The flight took only two and a half hours from takeoff to landing, but during that time, the rumors online had already gone through an entire round of changes.
Shu Yu had been mentally prepared for it, but when she got off the plane and saw that the rumors had already shifted to claims that the girl who had jumped to her death had been bullied and subjected to campus violence by the other five girls in her dormitory, she was completely speechless.
If she remembered correctly, the basic information in the materials Xiao Cai had brought over the first time had clearly stated that the girl was a day student. She did not even live at the school.
Weary, Shu Yu pressed her temples and began thinking about how they should handle this wave of public opinion.
First of all, too much personal information about the deceased girl could not be made public. This was about protecting the deceased.
Secondly, the normal studies and daily lives of the other students at the school could not be affected. It was March, and the college entrance examination was only three months away. Disrupting the senior students’ preparation at this point would be absolutely unforgivable.
Lastly, the personal information of teachers at the school who had nothing to do with the incident had to be protected. Although there was no way to completely stop people from digging up their information.
The good news was that Xiao Que had finally brought over the first version of the forensic examination report.
“The possibility of homicide has been ruled out,” Xiao Que said. “Other than the injuries caused by the impact from the fall, there are no obvious injuries on her body, nor are there any signs that she was assaulted. The findings don’t support the claims that she was sexually assaulted by the teacher or subjected to campus violence.”
“Don’t rush to respond yet.” Shu Yu thought for a moment before carefully going through the forensic report again. After confirming that the time of death had been during the lunch break, she asked, “How many teachers were in the office at that time?”
“Only one male teacher.” Xiao Que pushed up his glasses. “That’s the most troublesome part right now.”
“Was there surveillance in the office?” she continued.
“No. This isn’t a newly built school. It’s one of the older middle schools in the county. The teaching buildings were built in the 1990s. Although they’ve been renovated twice since then, cameras were only installed at both ends of the classroom corridors. The camera on the fourth floor could only capture her walking into the teachers’ office.” Lu Anran looked up from her work. “I’ve contacted several self-media accounts I’m familiar with. Two MCN agencies have already taken orders. Their coordination this time has been extremely fast.”
It had been less than seven hours since the incident first made the trending searches, yet the rumors across the various platforms had already changed twice. On top of that, with two major MCN agencies getting involved, a large number of marketing accounts had already begun reposting and coordinating their efforts.
And with plenty of people jumping in simply to stir up trouble and leech off the traffic, the entire situation could only be described as a complete mess.
“Leave the MCN agencies alone for now. What about the other platforms?” Shu Yu felt as though her head was about to explode.
“They’ve started coordinating as well. The trending searches have already appeared on several short-video platforms, with MCNs backing them.” Lu Anran operated the mouse and opened several backend dashboards. “But the momentum has only just begun to build. It hasn’t caused too much of a storm yet.”
Very well.
These people were planning something big.
Shu Yu carried her laptop toward the airport exit and saw a young girl holding up a sign. Clearly, she had come to pick them up.
Their department belonged to a covert branch, so when coordinating with local authorities, they generally operated under the name of the publicity department. The sign held by the girl picking them up read:
WELCOME THE EXPERTS FOR GUIDANCE.
Shu Yu actually had no desire to come and “provide guidance.” From this sudden public-opinion crisis, she had finally realized just how much pressure this profession carried.
She suddenly wanted to ask the author of this novel:
Did you ever imagine that this female character, whose total screen time doesn’t even add up to ten chapters, would end up carrying this much weight?
Well, of course the author had never imagined it.
From the airport exit all the way to the highway, everyone remained silent as they dealt with their respective tasks.
The group chat was in complete chaos. After obtaining the forensic report, Xiao Que immediately debunked the claims of campus bullying and the male teacher sexually assaulting the student. He also responded to questions regarding the surveillance footage and the school itself, temporarily calming the ferocious wave of public opinion.
Unfortunately, the male teacher’s personal information had not escaped.
These days, there was practically no such thing as privacy when it came to a person’s identity information.
An hour and a half later, they finally arrived at J County No. 1 Senior High School under F City.
It was already dark.
This was a key high school in a less-developed area. It was obvious that the county’s finances were rather tight, and the school itself was fairly modest.
The local liaison personnel were waiting at the school gate. The moment they saw the group arrive, they looked as though they had just seen their long-lost relatives.
Over the past few hours, after handing over control of the official account, they had watched wave after wave of vicious public opinion surge across the internet, and only then had they begun to feel truly frightened.
If they had been left to handle this themselves, they would probably have been finished.
Shu Yu had absolutely no mood for small talk with the middle-aged man handling the handover.
“Hello. I’m Shu Yu, Director of the Public Opinion Response Division.” She was holding her laptop, so there was really no way for her to perform proper social etiquette. “Are you the person in charge of coordinating with us?”
“Yes, yes.” Seeing that Shu Yu did not look particularly pleasant, the man did not dare waste time with pleasantries. “We’ve temporarily arranged an office in the school’s administrative building. Please follow me.”
He was extremely polite.
Not the kind of politeness one showed toward a superior, but the guilty politeness of someone who had just managed to throw a hot potato out of their own hands.
Shu Yu closed her laptop. Before entering the school, she glanced toward the school gate and noticed that quite a few self-media creators and influencers were already livestreaming outside.
“Let’s use the side entrance.”
She made the decision immediately.
The man understood as soon as he saw the situation outside and led the group through a small entrance beside the school field.
The moment she entered the school, Shu Yu began observing the layout.
It was a school where old and new buildings had been combined together. The sports field and synthetic track were newly built, but the teaching buildings surrounding them were old.
The old-style teaching building had four floors.
The student involved in the incident had jumped from the fourth floor.
Normally, a fall from that height would not necessarily be fatal. Unfortunately, the girl had been unlucky. She had landed head-first, suffering severe cerebral hemorrhaging that caused her death at the scene.
The exterior walls of the teaching building had been repainted and were now orange-red. In some places, the paint had peeled away, revealing the original white walls underneath.
“Which teaching building was the incident in?” Feng Tang asked.
“The one on the east side. It’s closer to the vacant land behind the school,” the liaison officer answered.
Shu Yu looked in the direction he pointed and saw a building roughly the same size as the one in front of them.
Behind it was a construction site that had already been fenced off but had yet to begin construction.
The liaison officer brought them to a three-story administrative building closer to the front gate.
Their office had been arranged on the first floor, and someone had already prepared all the detailed materials.
It seemed that the public-opinion crisis they had botched the last time had at least taught them one thing:
When something happened, they could not think about running away. They had to find a way to deal with it immediately.
The last time, the county leaders had tried to suppress the attention surrounding a public-opinion incident. In the end, certain organizations that had already caught the scent of an opportunity took full advantage of it. The rumors they fabricated were still circulating to this day.
Later, the head of their publicity department had been transferred to the neighboring county’s earthquake bureau to manage documents.
This time, as soon as the incident happened and public discussion appeared online, they had already planned to contact Shu Yu’s team.
Unfortunately for them, Shu Yu’s team had moved even faster.
“Who here is responsible for communicating and coordinating with the local authorities?” Shu Yu looked at the four people in the office.
A man and a woman raised their hands.
Shu Yu swept her gaze over them and noticed that both were young. It was hard to say whether they had simply been assigned here to deal with an unpleasant job.
But there was no time to think about that now.
After clearing the room, Shu Yu had the two of them sit at the back.
Everyone else disappeared faster than anyone else could have.
Apparently, nobody wanted to get involved with this mess.
Watching their backs disappear, the corner of Shu Yu’s mouth twitched.
These people were almost too honest about it.
Feng Tang kicked the door shut.
From beginning to end, she had never lifted her head from her laptop.
Shu Yu picked up the materials they had prepared and looked at the two people responsible for communication.
“Do you both know the details of what happened?”
“We do.” The young woman nodded.
The young man nodded along.
“Then I’ll ask, and you answer. We’re short on time, so we need to gather all the information as quickly as possible.” Shu Yu did not waste any words.
A public-opinion battle was all about racing against time.
If the other side occupied the high ground for too long, it would become extremely difficult to correct the false memories they had already planted in the minds of netizens.
“First, what was the male teacher doing when the girl jumped?”
“According to his own statement, he was tutoring the girl with her homework.”
“What subject does he teach?”
“Mathematics. But he’s not her homeroom teacher.”
“How were the girl’s grades?”
“Above average. She was a little weak in certain subjects. Her mathematics wasn’t very good.”
“Did they have an argument before the incident?”
“The teacher said he had become somewhat impatient after explaining the same question three or four times, so he criticized the girl a few times. His tone wasn’t very good, but he didn’t use any profanity.”
“Did he admit to any inappropriate behavior?”
“He said he didn’t. According to him, he was extremely angry while explaining the problem to the girl, so he didn’t pay attention to what she was doing. By the time he realized she was about to jump, it was already too late.”
“Was the girl being excluded or isolated at school?”
“No. She was rather introverted, but she had three or four close friends in her class. She wasn’t particularly popular, but her relationships with others weren’t bad either.”
“Has the girl shown any unusual behavior recently?”
“That… we haven’t asked about it in detail yet.”
That brought the conversation to an end.
In the shortest time possible, Shu Yu constructed an image of the girl in her mind.
Based on the information they had, the girl was gentle and introverted, but not antisocial. Her grades were above average. She was good at English and history, but slightly weaker in mathematics.
She was an extremely ordinary female student—the kind most commonly seen among high school students.
Which also meant that, at present, it was difficult to determine why she had taken her own life.
Although much of this work was not technically their responsibility, she needed to ask more questions in order to assess the situation accurately and respond in time.
“All right. The two of you go and do two things separately.” Shu Yu organized the clues they had gathered so far and felt that this was still extremely difficult to respond to, especially before the police had completely ruled out every other possibility. But they could not remain completely silent either.
She said, “You stay at the school gate and film all the influencers and self-media creators who are livestreaming there.”
She assigned the task to the young male staff member.
“You come with us to the police station later. We need to communicate with them about the situation.”
Shu Yu assigned the second task to the female staff member.
The reason was simple.
The young woman was wearing a police uniform.
Shu Yu guessed that she was probably a police officer responsible for publicity.
Before they left, Shu Yu sat in her chair and assessed the current situation.
The current rumors had all been fabricated without any factual basis, which meant that the other side had not yet obtained any useful internal information.
That gave them a little time to stay one step ahead.
“So, how do you think we should handle it? The situation isn’t so urgent that it’s beyond saving yet.” Xiao Que leaned against his chair. “If we strike first, we could play the victim for a bit and shift everyone’s attention toward those influencers livestreaming outside the school and disturbing the students’ normal school life.”
“Isn’t that exactly what Sister Shu is preparing to do?” Lu Anran yawned. “Once the footage is done, I’ll blur the faces and send it to you. But we can’t use the official account for this one. It wouldn’t be appropriate for us to steer public opinion directly.”
“Do you have a suitable self-media account?” Shu Yu asked.
“There is one that focuses more on current affairs. We can use it, but we’ll need to arrange a trending search to go with it.” Lu Anran thought for a moment. “I’ll get a few other accounts to coordinate as well. We can temporarily redirect the conflict.”
Shu Yu nodded.
They were not here to solve the case.
They were here to guide the overwhelming wave of public opinion online and buy more time for the task force investigating the case.
Under normal circumstances, an investigation from evidence gathering to follow-up visits would take quite some time. If things went quickly, it would take three to five days; if things went slowly, about a week before the entire situation could be fully investigated.
If public opinion was not handled properly during this gap, the final investigation results could end up being ignored entirely, or people could be led to question their authenticity.
What Shu Yu and the others could do was guide the emotions of everyone following the incident in the right direction as much as possible during this period.
But that was actually very difficult.
The keywords the other side was using to stir up public sentiment were extremely precise. Every single one was enough to grab people’s attention.
“Any new rumors?” Shu Yu asked Feng Tang.
“People are starting to claim that the male teacher has connections and that the girl’s parents are being silenced. Just the usual tricks.” Feng Tang slowly scrolled through her phone. “A few idiots in our circle have already taken the bait. Why is it always the same few people? Every single time, they fall for it hook, line, and sinker.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
Shu Yu couldn’t be bothered to comment further.
At that moment, a message from Shu Ling came in.
“Sis, so you’re working overtime because of this today?” Shu Ling sent over the news link. “I was wondering why you suddenly flew to F City.”
“Yeah. Perfect timing. Hurry up and buy a trending search to help your sister take some of the heat.” Shu Yu replied extremely quickly. “Is the press release ready? Let me take a look.”
They were waiting for the footage from the school gate, so there was nothing else to do for the moment.
Shu Ling quickly sent over a document.
“My team wrote it. I can’t really understand it either.”
Shu Yu opened it and took a look. The other side had written the draft from the perspective of something they had merely heard through the grapevine.
“This isn’t sensational enough. Tell your team to rewrite it from a paparazzi’s perspective. Cooperate by taking a few ‘secretly photographed’ pictures outside our house, then reveal your background piece by piece as though you’re gradually uncovering the truth about your identity.”
Shu Ling knew that Shu Yu was a professional in this field, so she had always followed her older sister’s advice without question whenever it came to public-opinion matters.
“You’ll probably be staying up late again tonight. I need to buy you more supplements,” Shu Ling said goodbye to Shu Yu before going to sleep.
As a female celebrity, whenever she did not have filming scheduled, she needed plenty of sleep to maintain the condition of her skin.
Shu Yu touched her own face and discovered that she had broken out with several more pimples.
Since transmigrating into the novel, the only thing she had gained was that, with the help of the original owner’s memories, she seemed almost godlike whenever she handled public-opinion crises.
Other than that, there had not been a single piece of good news.
I’m so tired. Why am I still working overtime in the middle of the night even after transmigrating?
Shu Yu leaned back against her chair and contemplated her life.
Feng Tang slowly wandered over.
“Sister Shu, you look unusually impatient today.” She handed over a lollipop as she spoke. “There probably won’t be too much new information tonight. You should still be able to get some sleep.”
“How could I dare to sleep?” Shu Yu let out a long sigh. “Don’t you know? The later it gets, the more fiercely these people start jumping around.”
She peeled off the wrapper and stuffed the lollipop into her mouth, trying to numb herself with the sweetness.
Half an hour later, the clock on the office wall reached eleven.
The male staff member returned and sent the footage to Lu Anran.
After a quick edit, Lu Anran added the copy Xiao Que had written and posted it on one of her higher-traffic self-media accounts.
Shu Yu opened her own Weibo account and reposted it.
She rarely managed this account herself. Although she had some followers, her influence was extremely limited.
After Feng Tang reposted it on her own Weibo, she unsurprisingly received a few private messages from her handful of followers warning her about it.
“Sigh, I don’t want to get involved in current affairs either. Unfortunately, they’re the ones paying my social insurance.” Feng Tang looked at the messages, then helplessly closed her Weibo.
She had originally been transferred here from another department because of an accident at work. She had never expected that, after joining the Public Opinion Response Division, she would lose almost all of the followers she had left.
It really was a follower-cleansing weapon.
If she had signed with an entertainment company, she would probably have lost so much money by now that she’d have no choice but to go work at a construction site.
Xiao Que had already secured the trending search, but according to his estimate, it would not last very long.
For now, at least, the whirlpool of public opinion had temporarily shifted toward the self-media creators and influencers making trouble outside the school.
They could finally catch their breath.
“Let’s go. We’re heading over to the task force.” Shu Yu rolled her stiff shoulders and spoke to the female staff member who had been waiting nearby. “Let’s see how much time they need us to buy.”
Normally, a case like this would not necessarily result in a special task force being formed.
But once it triggered a major public-opinion crisis, that was another matter entirely.
When Shu Yu and the others arrived, the members of the task force were also working overtime.
Everyone silently looked at one another with dark circles under their eyes and smiled.
“How are things on your side?” Shu Yu asked the task force leader.
“After ruling out homicide, we’re investigating the possibility that the deceased was sexually assaulted. At the same time, we’re visiting her classmates, family members, and friends to gather information. This case isn’t particularly complicated. We’ll definitely give you an answer within three days.”
The team leader spoke with complete confidence.
You’d better.
That was what Shu Yu thought.
But verbally, she still had to be polite.
“Then let’s stay in contact over the next few days. You’ve worked hard too.”