Part 3
“Are you okay?” Bai Sinian asked worriedly.
“What could be wrong with me?”
Fan Hongyi looked confused but invited them in. His father was reading in the living room.
Fan Hongyi’s father looked like a scholarly man. Thick lenses hid his strict eyes, and he wore a yellowish short-sleeved shirt. Books were piled on the coffee table and sofa.
“Hello, Uncle.”
“Dad, these are my classmates, Bai Sinian and Bian Rui.”
Fan Hongyi’s dad nodded, gave an “En,” and went back to reading.
“Come to my room,” Fan Hongyi whispered, leading them to his bedroom and locking the door.
“Why did you guys come suddenly?” Fan Hongyi still didn’t dare speak loudly.
Thus, inexplicably, everyone began to whisper.
Bai Sinian sat on Fan Hongyi’s bed. “Were you filmed yesterday?”
Fan Hongyi paused, remembering yesterday’s events, and was shocked for a second. “How do you know?”
“It’s all over the internet.”
Bian Rui acted like a tool, opening the video and handing it to Fan Hongyi. Fan Hongyi went from shock to fright, and by the time he finished watching, his face was red with held-back emotion.
Bai Sinian was nervous too. He believed in Fan Hongyi, but he was afraid Fan Hongyi might admit he actually did it.
The idols’ image in his heart was tall and mighty. He feared he was viewing them through a filter, and if that filter shattered one day, he would break down too.
“I didn’t! I really didn’t!” Fan Hongyi was so agitated he didn’t even know how to explain.
Bian Rui patted his shoulder. “Calm down.”
Bai Sinian breathed a silent sigh of relief. “Fan Hongyi, think carefully. What exactly happened yesterday?”
“Hiss…” Fan Hongyi wiped his face with his hand, his Adam’s apple rolling. “Yesterday I was coming back from cram school on this bus. This woman kept playing on her phone next to me, then suddenly raised her phone to film me, saying I touched her butt. But I didn’t even touch her!”
He didn’t dare speak too loudly for fear of his dad hearing, so he could only roar in a whisper.
Bai Sinian showed his calm side. “It’s okay, we’ll think of a solution together.”
While Bai Sinian comforted Fan Hongyi, Bian Rui had already looked up the woman’s information.
He whispered from the side, “She’s a female university student, a relatively popular blogger online. Her previous videos got tens of thousands of likes, sometimes hundreds of thousands. Every video has a juicy story.”
Bai Sinian clicked on her homepage. Indeed, her videos were full of stories: suddenly meeting a heartbroken girl on the street and comforting her; seeing a beggar on the road at midnight and buying them food; and many other coincidental events where she enthusiastically helped out.
“So coincidental? She catches every good deed?” Bian Rui said with a tone of suspicion.
Bai Sinian understood immediately. “You mean she deliberately manufactures heat to catch eyes, right? Look, her recent videos have significantly lower likes. Is she being throttled? So she wants to create a big wave?”
Bian Rui stared thoughtfully at the screen, brows furrowed tight.
Fan Hongyi was touched. He hadn’t expected the two of them to stand firmly by his side after hearing just one sentence of explanation.
“Pfft…” Bai Sinian saw a comment and couldn’t help laughing.
“This person said, looking at his prison haircut, you can tell he’s a habitual offender. Hahahaha…” Bai Sinian finally laughed out loud.
This lightened Fan Hongyi’s somewhat depressed mood, and he involuntarily laughed along.
“I really should have a talk with my mom.” Fan Hongyi rubbed his head.
While they joked, Bian Rui had already thought of a solution. He said, “This girl is obviously doing this for attention, so she picked a high school student as a target. We need to go to the bus company and pull the surveillance footage.”
“Will they give it to us?”
They looked at each other. They might actually not give it, since they were minors. In situations like this, it was more reliable to have an adult step in.
Bai Sinian asked, “Can you ask your dad for help?”
Fan Hongyi hesitated. He hated troubling his parents the most. Although he hadn’t done it, being accused of being a groper would still be shameful for his parents. His dad was a university professor dealing with intellectuals; making him use connections for this would just add to their stress.
Seeing his hesitation, Bai Sinian opened the bedroom door and shouted, “Uncle, Fan Hongyi is in trouble!”
“Bai Sinian!” Fan Hongyi jumped up in agitation. He ran to the door to stop Bai Sinian, but it was too late.
His dad closed his book and asked sternly, “What trouble?”
Bai Sinian walked boldly into the living room and told his dad everything.
After hearing it, his dad’s expression was grave. It made Fan Hongyi’s heart tremble; his dad usually looked like this right before getting angry.
“Fan Hongyi, are you sure you didn’t do it?”
“Dad! I didn’t!”
Fan Hongyi’s dad put the book on the sofa, stood up, and straightened his shirt. “Alright then, let’s go to the Public Transit Group right now.”
In that moment, Bai Sinian felt the light of fatherly love radiating from him. Fan Hongyi’s eyes overflowed with emotion and admiration.
He hadn’t expected his dad to decide to check the surveillance without a second of hesitation.
Bai Sinian inadvertently met Bian Rui’s gaze. Bian Rui’s eyes revealed a look of approval. In that moment, Bai Sinian felt a warm spring flowing through his heart, very satisfied.
Fan Hongyi’s dad changed into a new shirt, looking much sharper than the previous one. He took the three kids to the parking lot and drove them personally to the Public Transit Group.
The headquarters was in the city center. Fortunately, it wasn’t too congested in the afternoon.
Bai Sinian and Bian Rui sat in the back, chatting with them while reporting their progress in the group chat.
Before leaving, Fan Hongyi’s dad had already called the police. By the time they arrived at the bus company, the police had just arrived.
Bai Sinian silently admired him. As expected of an adult, he considered everything thoroughly.
Without a police report, ordinary citizens had no right to demand to see surveillance footage; only the police had that authority.
Things went very smoothly. They got the receipt of the case filing and part of the surveillance footage. In the video, it was obvious Fan Hongyi did nothing. One hand held the rail, the other scrolled on his phone. The girl was next to him, and suddenly she started filming him with her phone and shouting.
But it wasn’t enough for the few of them to know the truth; they needed to announce the result online.
The heat was already one-sidedly cursing Fan Hongyi. If this continued, Fan Hongyi’s real name and school might be exposed.
[Tears Ripped Open My Aorta]: I knew it couldn’t be Old Fan!
[Little North°]: That’s great! Happy.jpg
[Tears Ripped Open My Aorta]: I say, while we’re slapping her in the face with the truth, we should take this chance to earn a wave of traffic. We are Dazzling Star after all!
Seeing the messages in the group, Bai Sinian was tempted.
His intention was to accumulate popularity for “Dazzling Star” to explode in the future. Now that there was an opportunity, once netizens knew Fan Hongyi was wronged, it would at least attract a wave of sympathy fans.
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