You're My Belated Happiness - Chapter 4 Part 3

Translated by Team DHH at http://dhh-workshop.blogspot.com.

You’re My Belated Happiness

Chapter 4 Part 3

Ruan Yu also didn’t feel any relief after she reposted Xu Huaishi’s statement. She had misgivings about the other author’s unwillingness to disclose the source of her story. She decided to wait and see if Shen Mingying could come up with anything from the coffee shop.

But Shen Mingying came back to tell her that the coffee shop hadn’t found any of her personal items. Shen Mingying had called the police in order to get access to the surveillance tapes of the surrounding areas. But the flash drive was such a tiny item that they probably wouldn’t be able to notice anyone acting suspiciously in those video tapes. They could file a report at the police station, but since it had happened over a month ago, the police probably wouldn’t be able to come up with anything either.

Though Ruan Yu was able to declare her innocence, she was still uneasy about the missing piece of information.

Soon enough, Ruan Yu didn’t have time to worry about the missing piece.

Not too long after the statement was posted, her Weibo account was swarmed once again by malicious spammers. They claimed that Ruan Yu had paid “Poem Writer” to get a bogus apology statement.

The spammers who made up the story about the fake statement engaged in a heated argument on Weibo with the people who chose to support Ruan Yu after reading the statement.

It was a chaotic situation underneath Ruan Yu’s Weibo post.

Then on Sunday morning, a writer from Jinjiang posted a long comment on Weibo. Though this person didn’t name Ruan Yu specifically, it was quite clear to the readers that this person was talking about Ruan Yu. The person said that Ruan Yu not only plagiarized the new writer but also bullied her, forcing her to give up her pen name. The poster claimed that Ruan Yu’s actions were a shame to all the creative writers.

This long post had magically gone viral. It was quickly reposted all over the internet and by that evening, it was on the trending list.

Xu Huaishi was keeping track of the situation as it developed. By Sunday evening, she had realized the seriousness of the incident.

Any reasonable person would have chosen to believe Ruan Yu by now. The people who chose to claim otherwise obviously had ulterior motives. They were deliberately slandering Ruan Yu trying to mislead the public opinion.

Xu Huaishi carefully retraced how this whole thing had started. She was a newcomer with a newly registered username, didn’t have a fan base to speak of, and her published story had only minimal exposure. Someone had intentionally stirred the whole thing up to begin with.

She and Zhao Yi had been too naive about the whole incident.

Xu Huaishi was a little scared now. She intended to contact Ruan Yu again and wrestled with properly wording the message.

But before she could send her message, she noticed that Ruan Yu had refreshed her Weibo post: [Comments and private messages are temporarily turned off]. 

Ruan Yu also posted a screenshot underneath the new message. It was a private message sent to “Wenxiang”. The sender’s profile picture and id were blurred and the message sent was a threatening picture.

The picture was filled with splashed paint with several bright red hand prints that gave a threatening feeling. The caption was [Plagiarists must die!]

Just by looking at the picture on the cell phone, Xu Huaishi was so shaken that she almost dropped her phone on the floor.

Her hands started shaking. She didn’t even hear the piercing bell ringing for evening self-study. She rushed to the restroom in the classroom building. She shut herself in one of the stalls in a fluster and dialed Xu Huaisong’s phone number.

It was already past 3 am over in San Francisco. It was an emergency, she couldn’t wait.

The other side answered the phone. Xu Huaishi immediately spoke haltingly: “Ge…...I, I’ve made big trouble!”

Xu Huaisong hadn’t gone to bed yet. There were a lot of people talking in English on the other side of the phone. It seemed that Xu Huaishong was flipping through some papers as he spoke. His response seemed somewhat perfunctory: “What’s wrong? I’m going to have an emergency meeting in five minutes. If it’s nothing serious then……”

“It’s serious!” Xu Huaishi insisted. When she opened her mouth again, she sounded like she was about to cry: “Ge, I’ve caused a big trouble for Ruan xuejie……”

It became quiet on the other side. After a while, Xu Huaisong asked: “Who?”

She said while sobbing: “Ruan Yu. Ruan xuejie. You don’t remember her?”

It was quiet on the other end again, for a much longer time.

Xu Huaishi was about to speak again when she heard footsteps coming from outside of the restroom. She was afraid of being discovered that she had used her cell phone during their self-study period. She quickly held her breath and kept quiet.

After a little while, the noise from the other end of the phone disappeared.

Xu Huaisong seemed to have walked to a quiet place and continued to ask: “What are you crying for? Spell it out.”

Xu Huaishi couldn’t talk. The girl who came to use the bathroom hadn’t left yet. She had to keep quiet and breathe calmly.

Xu Huaisong asked again: “Where are you?”

The tone of his voice was getting annoyed. Xu Huaishi hurriedly hung up the phone and sent a WeChat message to him instead: [I’m hiding inside the restroom in school. There’s someone here. Let’s talk here. First, let me show you a picture.]

She shared the picture of the wall in the piano room with him and added: [Two nights ago I found this inside the piano room 301 at the school’s arts building.]

On the other side of the screen, Xu Huaisong, well-groomed in a smart navy blue suit, stood in the brightly lit hallway outside the meeting room. He clicked open the WeChat chat with a frown.

A white lady walked over on her high heels. She called him: “Hanson.” Then she handed him a thick stack, over a hundred pages, of loose papers and told him those were the documents he had asked for.

His eyes were on his cell phone screen but reached over with the other hand to take the papers. His fingers let go of the papers suddenly when he opened the picture and clearly saw the English letters on the wall.

The pages scattered all over the ground, spreading out like snowflakes, making a mess of the hallway.

Inside the narrow and silent hallway, Xu Huaisong could hear his own heart thumping, loudly.

Translated by Team DHH at http://dhh-workshop.blogspot.com.