Chapter 21

The shock lasted only an instant before Madam Dai returned to normal. Only her tone cooled. “Young Master Fang, what do you mean by that?”

Fang Han held an elegant smile, as if what lay before him were a conversation among high society. He smiled and glanced at Jiang Zao before saying, “Teacher Jiang is only concerned about Student Dai Chu. He’s a very responsible teacher, you know. Student Dai Chu’s grades aren’t good, so in order to encourage her, he even treated her to hotpot. Look—”

Fang Han handed his phone to her.

Madam Dai only looked once before her face turned livid, and she smashed the phone. “Dai Chu!”

Fang Han picked up his phone, heartbroken. “Madam Dai, be angry if you want, but why did you smash my phone? I only just changed to this new phone!”

Madam Dai turned a deaf ear to him and stormed toward Dai Chu. Even with Lu She blocking her in the middle, he was scratched several times by her. Jiang Zao went up to advise her. “Madam Dai, please calm down—”

Madam Dai swung a slap at him. Jiang Zao had expected it. He retreated slightly and barely avoided her hand, but although he dodged the slap, he did not dodge her shrieking attack.

“What right do you have to tell me to calm down, you demon!” Madam Dai’s thin, sharp voice was as piercing as fingernails scraping against glass. “How did the two of you hook up? Did you seduce her, or did she seduce you? You shameless pair of adulterers!”

“Enough!”

A sharp shout came from Dai Chu, who had remained silent all this time. The girl who had always spoken gently and softly was, when she raised her momentum, no weaker than her mother at all.

Dai Chu stepped forward and faced her mother directly, saying each word clearly. “I will go home with you. Please stop causing a scene here.”

Madam Dai had clearly already gone mad. She could not hear anything else. She grabbed Dai Chu, who was right in front of her, by the shoulders and questioned her. “I’m causing a scene? If you hadn’t disobeyed me and dressed improperly to go around seducing men, would I have come here to make a scene? In the end, it’s all your fault!”

Madam Dai screamed hysterically.

On Dai Chu’s face, only the wound kept seeping blood. There were no tears, no expression. She said softly, “Mom, this is Jiayin High School.”

Such a light sentence entered Madam Dai’s ears, and her entire body trembled involuntarily. Her crazed expression turned dazed for an instant, and immediately after, reason returned.

She slowly released Dai Chu and said in a commanding tone, “Pack your things. We’re leaving.”

She turned toward Jiang Zao, her eyes full of hatred. “I will arrange for Dai Chu to suspend her studies. And you—I will definitely file complaints all the way to the end and make you crash and burn!”

After saying this, she looked at Dai Chu with disgust, left behind a sentence of “Hurry up, I’ll wait for you outside,” and walked out of the classroom.

Dai Chu’s body swayed. She refused Jiang Tong’s support and slowly walked to her seat by herself to start packing.

Fang Han came over and smiled at Jiang Zao. “She’s only a social butterfly, yet she’s actually making such harsh threats. How funny. Teacher Jiang, don’t worry. As your student, I know you’re not that kind of person. I’ll definitely support you with all my strength!”

Jiang Zao ignored him and walked straight toward Dai Chu, stopping when he was still two steps away from her.

Dai Chu zipped up her schoolbag before turning her head to look at him. “Teacher, I won’t say sorry to you, because you were the unauthorized copy one who chose to approach me. But…”

She revealed an exhausted smile and softly said two words.

“Thank you.”

“No need to apologize.” Jiang Zao’s tone was very calm, so calm it was as if everything that had just happened had nothing to do with him. “And, you’re welcome.”

Dai Chu picked up her schoolbag and walked outside.

“Dai Chu,” Jiang Zao called her.

Dai Chu did not stop.

Jiang Zao continued, “Everyone has their own choices. But only those who choose themselves are qualified to be saved.”

Dai Chu’s steps stumbled slightly, then quickly steadied again as she walked out of the classroom.

Madam Dai’s thin high heels struck the floor, gradually fading into the distance.

Jiang Zao turned around. The entire class’s gazes were focused on him. Among these gazes, there was concern from Jiang Tong, mockery from Fang Han, intrigue from Song Jintong, indifference from Qiu Shao, and lingering interest from the others.

“Why are you all gathered around? Are we not having class?” Jiang Zao said.

Fang Han walked toward his seat, or perhaps toward Jiang Zao. As he walked, he asked, “Teacher, after such a huge incident, do you still have the mood to teach? I think the people coming to investigate you will arrive soon.”

Song Jintong’s laughter rang out. “Young Master Fang, you still have the nerve to say that? If you hadn’t taken out that photo for Madam Dai to see and provoked her, things wouldn’t have blown up so much in the end.”

Fang Han spread his hands. “I was kindly speaking up for Teacher. Who knew that woman would be so crazy? Emotionally unstable women are really scary. No wonder she can only be someone’s mistress and can’t climb into the official position.”

“Fang Han.” Jiang Zao looked at him.

Fang Han covered his mouth, looking as if he was very afraid. “What’s wrong, Teacher? Your expression is so terrifying. You wouldn’t be blaming me, would you?”

But immediately after, he laughed again, his tone contemptuous. “Then you’d be wasting your effort. This place is the ‘Good-for-Nothing Concentration Camp.’ Don’t you know I’m a good-for-nothing? Good-for-nothings naturally have to do some rotten things. Don’t tell me you thought we good-for-nothings would only do little things like blocking restrooms. Hahaha!”

Laughter echoed in agreement all around him.

Fang Han wiped away the tears he had laughed out and looked at Jiang Zao with gloomy eyes. “But if we’re talking about being rotten, how could we compare to you adults?”

Amid the laughter, Jiang Zao’s expression was calm. His eyes even held a kind of pity for the world.

“Are you explaining?” Jiang Zao said. “Why? Do you want to obtain understanding and lighten your sense of guilt?”

Fang Han froze slightly, as if he did not understand why Jiang Zao would say this.

Jiang Zao smiled contemptuously. “What a pity no one wants to understand you. I don’t, and Dai Chu doesn’t either.”

He raised his voice. “Why should a victim have to understand the perpetrator?”

His words landed forcefully, and the other sounds gradually quieted down.

“If you were hurt by someone else, why don’t you hate the person who hurt you? Is it because you don’t dare?” Jiang Zao’s gaze swept over Fang Han’s tightly clenched fists before he continued, “I hope you can choose to place your hatred on the person you should hate, instead of blindly venting your anger on a little girl.”

The grade director appeared outside the classroom, his expression unfriendly. “Teacher Jiang, please come out for a moment.”

“All right.” Jiang Zao turned back and answered, “One moment.”

He walked up to the podium and looked down at the class below. The twenty-three faces wore all sorts of expressions. “This class period is for free discussion. The topic of discussion is—”

He wrote two characters on the whiteboard.

Capping the marker, Jiang Zao walked out with unhurried steps.

At first, the class was still noisy, with voices talking, laughing, cursing, and all sorts of sounds mixed together. But at a certain moment, it was as if someone had pressed pause. Everyone stopped at the same time.

It was so quiet one could hear a pin drop, until someone read aloud the two words on the whiteboard.

“Choice.”

In their minds, Jiang Zao’s words began to replay. Clearly, it had been only a very ordinary sentence, yet it was deeply memorable, as if it had been engraved into their brains.

“Everyone has their own choices. But only those who choose themselves are qualified to be saved.”

From time to time, someone read it aloud.

“What saving or not saving? Does he think he’s some savior?” someone said disdainfully.

This sentence woke everyone from their daze. “Exactly. Isn’t he way too chuuni?”

“If he’s really that capable, why didn’t he save Dai Chu? He got called away for investigation himself. It’s hilarious.”

Everything that had just happened had been too fast and too sudden. Jiang Tong, who had never seen much of the world, only now came back to himself as if waking from a dream, panicked. “Lu She, what do we do? My brother got called away for investigation. What do we do, what do we do?”

Lu She caught his restless hands and comforted him. “Trust Teacher Jiang. He’ll be fine.”

After hearing this, Jiang Tong gritted his teeth. He had promised to trust his brother one hundred percent, and now he could only do so. But in the next second, he started worrying again. “Then what about Dai Chu? Will something happen to her after she goes home with her mother?”

As he spoke, Jiang Tong’s expression became downcast. It was truly difficult for him to imagine that there could actually be a mother like that in this world. Just because of one skirt, she could make wild ​bailiantales.com​guesses, imagine such filthy things, use such extreme words to insult her own daughter, and personally spread rumors about her daughter. Did she really love her daughter?

Jiang Tong felt very guilty. He felt guilty that he had once developed prejudice toward Dai Chu because of some rumors. As listeners, they had merely treated those things as gossip. Whether they were true or false, it had not mattered. But what about Dai Chu, the person involved? What did she think? When she silently endured those rumors, had she been in great pain?

When she was beaten and cursed by her mother, why had she not cried? Did she not want to cry, or was she unable to cry?

Jiang Tong lowered his head. Right now, he really wanted to say sorry to Dai Chu.

A soft laugh came from diagonally in front of him. Song Jintong was leaning sideways against the back of the chair, smiling very brightly. “You’re worried something will happen to Dai Chu when she goes home? How could that be? That’s her own mother. How could she bear to truly hurt her?”

Jiang Tong frowned. He could not sense malice in Song Jintong’s words, but listening to them made him very uncomfortable. He retorted, “But Madam Dai hit Dai Chu so hard in front of everyone. Once they go home and there’s no one around, wouldn’t she be able to hit her however she wants?”

“That isn’t cruelty. That’s love.” Song Jintong shook her head and said, “You don’t understand. If Madam Dai didn’t truly love Dai Chu, why would she control her so tightly? I’m really envious of Dai Chu. She has such a good mother who cares about her so much.”

Jiang Tong felt waves of nausea in his heart as he listened. How could someone open their eyes and lie to this extent? Reason told him he should not pay attention to her, but emotion made him unable to hold back. In a very aggressive tone, he shouted at Song Jintong, “If you envy her so much, then would you want this blessing if it were given to you?”

Song Jintong froze.

Jiang Tong had originally wanted to say, If even you don’t want it, what right do you have to envy her? But then he saw Song Jintong smile.

“I would,” she said with a smile.

Jiang Zao underwent questioning for the entire afternoon. The people speaking to him went from the grade unauthorized copydirector, to the principal and vice principal, to members of the board of directors.

Jiang Zao’s emotions remained very stable the entire time.

School Director Rong, sitting across from him, was also emotionally stable.

Stable as he sat opposite Jiang Zao and smiled at him.

Jiang Zao leaned back against the sofa and looked at the ceiling. “If you have something to ask, then ask.”

“I don’t have anything I want to ask.” Rong Jingcheng smiled. “I’ve always trusted Xiao Zao very much.”

“Then why did you call me here to be questioned?” Jiang Zao clicked his tongue.

Rong Jingcheng said, “I merely found a reason to see you. Who told you not to meet me usually?”

“I’m leaving.” Jiang Zao got up and walked toward the door.

Rong Jingcheng did not stop him. He only propped up his chin and asked, “What are you going to do next?”

He did not look particularly troubled either. Clapping his hands once, he smiled and said, “It seems there’s nothing major about it. There are still so many students in the class. Even if one is missing, it doesn’t matter. Maybe things will even be a little easier.”

Jiang Zao, who had already reached the door, suddenly spoke. “Let her come back.”

“How?”

“Home visit.”

Leaving behind these words, Jiang Zao opened the door and went out.

Behind him, Rong Jingcheng shook his head. “So impulsive. They won’t meet ‘Jiang Zao,’ you know.”

The person had already disappeared. Rong Jingcheng smiled and sighed, then turned to ask the suited man who had been silently standing beside him, “What do you think?”

The secretary said, “If he did not do this, you would be disappointed, wouldn’t you?”

Rong Jingcheng extended his index finger and shook it. “No. I like Xiao Zao no matter what he is like.”

“But…” He pondered for a moment, then smiled. “Indeed. This version of him, I like even more—notify the Dai family. I will visit them tonight.”