Chapter 265 - 118: Goading

Chapter 265: Chapter 118: Goading

"Why were you comforting her?" Zhang Shutong asked, a rare spark of curiosity in his voice.

The girl on the other end of the video call suddenly narrowed her eyes.

"I say, ’bro,’ there’s no point in playing dumb."

Zhang Shutong didn’t know how to deal with forward girls like her, but he needed something to wake him up right now, so he nodded for her to continue, deciding to treat it as a late-night radio show.

As it turned out, the host’s first words were shocking:

"You walked off with Qiumian’s down jacket, didn’t you?"

"You know?" Zhang Shutong asked, surprised. His sleepiness was already starting to fade.

"So she found out, got upset, and you had to comfort her?" Zhang Shutong asked again, finding the idea preposterous.

"Ugh, yes, yes! She found out you secretly wore her jacket and got super mad, okay? Is that good enough for you? Now she says one jacket isn’t enough, you owe her two, and I’m here to collect the money! What is even happening right now!" the little secretary wailed. "I mean, have you really not figured it out? You can’t be this dense, can you? C’mon, handsome, please just try to remember what happened, okay?"

Zhang Shutong didn’t have the mental energy to reminisce. ’You weren’t even there,’ he thought. ’How do you know more about it than I do?’

"You’d better just tell me straight."

"Tell you what? I wasn’t there either!" she sighed. "Whatever. I’ll send you this. See for yourself."

His phone vibrated twice. Zhang Shutong had no energy to play guessing games. He decided that if these two photos were just more mind games, he would hang up immediately.

He looked down and opened the images, picturing the money he’d just put on his phone plan about to go down the drain.

The images were photos taken on a phone.

Or more precisely, a photo of a photo.

—Someone had used their phone to photograph a picture on another phone’s screen.

It must have been dark when it was taken. The quality was blurry, but it was still clear enough to make out the contents at a glance.

Because the first photo depicted something he’d experienced personally.

It was taken inside a car. He was in the driver’s seat, halfway turned around.

Zhang Shutong remembered it. It was from his driving lesson, the time he’d embarrassingly stalled the car. Gu Qiuyan had seized the chance to take a snapshot.

’What’s your game, secretly sending me a photo from your best friend’s phone?’ he thought.

’You think this is some kind of big reveal?’

In the past, he might have asked what she meant. Now, he just wanted to quickly swipe to the second picture.

Zhang Shutong froze.

The first photo was of him, and so was the second.

But this one was a little unsettling.

The background was the villa’s courtyard, early in the morning.

The perspective was from a room on the second floor.

He was in the center of the frame, wearing a very ill-fitting down jacket, silently shoveling snow.

"So? What do you think?" the girl asked.

Zhang Shutong looked away from the screen and asked subconsciously:

"Where did you take this picture?"

"I snuck a picture of it from Qiumian’s phone, of course. I was hanging out at her house today!"

He looked at the screen again. It was obvious just how short the down jacket was—if he bent over, his waist would be exposed. And yet it was wrapped so tightly around him, he looked like a Swiss roll.

The boy in the photo was covered in snow. Someone had captured such a sorry-looking moment.

The photo was blurry. He didn’t know if it was because it had been taken in a hurry... or if the original photo was also blurry, because its owner had been laughing so hard her hands were shaking when she took it?

’What was she thinking then?’

"Why would she have this picture?" Zhang Shutong asked, stunned.

The girl said:

"That, I wouldn’t know. You’ll have to remember for yourself."

Zhang Shutong could clearly recall the events of that day.

That was December 7th, a completely different Friday.

He had woken up early in the second-floor guest room to find the entire courtyard buried in snow. Then he went downstairs and was told by Song to go out and shovel.

The snow was piled so thick it nearly buried a quarter of the fence. He shoveled a path from the main gate just wide enough for one person to pass through.

If memory served, the photo had been taken right at that moment.

But why?

Zhang Shutong clearly remembered that Gu Qiuyan should have still been asleep then.

Although he had knocked on her door earlier, partly out of some vague concern, and partly because he knew she was prone to low blood sugar. He had waited until she slowly responded before leaving.

’Shouldn’t she have gone back to sleep?’

"Still haven’t figured it out?" the girl prompted. "Let me jog your memory, then. Did you really think you could just walk off with her jacket without saying a word, and she wouldn’t have a clue?"

Putting aside whether Gu Qiuyan knew or not, Zhang Shutong now had only one question:

"How do you know?"

"Of course I know! I just asked her about it tonight. I was about to leave and wanted to borrow that exact down jacket, but she said she’d lent it to someone yesterday. At first, I didn’t think anything of it, but then it hit me—wait a second!

"I know all of Qiumian’s female friends, and none of them have visited her in the last few days. So it had to be someone else. Plus, I’d seen her photo album before—that’s when I took the picture of that photo—and it suddenly clicked. ’Don’t tell me he’s the one who took it?’ I thought."

Her reasoning was brilliant, almost breathtakingly so. The little secretary delivered the final verdict:

"And sure enough, when I video-called you, you were wearing it.

"But I’m not trying to nag you, senior, could you be less of a slob? If you’re going to borrow someone’s clothes, could you take better care of them? She lent it to you for warmth, and here you are, getting melon seed shells all over it?"

Zhang Shutong felt a little awkward. He shook the down jacket, brushing the shells onto his lap.

"But you’re wrong about one thing," he explained. "It’s not as complicated as you think. It was my teacher who dug it out for me. He probably had no idea whose it was; he just saw it and grabbed it."

The little secretary was frustrated by his failure to see the obvious. ℯℯ𝑙.

"Are you running a fever or something? Is your brain completely fried? How would your teacher know where she keeps her down jacket—is he her family’s housekeeper? Is he her dad? Let me ask you this, then: where was *she* at that time?"