Chapter 58 - Rightful Compensation (1/2)

“I didn’t attack you,” Niu Caijie insisted, falling back into her performance of sniveling vulnerability. “You’re the ones who bullied me unreasonably. Professor, please… I’m so scared.”

“Don’t be afraid,” the professor assured her. “I won’t let them get away with hurting you.” He leveled a withering glare at Tang Qiu. “Bargaining is useless. Refuse to compensate her again, and I’ll have you expelled–I promise.”

“I’m looking for Professor Zhao Guohao.” A deep, masculine voice traveled into the office from outside the door, followed by its owner.

The principal.

“Principal Pang,” Zhao Guohao greeted, startled. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m not here for you,” the principal replied, his bespectacled gaze tinged with the barest hint of dry contempt. “I’m here to witness how exactly you dispense justice–if you can call it that.”

Zhao Guohao’s eyes dropped. It was true he hadn’t taken care to investigate the reason behind the fight in the cafeteria. But he had seen the two girls beating Niu Caijie up, and she was so delicate; she couldn’t possibly hurt a fly. They had even threatened her in his presence. Wasn’t that evidence enough that they were in the wrong? “Why do you say that, Principal Pang?”

The principal’s name was Pang Cunshen. His eyes flickered to the man in the wheelchair, then Niu Caijie. “You’ll have to ask her,” he said coldly.

Niu Caijie didn’t understand why she had been targeted, so she resorted to weeping again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whimpered. “You’re frightening me.”

“You weren’t too frightened to hit a fellow student earlier.” Principal Pang’s gaze glinted like the tip of a dagger. He had encountered all kinds of pupils before, but never one as outrageously barefaced as Niu Caijie.

.

“I didn’t. How can you frame me like that, Principal Pang? They were bullying me!”

“Answer me this, Niu Caijie: did you start the fight?” The principal’s tone was harsh with ice and steel.

He was utterly unmoved by her teary-eyed pleas. A bolt of fear–real this time–shot down Niu Caijie’s spine. “Help me, professor,” she begged, latching onto her only source of support in the room.

The professor said nothing. It hadn’t escaped his attention that she had failed to answer the principal’s question. For the first time, a bud of doubt blossomed in his heart.