Gabrielle

Nobody thinks Gabrielle is a good girl. She herself believes she's a bad girl. Her biological father is nowhere to be found, and her mother works as an ordinary streetwalker, like a public washing machine where men just need to stuff some banknotes into her bra to unlock the secret door and indulge in clandestine pleasure. Growing up in such a "bad" environment, she couldn't help but become a bad girl.

She inherits her mother's beauty, with thick, lustrous black hair that takes considerable effort to tie, and skin the color of honey syrup. Her lips are very red, with the upper lip slightly curved, outlining a sweet arc. Her mother's clients often stare at her lips without turning away. Her mother has to sternly scold her, even though it's directed at her, calling her a flirtatious little "grues." Gabrielle, however, doesn't mind, thinking her mother is just jealous of her beauty.

She is indeed a vulgar, thoughtless, yet astonishingly beautiful bad girl.

At the age of eighteen, this bad girl experienced the first setback in her life.

Before this, her life wasn't smooth sailing either. While her family was not wealthy, they managed to meet basic needs. Her mother, despite occasionally eloping with men and leaving her alone, always left behind a stack of banknotes. Gabrielle could barely survive with that money.

She never considered working to earn money because her mother wouldn't be away for too long. Usually, after two weeks, she would be abandoned by the man and return to the flashy yet dirty apartment to live with Gabrielle again. So, Gabrielle was always calm when her mother left.

However, this time was different. Her mother seemed to have found true love, and two months passed without her returning home.

Sometimes Gabrielle wonders if her mother really found true love or if she died at the hands of that man, buried in some remote wilderness. This thought lingers in her mind for two seconds, then gets pushed aside by other worries.

Her mother ran away, leaving Gabrielle without a source of income, unable to pay tuition, and with no money for food.

At this point, she realized the good side of her mother. Despite being a streetwalker, her mother never intended to groom her as a successor. If a client looked at her a bit too much, her mother would erupt in anger—even if it was directed at her, scolding her as a flirtatious little "grues." Gabrielle knew this was her mother's way of protecting her, so she wasn't angry.

While her mother's mind wasn't very bright and often had romantic but laughable ideas, she still qualified as a decent mother. Even though she would occasionally scream and shout at Gabrielle, sometimes even expressing a desire for a joint suicide, she used the money earned from selling her body to send Gabrielle to school, dressing her up like a young star. Despite eventually running away with a man, Gabrielle would shed a few large tears when thinking about her.

Of course, if Gabrielle had enjoyed studying, she might have cried even more. Unfortunately, the child of a streetwalker wasn't destined for education. When her mother left, she was sad for a while but was soon overwhelmed by the joy of not having to go to that damn school anymore!

Gabrielle's mother couldn't afford to send her to a private high school, so she had to enroll her in a public school. There, Gabrielle learned how to smoke, fight, and curse, but never how to study. Occasionally, her mother would ask for her report card, and she would present a forged one. Her mind, like her mother's, was not very bright, but in these moments, it seemed remarkably clever. She didn't forge straight A's; she deliberately left two glaring C's, making her mother believe it was her true level. In reality, apart from those two C's, the rest of the grades were fake.

After deciding not to go to school, Gabrielle slept until noon the next day without any hesitation. The school called her several times, and she pretended not to hear. Teachers wouldn't venture into the red-light district to save a failing student's academic career. Thus, two weeks later, Gabrielle received her expulsion notice.

Opening the envelope, Gabrielle's emotions remained unaffected. She was too young—young to the point of being naive—too young to understand the consequences of losing the privilege to study. She only felt liberated and free, like a bird breaking out of its cage, free to soar into the sky.

After savoring her freedom for a while, Gabrielle turned and threw herself into a reckless pursuit. A week later, her reckless pursuit went bankrupt due to insufficient funds. Using her petite yet not very bright mind, she thought for a while and decided to find a job to earn money.

However, she had no idea where to work or what kind of job to take. When her mother left, she believed she was raising a beautiful, intelligent daughter with hopes of attending college. In reality, she had raised a beautiful but empty-headed girl.