Winter Time Rendering

Chapter 132: Chapter 55: Roman Holiday (Final)

Zhang Shutong shrugged, saying unenthusiastically,

"If you have to blame someone, blame Oreo. What can I say? We were fated to meet."

...

「A few hours earlier that afternoon.」

"Why isn’t Song back with the water yet?" Du Kang asked, looking around.

"Did you tell your family you’re eating out tonight?" Qingyi suddenly asked.

"It’s fine. My dad knows I’m not coming home."

"I have to let my family know."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean my phone is dead too." Qingyi said, innocently waggling his phone. Then he asked, "Can I borrow yours to make a call?"

But he didn’t ask Du Kang. Instead, he turned to the boy next to them, who had just come out of the restroom.

"I... You... You can borrow your friend’s..." the boy stammered, instinctively covering the pocket where his phone was.

"Just like Shutong said. It really is you." Qingyi let out a breath. "Du Kang, get him."

...

"Fuck! I knew you were a sneaky bastard, but I didn’t think you were pulling a stunt this big. You’ve got some fucking nerve!"

Du Kang spat. The boy, who had just been punched by him, was writhing on the ground, unable to speak.

Only then did Du Kang remember to ask his best friend, shocked, "What the hell is going on?"

"He’s the one who wrote the name on the stall divider and instigated Li Yipeng to make a move."

As he spoke, Qingyi made a call back. "Hello, Teacher? You can come back now. We’ve caught him."

"Wait, buddy, what’s this about?"

"Calm down. I’ll explain everything one by one. Let’s start with this guy."

A relaxed smile finally appeared on Qingyi’s face.

"Do you remember what I emphasized before? The incident with Li Yipeng’s mother was a pre-planted time bomb. And the best place to plant that bomb was the school."

"So, he passed a note to Li Yipeng to incite him into action. Makes sense now, right?"

But Du Kang immediately shook his head.

"No, no, that’s not right. As I recall, the three of us were the ones who caught the person responsible for the castle incident. What does he have to do with it? And you can’t call that a time bomb. Without us, how would the bomb have been detonated?"

Qingyi said,

"That’s another one of their miscalculations—his and his father’s. Shutong was the one who exposed Li Yipeng, but haven’t you realized? It actually doesn’t matter who exposed him."

"Since he was the one who instigated it, in a way, he was the only one who knew in advance who would smash the castle. Even without us, he would have exposed him eventually. His methods are identical to his father’s. He likes to hide behind the scenes, leave the mess for others to clean up, and wash his hands of the whole affair."

"That’s why he not only wrote the name on the divider, but to completely clear his own name, he also ’proactively’ told Gu Qiuyan about it. Remember? When Shutong went to talk to him back then, his reaction was very strange. He absolutely refused to say anything."

"That was intentional too?" Du Kang asked, dumbfounded.

Qingyi nodded.

"Exactly. It was to solidify his image as a secret admirer. If he had a secret crush, it wouldn’t make sense for him to do something to get revenge on Gu Qiuyan. And if he gave a warning beforehand, it wouldn’t make sense for him to be the mastermind who instigated Li Yipeng. But think about it the other way around. He wiped his own slate a little too clean. When so many coincidences pile up, it’s no longer a coincidence—it’s an inevitability."

At this, Qingyi looked down at the boy on the floor.

"In reality, you never had a crush on her, did you? Your whole family despises Gu Qiuyan. Growing up in that kind of environment, how could you possibly develop feelings for her? Being her deskmate, always asking after her well-being, all of it... it was all just a way to gather information on Gu Qiuyan within the ’school’ setting."

"Am I wrong?"

Qingyi nudged the boy on the ground with his foot and spat out his name with disgust:

"Zhou Ziheng."

...

"So you, Shutong, and Song planned this all in advance? And the two of us were the only ones kept in the dark?"

The girl was dumbfounded.

She had just returned with their homeroom teacher. A moment ago, her heart was pounding with anxiety. But to her surprise, as soon as Song Nanshan was out of the three boys’ line of sight, he stopped in his tracks. This was hardly the behavior of someone who had gone to buy water.

The man turned around, bent over with his hands on his knees, and gave her a wry smile.

"Ruoping, sorry to have worried you. But as your teacher, I didn’t have much choice in this matter..."

She was just about to ask what was going on when Song received a call. She didn’t know what the other person said, but his expression immediately grew serious. He nodded and, with a wave of his hand, declared:

"Let’s go! We’ll talk when we get back!"

Then he took off, rushing back the way they came.

Then, Ruoping saw that one of the three boys, who had been laughing and joking just a moment before, was suddenly on the ground. Just a second ago, they had looked like a trio of gossiping comrades-in-arms.

Song went straight over to talk to Qingyi, so she could only ask Du Kang. That guy was a little dazed himself, and it took him a long time to explain what had happened.

It turned out the two of them were the only ones who had been kept in the dark.

Just then, Qingyi finally had a moment to spare.

"Yep. Song was the outside help Shutong called in. Why else would he suddenly call just the three of us out, and deliberately not include Shutong and the other one?"

"Then why didn’t you tell me?" Ruoping demanded, moving as if to pinch him.

"Whoa, whoa, hold on! I was afraid you two would blow our cover. What if you let it slip? Besides, didn’t Shutong ask you? Did you want to know the answer ahead of time or wait for a surprise?"

"Some surprise that was!" Ruoping seethed, grinding her teeth. "I almost thought something was wrong with Song. No wonder you acted like a total idiot all afternoon!"

Qingyi spread his hands.

"Couldn’t be helped. It wasn’t that I specifically wanted to scare you. Think about it—it’s the weekend. To get Zhou Ziheng out here without arousing suspicion, he was the only one who could legitimately call a student out. I mean, Song’s our homeroom teacher. We couldn’t just go looking for Zhou Ziheng ourselves, could we?"

"So everything Song said before—about fishing, his phone being dead, going to the movies—that was all a lie? You said it on purpose for Zhou Ziheng to hear, so he’d report it to his dad?"

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