She didn't know about this and was still talking excitedly in my ear.

"I'm so sorry, Maria! It's your birthday, yet you have to spend money on me."

She said this, but there was no embarrassment on her face.

I had been used to giving her gifts, so she had always spoken in this way.

Usually there had never been any problem, but now I felt a surge of anger towards her in my heart for no reason.

I immediately snatched the phone from her hand and put it back on the counter.

"Return it! I don't want it anymore!"

"Maria, what are you doing!"

Queenie stood behind me, shouting and looking at me in disbelief.

But I firmly asked the clerk to process the refund for the phone.

The clerk looked at me strangely and then at Queenie, politely refusing the refund.

Queenie's face flushed with embarrassment. When she heard that he said the refund was not possible, she immediately clung to my arm again.

"Ah, Maria, stop kidding me. The phone has already been bought so it can't be returned!"

Queenie's voice sounded soft and sweet, with a hint of coquettishness.

I used to enjoy her talking to me like that, but today I felt particularly disgusted.

Perhaps the mechanical voice in my head had too much influence on me, so I immediately pulled my hand away from hers and spread it out to her.

"The box, and earphones."

There were strange looks from the clerks and people around.

Queenie was embarrassed all over, squirming as she reluctantly handed the earphones to me and trying to make excuses with a forced smile.

"Maria, you are planning to wrap them as a gift for me, aren't you? Ah, you don't have to, it's fine as it is."

I didn't reply. I packed the phone and earphones back into their original boxes, put them in my bag, and then turned away.

Queenie was very surprised by my attitude. In the embarrassed gazes from the people around us, she stubbornly chased me out of the store.

And the mechanical voice came to my ears again.

"Stop the loss in time and return the amount."

The extra money deducted from the mobile phone balance was returned.

I walked faster.

Queenie chased after me from behind, grabbing my arm.

She asked me with anger and gritted teeth.

"Maria Samuel, what do you mean? Are you deliberately trying to humiliate me? You know I have no money, and yet from childhood to now, you've always enjoyed humiliating me in these ways"

Queenie's words successfully made me stop.

I hadn't expected that I would be that kind of person in her heart. Does she think I was teasing her on purpose?

Since I was a child, I knew that her family was not well off, so I treated her very well.

I tried my best to satisfy her whatever she wanted.

She said her father was very strict, so I always invited her to my house to play, or even better, to stay at my house.

She said that since she was a child she could only wear new clothes during the New Year, so I shared all my clothes with her and even used my own pocket money to buy her all kinds of beautiful dresses.

She said she had never even eaten fried chicken, so I took her to taste delicious food from all over the world.

But I never expected that today she would feel that what I had done was to intentionally humiliate her.

"I fell down the stairs today." I softened my tone, trying to communicate with her calmly.

"Fell, fell, fell! Why didn't you fall to your death!"

Instead of showing the concern I expected, she even blurted out such hurtful words.

I also wanted to know why she hated me despite having been best friends for many years.

I asked directly.

A look of panic flashed across Queenie's face. She grabbed my hand, but asked where I heard the news from, telling me not to believe other people's instigation.

I sneered in a low voice, raised my phone and showed her the balance, asking her what the number on it was.

After Queenie looked at the balance on my phone, her face immediately turned pale. She shed a tear and cried out the number in my balance.

"Maria, are you deliberately humiliating me? You know I don't have much money at all!"

I smiled and put my phone back into my bag, showing unprecedented indifference.

"Aren't you asking me why I treat you like this? This is the reason."

After saying that, I broke free from Queenie's hand and left.

The balance Queenie saw on my phone was the same as what I saw, which meant that the mechanical voice in my head was not an illusion.

I didn't know why Queenie hated me, and now I didn't want to know.

Full of anger, I rushed straight to my boyfriend's apartment.

My boyfriend Lay Yeoman opened the door for me with a confused look on his face.

"Maria, why are you here? Isn't it your birthday today and you are supposed to go out and play with Queenie?"

I threw the bag into his hands, entered the door angrily, and then sat on the sofa, and tears instantly burst out of my eyes.

"Queenie doesn't consider me a friend at all!"

Lay hurriedly wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes and comforted me, asking me what had happened.

I told him about the mechanical voice in my head, but he laughed in disbelief, suspecting that I might have eaten poisonous mushrooms and had hallucinations.

Especially after knowing that I fell down the stairs, he thought that I had a brain injury and pulled me to the hospital for a check-up.

No matter how I explained, he didn't believe me, so I had to show the balance on my phone, telling him the changes in the balance.

"You must have remembered it wrong!"

Lay flipped my phone over and covered it, and said to me very confidently.

I gritted my teeth and argued with him, even taking out the new phone from my bag and handing it into Lay.

"This is for you. Hold it and let's take a look. The balance on my phone will definitely change later!"

Lay flipped through the new phone in his hand, indicating that he didn't like it and didn't want these things.

But after I glared at him, he had no choice but to hold the phone in his hand.

Then we started waiting together.

After waiting for a while, the mechanical voice did not appear, and the balance on my phone did not change at all.

"See, there is no such thing."

Lay returned the phone to me, rubbed my head helplessly, and asked me to obediently go to the hospital with him.

I slapped his hand away, unwilling to give up, and took out the earphones and handed them to him.

"It will work this time for sure!"

But to my disappointment, those voices still did not appear and the balance did not change at all.

Lay held me in his arms, comforting me softly.

"You must have had hallucinations after falling down the stairs and also misunderstood Queenie."

I rested my head on his shoulder, not knowing how to refute.

It had clearly happened to my parents.

But when it came to Lay, there was no change at all.

"Do you love me?" I asked.

"Of course I love you." Lay replied.

Listening to his answer and his heartbeat, I surprisingly didn't feel at ease at all.

"Then use the phone I gave you."

I didn't give up and wanted to test it out again. I even thought that the reason why the mechanical voice didn't appear and the balance didn't change was because Lay didn't like the things I gave him and didn't really accept them.

Lay couldn't persuade me, so he had to let go of me to take the phone, placing his own phone together with the new phone.

"You see, there's actually not much difference, and there are still a lot of photos in my original phone."

He still didn't want to use the phone I gave him.

I reached out and grabbed the two phones, putting them together for a careful comparison.

This was different, and that was also different!

They were obviously entirely different, but he just didn't want to accept what I give him.

When I was about to cry in grievance, a message suddenly popped up on Lay's phone.

"I'm really fed up with her!"

But the owner of that message turned out to be Queenie!

At the same time, there were 19 unread messages from Queenie.

I felt like my heart sank.