Chapter 101 Personal Freedom It was me who sent you to the infirmary...
Because of Luo Shu, Shen Qianshu and his group gathered downstairs of her house in a panic.
"What's the matter? Still didn't answer the phone?" It was Jiang Xun who spoke. During this period, the news of Shen Qianshu's sudden family accident was reported back to Jiangcheng. The young couple specially came to comfort their old friend, and happened to run into Luo Shu disappearing silently. Tong Menglin was even more anxious and couldn't sleep all night.
"No." Shen Qianshu's face turned ashen.
Jiang Xun slapped his forehead and thought of a solution: "Otherwise, Linlin and I will go to the places she often goes to look for her nearby."
"I've looked everywhere." Shen Qianshu's tone became increasingly panicked, as if his chest was being pressed down by an invisible claw, unable to calm down. "No matter how hard we try, it's useless. I think we should just call the police."
Compared to his loss of control, Fei Wei was barely sane. "Qian Shu, I know you're worried, but we need to get down to business. It hasn't even been 24 hours since we discovered Luo Shu is missing, so the police won't accept our case. Besides, Luo Shu sent me a message asking for leave."
"I'm suspicious because she asked for leave without any reason." Shen Qianshu frowned and walked back and forth quickly, trying to ease his anxiety. "We all know that she's not someone who acts on impulse, and she certainly wouldn't ask for leave and turn off her phone without a single word."
Tong Menglin stepped forward to agree, "I agree with Qian Shu. I don't believe Luo Shu would leave without saying goodbye. I'm just worried about her making enemies."
Shen Qianshu's eyes were heavy, thinking that he would not be enemies with Luo Shu, but there were people who were enemies with him.
To be honest, he had always had a suspect in his mind. When he met that person that day, Luo Shu disappeared in the evening. The most important thing was that he asked someone to check the leave message and tried to find the IP address behind it, but strangely, it was completely erased. Apart from Fang Qingzhuo, he couldn't think of anyone else who had this technology.
He raised his arm and glanced at the time on his watch: "Then wait another hour. If you still don't see him, call the police."
While waiting, Shen Qianshu found Fei Wei who was resting and handed her a bottle of water: "Sister Fei Wei, thank you for your hard work during this period."
Fei Wei knew what he was referring to, and couldn't help revealing her sadness: "What are you talking about? We have been friends for so many years."
After a day of running around, Shen Qianshu’s hair was a little messy, and a strand of hair poked on his eyelids: “Sister, I have something to ask you?”
Fei Wei: “You ask.”
“It’s my brother…” Shen Qianshu hesitated, “Was there anything abnormal before?”
Fei Wei was silent for a moment, as if thinking. "Now that you mention it, I remember one thing. He gave me a set of jewelry for my birthday not long ago."
Shen Qianshu looked puzzled: "What's so abnormal about this?"
"That's not an ordinary set of jewelry. He's never given me such a lavish gift on my birthday before. That night, I even teased him about whether he would ever give me another one in the future..." Fei Wei covered her face with her hands in self-blame, never expecting her casual remark to come true. "Who knew it would really..."
Shen Qianshu stared at the air with a lost gaze, muttering to himself, "Really, something is wrong."
"Shushu, where have you been so we can find you..."
Suddenly, Tong Menglin's scream of shock and anger was heard in the air.
Hearing the noise, Shen Qianshu instinctively ran away, and sure enough, he saw Luo Shu appear at the gate of the community.
Despite being mentally prepared, Luo Shu's eyes were still filled with tears. She glanced at her friends who had gathered around her and said, "I'm sorry for making you worry. I'm fine."
Jiang Xun said in a tone that was half concerned and half teasing: "If you don't come back, we are all going to report the case together."
Luo Shu lowered her head guiltily: "I'm not very good at this. I'm sorry. I promise I won't do it again next time."
"I'm glad you're okay." Besides greetings, Fei Wei focused on the key point, "Where did you go today? You only received a message asking for leave, and why did you turn off your phone?"
Luo Shu then remembered that her phone was still with Fang Qingzhuo, and without thinking, she lied, "I just asked for leave to go out for a while, and I lost my phone on the way."
In the corner, Shen Qianshu, who had been observing quietly but not showing any concern, stepped forward and his first words were a questioning one with an indecipherable emotion: "You said you were going to relax, where did you go to relax?"
Luo Shu was stunned for a moment, then reacted and picked up the thermos bucket that the old lady had forced upon her before getting on the bus: "It's from the nearby farmhouses. Look, there's also some packed chicken soup. Do you want me to open it and show you?"
Tong Menglin didn't have that many thoughts, so she took her arm and said, "Even if you want to go out for a walk, you can't go a day without replying to messages on your phone. And next time you want to relax, tell me and I'll fly over to accompany you."
After exchanging pleasantries for a while, Luo Shu invited everyone to go home, saying that it was getting late and they should go back and rest.
Finally, Shen Qianshu was left alone. Luo Shu knew that he was the hardest to fool. She took a deep breath and walked up to him with a smile: "Qianshu, I'm really a little tired. Let's talk about it tomorrow. I won't see you off. Be careful on the road."
After saying that, he walked past him and headed towards the apartment building where he lived. Before he took two steps, Shen Qianshu spoke coldly from behind: "You can hide it from them, but you can't hide it from me."
Luo Shu stopped.
Shen Qianshu stared at the stubborn figure under the streetlight: "Why did you hide it for Fang Qingzhuo? Did he force you again?"
Luo Shu's knuckles turned white as she clenched the thermos.
"Restricting someone's personal freedom can lead to more than just detention in serious cases. Do I really need to educate you about the law?"
This question suddenly came from behind her head, and Luo Shu blurted out subconsciously: "Don't be suspicious, it's not him."
The subconscious denial was not Fang Qingzhuo's, rather than a rebuttal of the fact.
Shen Qianshu closed his eyes resignedly and tried to wake her up by shouting, "Luo Shu, stop shielding him. This is aiding and abetting evil. If he dares to take you away this time, he will do something even more outrageous next time..."
Luo Shu couldn't listen any longer and turned back to interrupt. Her pupils were still bright even in the night, but this glimmer of light was the dissatisfaction that Shen Qianshu effortlessly interpreted: "I said it's not him, so it's not him. I don't need you to educate me on the law. I'm back now, and it hasn't even been twenty-four hours."
It is clearly early autumn, but one feels a biting chill for no apparent reason.
After a brief moment of relative silence, the expression on Shen Qianshu's face gradually changed from disbelief to self-abandonment: "Aren't you curious about how I was sure about him?"
Luo Shu didn't say anything immediately, seeming to agree but also uninterested.
"When you called me yesterday afternoon, Fang Qingzhuo was sitting across from me, but we ended up parting on bad terms."
Luo Shu stared at him intently, and Shen Qianshu let her look at him wantonly, with a faint smile on his face. "Guess what I talked about with him. What could have scared him so much that he was desperate?"
It seems that her guess was correct. Luo Shu swallowed her saliva and asked, "What's the content?"
"Didn't I tell you that night in Jiangcheng that the thing I regretted most was going abroad?" Shen Qianshu approached her step by step. "If you had stayed with me until you woke up after getting a heat stroke during military training, wouldn't Fang Qingzhuo's later incident have happened, and we could have been together?"
"I don't understand what you're saying."
Thinking she was pretending to be ignorant, Shen Qianshu was completely hysterical: "It was me who sent you to the infirmary, not Fang Qingzhuo. I also picked up the student card on the stands and left it at the infirmary. Do you understand what I am saying?"
Compared to his frenzy, Luo Shu's reaction was more like a tranquilizer injected into his body. She blinked blankly at first, then took two seconds to accept the reality before staring at him motionlessly. Her words and actions revealed a single calmness: "I understand."
Those three short words were like a bucket of cold water poured over Shen Qianshu from head to toe, instantly bringing him back to consciousness. He froze in his place, clenching his fists, bewildered. On the one hand, he was surprised by her calm demeanor, and on the other hand, he was trying his best to suppress the uneasiness he felt in his heart: "You don't seem surprised at all?"
The night wind rustled the leaves above her head. Luo Shu nodded under his almost stubborn gaze: "Well, not surprising."
At first, Luo Shu did think that Fang Qingzhuo was the one who sent her to the infirmary because of the student card, but after a long time of getting to know each other, she realized that Fang Qingzhuo was not a potential hero. She could even imagine the scene. If someone really fainted from heatstroke during military training, he would definitely say that it was not his turn as a stranger to save them. There were so many classmates and instructors around. According to probability theory, there would always be one normal person among ten people. If it was really his turn as a passerby to save them, then the good people on this earth should have become extinct like the dinosaurs. It sounds cold-blooded at first, but it is the truth. The truth is unpleasant to hear, but it is not against the heart.
At the end, he will also talk about a series of real-life issues to stop people from watching those stupid idol drama plots. This is Fang Qingzhuo, and this is also his reputation.
Shen Qianshu didn't know what she was thinking about, but one thought was very clear in her mind, calling back her heart that had fallen on Fang Qingzhuo: "Okay, then you don't have to like him anymore, and don't doubt yourself anymore, because he is not the one you are sure of."
On the way back from the manor house, Luo Shu had been lost in thought, but at that moment, the answers to her wild thoughts suddenly emerged from her self-hypnosis. Recovering her composure, she gazed sincerely at Shen Qianshu in the wind. "Qianshu, I'm very grateful that you sent me to the infirmary, but I must be honest with you. I didn't fall in love with him because of that student card. Maybe that was the beginning, but I swear, I didn't fall in love with him because I mistakenly thought he was the one who saved me."
Luo Shu could assure herself with her hand on her chest that she was not so rash as to fall in love with him just based on the gimmick of being his savior and the photo on his student ID card.
Shen Qianshu digested her words for a long time. He understood every word, but couldn't understand them together. He slowly turned the corner, the inevitable plan stuck in his throat, unable to spit it out or swallow it back. "Okay, even if that's not the reason, you know Fang Qingzhuo's type of person better than me. A dangerous bomb that not only doesn't have a timer but can explode at any time and anywhere, is it worth you to worry about him like this?"
"He's not that bad," Luo Shu explained, seeking truth from facts to defend Fang Qingzhuo. "Everything has two sides, and so do people. He's not kind, but he's not blindly kind. He doesn't just follow others' cries of help. He silently grits his teeth and carries bags of grain over mountains and across rivers in farmlands with no surplus labor. He likes to complain, but he also repays kindness with kindness. He might not repeat a dish of fish on the host's table, but he'll always remember it in his heart, donating money and materials to repair mountain roads and build schools."
Shen Qianshu was already fuming with anger, and naturally didn't want to listen to the mixed reviews that only praised and criticized others. "What about you? What about the misfortunes you've suffered? Ask yourself, can you forget the things he did to hurt you? Can you live with it?"
"Don't worry about that."
"Luo Shu." Shen Qianshu shouted her name abruptly, anger and unwillingness melting into his voice, "How long are you going to persist in your delusion?"
Luo Shu was truly exhausted by now. She brushed back her flying hair and confessed, "Do you still remember the melon seed you stuffed into my pocket on the bus? The one that symbolized turning the page?"
"I remember." Shen Qianshu narrowed his eyes and answered immediately.
"It's a hollow melon seed. Maybe that's fate."
The old neighborhood was quiet at night. The only flaw was the street lights that occasionally short-circuited. Shen Qianshu watched Luo Shu go upstairs from afar. He had no recollection of when he left or how he returned home. He only remembered that he made a stubborn decision that night.
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