The Law of the Poor Little White Flower

Lin Xun lowered her head and slowly moved out of the fitting room, anticipating the gentle and satisfied look that Yu Fuli might give her. She even prepared a specially practiced expression on her face that was a mixture of shyness and gratitude.

He looked up and his heart skipped a beat.

Yu Fuli was no longer standing where she had been.

The store was empty and quiet, with only two female shop assistants in uniform huddled together at the counter, heads close together, whispering something, occasionally letting out a low chuckle they couldn't suppress, their eyes glancing in his direction every now and then.

Perhaps hearing him come out, the two shop assistants stopped talking and turned around.

Walking in front was a seasoned shop assistant with exquisite makeup and a hint of shrewdness and impatience in her eyes. Her gaze swept over Lin Xun and the old clothes in his arms like a searchlight. She pursed her lips but didn't say anything.

The younger shop assistant next to her covered her mouth, her eyes revealing undisguised contempt and a sense of anticipation.

"Oh, you've tried it?"

The senior sales clerk crossed her arms, her tone indifferent, deliberately ignoring the expensive new clothes Lin Xun was wearing—they were from their store—and focusing her gaze on the clothes in his arms. "Would you like us to get rid of these old clothes? It's probably not appropriate to leave them here."

She emphasized the words "handle" and "inappropriate," her eyes practically overflowing with sarcasm.

A younger shop assistant followed, arms crossed, a smirk playing on her lips, her eyes filled with undisguised scrutiny and disdain: "He looks presentable enough, but..."

She gestured with her chin toward Lin Xun's chest, "Should we help you put your luggage in a plastic bag? It might look a bit cheap if you put it on our boutique counter."

The experienced shop assistant immediately feigned annoyance: "Hey, Xiao Wang, how can you talk like that!"

But the smile in her eyes deepened. "That's true, our shop has strict rules. Customers' personal belongings, especially things like this... well, things that are a bit old, are indeed difficult to store. Little brother, why don't you go and change them, or..."

She paused deliberately, waiting to see Lin Xun's reaction.

Lin Xun looked at the two women in front of him, whose exquisite makeup couldn't hide the harshness in their eyes, and felt a sense of indifference bordering on weariness.

Again.

He said it silently in his heart.

This formula is as outdated as a yellowed soap opera script.

A snobbish shop assistant, a poor boy who has stumbled into a luxurious place, and undisguised contempt and harassment.

It was so cheesy it was laughable, yet it seemed to be a fixed plot point welded onto the track of his fate, once, twice... No matter how he tried to dodge it, he could never escape it.

However, his body seemed to be controlled by a completely different program.

That familiar, icy, astringent feeling in my chest surged uncontrollably upwards, quickly spreading over my throat and burning my eyes.

He felt his cheeks burning, his ears burning intensely, and his eyelashes trembling uncontrollably.

He bit his lower lip hard, so hard that he could taste a faint metallic rust, barely managing to suppress the trembling, choked sob that was about to escape his lips.

His hands, hanging by his sides, were clenched tightly, his nails digging deep into his palms, trying to use the pain to fight against the surging weakness that made him despise himself.

"...I...I'm waiting for Teacher Yu..."

"Teacher Yu?" The young shop assistant, Xiao Wang, raised an exaggerated eyebrow and exchanged a knowing look with the senior shop assistant. "You mean the gentleman who brought you here? Tsk tsk, he looks quite impressive, but..."

She lowered her voice, making sure Lin Xun could hear her, "Who can predict what rich people are thinking? Maybe it's just a passing fancy, a way to tease you. They see you wearing cheap clothes, take pity on you, give you a makeover, take a couple of photos, and then forget about you. See? He's vanished without a trace, hasn't he?"

The experienced saleswoman sighed as well, speaking with the air of someone who'd been there: "Young man, take my advice. Some circles you can't just squeeze into by changing your clothes. Even if a sparrow has a few phoenix feathers stuck to it, it won't become a phoenix; it'll just make you a laughingstock. Take your clothes off now while no one's talking about you, and go back to where you belong, okay? If you get these clothes dirty or torn, even if you and your whole family sold yourselves, you probably couldn't afford to pay for just one sleeve."

"Exactly," Xiao Wang chimed in, pointing to the gleaming floor beneath Lin Xun's feet. "Look at the soles of your shoes, are they clean? Don't get our carpets, which we air-freighted from Italy, dirty. Hurry up, stop dawdling, we still have other customers to serve."

Lin Xun's body trembled slightly, as if he could not bear the humiliation and scrutiny. He lowered his head deeply and remained silent like a frozen statue.

To anyone else, he was just a boy caught in a huge predicament and helplessness.

However, beneath that unseen, downward gaze, his eyes held an inorganic coldness, a clarity bordering on cruelty.

As if a part of his consciousness had been detached, he hovered in mid-air, coldly looking down at the familiar, sickeningly familiar drama below.

He thought indifferently to himself.

This meticulously designed predicament, this perfectly timed humiliation, this scene that pins him to the position of a pitiful wretch.

Everything was perfectly fitted together, like a puppet show stage.

So this time, according to that predetermined, disgusting script, who will take the stage and play the radiant savior?

Is it Xiao Chi, whose desire for control permeates every inch of the air? Is it Wen Qiao'an, who seems gentle but is actually distant? Or is it Jiang Yu, who has a bright smile but is as dangerous as an innocent child maliciously dismantling a butterfly's wings?

He could almost predict what would happen next—someone would appear just in time, easily crush the mockery of these ants with power or money, rescue him from his predicament, and once again solidify the relationship between benefactor and recipient, controller and dependent.

The fingertips curled up quietly at the side, not out of fear or excitement, but because the body, under the puppeteer's strings called the plot, unconsciously showed a trembling and embarrassment that was as different from the indifference in the mind, as if they were two separate worlds.

He really, really hates being manipulated.

Yu Fuli came out of the restroom and had just turned the corner in the corridor when she saw this scene.

The thin boy was flanked by two shop assistants in crisp uniforms, his head hanging low as he clutched his old coat that clashed with his surroundings. His shoulders trembled slightly, like a leaf shivering in the cold wind.

Even if you can't hear the specifics, it's not hard to guess what's going on at the scene from the slightly raised chins and the dismissive expressions in the eyes of the two shop assistants, as well as Lin Xun biting her lip tightly and the blush rising on her neck from suppressed resentment.

She was frail and helpless, yet possessed a stubbornness that refused to bow down or admit defeat.

Yu Fuli raised her hand and pressed her temple with a hint of helplessness.

The "poor little white flower law" is indeed well-deserved.

He sighed inwardly, almost finding his own foresight absurdly amusing.

This law was something he summarized in private, specifically referring to the unbreakable template of encounters for protagonists like Lin Xun—when he goes out to buy things, especially when he enters a place that is seriously inconsistent with his own spending power, he will inevitably trigger a scene of the shop assistants being snobbish, which lays the groundwork for the male protagonist to pull out his black card and forcefully slap them in the face later; if he goes to work, he will inevitably be ostracized and framed by his colleagues; and at school, he cannot escape the fate of being bullied by his classmates.

The ultimate solution to all these dilemmas seems to point in the same direction, waiting for a male protagonist to descend from the sky and carry out a magnificent rescue and a slap in the face.

In the game's parlance, the poor, innocent girl comes with a built-in taunt value, which only applies to bosses and cannon fodder, and has a 100% chance of triggering the male protagonist's rescue and face-slapping.

Yu Fuli only went to the restroom, and in just a few minutes, this law was precisely triggered without any delay.

Yu shook his head, suppressing the slight feeling of being both amused and exasperated. He straightened his cuffs and his face returned to its usual calm, though there was a hint of coldness beneath that calm.

He strode menacingly toward the shop.

Please don't hurt my son!