When Hilda pushed open the door and entered the Teaching Assistant Group leader's office, she immediately saw Zhang Yu clutching a sheet of letter paper, wearing an expression as though he were constipated.
"Whose letter?" She rarely saw Zhang Yu make that sort of expression.
The acting head of the Teaching Assistant Group let out a soft breath, and even his usually concise manner of speaking dragged out a little. "--Our protection target."
His wording was vague, but it did not prevent Hilda from understanding what he meant.
Because the Teaching Assistant Group currently had only one protection target.
"Why did he write to you? Is he resigning? Did the pressure of studying finally become too much for him, and he doesn't want to be a teaching assistant anymore?"
Though surprised, Hilda also felt that it was only to be expected. She glanced up at the pitch-black night beyond the window, but her words did not pause in the slightest. "Besides, couldn't he just come to the office tomorrow if there was something he needed? Doesn't he have a cat? Why not have that cat deliver a message? Mm, right, resignation isn't the sort of thing that's easy to say face-to-face. Writing a letter is a perfectly reasonable choice... and having a cat deliver the message would seem disrespectful to you."
She spoke quickly and densely, then nodded with considerable certainty at the end.
It was as if she were giving her own analysis a thumbs-up.
Zhang Yu shot her a rather speechless glance.
"Nobody's resigning!"
He put a little more emphasis into his voice, then gave a simple explanation. "When we were on duty tonight, wasn't there a period when he vanished from our surveillance range...?"
The Teaching Assistant Group's protection shift ran from four in the afternoon until