3
Sage’s home was close to the school.
She went home every weekend.
Once she left, I was the only one in the room.
At 9 PM, as usual, I got ready to sleep.
I don’t know how long I slept, but the persistent ringing of my phone woke me up.
I fumbled for my phone in a daze, saw it was 11 PM, and the caller was Sage.
Calling so late, could there be some emergency?
I quickly answered the phone, “Hello? Sage, what’s up?”
“You’re something else, Aria!” Sage’s excited voice came from the other end of the line, “Girl, I didn’t expect you to be having such a good time
<
behind my back!”
I was completely confused, “What?”
“Stop pretending!”
Sage sent me a SnapChat photo.
I opened it and my eyes widened, all traces of sleepiness gone.
In the photo, the campus heartthrob and I were in an intimate embrace, in a pose that couldn’t be more suggestive.
My head was spinning.
I was lying in my dorm room right now, when did I hug the campus heartthrob?
“When did you take this photo?” Coming to my senses, I immediately asked Sage.
“Just now! Aria, stop pretending! I saw you!”
“Sage, I’m in the dorm, the girl you saw isn’t me.”
“How is that possible!” Sage firmly refuted, “It’s you! The looks, hairstyle, clothes, shoes, bag, all exactly the same.”
I thought for a second, “I’m on the phone with you right now, what about that girl? Is she also on the phone?”
Sage’s voice faltered.
She belatedly realized, “Oh yeah~ She doesn’t seem to be on the phone! Wait, let me go over and see who she really is?”
With that, the call ended.
I anxiously waited for Sage to call back.
After waiting for a long time with no response, I thought for a moment and decided to call her myself.
The phone rang several times before it was answered.
I opened my mouth to ask, “Sage, did you find out anything?”
There was dead silence on the other end, and after a long while, I heard Sage stammer out a word: “You…”
Her voice was trembling.
After saying just one word, she abruptly hung up the phone.
I could sense a flavor of fleeing in panic from it.
I called back, but the call didn’t connect.
I sent messages asking, but there was no reply.
I couldn’t help but worry about Sage’s safety.
“Sage, are you okay?”
“When you see this message, please reply, no matter what.”
However, no matter what messages I sent, I still couldn’t get in touch with Sage.
That night, I was restless.
Fortunately, the next day was Sunday, and I thought I could wait for Sage to return to school, but unexpectedly, I first received a call from the counselor.
She was furious, “Aria, did you not take what I said to heart? Didn’t I just teach you last time that you need to carefully maintain dorm relationships?”
I had a bad feeling rising in my heart.
Sure enough, the counselor’s next sentence was, “Sage came to my office today, she also wants to apply for a room change! Weren’t you two getting along well? What’s going on now?”
I rushed to the counselor’s office.
The counselor lectured me endlessly.
Taking advantage of her exhaustion when she went to the bathroom, I secretly used her computer to send a message to Sage, Wendy, and Lily on SnapChat, notifying them that they needed to fill out a form for room changes and asking them to come to the office immediately.
After sending the messages, I deleted the chat history and set their numbers to “Do Not Disturb” to prevent the counselor from discovering my little trick.
Having done all this, I ran downstairs to intercept them.
I had tried countless times to communicate with them, but every time I appeared, they would walk away with other classmates, not giving me a chance to speak.
Now, I had cornered all three of them together.
“I just want to know what exactly happened? Why are you all avoiding me?”
Faced with my questioning, they each turned their faces away, unwilling to answer.
“We’ve been classmates for so long, if I’ve done something wrong, could you please tell me? Being isolated like this really hurts.”
As I spoke, my eyes reddened.
Sage glanced at me secretly.
It was evident that she felt a bit of pity.
“In our room, you and I were the closest, I don’t know why you suddenly stopped answering my calls and messages, when just the day before we were fine… Is it related to that girl?”
When they heard “that girl,” their expressions changed simultaneously.
“Can you tell me what exactly happened? I don’t want to be the only one left in the dark, please!”
My pleading gaze lingered on each of them, finally resting on Sage.
Sage looked very conflicted, her eyebrows furrowed tightly, her lips pursed repeatedly.
“Sage, I just want to know what happened?” I lowered my voice as much as possible.
Compassion flashed across Sage’s face, she gritted her teeth, as if throwing caution to the wind.
“Aria, do you know what I saw when I went after her that night?”