Heartthrob, Your Image is Crumbling!

Chapter 589: Goodbye, Youth

Seeing Liu Yue emerge from the hotel room with You Changjin genuinely took Jiang Xinyi by surprise.It was not just Jiang Xinyi who was stunned.

Even Zhou Yuwen was taken aback. After all, who could have ever anticipated this combination of people?

This was a romance between a teacher and a student.

Zhou Yuwen himself would never dare to cross that red line.

Seeing their expressions, You Changjin inwardly panicked. He immediately shook off Liu Yue's hand and hurriedly addressed Jiang Xinyi. "Xinyi, listen to me, I can explain. She..."

"You do not need to say anything."

Before You Changjin could even finish his sentence, Jiang Xinyi quickly cut him off.

Jiang Xinyi offered You Changjin a gentle smile. "Changjin, this is quite nice."

"Congratulations on finding your own happiness."

With those words, Jiang Xinyi took Zhou Yuwen's hand, and the two of them walked into their room.

"That is not it! Xinyi, listen to my explanation!"

You Changjin grew even more anxious at her words and chased after them to explain, but they were already closing the door. Right as the door shut, Zhou Yuwen could not help but flash You Changjin a subtle smile, his expression seemingly saying, 'Mr. You, you are truly something else!'

At this moment, You Changjin felt utterly suffocated by the misunderstanding.

He wanted to knock on the door and demand that Zhou Yuwen and the others come out to hear his explanation.

But right then, his phone suddenly rang.

You Changjin glanced at the screen. It was a call from Lin Xue. After a brief hesitation, You Changjin still connected the call.

"Hello? Mr. You, did you find Liu Yue?"

"Yes, we are over at the Suning Hotel. You girls can come over."

The moment the call connected, You Changjin adjusted his glasses, instantly reverting to his authoritative persona as a teacher.

Beside him, Liu Yue swayed, barely able to stand steady.

Fortunately, You Changjin was there to support her.

He abandoned the idea of knocking on the door to explain Liu Yue's situation to Zhou Yuwen and instead focused on helping her down the elevator.

Soon after, Lin Xue, Ma Tian, and Li Jing arrived.

Seeing Liu Yue passed out on the lobby sofa, Ma Tian and Li Jing could not help but frown. "Just how much alcohol did she drink!"

"We are so sorry for the trouble, Mr. You," Lin Xue said to You Changjin.

You Changjin assured them it was no trouble at all.

"Liu Yue is my student. If something like this happens again, remember to tell me immediately."

"We will."

You Changjin then hailed a ride-sharing car, allowing Ma Tian and Li Jing to help Liu Yue inside.

"Mr. You, will you head back to the school with us?"

"Yes, Mr. You. You take this car, and I will hail another one," Lin Xue offered sensibly.

But You Changjin shook his head. "You girls go back first. I still have some matters to attend to."

"Matters? What matters?" Li Jing could not resist asking nosily.

The counselor's expression turned slightly awkward. Ma Tian, being the sharper of the two, quickly interjected, "Why are you poking your nose into our counselor's business?"

And so, the three girls took Liu Yue and left first.

After they departed, You Changjin pondered for a moment before ultimately returning to the hotel and pressing the elevator button once more.

He absolutely had to clarify the situation with Jiang Xinyi.

Even if they had broken up, he wanted to assure Jiang Xinyi that he was not that kind of person.

No matter how low he sank, he would never get involved with his own female student.

Besides, if Xinyi really thought about it...

With his capabilities, how could he possibly afford checking into a hotel at Suning?

The truth of the matter was actually quite simple: Liu Yue had gone through a breakup.

Only this time, the heartbreak was far more severe than the last.

The last time, Liu Yue had merely been deceived emotionally.

This time, not only had she been emotionally betrayed, but she had also lost all the money she had diligently saved from working over the past two years.

It was worth noting that Liu Yue was a highly driven girl. Ever since Zhou Yuwen founded his food delivery company, Liu Yue had been working there as a delivery rider. She had repeatedly told her roommates that men were unreliable, so she had to work hard on making money and buy her own house in Jinling in the future!

Over two years, through careful and painstaking saving, Liu Yue had accumulated twenty thousand yuan.

Later on, she started dating a younger boyfriend.

This younger boyfriend seemed much more reliable than her first love, Xu Wenbo. At the very least, he did not two-time her.

And so, on a beautiful moonlit night...

The two of them had watched a late-night movie and missed the curfew to return to their dormitories.

They ended up checking into a hotel, booking a small, thirty-yuan room in a cheap hotel located in an urban village.

In that dark, cramped little room, where the walls were nothing more than thin partitions...

Liu Yue gave herself to the second man in her life.

This boyfriend was a year younger than Liu Yue.

And his looks were decent enough.

Truthfully, when she was intimate with her boyfriend, Liu Yue felt a twinge of shame.

In this day and age, a woman preserving her first time seemed like something that only existed for the female lead in a novel.

Even so, facing such an excellent boyfriend and knowing she could not give him her most precious possession left Liu Yue feeling slightly distressed.

The more her boyfriend did not care, the more she felt he was her Mr. Right. She firmly believed she had to do everything in her power to make it up to him and keep him happy.

After their passionate encounter, Liu Yue lay blissfully in her boyfriend's arms.

She said, "Hubby, from now on, I will live a good life by your side.

We will not envy anyone else.

We will just live our own lives steadily and practically.

Right now, I make three thousand five hundred yuan a month delivering food. After deducting my living expenses, I can still save three thousand a month. By the time we graduate, we can save up fifty thousand yuan. Then, I can cover the down payment for a small apartment in Jinling all by myself.

Then we will both find jobs. You are majoring in design, so you can earn six thousand a month.

And I will keep delivering food.

"If I deliver food full-time, I can make eight thousand a month."

"That means we will have fourteen thousand a month."

"In less than three years, we will have our very own house!"

"Then we will get married, and I will give you two chubby little boys! And we will get a dog, too!"

In that cheap thirty-yuan motel room.

Liu Yue and her boyfriend poured their hearts out, freely dreaming of the future with high expectation.

But upon hearing this, the boy merely chuckled softly. "Your living expenses are only five hundred yuan a month? Seriously? How do you even save money like that?"

"What is so hard about that!"

Liu Yue sounded rather proud as she explained that delivering food had made her familiar with all the nearby shops. She usually just bought a few steamed buns and dipped them in some sauce from the local vendors.

"Sometimes the shop owners even save a piece of lean meat for me!"

She spent a total of barely two hundred yuan a month on food, twenty yuan on phone credit, and with other miscellaneous expenses added up, five hundred yuan was more than enough.

Her boyfriend still seemed slightly skeptical.

However, Liu Yue insisted that she had already saved twenty thousand yuan!

She then excitedly opened Alipay on her phone to show him.

When her boyfriend saw the clear balance of twenty thousand yuan displayed on that cracked phone screen, he was genuinely stunned. He looked down at the slightly chubby girlfriend lying in his arms.

In that moment, he truly felt that this girl was remarkable.

However, young people's thoughts were notoriously fickle.

Having just stepped into university life, one constantly met all sorts of people and faced endless temptations.

The neon-lit, intoxicating atmosphere of bars.

The scantily clad dancers swaying in the middle of the dance floor deeply captivated these young people.

Then there were the mahjong parlors hidden deep within the urban villages.

Guided by a few local, street-smart students...

In every university, there was a small clique of local students.

They would look down on students from out of town, yet they gleefully mingled with them, calling them easy marks behind their backs. Whenever they had free time, they would drag the outsiders along to play mahjong or Three-Card Poker.

Playing casually in the dormitory was one thing.

But sometimes they would insist on going out to play with friends.

As time went on...

Losing eight or nine hundred yuan in a single night began to feel like a matter of course.

Under this kind of lifestyle, Liu Yue's boyfriend soon found his pockets completely empty.

Yet, he was truly addicted to the thrill. Suddenly, he remembered that his girlfriend still had twenty thousand yuan.

He felt his recent luck had been quite good, so he decided to borrow the twenty thousand yuan to use for a bit.

Once he won, he would simply pay Liu Yue back double.

And just like that, he took a gamble, hoping to turn a bicycle into a motorcycle.

But who could have predicted...

Not only did the bicycle fail to turn into a motorcycle, but he even lost the pedals entirely.

The moment Liu Yue discovered the truth, she felt as though the sky had collapsed!

What made Liu Yue feel even more desperate was that young people simply had absolutely no concept of taking responsibility. Realizing he had caused a massive disaster and could not repay the twenty thousand yuan, he simply bought a train ticket to nowhere, fleeing the city and shutting off his phone completely.

As long as Liu Yue could not find him, everything would be fine!

Originally, Liu Yue had been full of expectation for the future.

She worked harder than anyone else.

The vendors operating near the university all knew of this down-to-earth female student.

Day after day, she rode her electric bicycle around delivering food.

"Good morning, Auntie Liu!"

"Uncle Wang! The skewers look perfectly grilled today!"

"Hello, Baidu Food Delivery. Let me take the trash down for you on my way out!"

Liu Yue repeated this exhausting routine daily. Even though she was deeply fatigued, just thinking about her boyfriend and the balance on her Alipay filled her with endless motivation.

One day, after finishing her shift, Liu Yue picked up her phone to check her balance, just as she always did.

But the moment she opened Alipay, her entire world shattered.

0.5?

How could it be 0.5?

No, there had to be a glitch in the system, right?

Liu Yue was on the verge of frantic tears. She immediately called customer service and pleaded, "Hello? Why is all my money gone?"

The representative told her not to panic and instructed her to check her transaction history.

Perhaps someone had hacked and stolen from her account.

Impossible. Who would steal from my account?

Liu Yue opened her transaction history and stared at it, utterly frozen in shock.

She tried calling her boyfriend, but the call would not go through.

After immense effort, she finally managed to get in touch with him.

Only to be met with the words: "Stop looking for me. The money is already gone.

I will pay you back.

But right now, I really do not have any money left."

Liu Yue desperately pleaded, "It is fine if the money is gone. We can just earn it back.

Please, do not do anything foolish.

It is going to be okay. Just come back."

"I am not going back! I never even liked you to begin with! Let's break up!"

He delivered the words with cruel heartlessness.

When Liu Yue's roommates found out about the ordeal, they naturally felt deep sorrow and indignation on her behalf.

"Call the police! This is literal theft! You have to report him! Teach him a lesson!"

"Exactly! You must call the police for something like this!"

Ma Tian and Li Jing seethed with righteous fury, going so far as to nearly dial 110 themselves.

However, Liu Yue stopped them. She softly urged them not to call the police, suggesting that he might have some unspeakable difficulties.

"He must have run into some kind of trouble and was afraid of dragging me down with him."

Clinging to the messages her boyfriend had sent, Liu Yue stubbornly refused to believe the worst.

The situation dragged on for over a month. Throughout that time, Liu Yue was completely out of sorts every single day. Eventually, the police were the ones who contacted her. Her boyfriend had been unable to resist his gambling itch, desperately trying to win his money back. As a result, he borrowed more and more until he could not repay his debts, prompting his creditors to call the police.

Later on, seeing how pitiful Liu Yue was, those people simply told her the harsh truth.

The intimate photos taken by Liu Yue's previous boyfriend had long been circulating throughout the boys' dormitory.

Her recent boyfriend had already seen them before they even started dating.

In his own vulgar words: "If she offers herself up on a silver platter, I might as well play along!"

In that precise moment, Liu Yue felt her inner belief violently collapse.

She did not understand.

It was clearly Xu Wenbo who had committed the wrong.

Why was she the one being punished?

On her way back that day...

Liu Yue stared blankly at the bustling pedestrians walking past her.

She felt as though every single one of them was pointing fingers and whispering about her.

Liu Yue kept her head down, desperately wanting to hide from their judgmental gazes.

Yet strangely, the tighter she covered her ears, the louder the mocking voices became.

In that exact moment, Liu Yue truly felt that her life had lost all meaning.

No matter what happened in the future...

The compromising photos taken by her first love had already been spread everywhere.

Everyone had seen them.

Her life was utterly ruined.

In her final moments, she decided to splurge.

So, she bought a bottle of red wine she had never tasted before.

She booked a king-size bed room in a five-star hotel.

She drank herself into a muddy stupor, utterly convinced that no one in this world could ever love a woman like her.

Xu Wenbo would not.

Chang Hao looked down on her, too.

In the eyes of everyone else, she was nothing more than a cheap plaything they might as well take advantage of.

Liu Yue shed her very last tear.

She was genuinely exhausted.

Right when she was at her absolute most helpless...

You Changjin appeared before her eyes.

Since yesterday afternoon, Ma Tian and Li Jing had noticed Liu Yue acting strangely. Coupled with the fact that she had not returned to the dormitory all night, they grew genuinely worried.

They immediately called their counselor, You Changjin.

Upon hearing the situation, You Changjin naturally took it very seriously. Using every method at his disposal, he eventually tracked Liu Yue down.

You Changjin told Liu Yue that destroying herself over a man was simply not worth it.

"What is this achieving?"

"My girlfriend was stolen by my own student, yet look at me—am I not still living just fine?"

"You are only nineteen. You have an entire bright youth ahead of you. Are you going to succumb to degeneracy over something so trivial? Do you think it is worth it?"

"If he cannot appreciate you, that is his loss. A girl like you is someone countless boys would beg for!"

You Changjin spoke to Liu Yue with utmost sincerity.

He urged her to never entertain thoughts of ending her life.

If she died, she would truly have nothing left.

She had to keep living well!

"Look at your teacher here—I am still surviving just fine!"

You Changjin used himself as a punchline to lighten the mood. He went to the restroom, dampened a towel, and patiently began wiping Liu Yue's face. As he gently cleaned her cheeks, he murmured, "There, see? What a beautiful girl you are!"

"Why seek death over a single boy?"

"There are plenty of boys out there who would like you!"

Liu Yue gazed at the somewhat mature man standing before her, wearing his black-rimmed glasses.

Suddenly, Liu Yue felt that Mr. You was actually quite wonderful.

Mature, gentle.

His experiences seemed strikingly similar to her own.

Mr. You had been dumped by the Teacher's Wife.

And she had been dumped by her boyfriend.

Mr. You was so incredibly gentle.

Surely he would not care about her photos, would he?

Staring at this counselor who was so earnestly wiping her face clean...

Liu Yue did not know what came over her.

Acting purely on instinct, she leaned forward.

And softly kissed You Changjin on the lips.