"Ah!" Gao Shiqi screamed in fright.
Xue Ruigao, who was in her room, was jolted awake as well and hurried out.
Seeing both Gao Shiqi and Wen Xiancheng in the living room, Xue Ruigao looked at Gao Shiqi in confusion. "Qiqi, what happened?"
Gao Shiqi pointed at Wen Xiancheng, looking terribly wronged. "He was creeping around in the middle of the night, scaring people!"
Wen Xiancheng sneered inwardly.
She really knew how to turn around and blame the victim!
But today, let's see if you can still stir up trouble!
Xue Ruigao was about to ask Wen Xiancheng what had happened, but he pointed at the box of cookies in Gao Shiqi's hands. "I was creeping around in the middle of the night? I'd like to know why you were feeding my Little Gray Mouse cookies laced with rat poison in the middle of the night!"
Only then did Gao Shiqi suddenly remember.
She had been caught red-handed!
Hurriedly hiding the cookies behind her back with both hands, Gao Shiqi shook her head at Xue Ruigao. "Little Cake, I wasn't!"
No sooner had she finished speaking than the Mouse Clone, which had been happily munching on a cookie clutched in its paws, suddenly collapsed on the floor and lay motionless.
Xue Ruigao: "..."
Gao Shiqi: "..."
Wen Xiancheng clenched his fists until his knuckles cracked and roared at Gao Shiqi, "You deliberately poisoned my Little Gray Mouse!"
Walking over, Wen Xiancheng scooped up the Mouse Clone, his face filled with grief. "Little Gray Mouse, you've been with me for two years. For these two years, I had no family. Only you and that one were family to me. I never thought I'd be the one to get you killed."
Squeezing two crocodile tears from his eyes, Wen Xiancheng turned around and spoke to Gao Shiqi through gritted teeth. "Why? Why did you deliberately poison Little Gray Mouse? What did it ever do to you? Why did you have to poison it?"
Xue Ruigao's expression darkened as well.
Little Gray Mouse was the pet Wen Xiancheng had kept by his side for nearly two years.
Every time Xue Ruigao had seen Wen Xiancheng during those two years, he had had it with him.
Wen Xiancheng was different from her. He was a shut-in.
Of the three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, aside from the last day of each month, when he met her after she rushed back and occasionally chatted with her, he had only Little Gray Mouse for company.
Now that Little Gray Mouse had been poisoned, she could imagine how heartbroken he was.
Looking at Gao Shiqi, Xue Ruigao asked in a grave voice, "Qiqi, why did you do this? Why go out of your way to poison Little Gray in the middle of the night? Orange clearly told you those cookies had rat poison in them!"
Gao Shiqi became flustered.
She had never imagined Wen Xiancheng would catch her red-handed!
Now that the evidence was undeniable, how could she defend herself?
All she could do was cry.
She believed Xue Ruigao would be moved by how wronged she looked, just as she had been when Gao Shiqi was caught stealing her underwear before.
Tears came tumbling down as Gao Shiqi sobbed, "I... I... Little Cake, I didn't mean it. I just got scared, and then this happened."
Before Gao Shiqi could finish, Wen Xiancheng gritted his teeth and said to Xue Ruigao, "You should know what Little Gray Mouse means to me. In my heart, there are only two people I can depend on now. One is you, and the other is Little Gray Mouse. Now the person you brought home has deliberately killed Little Gray Mouse. What else do you expect from me?"
With a self-mocking laugh, Wen Xiancheng said, "Fine! Little Gray's life was cheap, anyway. Your friend matters more."
Seeing this, Gao Shiqi hurriedly said, "Exactly, Little Cake. It was just a mouse. Once we get to the imperial capital, I'll buy him a more expensive one-"
Xue Ruigao abruptly turned her head.
Storm clouds gathered on her face.
The thought that the person she had brought home had actually gotten up in the dead of night specifically to poison Orange's pet mouse filled her with guilt.
She regretted it.
Why had she brought Gao Shiqi home?
Gao Shiqi flinched at Xue Ruigao's expression.
She had never seen Xue Ruigao look so furious.
She looked like a mother leopard facing the enemy who had hurt her cub.
Her words cut off abruptly, and Gao Shiqi's heart leaped into her throat.
She was afraid.
Forcing an awkward smile at Xue Ruigao, Gao Shiqi said, "Little Cake, I really didn't-"
"Enough!" Xue Ruigao cut Gao Shiqi off sharply. "Stop making excuses! You keep saying you didn't mean it, but now you're telling Orange it was just a mouse and you can simply buy him a more expensive one? Don't you realize you're contradicting yourself?"
Gao Shiqi said anxiously, "Little Cake, that's not what I meant!"
"You know better than I do whether that's what you meant! To you, it was just a mouse. To Orange, it was his friend!" Xue Ruigao's chest rose and fell slightly as she restrained her anger. "I honestly don't see the slightest guilt or unease in your eyes. Qiqi, I was wrong about you."
Gao Shiqi's tears streamed down again as she said to Wen Xiancheng, "Then what exactly do you want? Do you want to kill me? If you want to kill me, just say so! I'll pay you back with my life!"
Wen Xiancheng looked at Xue Ruigao with undisguised mockery. "This is the friend you've made? This is your best friend? Am I really that cruel? My Little Gray Mouse is the one who's dead! I'm the one who's been wronged, not her! Look at her, acting as if she's suffered the greatest injustice under heaven! As if I'm trying to drive her to her death!"
"And she's clearly the one who poisoned Little Gray Mouse, yet just now she tried to frame me, saying I was creeping around in the middle of the night? What a wonderful friend you have!"
"And you haven't forgotten, have you? When you were taking a shower earlier, she had your underwear hidden in her backpack! No matter how pitiful she made herself sound, it couldn't cover up the fact that she stole it!"
Wen Xiancheng turned and walked away.
Just as he reached his bedroom door, Wen Xiancheng suddenly stopped, but did not turn around. He said coldly, "You know I often have friends I play games with. I once heard one of them bragging that she'd stolen her older sister's underwear and sold it to a man pursuing her sister. That smug tone sounded a lot like this best friend of yours."
Wen Xiancheng shut his bedroom door.
Back in his room, he set the Mouse Clone on the windowsill. It immediately got up and climbed down.
It climbed along the wall to Xue Ruigao's bedroom window and slipped inside.
Xue Ruigao's bedroom door stood wide open.
Outside, Xue Ruigao and Gao Shiqi were still standing in the living room.
Xue Ruigao was expressionless and silent.
Gao Shiqi kept shaking her hand. "Little Cake, I wouldn't do something like that, really! I was wrong. I shouldn't have poisoned that mouse. I'll apologize to him tomorrow, all right?"
A trace of a humanlike sneer appeared on the Mouse Clone's face.
It scurried into the wardrobe, pulled out a pair of Xue Ruigao's underwear with its teeth, and dragged it all the way onto the bed, beside Gao Shiqi's backpack.
Gripping the zipper with its teeth, it unzipped the backpack, hid the underwear inside, then zipped it back up, leaving only one corner of the underwear sticking out.
Next, it dragged the backpack to the spot where Xue Ruigao slept.
Only after finishing all this did the Mouse Clone hide in a gap in the wardrobe, staring fixedly at the bed.
Outside, Xue Ruigao still said nothing and walked straight into the room.
Gao Shiqi was still pleading.
Suddenly, Xue Ruigao stopped in her tracks.
Her gaze fell on the backpack on the bed.
One corner of a pair of underwear protruded from it.
How could Xue Ruigao fail to recognize her own underwear?
She knew at a glance that it was hers!
Striding over, Xue Ruigao yanked open the backpack's zipper.
At first, Gao Shiqi did not react to Xue Ruigao's actions.
After all, she had not had time to steal Xue Ruigao's underwear this time!
Besides, even if she stole it, she had no intention of putting it in her backpack. She would wear it instead.
Who could have expected a pair of underwear to appear when Xue Ruigao unzipped the backpack?
Xue Ruigao took out the underwear and, biting her lip, shook it in front of Gao Shiqi. "I believed you the first time, and I believed you the second time. How are you going to explain this third time?"
(End of chapter)
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