Chapter 1365: Zhang Lijuan (5)

At that moment, I was so stunned that I couldn't even think. I just nodded like a wooden puppet and walked into Fang Zhuren's office.

Maybe only in his office could I escape the hundreds of eyes glaring at me like knives.

Fang Zhuren closed the door, tossed the photo casually onto the desk, and then pulled open his drawer to take out an envelope.

"Tian Tian, I'm really sorry about this. My wife has always had that temper," he said. "I'll give you five hundred yuan privately as compensation. You can think of it as medical expenses or whatever... emotional distress fees, I suppose. Anyway, I'm apologizing to you, so don't take it to heart."

This time, he didn't leave the envelope on the table. Instead, he grabbed my arm and stuffed it directly into my hand.

I took the money with trembling hands and said in a hoarse voice, "Fang Zhuren... why did you take my photo?"

"Oh, this?" Fang Zhuren picked up the photo of me on the assembly line without a care. "I took it earlier to nominate you for an advanced quality award. But then you didn't meet the age requirement, so it didn't get used."

After hearing that, I just stared at him blankly, mouth agape, and realized I had no questions left to ask.

Yes, all my doubts were gone.

But why did I still feel so strange?

"Take good care of yourself, Tian Tian," Fang Zhuren said. "There's that old saying: 'A straight body fears no crooked shadow.' You and I have nothing going on, so what do you have to fear?"

Yes... "A straight body fears no crooked shadow"... that phrase pulled my crumbling emotions back just a little.

What was I so afraid of? There was nothing between me and Fang Zhuren.

The only time I'd ever spoken to him alone was when I went into his office to collect two hundred yuan. Was even that wrong?

"I... I understand..." I nodded and, holding the envelope, left his office.

But as soon as I stepped outside and looked up, I saw hundreds of eyes fixed on me.

Their gazes were like hooks, digging deep into my flesh from every direction.

At seventeen, I only knew that "a straight body fears no crooked shadow," but I didn't realize that rumors could kill a person.

I wiped away my tears and sat down at my workstation.

From that day on, my life began its complete descent into ruin.

Wherever I looked in the factory, everyone was gossiping endlessly about me.

"I knew something was off... Don't you remember last time?"

"Or how she wouldn't even look at Man Tun—turns out she's got a big shot. Tsk tsk..."

"I heard someone in her family is sick and needs money, but she can't become an er nai for that, right?"

"Being an er nai and still stringing along Man Tun—how shameless."

What used to be a assembly line full of laughter and jokes turned, from that very day and moment, into a constant discussion about me.

Those sarcastic remarks, laced with growing hostility, swirled around me.

It was as if they had all become ticking time bombs, just waiting for a spark to ignite.

Three days later, I finally couldn't take it anymore. I slammed my work tool onto the assembly line, stood up, and shouted to stop the chatter:

"You people have no end to this?! There's nothing between me and Fang Zhuren—he said so himself. Can't you understand that?!"

My emotions had finally exploded.

Didn't the people saying these things realize they were wrongly accusing me?

"Huh?!" A young woman stood up from the assembly line and laughed. "What's the matter? You need Fang Zhuren to admit it himself? Who would ever admit to having an er nai?"

"It's not me!" I yelled. "It's never been me from the start! The photo isn't of me, and I'm not the er nai! Stop wrongly accusing me!"

The assembly line fell silent in that moment, as everyone stopped their work and looked at me.

I noticed that my words seemed more convincing than Fang Zhuren's, and even the young woman who had challenged me had nothing to say.

But just a few seconds later, a guy I usually ignored spoke up from a distance: "If it's not you, then why did they hit you?"

The young woman latched onto that like a lifeline: "Exactly!"

As more "exactly!" flew at me like darts from all sides, I realized they weren't thinking about it at all—they only believed what they wanted to believe.

"They hit the wrong person!" I said.

But my voice was drowned out by the surrounding noise, and I was left speechless no matter what.

That's when I understood that the hostility toward me wasn't just from the women—it was from the guys too.

Was it because I always focused on my work and unintentionally offended all those guys who wanted to talk to me?

What was I supposed to do?

Right... maybe Man Tun... Man Tun would believe me.

He'd definitely help explain things for me!

But when I went to find him, I realized just how naive I was at seventeen.

Man Tun didn't show any disgust toward me, but he didn't say a word in my defense either.

He brushed me off as casually as I had once brushed him off, responding with a flat "Mm," "Okay," and "Really?"

This was probably my own fault.

As I turned to leave, Man Tun spoke up.

But his words only pushed me deeper into the fire.

Staring into my eyes, right in front of all the guys on the assembly line, he asked:

"Is it because of Fang Zhuren that you wouldn't talk to me?"

After hearing that, I let out a bitter laugh.

Why had I thought Man Tun would help explain things for me?

Even he didn't believe me.

The story spread quickly from the town factory back to the village, from the east end to the west end, until it reached my parents' ears and Liang Wa's ears.

"Tian Tian..." That day when I got home, Mom stood in the courtyard, looking at me with a face full of shock. "I've heard some bad things... What's going on with you...?"

"Mom..." As soon as I got back from the dorm, my tears spilled out all at once.

What's going on... I wished I knew what was going on with me.

Isn't it said that good people get good rewards in this world? Now that I've gotten bad karma, does that make me a bad person?

"It's okay, Tian Tian," Mom said, stroking my head. "We have 'a straight body fears no crooked shadow.' You haven't done anything, so what do you have to fear?"

"A straight body fears no crooked shadow"—everyone kept telling me that.

But this crooked shadow was about to pull me down completely.

I hadn't done anything... I worked hard on the assembly line every day, only to end up as someone everyone wanted to attack.

"Sis..."

This time, instead of me hugging Liang Wa, he hugged me.

"It's fine... Liang Wa..." I fought to control my choked-up emotions and said, "Sis has been wrongly accused... They'll realize soon enough that they got it wrong."

The days that followed were no different from hell for me. Everyone in the workshop knew about this nonexistent story. They spread tales of how Fang Zhuren kept an er nai in vivid detail, as if everyone except me had witnessed it firsthand.

I explained myself countless times; I even posted notices on the workshop walls to clarify. But no matter what I did, it had no effect.

I thought the rumors would fade with time, but once again, I was naive.

This seemed to be one of the few topics in the workshop that everyone could relate to. As long as there was still life in the place, the topic would go on—until the workshop was empty, until I was dead.