Chapter 2: Creepy

 2: Creepy

 

All the mistakes began when Ren Zhizhao was still a child.

A child who wasn't particularly complex, but also didn't have any malicious intentions.

After school, she wouldn't go straight home. It wasn't that she was hanging out with her foreign classmates, eating, drinking, and having fun, or smoking. She wasn't interested in those things.

She didn't have to practice the piano, she would most likely go and sit on the cliffs of Scarborough,until she had to go home at dinner, and face the people she didn't want to face.

That was probably her favorite place in all of Toronto.

Firstly, because the scenery was beautiful, and it was close to home.

Secondly, the cliffs faced Lake Ontario, which was so much like the ocean. The water and sky merged into one, stretching endlessly.

Under the scorching sun of early September, the lake was so blue that it made people feel dizzy. At that moment, Ren Zhizhao felt like it was the Pacific Ocean, and beyond the ocean, was the homeland she longed for.

She gazed into the distance, taking off the hair tie that held her hair in a bun, letting her hair fall naturally.

Her hair was thick and coarse, a bit frizzy. During the day, it made her feel hot, but on the windy cliffs, it was just right to cover her bare shoulders.

She squinted her eyes, and the highly saturated water and sky made it difficult for her to focus. Fortunately, her phone vibrated at that moment, allowing her to rest her eyes for a moment.

She took out her phone from the outer pocket of her backpack, and the caller ID showed "RZZ".

"What's up?" she answered the call, her tone lacking patience.

"It's time for dinner, come down," the person on the other end said calmly.

Ren Zhizhao looked down at the cliff below her, the white sand, and the gentle waves. The calm blue water could instantly turn her soft body into a beautiful red mess.

"Come down?" She smiled, "Then I'll jump."

"..." The person on the other end took a deep breath, "Come down to the parking lot, the car can't go up there."

‘Maybe one day I will jump, but not today.’

Ren Zhizhao obediently went down to the parking lot by the lake and plopped herself into the familiar black car.

That was the gift her brother Ren Jun received on his seventeenth birthday after getting his driver's license.

Everything good was for her brother.

She fastened her seatbelt and stared at the rows of cars outside the windshield, without greeting or saying a word. 

She could feel the direct gaze from her left, making her feel uncomfortable.

Ren Zhizhao thought that this person probably had a case of the young master syndrome again.

She glared at him in the driver's seat, "I put paper on the seat, my pants are clean, I didn't sit directly on the ground, and I didn't touch anything with my hands."

Obviously, the other person wasn't concerned about hygiene. He pointed to his eyes and asked, "Did someone hit you?"

‘Damn, such a stupid and straightforward guy…’ Ren Zhizhao flipped down the sun visor and opened the mirror.

Her makeup skills were still immature. The smokey eye makeup, which was already coarse, had smudged after a day of wear.

She looked at herself in the mirror, the black eye shadow smudged over her entire lower eyelid, and the mascara had clumped, making her look like a panda with two black eyes.

‘Okay, so what if she looked ugly? Had he looked enough? Can they leave now?’

But the car still didn't start, and the other person continued to stare at her with that creepy gaze.

Of course, Ren Zhizhao knew what he was looking at, because her classmates had also looked at her like that at school today—

She was wearing a loose, long skull-printed vest with both sides completely open, exposing her two stick-like arms and her entire bra.

Below, she wore a pair of ultra-short denim shorts, covered by the long vest, making it look like she wasn't wearing any pants.

Her chest was covered with a bunch of long and short buckles, bead chains, and crosses. Her wrists were also covered with a bunch of studded leather bracelets.

She knew that her outfit was inappropriate, not like a student, but more like a punk or an emo.

However, after looking at her for a long time, the other person finally only said, "It's windy on the cliff, next time you go up there, wear a jacket."

After saying that, he finally started the car.

It only took about ten minutes to drive home from the cliff park. If the two of them didn't talk, they could endure the silence until they got home.

But her dear brother insisted on making small talk, "How was your first day of high school?"

‘The first day of high school, how was it?’

‘To be honest, it was pretty good.’

Ren Zhizhao knew that her personality wasn't very cheerful, and she was even a bit gloomy. Among these Western kids who laughed so hard that they showed all their teeth, it was hard for her to fit in. Therefore, after four years in Canada, she hadn't made any friends.

However, today, it seemed that God was finally willing to take pity on her pathetic social life.

Because it was the first day of school, Ren Zhizhao arrived early at the classroom for the first class and occupied a seat in the front row.

Soon, a boy dressed like a rapper ran towards her, threw his backpack on the seat, greeted her with a greasy greeting, and swaggered off, not knowing where he went.

She thought that this would be her deskmate for the entire semester.

But while she was boredly flipping through her textbook, she heard a "clang" sound in her ear.

She looked up and saw that the backpack the hip-hop boy had originally occupied was rudely thrown to the ground.

The person who did this was a beautiful and fashionable Asian girl, who sat down on the chair she had "taken" without hesitation, with her pretty pink nails flying over the phone screen, and greeted without looking up, "Hi, I'm Haley."

Ren Zhizhao was stunned.

Seeing that Ren Zhizhao didn't respond, the girl put down her phone and looked at her, a smile appearing on her lips, "I like your style, it's like Effy from 'Skins', very cool."

Someone actually appreciated her style. Ren Zhizhao thought that maybe she would finally have a friend?

                                                    
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