Chapter 41 Du Qian【VIP】
Someone nearby pulled her aside, "Everyone's gone, stop talking. Just a hundred dollars is still worth your contemplation."
Li Li was unhappy: "What's wrong with a hundred yuan? A hundred yuan is my pocket money that I worked so hard to save. If he wasn't my deskmate, I wouldn't have lent it to him. But now, it's like throwing meat buns at a dog, what a waste..."
"Shut up." Lin Zhihua, who was standing next to her, interrupted her coldly and picked up the phone on the table to transfer money to her. "Du Qian asked you to borrow money because Aunt Luo was in the hospital, and he didn't have enough cash on him. Today, I'll pay you back two hundred yuan on his behalf, and the extra money will be considered interest."
As soon as she finished speaking, Li Li heard the notification sound of the change arriving in her mobile phone account. She didn't expect that Lin Zhihua would transfer the money so directly. She hesitated for a long time without saying a word.
"Du Qian won't owe you anything from now on." Yan Jie glanced at her.
Li Li opened her mouth, but suddenly didn't know what to say. A strange emptiness filled her heart. Her intuition told her that because of the hundred yuan, the gap between her and her old classmates seemed to be widening. It felt as if she had been squeezed out of the circle.
Her husband Zhou Zhi was completely unaware of his embarrassing situation and was still trying to strike up a conversation with others.
He knew that he couldn't become fat in one breath. Xue Zeyu didn't look like someone he was easy to deal with. He looked around and set his sights on his partner Chen Zhong, intending to start with this younger brother who "looked easier to talk to."
He casually hooked his arm around Chen Zhong's shoulder and said with a playful smile, "Um, Brother Chen Zhong, I'm very interested in your live broadcast. If it's convenient..."
"Get lost." Chen Zhong shook the man's hand away without even raising his eyelids.
He had misjudged him. He didn't expect that Chen Zhong, who seemed shy and introverted, actually had such a blunt side. Zhou Zhi's face turned ugly. He soon found that everyone around him began to avoid him.
"No time."
"I don't want to know."
"I don't know, ask someone else."
After thinking about it, Zhou Zhisi felt that maybe they looked down on him and thought his family was too poor, and came here purely for free food and drink.
He glared at the distraught Li Li and returned to his own small table in embarrassment.
A class reunion ended in a somewhat subtle atmosphere. When saying goodbye at the door, Xue Zeyu thought with some frustration that a good party was ruined by a few bad apples.
Li Li's son and mother-in-law had just finished making a scene and had the waiter pack up a lot of extra food that wasn't on the menu. Zhou Zhi even shamelessly ordered several bottles of Moutai, saying he was treating them but then went back on his word. If the squad leader hadn't scared them off with a few words, he would have been the one who got taken advantage of.
Xue Zeyu rubbed his brows. He had too thick a filter for his student days, thinking that everyone was still the carefree and innocent students of seventeen or eighteen years old. He didn't expect that the world is impermanent and people's hearts are even more changeable.
"Don't let your imagination run wild, Big Head. This isn't your fault. Let's go to my house for the second game!" Yan Jie patted his shoulder and said in a low voice, "It's just the few of us."
"That's great. Sister Yan's home is in a high-end private community. If you're lucky, you can meet many celebrities!" Tang Yuan inserted himself in between the two of them, took over the conversation, and shamelessly agreed to the second game.
Yan Jie rolled her eyes and waved her hands in disdain: "Get out of the way! Who wants to take you? Last time, you cried and begged me to bring you in for a look, but you ended up yelling and screaming and asking for an autograph. People thought you were some stalker chasing you into the community and called security! You've completely ruined my reputation in the entertainment industry."
"No!" Tang Yuan pleaded pitifully, dragging out the last syllable in his throat. "Sister, please, I beg you. I promise there won't be a next time!"
"Go away, I won't trust you."
After Tang Yuan's joke, Xue Zeyu's mood suddenly improved a lot. He put his hands on Fu Shengyan and Chen Zhong respectively, and led them to the garage: "Let's go together. I also want to see if I can run into the goddess."
Yan Jie felt something was wrong: "Big Head, why are you acting like Zhimaxian?"
Fu Shengyan seemed to be still in a trance, letting himself be taken away in a daze. Lin Zhihua reached out and pulled him back, "We drove here, the driver has to stay."
Arriving in front of his car, Fu Shengyan subconsciously opened the door, but Lin Zhihua pushed him to the passenger seat, "I'll drive."
The atmosphere in the car was a bit depressing.
Fu Shengyan felt very complicated when he suddenly heard the news of his good friend's death, in which he played an important role. He had a lot to say but didn't know where to start.
He didn't ask, and Lin Zhihua didn't rush to speak. She reached out and turned on the car stereo, and soothing music slowly flowed in the car.
The car drove out of the hotel smoothly and followed behind Xue Zeyu's car at a leisurely pace. When they stopped at a traffic light, Lin Zhihua asked about the business: "Are you thinking about Du Qian?"
Turning to the car window, he said in a gloomy voice, "This case had a huge social impact at the time, and the online public opinion was also very serious. There is too much information and it is very confusing.
He'd just done a quick search on his phone, and all that popped up was a barrage of abuse and accusations against the perpetrators, with a few fleeting words of sympathy and a few phony warnings to parents. Besides the legal updates on school violence, the focus was on the young lawyer who had become famous thanks to this case.
Who was he, what hardships did he go through, and how did his relatives heal their wounds?
"Ayan, do you still remember when you were a kid you said you wanted to be Superman when you grew up?" Lin Zhihua suddenly said something irrelevant.
"I never said that." "But I certainly never thought I'd become a lawyer."
Before the age of 18, Fu Shengyan was a notorious lawyer. He was criticized, especially for his criminal defense work, which was characterized by low pay, heavy workload, and daily dealings with the public. As a result, he took on fewer and fewer criminal cases, and gradually shifted his focus to the civil field.
He has been very smart since he was a child and learns things quickly, which also leads to him only having a short-term enthusiasm for most things.
As a child, he had been interested in computers and thought hacking was cool. He thought it would be nice to grow up to be a world-class hacker. When he first returned to the Fu family, as the sole heir, he learned company management from Fu Jinnian. He only spent a few days in the president's office before sneaking back to Lin Zhi Painter.
After Fu Shengyan's repeated requests, Fu Jinnian and Shen Weiwei no longer insisted on him attending a private international school in the city, and allowed him to follow the Lin family's daughter to the public college.
Du Qian was not only their high school classmate, but also their middle school classmate. Fu Shengyan loved the pancakes sold at the school gate, and the woman who ran the pancake stand was none other than Du Qian's mother, Luo Mingman. As they came and went, they became close to Aunt Luo and also became familiar with Du Qian, who often worked the cashier nearby.
After graduating from junior high school, when Fu Shengyan was still lamenting that he would no longer be able to eat breakfast at the junior high school gate, the familiar pancake cart appeared at the gate of No. 1 Middle School.
Fu Shengyan was overjoyed. Coincidentally, Du Qian had become their classmate. The brat in high school had become even more self-righteous, having learned a lot of adult bad habits. He was even more interested in comparisons than in junior high, suppressing others to show his superiority.
Soon, someone started talking about the fact that Du Qian's mother sold pancakes. When Fu Shengyan heard about it, he taught the person a lesson on the spot. The next day, he took him to Aunt Luo's pancake cart to apologize, and afterwards he bought a pancake for the whole class.
Being able to win the favor of Master Fu, the pancakes must have tasted amazing. Aunt Luo's cooking skills quickly won over a large number of new customers. Especially after learning about Du Qian's family's financial difficulties, many of his classmates would go out of their way to support his business.
Until the second semester of his sophomore year, a man claiming to be Du Qian's father came to the school gate every day to make trouble. Not long after, Du Qian suddenly transferred to another school and his family moved out overnight.
Later I heard that he went to a private boarding school with strict management, where strangers were not allowed to enter the school.
Private schools and public schools have different closing times. Fu Shengyan hadn't seen Du Qian for a long time. His mother no longer came to No. 1 Middle School to sell pancakes, and they only chatted occasionally on the phone. The next time he heard about Du Qian, it was on the headlines of City A's news.
"At first, the media simply said a student at Yulin Middle School jumped from a building due to excessive pressure, and lamented the lack of mental resilience among this generation of students." Lin Zhihua's knuckles turned white from gripping the steering wheel. "Then all sorts of eye-catching headlines appeared, like 'school bullying,' 'Rich second-generation murder,' 'Not suicide, but murder,' and so on. These headlines garnered considerable attention, but soon the media outlets vanished."
"From the photos released by the media, someone in our class recognized that the student who jumped from the building was Du Qian." When she said this, her heart skipped a beat.
"Du Qian's homeroom teacher took three days to contact Aunt Luo about his suicide. After seeing his injuries, Aunt Luo refused to believe him and went to the school to make a scene, but the school remained silent. When the police arrived, the school, teachers, and classmates all said Du Qian had jumped from stress. They even posted his report cards and homework. His grades had plummeted, and he frequently didn't turn in his homework."
Lin Zhihua took a deep breath and was silent for a moment before continuing, "The case was at a stalemate for a while. In the end, it was a girl from the next class who secretly told Aunt Luo about Du Qian being bullied."
"He went to Yulin Middle School?" Fu Shengyan lowered his eyes. He had an impression of this school. One of its recruitment gimmicks was the "study abroad through train". It had agreements with many foreign schools. Most of the students who were willing to spend money to study here went abroad to study directly after graduating from high school.
"Yes," Lin Zhihua nodded and explained, "Yulin Middle School is a closed-door school. Students all live on campus and can only go home once a week. Seniors have a monthly break and can only go home two days a month. These closed boarding schools tend to form a unique order that is different from the outside world. There is usually a clear internal hierarchy, and new members need to learn and integrate into this internal culture to better adapt. Transfer students like Du Qian will most likely be ostracized if they enter."
She didn't say the rest, but Fu Shengyan had already pieced together the rest of the story from the few words in the news.
Yulin Middle School has a strong faculty and very strict daily management. Ordinary people cannot enter this school at all, and students cannot easily leave.
Aunt Luo had painstakingly secured a place at Yulin Middle School, so that Du Qian could focus on the Gaokao without distractions. Du Qian had good grades and was a promising prospect for University A, so Yulin's leadership quickly accepted his application.
Du Qian, a transfer student, felt a bit out of place in his class. Coupled with his family's financial difficulties, it was natural for him to be ostracized and bullied. He slept on wet bedding every day, and his homework and textbooks were always left soaking in the sink... There was also more hidden bullying. The teachers didn't want to intervene, nor could they control these arrogant second-generation rich kids.
Du Qian endured all of this, and he probably didn't expect that he wouldn't be able to make it to the day of the college entrance examination.
"——Look, someone jumped down from the building!"
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