Chapter 65: Stop Pretending to Be Innocent
By the time Chen Mo and Su Yuqing walked out of the school gates, only a few students were left scattered across campus.
Many of them were couples, lingering to enjoy some private time together before heading out.
Walking side by side, Chen Mo and Su Yuqing blended in, looking just like another young couple who had secretly lingered in a classroom for a sweet moment before leaving.
Twilight stretched the shadows of the plane trees at the school gate. The wind lifted a corner of Chen Mo’s uniform, then gently let it fall.
The fingertips of Su Yuqing’s hand, hanging by her side, unconsciously brushed against his wrist. It was like the tip of a willow branch grazing the surface of a lake in spring, and both of them instinctively pulled their hands back.
They had grabbed or held hands before, more than once, but this felt different—so much like a real couple walking hand in hand. A mutual shyness took hold of them.
Chen Mo was fine with grabbing Su Yuqing’s hand in the heat of the moment. But when he tried to think of her as his girlfriend and purposefully take her hand, he felt his own arm freeze up.
An inexplicable bashfulness would always creep into his heart.
They walked out of the school grounds side by side, neither saying a word, each staring straight ahead.
Once they left the school grounds, the streets were busier with pedestrians, but no one gave them the sidelong glances they got on campus. The change immediately put them both at ease.
There were many food stalls near the school gate. Chen Mo smiled at Su Yuqing. "See anything you want to eat?"
Su Yuqing smiled and shook her head. With her mother’s situation still unresolved, she had no appetite.
’Until this is all over,’ she thought, ’it feels like there’s a heavy stone weighing on my heart.’
Chen Mo could read her mood, so he didn’t press the issue.
Soon, they reached an intersection, hailed a taxi, and headed for Su Yuqing’s mother’s house.
「Meanwhile, just as they were leaving campus...」
In the Year 3, Class 1 classroom, Qu Danwan, who had a habit of tidying the teacher’s desk after school, had just finished cleaning the podium and blackboard when she was cornered by a group of girls.
"Please let me through," Qu Danwan said, her expression flat as she looked at the girls.
"Qu Danwan, what’s your problem?" the leader of the trio, a girl with a high ponytail, demanded, glaring at her coldly.
"I don’t know what *you* mean!" Qu Danwan stared at them, stunned. ’This is completely backward.’ They were the ones cornering her, and they had the nerve to ask what *her* problem was?
Qu Danwan wanted to ask them what exactly they thought they were doing.
"Still playing innocent, huh?" the girl with her hair in a bun sneered. "If you do the crime, you do the time. You’re always so high and mighty, so why are you trying to weasel your way out of it now?"
As the girl with the bun advanced on her, Qu Danwan clutched the blackboard eraser and took half a step back in the twilight-soaked classroom.
"If you have something to say, say it clearly. I don’t have time to play guessing games with you." Though she was backing away, Qu Danwan’s voice was still firm.
The high-ponytail leader’s fingernail nearly poked her in the nose. "Stop playing innocent, you damn snitch!"
"What did I snitch about?" Qu Danwan frowned at the three of them.
"Wow, real tough talker, aren’t you? Don’t think we don’t know you snuck off to the teacher’s office and reported us for eating snacks in class!" the girl with the bun raged. "Are you sick? How does us eating in class have anything to do with you?"
"Yeah, you’re a real piece of work," the high-ponytail girl sneered. "I’ve been sick of you for a long time, always acting like the perfect little student for the teachers, such a good little girl. It’s not even your turn to clean, but you stay behind every day to tidy the desk and wipe the blackboard. Who are you trying to impress? Just looking at you acting so fake makes me want to puke!"
Hearing them curse and posture like brutish boys in a fight, Qu Danwan found herself at a loss.
She rarely had any dealings with these delinquent-type girls, and with them suddenly in her face, she was momentarily speechless.
But she still found the strength to reply, "Then don’t look. No one’s asking you to. And I have never snitched on anyone to the teachers, so stop accusing me. If that’s all, I’m leaving."
As she finished speaking, Qu Danwan tried to leave, but the high-ponytail girl shoved her by the chest, forcing her back against the desk.
"Hmph. You think we’d come after you without proof? Our Xiaoru saw you go into the teacher’s office to snitch with her own two eyes. Who do you think you’re fooling?"
As she spoke, the high-ponytail girl pulled a girl from behind her. This one didn’t look like a delinquent; in fact, she seemed rather timid.
"Xiaoru, go on, tell her what you saw!" The high-ponytail girl sneered at Qu Danwan, her expression smug. ’Didn’t see that coming, did you? I have a witness. Let’s see you talk your way out of this one.’
Hearing this, Qu Danwan looked at Fang Xiaoru in surprise.
"Well, I didn’t hear it with my own ears," Fang Xiaoru said cautiously, "but I saw you, Danwan, come out of the teacher’s office. Not long after, the head teacher came to our class to talk about bringing snacks to school. He even called out Huihui and Xinyao by name. If you weren’t the one who snitched then, I don’t know who was."
"Hmph. So? You think we forgot?" Lin Xinyao shot a venomous glare at Qu Danwan. "I remember it now. You collected the homework and went to the teacher’s office. A little while after you got back, the head teacher came in and lectured us about snacks. We had only just brought them back to class, and you happened to see us right before you left. Who else could it have been?"
"I didn’t," Qu Danwan argued weakly, her back pressed against the cold front panel of the teacher’s desk.
Proving your own innocence is always the hardest thing to do.
When you’re asked to prove you *didn’t* do something, you’ll almost always find yourself unable to mount a defense.
The girl with the bun, Song Huihui, suddenly kicked over the chalk box. Colored chalks CLATTERED across the floor, rolling onto Qu Danwan’s canvas shoes. "The spicy strips in my drawer during second period last Wednesday, the popping candy Xiaomei brought during first period the day before yesterday—the teacher knew about all of it! I remember now, every single time, the head teacher came to check on us right after you got back from the teacher’s office. Who else but a phony, goody-two-shoes bookworm like you would be a snitch?"
As Song Huihui finished speaking, Qu Danwan’s eyes widened in sudden realization. She remembered. Every time she was about to go to the teacher’s office, she would see Fang Xiaoru either running out of the classroom or disappearing down the hallway.
The next time she saw her, Fang Xiaoru would be walking back from the direction of the teacher’s office. Of course, the stairwell was right next to the office, so she could have just been coming from the stairs.