Chapter 64: Rescuing the Bullied Top Student (12)

Hearing Tang Qi’s words, the parents instantly exploded. Each of them glared at her with utter fury, staring at Tang Qi as if she were their mortal enemy.

The principal’s head throbbed with pain. He then heard Tang Qi continue, “Although, come to think of it, whether they’re expelled hardly matters… They’ll be going to prison for breaking and entering anyway. Their student status will be automatically revoked. Isn’t that right, Principal?”

The principal forced a few dry laughs. No one had expected that a mere teenager like Tang Qi could talk about sending six people to jail so lightly, as effortlessly as mentioning some trivial, painless matter.

“It must be you! It’s all your fault, you little whore…” One parent lost control and lunged at Luo Xun, but Tang Qi easily blocked them.

Grabbing the parent’s wrist, Tang Qi pulled a faint smile. “Oh, right. I also have evidence here of your children extorting money from elementary school students. I imagine plenty of kids or parents would be willing to testify.”

She shoved the parent away. The parent stumbled back a few steps and fell to the floor, burying their face in their hands, sobbing. “He’s just a child! Why can’t you just forgive him!”

Tang Qi sneered coldly. “We’re the same age as them. We’re children too, aren’t we? So we deserve to be bullied? Instead of crying and making a scene here, you should be thinking about what your children will be able to do in the future. Life won’t be easy for them after they get out.”

The other parents looked dazed. As if hearing some absurd joke, they let out a few crazed cackles. Then, moments later, it suddenly dawned on them—Tang Qi and Luo Xun were truly, resolutely determined to send their children to prison.

“They’re still young. If you send them away out of momentary anger, you’ll feel guilty about it later too…” The principal couldn’t stand by any longer and stepped in to mediate.

“Principal!” Tang Qi’s voice suddenly rose. “School is a place for teaching and nurturing, but that doesn’t mean it should unconditionally condone every problem a student has. I think this incident can also serve as a very good lesson—to tell other students: Don’t break the law! Whoever you are, if you make a mistake, you face the consequences.”

“This is called justice! This is a right granted to us by society and the law!”

As for guilt? Tang Qi looked towards Luo Xun. “Luoluo, will you feel guilty?”

Luo Xun shook her head, her voice firm and resolute. “No. Why should I feel guilty? If you hadn’t come that day, my mother would have died because she couldn’t get treatment in time. I might have been killed or crippled by them. Why would I feel guilty? I’m not the one who should feel guilty.”

People always find it easier to make excuses to forgive the perpetrators, demanding that the victims show understanding. They always find a reason: He’s just a child. He’s had a hard life too.

It’s as if finding one good quality in a bad person proves they aren’t truly bad. Yet for a good person, one flaw invites endless condemnation, as if everyone has just seen that person’s true face.

“From the moment this happened to me until now, no one—not a single person—has asked me if it hurt, or if I was scared. No one has offered me an apology. All anyone does is demand my forgiveness the moment they open their mouths. On what grounds?” Luo Xun did not back down an inch. “And if I had died? Would you all go beg for forgiveness at my grave? So even if the Principal pleads for them, I won’t agree.”

“Not only will I not forgive them, I’ll applaud and cheer when they get sent away.”

Tang Qi looked at Luo Xun with a beaming smile. That was more like it! This was how her Luoluo should be—fearless, full of sunshine, not tormented into a gloomy, withdrawn shell.

Taking Luo Xun’s hand, Tang Qi started walking out. Luo Xun’s gaze lingered on Tang Qi’s back. She didn’t want to forgive those people. Before coming here, she had already mentally prepared herself to be persuaded otherwise by others.

She might even be called cold-blooded, accused of lacking any sense of camaraderie.

But Tang Qi had always stood firmly by her side.

From beginning to end, Tang Qi had never once asked her to forgive them!

The parents continued their raucous scene at the school. Tang Qi simply took Luo Xun straight home and applied for leave, refusing to go to school. When the parents realized they couldn’t find the two girls, they tried every possible method to find out their address, but no one knew where Tang Qi lived.

Tang Qi released the story through local media. Many parents only then learned that six students from No. 1 High School had broken into a classmate’s house at night to steal. When they asked their own children, they found out these same students had been domineering bullies at school, constantly harassing classmates.

They petitioned the school en masse, demanding these students be dealt with. They opposed having such students polluting the educational environment, and feared that leaving them in school would mean their own children would be targeted next.

After wavering several times, the principal ultimately made the decision to expel them. They truly had been in the wrong on this matter.

Mother Luo soon regained consciousness and, after a few days of observation, was brought to Tang Qi’s home by Tang Qi. Xu Yan formally submitted the application for case filing. Since the case involved juvenile crime, the court quickly scheduled a trial, set for just half a month later.

The parents created a fuss for a while, but then, for reasons unknown, they suddenly quieted down.

No matter what storms raged outside, however, the little home Tang Qi and Luo Xun shared was like a safe harbor, shielding them from the outside wind and rain.

Knowing that Luo Xun was worried about her grades, Tang Qi stayed up late creating a study plan and required Luo Xun to follow it strictly. They woke up at six every morning and went downstairs for a twenty-minute slow jog.

After returning, they’d have a nutritious breakfast, then begin the morning’s study session. Mornings were mainly focused on identifying and filling knowledge gaps from their first and second years of high school.

After a lunch break and a half-hour nap, they continued studying material from their third year in the afternoon. It was during this time that Luo Xun discovered Tang Qi basically knew everything. Her explanations were even better than the teachers’, exceptionally clear and incisive on key problem areas.

Evenings were for intensive sprint drills. Luo Xun would randomly pick two subjects each night and do two test papers for each, to be graded by Tang Qi.

On the very first day, Luo Xun received a shock. She had thought her foundation was fairly solid, yet she only scored 70 percent on the first paper.

“Unhappy?” Tang Qi came over carrying a plate of fruit and sat down beside her. Luo Xun looked at the score on the paper, feeling upset and mumbling, “I thought I’d get at least 90.”

“That’s not surprising. I looked through all your previous notes and test papers. There are a few key concepts you haven’t fully grasped. I specifically selected these problems for you, tailored to your weak points. This score is perfectly normal.”

Tang Qi picked up a grape and held it to Luo Xun’s lips. “Have a grape. Then I’ll go over the problems with you.”

Luo Xun blushed. She stole a glance at Tang Qi. Tang Qi’s hand hovered firmly by her lips, neither lowering nor moving closer, just waiting patiently at a short, teasing distance, waiting for Luo Xun to come forward herself.

This feeling… was exactly like being a fish on a hook.

The little fish, Luo Xun, leaned in and ate the grape, swallowing the bait lowered by the hunter!

Soft lips brushed against her fingers. Tang Qi withdrew her hand and rubbed her fingers together forcefully. Taking a deep breath, she said, “Come on, let me explain the problems to you…”

This kind of simple life, where all she had to consider was studying, was something Luo Xun hadn’t experienced in a very long time. She plunged herself headfirst into the sea of knowledge, ignoring everything else.

If Tang Qi assigned her one test paper, she’d do two. Before sleeping at night, she’d listen to half an hour of listening comprehension exercises. She wouldn’t even spend more than five minutes in the bathroom, and during those five minutes, her mouth would still be reciting literature texts she needed to memorize.

There was absolutely none of the “couple time” Tang Qi had envisioned. The scenes she’d imagined—Luo Xun not wanting to study, Tang Qi coaxing her, the two of them playfully wrestling over it—none of that happened.

She had even envisioned playing the strict teacher, where if Luo Xun refused to study, she’d have to steal a kiss before she could relax…

And the result? Luo Xun was even more self-disciplined and diligent than she’d ever imagined. All her schemes had fallen flat!

Every evening, the two of them studied in Tang Qi’s room. After studying, Luo Xun would go back to her own room through the connecting door to sleep. So exhausted she was, her head hadn’t even hit the pillow before she was sound asleep.

Even if Tang Qi wanted to tease her, seeing her so tired, she couldn’t bear to do it. She could only tuck Luo Xun in every night, adjust the air conditioning temperature, and then return to her room to “keep her empty boudoir alone.”

Luo Xun’s hard work quickly paid off. Her error rate for similar types of questions grew less and less. After several rounds of practice, she could essentially achieve a 95 percent accuracy rate.

Time passed day by day until the day of the trial arrived. For once, Luo Xun set aside her studies and appeared with Tang Qi at the plaintiff’s bench.

Xu Yan presented the events of that day, producing the initial testimonies of the six students. He demanded the most severe punishment for such a heinous act.

When it was time for the defense’s statement, as expected, the six students recanted. They claimed they had been too terrified at the time, and that the statements they initially gave were all false, completely fabricated.

They unified their story, adamantly insisting that Luo Xun and Zhou Chenglong were lovers, that they were Zhou Chenglong’s friends, and that they went to Luo Xun’s house only to mediate their breakup. They absolutely were not there to assault anyone.

“You’re lying! If it was as you say, why did my mother faint?” Luo Xun shouted angrily.

“That’s because your mother found out you were dating someone and got so upset she fainted,” one of the students retorted.

Furious, Luo Xun was about to argue further, but Tang Qi held her back, telling her to stay calm and leave everything to Xu Yan. Unhurried, Xu Yan stood up. “I’d like to ask the defendants: You claim Zhou Chenglong and Luo Xun were lovers. Yet, when I asked around at school, everything I heard was that Zhou Chenglong bullied Luo Xun daily, even forbidding others from speaking to her, hitting her and cursing at her.”

“That wasn’t bullying. That was just roughhousing between a couple. It was Luo Xun who didn’t want anyone to know she was dating Zhou Chenglong, so she asked him to act that way,” one of them countered.

“You’re saying… I asked Zhou Chenglong to bully me?” Luo Xun thought she had become strong enough, but hearing this, she couldn’t help the tears welling up in her eyes.

“Exactly.” The six nodded in perfect unison. “You said he was just a street punk, beneath you, so you didn’t want to go public.”

“If you hadn’t broken up with him, we wouldn’t have come looking for you.”

“Before, when you hung out and played with us, you had fun, didn’t you?”

One after another, they piled on, their words laced with malice aimed straight at Luo Xun. Even some people in the gallery who didn’t know the truth began to cast meaningful glances at her.

Luo Xun couldn’t stop trembling. She had never known people could be so utterly shameless.

The parents smirked smugly. Weren’t they refusing to forgive? They had their ways to get through this safely. Without witnesses, without surveillance footage, it all came down to whatever anyone claimed with their own mouth.

“Then, if I may ask, do you have any other evidence to prove she was in a relationship with Zhou Chenglong?” Xu Yan continued.

“How would we know the intimate details between the two of them? You can ask Zhou Chenglong,” a teenager replied smugly.

Their lawyer rose, nodding slightly towards the bench. “I would like to call my witness: Zhou Chenglong.”

Luo Xun and Tang Qi were shocked. Even the homeroom teacher, who had come to observe the trial, gaped in disbelief. Outsiders might not know, but how could the school staff not be aware of the real situation?

Why had Zhou Chenglong come? To commit perjury?

Under everyone’s watchful gaze, the courtroom doors opened. With all eyes upon him, Zhou Chenglong slowly walked in. He took his place in the witness stand, his face completely expressionless. “Luo Xun, I’m sorry. I can’t betray my brothers!”