Counterattack
Jiang Nan was puzzled, but she immediately did as she was told, getting up and going downstairs to fetch Wu Chen's things.
In the few minutes before she returned, no one spoke. Only Yang Yuanjing sat beside the counselor, Zhang Wei, sniffling from time to time.
Li Lan smoked one cigarette after another, deeply agitated.
A problem between a teacher and a student was a serious matter. Crossing that line was forbidden.
Even on Qidian Chinese Network, where he liked to read, novels couldn't include that sort of thing. A book would be banned for so much as brushing up against it.
Yet something like this had happened in real life, right under his jurisdiction!
If word got out and affected the school's 2011 application project, they would have a serious problem.
Should he suppress it?
A terrible thought flashed through his mind.
It wasn't as if there had never been a precedent.
All they had to do was guarantee Yang Yuanjing a place in graduate school and then dismiss Wu Chen. They could settle the matter quietly, and the school wouldn't be affected...
But was that really the right thing to do?
Li Lan looked at Wang Hongfa, wanting him to decide.
Before he could speak, however, the conference room door flew open with a bang.
Jiang Nan stood in the doorway with Wu Chen's backpack on her back, breathing slightly hard.
A normal round trip from here to the parking lot took ten minutes, yet she had run back in less than five.
She walked over to Wu Chen and set the backpack on his desk.
"Mr. Wu, is this what you wanted?"
"Mm."
Wu Chen opened the bag and took out a camera.
It was the very component he used to calibrate the production line's precision.
As he connected the camera to the computer, he breathed in Jiang Nan's scent and experienced just how much the words "drenched in fragrant sweat" were worth.
Where had Yang Yuanjing gotten the confidence to think he would pass over Jiang Nan to harass her?
While Wu Chen was fiddling with the computer, Wang Hongfa finally lost patience and rapped on the table, demanding an answer.
"Wu Chen! I've been waiting here all this time, and you haven't offered a single word of explanation. Doesn't that prove what this student, Yang, said is true?"
"False."
Wu Chen's answer was brief.
"Then do you have proof?"
"The one making the claim bears the burden of proof, so ask her for it."
Wu Chen pointed at Yang Yuanjing, who was curled up in a ball.
But she only curled up in a ball and answered whatever anyone asked, sobbing all the while.
Of course, Wu Chen hadn't expected her to answer. Instead, he opened a video on the computer and said to everyone, "This is what the camera recorded while I was testing the equipment over the weekend. See for yourselves."
Li Lan was the first to lean over.
The time displayed in the footage was just after eight on Saturday night, and it showed Wu Chen busy at his desk.
The video was more than twenty hours long.
"This is..."
Li Lan asked, puzzled.
"To test the equipment's stability, I left it running from Saturday until Monday morning. You can drag the progress bar and take a look."
After that explanation, Wu Chen asked Yang Yuanjing, "You tell us. When did I force you last weekend?"
"I..."
Yang Yuanjing was dumbfounded for a moment. She glanced at Wang Hongfa instinctively, then gritted her teeth. "It wasn't at night. It was Saturday afternoon!"
"What time?"
"I... I don't remember..."
"The department had a meeting on Saturday, and it was after seven in the evening when I got home from the hospital. I had colleagues with me the whole time. When did I ever see you?"
"I..."
Yang Yuanjing hadn't known Wu Chen's schedule on Saturday and immediately panicked, but she continued to argue, "I, I must have remembered wrong. It was at night, so the time in that video is fake!"
Wu Chen sneered and dragged the progress bar, fast-forwarding to around ten on Saturday night.
The image from the camera shifted, and then the camera appeared to be picked up and pointed at the computer on the desk.
The time on the computer was clearly visible in the footage, and it matched the time recorded in the corner of the camera image exactly.
Most importantly, a QQ message happened to pop up on the computer just then, and Wu Chen opened it.
When he replied, however, he put the camera down. The angle made it impossible to see clearly who had sent the message, but the messages themselves were visible.
[I'll come find you at 9 tomorrow morning. Same place?]
[9:30]
The times shown on the messages also matched the computer's time exactly.
"Still fake?"
Wu Chen asked Yang Yuanjing.
"Fake! It must be fake!"
Seeing that her lie was about to be exposed, Yang Yuanjing threw all restraint aside, crying and making a scene.
Li Lan and the others felt as sick as if they had eaten shit, unsure whether to be happy or angry.
They were happy because Yang Yuanjing appeared to have made a false accusation, meaning the school wouldn't end up among the trending searches.
What angered him was that he hadn't expected Yang Yuanjing, who looked like such a little white flower, to have been lying all along!
And to think they had believed her just now!
Li Lan's face darkened, and he was about to give her a scolding.
Unexpectedly, Wang Hongfa suddenly cut in. "Technology is advanced these days. The chat in the video could indeed have been faked, but we won't pursue the matter either. Let's leave it at that for now."
Hearing this, Li Lan forcibly swallowed his words.
No matter how slow he was, he now realized that the problem wasn't Wu Chen and Yang Yuanjing, but Wang Hongfa and Yang Yuanjing!
But Wu Chen couldn't leave Wang Hongfa anything to use against him.
"What's real is real, and what's fake is fake. What do you mean, it could have been faked?"
Wang Hongfa shot back, "Then how do you prove it's real?"
Wu Chen was just about to speak when a voice said calmly, "I can prove it."
Everyone turned to look. Jiang Nan stood behind them with a dark expression, her face full of anger, lending her already aloof bearing an even colder air.
She opened QQ on her phone, brought up her chat history with Wu Chen and showed it to everyone. Then she said to Wang Hongfa, "Dean Wang, I sent that message. Is that proof enough now?"
Wang Hongfa's pig face instantly turned the color of pig liver.
He glared fiercely at Yang Yuanjing.
What a good-for-nothing. She can't even make a false accusation properly!
But if he admitted the video was real, that meant Wu Chen had never had time to have sex with Yang Yuanjing, definitively exposing her lie.
In that case, there would be no way to smear Wu Chen.
Just as he was racking his brains for another loophole, Yang Yuanjing suddenly shouted, "What normal person films themselves for more than twenty hours? He must have planned this! The video was spliced together!"
"That's right! It is suspicious. We can't reach a conclusion based on a single video!"
Wang Hongfa's drinking had addled his head. No matter how much nonsense Yang Yuanjing was spouting, he intended to seize this lifeline and get the matter over with as quickly as possible.
But now, even someone like Zhao Lei couldn't stand watching any longer.
They said nothing, though, merely turning their eyes to Wu Chen to see how he would continue proving it.
But Wu Chen had no intention of proving it.
He looked at Wang Hongfa, wanting only to bring this farce to a quick end and then go with Jiang Nan to the factory to solve the production line's problems.
So he said, "Dean Wang, I happened to hear something last Saturday. I wonder if you remember it."
Wang Hongfa looked puzzled. "What?"
Wu Chen smiled. "Why were you so quick today... how should we handle it? Guarantee her a place in graduate school, of course..."
He enunciated the words "guarantee her a place in graduate school" perfectly, exactly as they had sounded in Yang Yuanjing's evidence just now.
"You!"
At those words, Wang Hongfa stumbled back a step, nearly falling to the floor.
Across the room, all color instantly drained from Yang Yuanjing's face. Her wailing cut off halfway through, like a goose being strangled by the neck.