Before Bai Lan could say anything, Kushida spoke impatiently. "Bai, what business do you have with this 'friend' of yours?"
"Um, I just wanted to ask, Kushida, when exactly are you planning to report me and get me expelled? Could you give me some advance notice?
That way, I can budget my living expenses. I don't want to have money left over when I'm expelled—or run out of money before I'm expelled."
He felt that if he didn't get a clear answer tonight, it would affect his sleep.
If he knew the date of his expulsion in advance, he could choose the highest price he could control before being expelled, sell at that point, make a huge profit, exchange the remaining points for cash, and leave in one fell swoop."
Time was money!
Knowing the critical timing was extremely important in business!
After hearing Bai Lan's answer, Kushida froze for several seconds, and then...
"Beep beep beep beep..."
Kushida hung up on him.
"People say the dead deserve the greatest respect! I'm about to be expelled and socially executed for 'molesting a female classmate,' and she doesn't even know to cut me some slack. Kushida is really..."
Bai Lan shook his head and finally forced out a few words:
"She's really rude."
Above Bai Lan's head.
In a room on one of the upper floors designated for female residents.
Kushida had just ended her call with Bai Lan and was muttering to herself. "As expected, he's already realized that my threat is useless against him, and that the evidence of me reporting him for molestation is completely worthless?
He even dared to toy with me using this matter!
It was all part of his scheme.
Heh heh~
Without leverage to force him to keep my secret, what am I supposed to do..."
At this point, the light faded from Kushida's eyes, and her expression turned gloomy.
Yes, not long ago, Kushida had suddenly realized that she couldn't use a molestation charge against Bai Lan at all!
It was because of Bai Lan's strange response to her threats.
Kushida grew suspicious.
She couldn't understand why Bai Lan didn't seem frightened by her threats at all.
Could something have gone wrong?
With that thought in mind, Kushida returned to the dormitory intending to change the clothes she was keeping as evidence, while beginning her "self-check."
After taking off her jacket, she discovered that her inner shirt had unknowingly been soaked through with sweat. Once she noticed it, she immediately felt sticky, so she simply changed that as well.
Clothes stained with sweat could easily grow mold if left for too long.
Therefore, Kushida immediately threw the inner shirt she had just taken off into the washing machine.
After changing clothes and returning to the classroom, Kushida continued her "self-check" during class.
After an unknown amount of time, Kushida suddenly realized something. She couldn't help turning her head toward the dormitory.
Her eyes seemed to pierce through the dormitory's walls and land directly on the inner shirt inside the washing machine, which had probably finished washing by then!
She understood!
The key was that inner shirt!
So that inner shirt was the real evidence!
38, Kushida: It was all Bai Lan's scheme!
Under normal circumstances, the inner shirt would never have attracted Kushida's attention.
But Bai Lan's strange reaction made her unable to stop overthinking.
Kushida suddenly thought of a suspicious detail: when Bai Lan grabbed her at the time, had he grabbed her jacket or her inner shirt?
The school's suit-style uniforms were open around the collar. Through the opening, the bow tie or necktie underneath could be seen, along with part of the white inner shirt.
Kushida recalled what it had felt like when Bai Lan had grabbed her earlier.
She remembered that her neck seemed to have felt slightly tight.
Soon, she realized that although Bai Lan had touched the area around her chest, he had initially grabbed the collar near her neck!
And that was exactly what had happened, because Bai Lan had initially planned to use a throwing technique against the attacker.
A throwing technique generally involved grabbing the clothing around the collar, not the chest.
That was because there was little spare space around the collar. Even grabbing it slightly was enough to lock the collar and the person in place, making it easier to apply force.
The clothing around the chest, however, was generally looser. Combined with the elasticity of the material, it was difficult to transmit force through it.
Therefore, the fingerprints from Bai Lan's five fingers had actually been left on the collar of Kushida's inner shirt.
Since the collar of the suit jacket was open, the collar Bai Lan had grabbed was the collar of the inner shirt, not the jacket!
However, Kushida still felt that something was wrong.
Although the collar of the inner shirt was not covered by the jacket, the chest area was completely covered by it.
Later, after Bai Lan realized it had been a misunderstanding and switched to "pushing" to cushion Kushida's inertia, his palm was so large that the lower half of it pressed against Kushida's chest during the push.
At that moment, Kushida had clearly felt her chest being pressed.
Since her chest was covered by the jacket, Kushida instinctively thought that if her chest had been pressed, then even if Bai Lan's fingerprints had not been left on the outer jacket, part of his palm print should have been.
Palm prints could also serve as evidence.
Although they were not as reliable as fingerprints, they were sufficient in molestation cases in Japan.
But would there really be a palm print?
Afterward, under the guise of fooling around with a friend, Kushida grabbed another female student to conduct an experiment.
She discovered that after grabbing the other girl's collar and then changing from pulling to pushing, when her palm reached the area covered by the jacket, it pushed the jacket away from the inner shirt, eventually pressing completely against the inner shirt.
However, because Kushida's palm was not as large as Bai Lan's, and the girl she used for the experiment had a smaller chest than Kushida, Kushida had been unable to touch the other girl's chest during the experiment.
But that was enough!
Kushida understood instantly!
So Bai Lan's palm had not been pressing against the jacket at the time. It had been pressing against the inner shirt!
Bai Lan's fingerprints, palm print, and entire handprint were all on the inner shirt!
If not for Bai Lan's "reminder," Kushida felt she probably would have foolishly kept the jacket as evidence. Then, if she had taken it to report him one day, she would have discovered that it contained none of the evidence she had believed was there!
If things went badly, she might even have been charged with making a false accusation!
The unlucky one would not have been Bai Lan. It would have been Kushida herself!
And by then, the inner shirt bearing the actual handprint had already been washed who knew how many times!
However, even though she had realized it now and knew that the handprint was on the inner shirt rather than the jacket, it was useless.
The inner shirt had already been thrown into the washing machine and washed away!
Under these circumstances, the handprint could not possibly be preserved.
Why had she sweated so much?
It had been when she was chasing Bai Lan!
Wait!
That wasn't all!
There had also been the time she practiced verbally attacking people!
When she practiced verbally attacking people, she had suddenly experienced an unprecedented sense of exhilaration, along with the thrill of fearing that someone might hear or see her.
Those two intense emotions had made Kushida excessively tense and excited. Her nerves had become overactive, her adrenaline had surged, her blood circulation had accelerated, and her body temperature had risen. To dissipate heat and eliminate the toxic substances produced by her body's hormonal response, her body had needed to sweat rapidly.
Afterward, she had chased Bai Lan and run at full speed for quite a distance.
Once she realized she couldn't catch him, stopped running, and relaxed, the heat inside her body had been released all at once. And the main way to release that heat was—sweat!
The sweat that had unconsciously flowed out while she was verbally attacking people.
The sweat that had surged out after her burst of rapid running.
After sweating that much, her clothes had become sticky and would even have a smell.
This made Kushida, who cared deeply about her image, hurriedly change out of them.
To keep the clothes from growing moldy, she had immediately washed them...
And then the evidence was gone!
If she used the jacket to report him, she might be accused of making a false accusation.
Knowing that the jacket could not be used to report him, while the inner shirt that was the real evidence had already been washed, she still had no way to report him.
Therefore, Kushida had no way to threaten Bai Lan at all.
Instead, the more she wanted to harm Bai Lan, the more likely she was to overlook the inner shirt and end up harming herself!
Could it be... that everything had been part of Bai Lan's scheme?
After all, the sweating caused by her practicing verbal attacks had happened before she issued her threat to Bai Lan!
Could Bai Lan have already guarded against this move before then?
Had he seen through her from the start?
What terrifying scheming!
Could a human really possess this level of calculation?
At first, Kushida wondered whether she was simply overthinking things.
Perhaps everything was just a coincidence.
Before you continue