The air crackled as if sparked by invisible embers.
The two students across the room blushed furiously, yet their bodies and expressions froze solid in the sudden drop of atmospheric pressure. Their faces…once flushed with shame…were now drained of color, pale with fear as their breathing ground nearly to a halt.
They had never seen Director Jiang like this.
The woman’s expression had plummeted past rock bottom, radiating a frigid chill so intense it felt as though frost might gather on her head.
Director Jiang was usually aloof and serene. In every interaction and subtle expression, she possessed a quiet grace, detached as wind and moonlight. No matter how grave a mistake a student made, or how severe an administrative crisis unfolded, she remained calm, composed, and unfazed.
It was as if everything lay strictly within her grasp. Nothing could ever stir ripples in her heart, soften the cold, chaste corners of her eyes, or coax out a single trace of emotion…positive or negative.
Yet right now… those exquisitely captivating eyes, naturally upturned at the corners, suddenly narrowed. Dark clouds seemed to blot out the sun, heavy with the suffocating silence before a violent storm. The overwhelming pressure left Jian Yan and Bu Sheng practically gasping for air.
And yet, the taxpayer completely ignored the supreme authority in the room. Compared to the Director’s icy severity, the woman’s fox-like eyes brimmed with endless, subtle charm. Even in a formal school setting, she could not conceal her striking beauty.
Her thin lips parted slightly.
“Student Bu Sheng,” she said. “The brand Chiyin makes products specifically designed for heterosexual couples. Could you explain why the item you purchased belongs to the series exclusively tailored for female couples?”
At the mention of his name, Bu Sheng’s face turned the color of a beet. His hands curled into fists, his face a mix of panic and the furious embarrassment of someone whose dark secret had just been dragged into the light. Enraged, he pointed a finger straight at Gu Lingyi.
Suddenly, sensing a cool, detached gaze from the woman standing beside Director Gu, he suppressed the turmoil raging inside him. Trembling, he lowered his hand, acting like a spoiled, unreasonable child caught doing something wrong…aggrieved and loudly complaining:
“Director Jiang…”
“Student Bu,” Gu Lingyi cut in with a light laugh, cutting off any chance for the student to speak to Jiang Yanqing…as if shielding her from something filthy. “Why bother putting on an act at this point?”
“You—”
“Did you think high school teachers were easy to fool, and that taxpayers would be just as gullible?”
Ignoring Jiang Yanqing’s attempt to stop her, Gu Lingyi retrieved the item once more, keeping the black casing positioned to block the security camera’s line of sight.
The actual product and its box were revealed once again. They were a mismatch: the item inside was clearly not the model printed on the outer storage box. It was a massage wand meant strictly for heterosexual couples.
A product designed for heterosexual couples had been hidden inside the packaging meant for female couples.
Not a single teacher at Bamboo High had bothered to open the box to verify its contents. They had simply made an aggressive, sweeping assumption, grilling Jian Yan until they dragged out her supposedly closeted romance…without ever bothering to investigate the full truth.
Products tailored for different sexual orientations functioned on fundamentally different logic. This was no simple case of high school lovers letting curiosity get the better of them to taste forbidden fruit.
“Bu Sheng, you and Student Jian aren’t in a romantic relationship at all, despite what the grade director claims.”
Gu Lingyi’s eyes turned cold and sharp. That single, simple sentence struck like a bolt of lightning, its reverberation shaking all three of them to their core.
Bu Sheng’s face drained of all color. He clamped his jaws shut, his fingers gripping the armrests of his chair so tightly his knuckles turned white. He was, after all, just a high school student; his facial expressions lacked the polished control of an adult. The dark, menacing look on his face made Jian Yan shudder beside him.
Gu Lingyi stepped between the two, blocking Bu Sheng’s fierce glare toward Jian Yan. She could feel another gaze lingering on her…one that hadn’t shifted away for a second…but right now, she refused to give that person even a glance.
“Speak.”
Her tone was quiet, yet without warning, Gu Lingyi slammed her palm onto the desk with a deafening BANG!
The heavy, suffocating pressure was almost too much for Bu Sheng to bear. He began to gasp for air.
Before he could recover, a second heavy strike echoed through the room. A wave of overwhelming anger washed over him, breaking his resolve entirely.
“I… I, it’s true, we aren’t… Jian Yan, she…”
He seemed to find the words difficult to swallow, yet terrified by Gu Lingyi’s formidable presence, he spilled the rest in one desperate rush.
“Those belong to Jian Yan! I just… I just happened to catch them doing it…”
“Is that all?”
Her cold voice carried an unbearable weight.
“I… I blackmailed them… into doing it in front of me…”
Gu Lingyi’s expression shifted dramatically. Sweeping aside the fact that this was Jiang Yanqing’s domain, she barked an order at the school’s top authority, her voice dropping to a dangerous chill: “Watch them.”
She walked over to the window, stepping into a blind spot out of the security camera’s view, and dialed the emergency police hotline.
The moment the call connected, before the operator could even speak, a pale hand pressed against the screen. Browsing lightly past her wrist bone, it left a faint trace of heat behind…and severed the call.
Calm. Decisive.
Gu Lingyi stared at Jiang Yanqing in utter disbelief. Anger, anguish, and disappointment surged within her eyes, a storm of emotion threatening to spill over.
How could she have fallen for a person like this… and loved her for eight whole years?
“Hello? A-Yi? Can you tell your sister-in-law where you actually slept last night? Everyone is worried about you. Did you need me for something? I’m free right now and can help you handle it.”
The voice from the speaker wasn’t loud, entirely unheard by the two trembling students sitting further away. But here, in this sunlit blind spot of the security camera, both women heard it with absolute clarity.
In the brief moment Gu Lingyi’s anger had flared, the very Director Jiang who had just cut off the emergency call had quietly slid her finger across the screen…dialing the number saved as ‘Sister-in-Law’ in Gu Lingyi’s contacts.
Gu Lingyi’s sister-in-law was the Captain of the Capital’s Vice and Special Crimes Unit.
“Director Gu.”
The beauty’s pink lips parted slightly, glowing with a soft, matte luster in the sunlight, as her cool, elegant eyes gazed back at her indifferently.
“Your family is calling.”