The phone, which had been in use for too long, was getting hot, scalding the tip of Huo Ranyin’s ear.
Huo Ranyin moved the phone away slightly and unconsciously pinched the reddened tip of his ear with his fingers. “…A boomerang, huh.”
“What?” Ji Xun asked.
“It seems like you’re praising Zhou Zhaonan, but you’re actually praising yourself,” Huo Ranyin said. “Didn’t your arm get dislocated too?”
“I dislocated one, Zhou Zhaonan dislocated two. If you do the math, my praise for Zhou Zhaonan is double the praise for myself,” Ji Xun did some elementary school arithmetic.
“Do you think saying that will make me… make Zhou Zhaonan thank you?”
“Won’t he?” Ji Xun retorted. “He was clearly very happy and took my words completely to heart.”
“Just keep showing off…” Huo Ranyin muttered very quietly, and before Ji Xun could hear clearly, he instantly changed the subject. “Alright, it’s late. You should get to bed early. You have a book signing to get to when you wake up.”
The story of the past wasn’t actually finished. Hearing this, Ji Xun was a little reluctant to hang up, but on second thought, it wasn’t easy for Huo Ranyin to get to bed early, so he said:
“Alright, you sleep too. It’s rare to have a night where you don’t have to work late—”
He hung up the phone.
The hotel room, now devoid of the other person’s voice, instantly felt much colder. It was time to sleep. But the excitement brought on by the past didn’t fade away immediately; instead, it continued to beat against his heart like a tide.
He sat up from the bed, rotated his stiff neck and shoulders from holding the same position for so long, and walked to the window to look outside.
It was deep into the night. The city, once like a river of stars reflected on earth, had mostly extinguished its enchanting, winding lights. Only a few scattered dots remained, as if the river of stars had flown back to the sky, leaving behind a few lonely, pitifully cute stars shining by themselves on the ground.
The follow-up to that old case…
Ji Xun continued to think.
The red and blue police lights illuminated half of the science building, and the piercing siren could be heard even further away, audible to half the school.
From a distance, Ji Xun saw the corridors of the academic building crowded with students, like clusters of black-headed mushrooms growing in the hallway. It wasn’t quite the end of the evening self-study session yet, but at this point, studying had long been thrown to the back of the students’ minds.
After all, on this night, there was first the death report of a classmate posted on the notice board, then a teacher admitting to a student-teacher romance, and finally, another student attempting to jump off a building, who was fortunately saved…
For all the students at the school, this night was bound to be an unforgettable one in their academic careers.
Thinking about it that way, this was truly a terrifying school…
Ji Xun thought to himself. He turned his head and saw the paramedics who had arrived with the ambulance giving Zhou Zhaonan emergency pain relief. The bruises on his face were also being re-treated with medication.
Zhou Zhaonan’s hair, usually long enough to cover his eyes, was now pulled back and held on top of his head with a cute deer-antler hairpin, no doubt contributed by some kind-hearted nurse.
With his hair out of the way, Zhou Zhaonan’s entire face was revealed. Ji Xun was surprised to find that the other’s brow bones were prominent, his nose bridge was elegant, and while his jawline was currently obscured by a fresh piece of gauze…
He looked like a truly miserable, pitiful sight, biting his lip to endure the pain.
Ji Xun took a walk around the school, found the tuck shop, and bought Zhou Zhaonan a hot drink.
By the time he returned, Zhou Zhaonan’s wounds had been treated. The hair that had been clipped up was let down again, covering his eyes and brows as before.
The doctor beside him looked like he had been waiting for a while and grumbled, “You dare to run around with a dislocated arm? Doesn’t it hurt? You’ll know how serious it is when you can’t use your arm properly later!”
“I know, I know. Don’t worry, I’m still young. I don’t want to lose the use of my arm,” Ji Xun said with a playful grin, handing his injured arm to the paramedic. He turned and tapped Zhou Zhaonan’s cheek with the hot drink can.
“For you, to warm your stomach.”
Zhou Zhaonan was slightly taken aback. The cheek that the can touched turned a little red, like a red cloud drifting over snow.
After all this running around and having his wounds treated by the doctor, Chen Ya seemed to have finally recovered somewhat from the terror of her near-death experience.
In this incident, Zhou Zhaonan was the most seriously injured, followed by him. Chen Ya was relatively lucky, with only some scrapes and bruises. But at the same time, she was left with the most difficult wound to heal—the mental pressure and emotional trauma.
The police officially began their questioning. Chen Ya, sobbing, tried her best to answer.
Ji Xun stood nearby, listening in.
He heard Chen Ya recount everything he already knew, and also things he didn’t know but had guessed at—the reason she had a sudden emotional breakdown and wanted to jump after running away was because Xu Shijin had been calling her nonstop, berating and insulting her!
“Xu Shijin…” Ji Xun’s brow furrowed slightly.
“I actually saw a dark figure when Chen Ya left,” Zhou Zhaonan walked up beside Ji Xun and said softly. “But it was dark, so I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me and didn’t say anything.”
Ji Xun looked around. There were many people nearby, so he pulled Zhou Zhaonan to a corner for a private analysis.
“There are two possibilities now,” Ji Xun quietly analyzed with Zhou Zhaonan. “First, the dark figure you saw was Xu Shijin. She was lurking on campus, saw the whole thing, and angrily called Chen Ya. The other possibility…”
“That person was Yu Xiaoyu,” Zhou Zhaonan said.
“Correct,” Ji Xun said. “Yu Xiaoyu did the exact same thing as before; she tipped off Xu Shijin again. If our previous speculation is true and Xu Shijin wants revenge on everyone, she wouldn’t miss Chen Ya. Learning that her own ordeal was a direct result of Chen Ya’s actions, it would be logical for her to verbally provoke Chen Ya into suicide.”
But what about Chi Wenlan? Ji Xun actually found the death report posted on the bulletin board today very strange. Although the logical chain of “Chi Wenlan caused the rumors, which in turn triggered Zhen Huan’s death, and the people in Class A, out of fear, then turned to bullying Xu Shijin” existed, wasn’t it too long and convoluted? Why go after Chi Wenlan instead of the people in Class A?
Could it be that Chi Wenlan, out of some sanctimonious guilt, did something directly to Xu Shijin?
But would a person with Chi Wenlan’s personality, who was still indulging in a self-absorbed savior complex before Chen Ya spoke up, do anything unnecessary to Xu Shijin?
Ji Xun kept these speculations to himself. He wasn’t worried by the confusion; he believed that as long as he continued to investigate, he would uncover more clues. He pulled Zhou Zhaonan back to their original spot to continue listening to the police investigation.
Shortly after they left, the conversation between the teachers and the police still revolved around Xu Shijin.
A police officer said, “Xu Shijin, isn’t that the girl who caused a scene about jumping off a building at your school before? What’s going on with your school? It’s only been a few days, and we’ve been here four or five times already. Students at this age are very sensitive. You can’t rush them; as soon as you do, something happens.”
The police have been here four or five times? Ji Xun made a mental note of this. He then listened as the surrounding teachers offered apologetic smiles for a long time without mentioning anything important, and he couldn’t help but interject:
“And the mineral water dispenser in Class E was tampered with—”
“Officer,” the grade level director suddenly spoke, his voice loud, completely drowning out Ji Xun’s. “It’s too cold at night. It’s not appropriate to keep a child whose mental state is still unstable out here. Let’s take her to the school infirmary and question her slowly in there. By the way, what about her parents? Has anyone contacted them?”
“Contacted, contacted,” the other teachers immediately chimed in.
Male and female voices, a cacophony of different sounds, overlapped. Even if Ji Xun wanted to speak again, his voice wouldn’t reach the police officers’ ears for a while.
Immediately after, led by the grade level director, the school leaders and teachers escorted the police, along with Chen Ya, to the infirmary.
But Ji Xun and Zhou Zhaonan were not ignored. In fact, a teacher and a security guard quickly appeared by their side, “escorting” them towards the office.
The police went forward; they went backward.
Their paths were truly heading in opposite directions.
Ji Xun said, “Hello, teacher. A question, where are you taking us?”
“Why ask so many questions! Would a teacher harm you?”
“Teacher, we need to use the restroom.”
“Not allowed.”
“Teacher, why not?” Ji Xun’s voice was full of mockery. “Teacher, are you infringing on our personal freedom?”
However, at this point, the teachers watching them fell silent. Each wore a grim, stone-faced expression and continued leading them forward until they reached a small meeting room.
This group even wanted to put Ji Xun and Zhou Zhaonan in separate rooms, but Ji Xun, who had been cooperative and hadn’t struggled all this time, suddenly forced his way into the room where Zhou Zhaonan was.
The teachers immediately scolded him: “What are you doing? Why are you two students so difficult? I told you, the teachers won’t harm you—”
“That’s enough,” a voice came from behind, stopping them. The grade level director, who had just seen the police off, had returned. He said, “If they want to be together, let them be together. I need to speak to them together anyway. The rest of you can leave.”
The teachers and security guard filed out.
In the meeting room, only three people remained: Ji Xun, Zhou Zhaonan, and the grade level director.
Before, he had only seen him in a crowd or from a distance. It was only now that they were face to face that Ji Xun suddenly recognized him. This grade level director was the same person he had seen trying to cozy up to a chemistry professor at the entrance of a lab at Qin University!
Which meant…
The grade level director knew everything.
“You’re not a student at our school, are you?” The director looked at Ji Xun first. “If you’re not a student at our school, you shouldn’t be on our campus…”
“But my presence on campus is perfectly reasonable,” Ji Xun interjected. “Emotionally, I stopped a suicide attempt that happened at your school and saved one of your students. Logically, I know about some things that have happened at your school, for example…”
He looked at the grade level director.
“Someone went to the science building at Qin University last weekend, trying to slip someone a red envelope to privately test a mineral water bottle. And Xu Shijin, she’s been missing for so long. Has the school filed a report?”
The director’s expression changed slightly, but that was all. After it passed, his tone became much more cordial. “You saved a student from our school. That’s a good thing, a very good thing. I think good deeds should be rewarded, otherwise, no one will be willing to do good deeds in the future. So I will apply to the school for a Good Samaritan award of twenty thousand yuan, specifically for you.”
Without waiting for Ji Xun’s reply, he turned to Zhou Zhaonan.
He said, “Zhou Zhaonan, you were the one who was truly impressive tonight. You are a very brave student, and the school is proud of you. I’ve also looked into your situation. Since you agreed to what happened in the past, I won’t say whether it was right or wrong. Your grades have always been excellent, and you were originally qualified to enter Class A. There isn’t much time left before the college entrance exams. I think the school can make a special exception and let you into Class A to focus on your studies.”
…
Their conversation with the grade level director didn’t last long—or rather, after the director had given them a one-sided, polite speech, he let them leave the office.
The two walked around the school for a while before Ji Xun broke the silence: “Looks like we’ve run into the same thing as Xu Shijin. The school plans to use some benefits to buy our silence…”
The Good Samaritan award meant nothing to him. No one who truly saves a life does it for anything other than the life itself.
But he looked at Zhou Zhaonan.
He seemed to have picked up on something from the director’s words. It seemed Zhou Zhaonan was originally supposed to be in Class A but, for some reason, had remained in Class E.
“What do you think…?” he asked.
“This morning, the school arranged a health check for us,” Zhou Zhaonan replied, seemingly off-topic. “There are also rumors in the grade that the school is planning a fully enclosed pilot teaching program for the second years and will randomly select one class… I didn’t think much of it this morning, but now that I think about it, this ‘random’ selection will almost certainly fall on Class E. Just like the health check, it’s all part of the school’s response to quell the situation.”
Ji Xun saw the familiar face beside him darken, as if merging with the night, revealing a cold glint.
He heard the other’s low voice: “Disappointing.”
Zhou Zhaonan stopped and looked toward the academic building.
Ji Xun noticed his gaze was fixed on one spot, and that spot was… Class A.
The next second, Zhou Zhaonan retracted his gaze as if casting aside a worn-out shoe.
“Ji Xun,” Zhou Zhaonan said.
“Call me ‘ge’,” Ji Xun added a cooler title. “Officer-ge.”
“…Listen to me,” Zhou Zhaonan said with a cold face.
“Listening, listening,” Ji Xun said.
“I want to know the whole truth,” Zhou Zhaonan said.
Ji Xun raised an eyebrow. After listening to Zhou Zhaonan finish, he replied with an even more determined tone:
“I will find out the whole truth.”
