No wonder she had received a text about deducting fees shortly after going online. It was a plan with no data!
Oh my god!
Suffocating.
A mistake. She should have gotten the phone card herself. Never mind, she'd do it another time.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs—physiological, safety, social, esteem, self-actualization. In prolonged poverty, the physiological needs of clothing, food, shelter, and transportation are not guaranteed, let alone safety. This book "Yangchun Baixue" never let the child be safe, and the subsequent life was a complete mess.
Su Cui took a bite of rice.
Looking at the obedient girl before her, Su Baixue, the female lead of "Yangchun Baixue."
In the original book, most of the female lead's downfall was due to the influence of those around her, but Su Baixue's own personality was also a factor. In the original story, apart from resisting the first scumbag, Zhao Pengfei, she basically spiraled into self-abandonment.
This wasn't the female lead's fault—after all, she was the protagonist of a sanitized, innocent romance novel. Resistance was futile; she had to accept it... Otherwise, how could the story continue?
But now that Su Cui had transmigrated and was her grandmother, she felt truly helpless.
Combining her memories and observations from this period, Su Cui found that Su Baixue was genuinely kind, sometimes even boundlessly, self-sacrificingly kind. For example, if she had worked hard to earn some money and a classmate cried to borrow it, she would lend it out, even willing to work two jobs rather than urge the classmate to pay her back.
Another example: if she was bullied at school, she would hide and cry secretly, not daring to fight back. She put on a brave face to keep Su Cui from finding out, but inside, she was holding back tears, and her appetite would decrease. Could Su Cui not notice? No.
Su Cui understood why Su Baixue was like this.
When she was young, her parents passed away. No relatives helped. Her grandmother had been paralyzed for years. Apart from an old house, they faced a constant survival crisis. What could she do when bullied? Few children without backing could truly stand up for themselves. Su Baixue wasn't the type to be impulsively fearless.
The fact that she worked while studying showed she still had hope, and she was inherently smart and sensitive.
In such a situation, she had to worry about her sick grandmother. If she really got into a conflict and even got hurt, the consequences were something she clearly couldn't afford. And at that time, she lacked the emotional intelligence and problem-solving skills to turn hostility into goodwill, so she could only endure. The longer she endured, the weaker she became.
In the end, she would even take the blame for others' mistakes. If she was inexplicably bullied, she would find fault with herself.
That is, she would convince herself that she was also at fault, so she deserved to be bullied. This way, she felt a little better, and could still fantasize that everyone in the world was good.
But the pent-up resentment, grief, and pain wouldn't diminish through tolerance. The distortion of the truth couldn't be rationalized away. Escaping solved nothing.
Eventually, even a rabbit would bite when cornered. That was what Su Cui feared.
Although the original female lead died of old age, the last thing she did before her death was truly shocking.
Prevention was better than cure.
Su Cui thought that just watching over her wasn't enough. To fight against scumbags, she needed a combination of internal and external efforts.
Externally, there was Su Cui herself.
Internally, she had to work on Su Baixue's heart.
Take it slow.
...
Days flowed like water, and before they knew it, summer vacation ended—the curtain rose on high school life.
"Respected leaders, teachers, dear students, good morning! Today, standing at the starting line of a new semester, we are filled with passion and hope, completing the leap from middle school to high school... Today, this historic campus welcomes its new batch of outstanding students—welcome, fellow students, congratulations to you all!"
Su Cui stood outside the school's iron gate, listening to the voice over the loudspeaker from the sports field.
City A High School's uniform was European-style. She knew how beautiful Su Baixue would look in it. A smile tugged at her lips as she brushed the gray hair at her temples. The school's iron gate opened, and an older woman walked out. She looked at Su Cui curiously and said, "Are you Su Cuihua?"
"Yes, I'm Su Cuihua." Su Cui smiled, hiding her original name from now on.
The older woman was a cleaning supervisor from a property management company that had contracted City A High School's cleaning services. Her name was Wang Miao. She wore a clean uniform. Wang Miao rolled up her floral arm sleeves, took Su Cui to collect two sets of cleaning uniforms, an ID badge, and other items, then had someone take her to her assignment.
In this day and age, there were people who paid to pull strings to work as a cleaner at a school?
Wang Miao pursed her lips and shook her head.