Chapter 152: Unresignation

Gu Zhiran still wore a look of vulnerability and disbelief on her face, as if she could hardly believe Gu Ci would utter such words.

"Cousin... how could you... how could you be like this?"

She bit her lip, her face filled with helplessness, and her voice trembled with the pain of being betrayed by someone close to her—a sight that would make anyone instantly yearn to hold her in their arms and protect her.

"Gu Ci, have you had enough! Do you really think any of us still believe a word you say? I'm warning you, stop bullying the campus belle at school, or else—" A boy who had long held a secret crush on Gu Zhiran could no longer hold back. He stood up, rushed right in front of Gu Ci, and made a fierce threat.

"Or else what?" Gu Ci glanced sideways, her voice icy yet laced with a trace of nonchalance.

These words instantly drained the boy of his bravado. The rest of his sentence choked in his throat, stuck midway, neither able to come out nor go back down.

His face turned alternately pale and flushed.

Feeling that he had lost face in front of his goddess, the boy stiffened his neck and forced himself to keep confronting Gu Ci.

"You claim the campus belle stole and tricked you out of your book, where's the proof? If you hadn't told her to go get your book, how could she have known you would return this afternoon and mentioned that you were at the hospital?"

"Classmate, please don't say anymore. My cousin... she didn't mean to either... perhaps... she just has some misunderstanding about me." Gu Zhiran softly persuaded the male student. Every word seemed spoken in Gu Ci's defense, yet in reality, she was tacitly confirming their narrative, framing the incident as a malicious slander by Gu Ci while she, in her magnanimity, held no grudge and still defended her.

This only made the onlookers think even more highly of Gu Zhiran's kind heart, fueling their condemnation of Gu Ci.

Gu Ci merely let out a nonchalant laugh. "Evidence?"

"Let's assume I asked you to take my schoolbag away. Since I would have been at the hospital at that time, I must have sent you a message via phone call, text, or a chat app, right? Where is the message?"

As soon as these words were spoken, Gu Zhiran's pupils constricted sharply!

At the time, she had only assumed that Gu Ci would inevitably be trapped this time, so how could she have thought about such details? Naturally, she had simply timed it right and gone straight to Class 12 to grab Gu Ci's schoolbag...

Who could have foreseen that even after Meng Yueling assured her everything was foolproof, Gu Ci would still manage to return completely unscathed?

The expression in Gu Zhiran's eyes shifted rapidly before she finally pulled out her phone with a normal-looking face.

As she opened her text message inbox, she spoke in a frail voice, "Cousin, you clearly did send me a text message... Look, right here—"

At this point, Gu Zhiran widened her eyes as if she had suddenly witnessed something utterly unimaginable.

Then, her fingers swiped frantically across the text message interface while she muttered incessantly, "How can this be... clearly... clearly, Cousin..."

At this, she raised her head to look at Gu Ci with an expression of disbelief.

Her eyes welled up with tears. Taking a deep breath and biting her lip, she bowed deeply to Gu Ci.

"I'm sorry, Cousin. I shouldn't have... I shouldn't have stolen your schoolbag. It was all my fault..."

Having said that, she immediately returned the schoolbag to Gu Ci, then buried her face against her desk and wept softly.

Her sobs were heavy with undisguised grievance.

Merely watching this series of emotional shifts in Gu Zhiran led everyone to believe they had completely deduced the unvarnished truth!

Gu Ci must have foreseen this very issue when she orchestrated the stunt and had long since deleted those text messages!

Yet Gu Zhiran had remained naive enough to believe that the texts Gu Ci sent her were still there, which was why she hadn't panicked in the slightest just moments ago.

And yet, upon checking her phone now, all the text messages were gone. No matter how wronged Gu Zhiran felt, she had no choice but to apologize to Gu Ci.

Gu Ci was truly scheming and deep!

With this thought, the glances cast at Gu Ci by the crowd carried an extra layer of disgust.

Even though Gu Zhiran could not produce any concrete evidence, guided by her subtle manipulation, everyone present—except for the students of Class 12—had already concluded that Gu Ci was the culprit!

Watching Gu Zhiran seemingly apologize to Gu Ci while overtly and covertly pointing the finger at her for clearing away all the evidence beforehand made Wen Zixin, Xiao Yang, and the others utterly sick to their stomachs!

Yet as much as they wanted to explode with anger, they had no outlet for it!

After all... Gu Zhiran had indeed apologized to Gu Ci, and she hadn't explicitly said that Gu Ci orchestrated any of it; she had merely intentionally or unintentionally guided everyone's guesses in that direction...

Gu Ci simply took her schoolbag, her eyes remaining indifferent, clearly paying zero attention to the varied expressions around her.

Opening the bag, Gu Ci skimmed through the contents at a glance and languidly told the students of Class 12, "Let's go."

As she passed by Gu Zhiran's desk, Gu Ci dropped two light syllables.

"Disgusting."

She spoke the word very softly, yet it landed clearly in Gu Zhiran's ears.

When Gu Ci uttered those two words, her tone seemed devoid of any emotion whatsoever, yet it inflicted a profound sense of humiliation upon Gu Zhiran!

The voice carried the implication that, in Gu Ci's eyes, she was merely a speck of dirt—unworthy of evoking even the slightest ripple of emotion, deserving only of those two words tossed out like charity.

Gu Zhiran violently grabbed the fabric of her school uniform sleeve, clenching her fist until she had tightly crumpled that patch of cloth into a ball.

Beneath the cover of her arm, her eyes were blazing red, filled to the brim with venomous hatred!

Clearly, Gu Ci was nothing more than a country bumpkin who had spent her whole life in the boondocks!

Clearly, she was the true delicate, well-bred young lady carefully raised by the Gu family since childhood!

She was supposed to be the favored daughter of the heavens!

She was supposed to be the one standing on high, looking down upon Gu Ci with disdain!

So why... why did she always have the lingering sensation that everything had been completely reversed?

Take right now... Even though, by all accounts, she was the true victor of this duel, she inexplicably felt an incomparable sense of humiliation!

However... fortunately, after putting in so much effort, Gu Zhiran was ultimately satisfied with the harvest.

For one, outside of Class 12, the rest of No. 1 High School now despised Gu Ci even more. For another, the moment she had brought over Gu Ci's schoolbag, she had quietly slipped one of the reference books into her own desk drawer...

On the way back to their classroom, Wen Zixin was still chattering away angrily beside Gu Ci, her round little cheeks flushed crimson, looking as if they were about to explode.

"Ahhh, I'm so mad! This Gu Zhiran pulled the exact same trick on our class before, and it disgusted me to no end! And now she's doing it again, only worse!"

Hearing this, Gu Ci halted in her tracks, her eyes narrowing dangerously. "She used this trick to disgust you before?"

Yan Moyu glanced at Gu Ci. "You didn't know? When you weren't around earlier, Gu Zhiran came to our class wanting to take your... bag. Xinyin wouldn't let her, so she pulled the same disgusting act on her."

A cold frost gathered between Gu Ci's brows. With a sharp pivot, she turned around and walked straight back toward Class 1.

"Come on, let's go back."