To the Love of My Life

Chapter 322: 322: Blessing in Disguise (12)

Junior high students always executed their teachers’ instructions as if they were unbreakable decrees. No one dared to be late, so only her voice echoed continuously in the empty restroom.

At that time, smartphones hadn’t yet appeared, and Nokia’s color-screen phones had just entered the Chinese market, where everyone regarded them as luxury items.

Back then, the Gregorys’ business was still profitable, so Maxwell Gregory bought her a phone.

She cried out for help for a while, but no one bothered. Just then, she felt a faint pain in her stomach, accompanied by an even more intense flow of blood. She didn’t know that this was a normal physiological phenomenon for a woman, nor did she know that the faint pain in her stomach was due to menstrual cramps caused by eating ice cream with Madeleine at noon and catching a cold. She only thought it was a reaction to the incurable disease, which made her even more panicked. Trembling, she took out her phone, her mind muddled. She even forgot that she should call 110 for help. Her first instinct was to call her parents, but she accidentally dialed Steve Burton. After one ring, she hung up. As she shakily entered the Gregorys’ phone number, her phone suddenly started vibrating.

It was a call from Steve Burton.

Before she could even speak, the usual cold and impatient voice from the teenager on the other end of the phone came through, “Ruby, it’s class time. What are you doing calling me for?”

After knowing Steve for so many years, Ruby had gotten used to his cold and sarcastic tone. But that day, as she listened to his icy voice and held the phone, her tears fell one by one.

Perhaps it was the tears that made her senses even more acute. She felt her stomach hurt more, as if death was near. Silently weeping, she suddenly cried out loud.

At that moment, Steve was in the chemistry lab doing an oxygen generation experiment. Since it was free lab time, the classroom was a mess. He felt justified in answering his phone. Holding a test tube, he casually approached the alcohol lamp to heat the potassium permanganate in the tube. Upon hearing Ruby’s sudden outburst on the phone, his hand shook, and the test tube fell on the table with a hit. As he clumsily tidied up, he asked Ruby angrily, “Why are you crying?”

The girl on the phone didn’t answer him but cried even harder.

Young Steve, who was already annoyed by the crying, lost all interest in his experiment that he already considered brainless. Without thinking, he walked out of the lab, “Did someone bully you?”

That was the only reason he could think of.

He took off the white lab coat he was wearing and found that the girl on the phone was still crying nonstop. He couldn’t help but become more anxious, “Ruby, if you cry again, I’ll hang up the phone, I swear!”