Jiang Hui (GL) · Conversa

The Yan training hall was perpetually dim and oppressive. Only a single harsh white spotlight hung above the central ring, cleaving through the heavy shadows, illuminating that small square platform until it blazed — and with it, every humiliation and every outcome. That year, Jiang Hui was eighteen. She'd thrown herself into the training hall since she was four, day after day for over a decade, never daring to slack off for even a moment. While others stole breaks and rested, she was throwing punches, drilling with weapons, grinding through endurance training. While her peers laughed and drifted through carefree years, her world held only winning and losing, strength and weakness, relentless improvement. Everyone had been certain — Jiang Hui was a born fighter, Yan's most unshakeable prodigy, and the one who would forever stand a cut above you. Even she herself, once upon a time, had believed as much. She was a year younger than you, yet she was the one who guided you in from the very start. When you first arrived, battered and lost, it was fourteen-year-old Jiang Hui who looked at you with bright, fervent eyes, thumped her chest, and swore she'd keep you safe, teach you to stand on your own. She watched you rise from a clueless beginner, step by step, always carrying the composure of a senior and a genuine, indulgent warmth — certain she would always be your pillar, the benchmark you could never reach. But talent is the cruelest, most unreasonable thing in this world. Years of diligence, in the end, couldn't match innate brilliance. You caught up silently, grew without fanfare, and across countless dawn-to-dusk sparring sessions, you erased years' worth of foundational advantage bit by bit — until today's open match, when you surpassed her completely. The instant the final exchange ended, you sidestepped to deflect her sharp offensive, raised your hand and locked her forearm — controlled in force but absolutely secure. A gentle press, and all of Jiang Hui's strength collapsed at once, her center of gravity utterly lost, both knees slamming hard into the mat. The dull thud cracked open the silence, and a deathly hush swallowed the entire training hall. Jiang Hui froze in place, every ounce of strength in her body falling apart. Fine beads of cold sweat crawled across her brow, sliding down the clean line of her jaw, her ragged breathing shattering the steady rhythm she'd maintained for years. Head lowered, she stared blankly at her faintly trembling hands, and at this ring where she'd fought for over a decade and never once lost. Disbelief. Shock. Bewilderment. Wave after wave crashed over her. Your chest tightened immediately. You pulled back all your force, instinctively leaned forward and reached out, wanting to help her up, speaking softly to comfort her. "Jiang Hui, it's just sparring. It's fine." The instant those words fell, Jiang Hui snapped her gaze up. Those eyes that once brimmed with warmth, with favoritism, with clear bright laughter — they had utterly transformed. The daze in them drained away, leaving only the wreckage of shattered pride and a churning, relentless refusal to accept defeat. She flung your hand aside with a sharp, forceful sweep, as if recoiling from a naked humiliation. "Fine?" Her voice carried an undisguised tremor — the stubborn refusal to accept reality, the absurdity of having given everything only to be toppled in a single day. She braced herself against the platform and slowly rose, spine ramrod straight. Even in defeat, she clung desperately to her last shred of dignity, yet the crumbling in her voice was already beyond concealing. "I trained for over a decade. Day in, day out — grinding, drilling. Not a single day did I ever slack off, not even a little." She stared at you, gaze blazing, tinged with redness, every word dripping with anguish and defiance. "I had years more foundational training than you. I taught you every technique, every trick, hand by hand. I put everything into mentoring you back then. So how? How could you just breeze past me like it was nothing?" Watching the emotions storming in her eyes, your chest ached with a sour, swelling pain. You rushed to explain: "I never tried to surpass you. I was just sparring normally." "Just sparring normally?" Jiang Hui let out a low laugh — cold, bitter, utterly devoid of warmth. She stepped forward half a pace. On the narrow ring, the distance between you collapsed, and the storm clouds in her eyes grew heavier still. "You beat me, and now you say something pretty like that? Were you waiting for this all along? Waiting for me to lose to you, waiting for everyone to see that I, Jiang Hui, am less than you?" You shook your head frantically, your tone gentle and earnest: "I never thought that way. I never wanted to compete with you." But your explanations, to her ears in that moment, were nothing but hypocrisy and a blinding glare. Just then, from the viewing platform came Jiang Lüe's cool, flat voice — every word a blade, devoid of any comfort, nothing but icy judgment, crashing straight into Jiang Hui's taut heart. "Xiao Hui, look at her. She started later, has sharper instincts, and her ability has completely overtaken yours. Ask yourself honestly — with all those years of training, where exactly did you slack off?" That sentence was the final straw. All the perseverance, all the things she'd swallowed down, all the desperate effort no one ever saw — her own father negated every bit of it in a single breath. The last trace of warmth in her eyes extinguished entirely, and what surged up in its place was humiliation, fury, and a deep, unresolvable anguish. Jiang Hui cut her gaze toward the viewing platform, lips pressed into a bloodless line, then turned back to you. Her eyes were already drowning in impenetrable gloom and bristling hostility. "Did you hear that?" Her voice dropped low, cold and hard with a choked edge. "Even my father thinks I'm inferior to you. In his eyes, my decade-plus of effort can't measure up to your few years of catching up." Your chest clenched. You tried to speak, to argue back, but her voice suddenly spiked, cutting you off. "Everyone used to call me a genius. Everyone gathered around me, acknowledged me. But ever since you showed up, everything changed." She fixed her eyes on yours, the emotions roiling — jealousy, defiance, anguish, resentment — all tangled and knotted together. "He doesn't see me anymore. All the praise, all the favoritism — it all went to you. You don't have to do a thing. You just have to stand there, and you take everything I've fought with everything I have and still couldn't get." "I never tried to take anything from you," you murmured in protest, your voice soft, laced with helplessness. "No, you didn't." Jiang Hui tugged at the corner of her lips, producing a smile so cold, so bitter, a thin sheen of moisture flickering in her eyes before she forced it back by sheer will. The pride in her bones would never permit her to shed tears in front of you — would never allow a single additional scrap of humiliation after her defeat. "What you're best at is exactly this — that gentle, harmless, wanting-nothing look. Everyone thinks you're sensible, composed, magnanimous. Everyone thinks I'm the petty, hot-tempered, good-for-nothing one." Word by word, as if laying her bleeding heart bare, as if indicting the injustice of fate itself. "Back then, it was me who went soft. Me who wanted to be your friend. Me who taught you everything I knew, hand by hand. I shielded you, guided you, treated you with all my heart — and in the end? The person I raised with my own hands shattered every last piece of my pride and destroyed every bit of my confidence." Watching the rift bloom fully in her eyes, watching the warmth that was once there dissolve into nothing, your heart seized with panic. You called to her softly, gingerly holding up the remnants of what you'd shared: "Jiang Hui, we can still go back to the way things were. Really. It's just winning and losing — don't take it to heart." "The way things were?" Those two words seemed to wound her deeply. She suddenly reined in every fragment of anguish, and all that remained in her eyes was bone-deep cold. Every piece of youthful closeness, every pure moment shared, every sincere affection — in that instant, she overturned it all with her own hands. "There is no 'way things were.'" Her voice was cold as tempered ice, every syllable severing another inch of what once was. "The Jiang Hui who would have protected you, the Jiang Hui who treated you with all her heart — she died in this match." Jiang Lüe's impatient rebuke came down again, dripping with ruthless pragmatism and frost: "All you do when things go wrong is lash out and resent. You can't keep your composure. You should learn from her steadiness and temperament." That comparison ignited every last ember of hostility in Jiang Hui's heart. She could no longer hold back. The defiance, the jealousy, the anguish, the humiliation churning in her chest all erupted at once. She stared at you, unblinking. Those eyes that once overflowed with affection now held nothing but searing hatred. "Learn from her?" She scoffed, her voice sharp and cutting, carrying the finality of someone burning every bridge. "Why should I learn from her? Putting on an act, that fake gentleness, that harmless little face — while behind the scenes, she effortlessly crushes someone else's decade of blood and sweat." She bore her gaze into you, every word drawn in blood, every sentence aimed at the heart, condensing all her accumulated emotions into one sentence that would sever you both completely. "Since you're so talented, so blessed by heaven, so adored by everyone —" "Why don't you just go die?!" The words settled, and a faint echo drifted through the empty training hall. The harsh white light fell, illuminating the desolate, frozen wasteland in her eyes. In that moment, you knew with absolute clarity. What you once had — it was gone for good.