When the boy saw Jiang Tinglan blush, the corners of his lips curled up.
Although the two of them had never officially dated, they had been desk mates in middle school. There had always been an ambiguous, hard-to-describe feeling between the adolescent boy and girl.
So even after they went to different high schools, they still chatted and kept in touch every day.
Now that their classmates were teasing them, the boy’s instinctive defense of his pride kicked in. “Of course not! How could someone from Mingde date someone from Shengde? She’s just my former middle school classmate!”
“She used to chat with me every day about how painful her family situation was. She even sent me those posts by that scammer, Breaking Free.”
He turned to Jiang Tinglan and mocked her with a grin. “Actually, I could tell Breaking Free was a scammer the very first day you told me about them!”
Jiang Tinglan was mortified beyond words. She raised her head and shouted at him, “Zhao Chengyu, I trusted you, so I told you what happened to me back then! You knew from the start that they were a scammer, but you didn’t warn me. You even kept egging me on and encouraging me to cut ties with my family!”
Zhao Chengyu said, “Would warning you have helped? It’s not like you just became stupid today. We were desk mates back in middle school. Now I’m at Mingde and you’re at Shengde. Doesn’t that already explain everything?”
The students from Shengde had long since grown tired of listening. They stood up and cursed at him. “How can you be such a horrible person? Can you guarantee you’ll never get scammed?”
“Of course,” Zhao Chengyu said. “These days, if someone gets scammed, it’s either because they’re stupid or because they’re greedy for petty gains. Sorry, but I have neither of those flaws.”
A Shengde student snapped, “And that gives you the right to tear open someone’s wound in front of all these people?”
Zhao Chengyu continued smiling. “I’m only saying it for everyone’s benefit. I’m helping raise everyone’s awareness about scams!”
“…”
Before long, the students on both sides were arguing.
Jiang Tinglan buried her face in her arms on the last row and started crying.
The several Shengde students had been selected from different classes and barely knew one another. Now, none of them knew how to comfort her, so they could only silently stuff tissues into her hands.
Zhao Chengyu had originally been grinning and joking around.
But when he realized she was genuinely crying, his expression grew slightly awkward.
He clicked his tongue and put on an expression that clearly said, What a hassle. Then he walked over to Jiang Tinglan’s desk, sat down, and tried to coax her. “Hey, why are you still crying?”
Jiang Tinglan ignored him and continued crying.
“I was only making a casual joke,” Zhao Chengyu said. “All right, stop crying. It’s not like this is the first time you’ve embarrassed yourself. I knew you were stupid back in middle school. Just learn your lesson and be more careful in the future, won’t you?”
Jiang Tinglan cried even harder, still refusing to say a word.
Yu Xiaxing had been sitting in the corner. Just now, she had been communicating with Yu Zheng about the progress on Director Shao’s side and hadn’t had time to deal with what was happening here.
But after observing the situation for a moment, she understood perfectly.
She had encountered boys with Zhao Chengyu’s exact kind of rotten personality back in elementary school.
At the time, she had been growing quickly and eating a lot, so she was a little chubby. There was a boy in her class who called her “Meatball” every day.
She had told him directly that she hated the nickname and had even chased him around to beat him up.
But the boy kept shouting it—in front of everyone.
She eventually couldn’t take it anymore, so she asked her older cousin Yu Zhining to go beat the boy up.
Unexpectedly, the boy cried and told her, “I only gave you that nickname because I like you…”
She found it disgusting. It made her so uncomfortable that she couldn’t eat for several days.
When she went home, her aunt decided that she must have some kind of psychological problem and found a therapist to counsel her.
Only after the counseling did she realize that there was nothing wrong with her.
Anyone being bullied would feel disgusted if their bully suddenly claimed to like them.
The problem was with that boy. His behavior was a form of shame-based defense.
Put simply, it meant: “I like you, but I know I’m not good enough. I’m afraid you’ll reject me, and then I’ll be humiliated. So I’ll deliberately belittle you in front of everyone, put you down, and bully you… That way, I can hide my own inferiority and shame.”
It was a twisted combination of extreme arrogance and deep insecurity.
The psychologist who had counseled her had also told her, “You’re very young, so your resistance doesn’t really hurt him. When you chase him and hit him, he may think you’re playing with him. He might even enjoy it and feel secretly delighted…”
“So when you face this kind of bullying, either find an adult to stand up for you, or decisively refuse to give him any response at all. Cut him off completely and don’t give him any chance to make up with you!”
At that moment, Jiang Tinglan also felt sick listening to Zhao Chengyu. She raised her fist and punched him once. “Get lost!”
As expected, Zhao Chengyu didn’t feel the slightest bit of pain. He continued grinning and leaned closer to tease her.
“You got scammed, and now you won’t let anyone talk about it? When you grow up, you’ll definitely become one of those silver-tier moms who have a little money in the family and get every last cent conned away by other people.”
Jiang Tinglan began crying even harder.
Yu Xiaxing generally didn’t stoop to dirty tricks against students. After all, she was an adult.
But when someone was truly unbearable, she had no problem making an exception.
She sent a message in the group chat.
Yu Xiaxing: “One of you two go talk to the teachers from Mingde. They actually mocked one of our students over being scammed. Make that student publicly admit fault and apologize.”
Lu Yanzhao: “Got it.”
Yu Xiaxing: “If they refuse to apologize, don’t bother trying to persuade them… We’ll come up with a little surprise for them later.”
Lu Yanzhao: “Got it.”
And so, Yu Zheng continued communicating with Director Shao, while Lu Yanzhao went to find the teachers from Mingde.
The people in charge from both schools were communicating outside the lounge.
Lu Yanzhao briefly explained what had happened, then made his demand. “That’s the situation. Your student was extremely rude. Since your student publicly humiliated one of ours, he also needs to apologize to our student in front of everyone.”
The teacher leading the Mingde group was a mild-looking middle-aged woman.
She had heard the argument inside just now. With a smile, she said, “It was only a minor conflict. They’re here for practical experience, so we shouldn’t supervise them as strictly as we do at school. Otherwise, the students will feel suffocated.”
With that, she brushed the matter aside.
Lu Yanzhao said in a stiff, measured tone, “He used a victim’s experience to humiliate another victim. That is victim-blaming, and the nature of the incident is extremely serious.”
The other teacher was still smiling. “Oh, come on. You’re making too much of it. Are the students at your school really that emotionally fragile?”
“If a student from our school were scammed, we certainly wouldn’t hide it away. We’d have them give a presentation and share their experience so more people could avoid the same trap!”
Lu Yanzhao finally understood.
Today, both the person in charge from Qizhi and this school had decided to treat Shengde like a bunch of fools. No matter what happened, they had no intention of taking them seriously.
He nodded. “Fine.”
Then he turned and left.
The other teacher understood immediately: Shengde was a pushover.
That meant they could keep squeezing them later—continuing to take over the laboratories Shengde had reserved and giving their own students more opportunities to carry out hands-on experiments!
—
Soon, it was lunchtime.
The unequal treatment became even more obvious.
The students from Mingde were escorted by Qizhi’s staff to a small cafeteria beside the laboratory area. Apparently, it had been specially prepared by Qizhi for elite teams from partner schools.
It had glass partitions, a self-service buffet, and an extremely luxurious setup.
Meanwhile, the students from Shengde were assigned boxed meals in the lounge area.
The boxed lunch wasn’t bad—three meat dishes, two vegetables, and a yogurt—but compared with the little cafeteria next door, it seemed especially shabby.
Yu Xiaxing sent a message in the “Glory Seekers” group chat.
“I can’t believe they’re treating us like this! Are we really going to let them get away with it? Come on, let’s go rub it in their faces!”
