senior technician who came out to ask Chen Fangzhou and the others if they could leave on the day of her assessment – apart from Chen Fangzhou and the other uncle, the technical director, there were only three senior technicians in the store, all of whom had gone abroad to learn their craft at their own expense, each with a half-Chinese, half-foreign foreign name.

Helen was twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old, with thick eyebrows and big eyes, quite beautiful. She had a lot of work experience and was articulate. Every month, she was the one who issued the most membership cards, and she was a pillar of the store with a detached status. Even the boss, Chen, would give her some face.

The other girl was short and fat, an intern technician, the one who had ridiculed Jiang Xiaoyuan that day. Her name seemed to be “Little K”, and her real name was unknown.

This was a day off for the shop, but the two were still there, with Helen demonstrating techniques on a mannequin for Little K.

Jiang Xiaoyuan stopped in her tracks and remembered—in twenty days, before the peak season at the end of the year, the store was going to have a big assessment. Those who passed could get a promotion.

She had been so caught up in her own troubles that she hadn’t given it much thought.

Anyway, it was impossible for her to get promoted to anything in just over a month.

Interns rarely got to cut hair; they mostly applied chemicals for perms and dyes. If there were no dedicated shampooers, they’d earn extra for washing hair. Jiang Xiaoyuan’s arrival had cut into this income, so Little K naturally resented her.

Seeing Jiang Xiaoyuan enter, Little K forced a condescending smile on her round face, her eyes darting to Jiang Xiaoyuan’s long hair and legs, her expression dismissive. Covering her mouth with her hand, she whispered something to Helen while glancing at Jiang Xiaoyuan.

Jiang Xiaoyuan: “…”

This fat girl must have watched too many idol dramas and learned a bunch of nondescript bad habits—some film and television works always make actors perform the inherent arrogance of their characters as uncultured, such as raising their chins, nostrils facing the sky, looking down on others, gossiping right in front of others, smiling noncommittally, whispering in front of others, etc… When applied to reality, the effect is really indescribable.

Helen slapped Little K on the back, “Why are you comparing yourself? She might leave in a few days. You’re aiming to be a technician, so focus! If you keep this up, I won’t teach you.”

Little K: “I’m just a poor little thing who can’t eat if I don’t work. I’ve been an intern technician for two years, and I really can’t live anymore if I don’t get promoted. Look, I don’t have the ability to go directly to the store manager and pull strings, and no one drives me back in the middle of the night…”

Jiang Xiaoyuan pushed a chair aside heavily. She was originally unwilling to condescend to engage in any verbal conflict with these girls, but since others had already provoked her—being magnanimous and being a pushover were different.

Jiang Xiaoyuan: “If you have something to say, say it to my face. Don’t be so indirect.”

Little K originally intended to squeeze out a “noble” smile, but the facial fat hindered the muscles from working, so she only made a “rich” smile: “I didn’t mean you, Sister Xiaoyuan. It’s so late, did you have fun?”

Jiang Xiaoyuan tried to calm the nameless fire in her heart, feeling that it was not worth it. She wanted to forget it, but just as she was about to raise her leg to leave, Helen added fuel to the fire: “Don’t waste time chatting. You want to be a technician and make progress. She’s not.”

his sounded like being directly accused of “lacking ambition.” The veins in Jiang Xiaoyuan’s hand, which was resting on the back of the chair, became more prominent—she indeed had no intention of making any significant achievements in hairdressing, but she had taken over the original owner’s identity. Not only had she erased the other person’s top scores in the high school entrance exams, but she had also ended up in this sorry state.

It was one thing for Qi Lian to look down on her, but did she also have to endure ridicule from a few hairdressers?

In a burst of impulse, she blurted out, “Who said I wouldn’t take the exam?”