Chen Wei lips quivered.
He Xiao Yi reached out and touched the fist Chen Wei had folded with his right hand, on the table. "It’s okay, we are just talking. I spoke to your parents and they were not aware that you jumped through a window and tried to kill yourself.
They just thought you got the scholarship extension and internship at the ministry because you were doing so well at school."
Lingyu said gently to Chen Wei, "You don’t have to say anything."
Chen Wei lowered his eyes.
He Xiao Yi continued on however, "Professor Ce had this fatherly aura about him. He takes you in at such a young age, spends ti playing so video gas or outdoor gas which allow him to understand you. Everything about you that your parents don’t get, he gets.
He would be the cheerleader on the sidelines when you took your first steps. He shows you off to alumni and leaders, talking about how you will do great things because he believes in you. Slowly by slowly, you get this urge to make him proud.
The first two years tend to be easy but as ti goes on, the pressure rises. Bit by bit. Then you start to realize that you are like the frog sitting at bottom of the pot and it is on fire."
Chen Wei whimpered.
He Xiao Yi lowered his voice, almost to a whisper. "Everyone knows, if you fail at Qinghe, you are considered a failure in the country. All forr students who didn’t pass are now struggling in their fields. Most end up as drug addicts or inside the walls of a ntal institution. But you are already there Chen Wei, aren’t you? If not for the legal consequences, the professor would not even have bothered with you."
Chen Wei bit his tongue.
"Did you kill him?" Liwu asked. "We know you were in his office and yet the hallway cara did not see you going in or out. You lied to us about being among the twenty. The student that burned the pictures of the remaining special Ce students has told my partner that yours was not there."
He Xiao Yi let go of Chen Wei’s fist. "You lied about that, you lied about being a system host, you probably lied about the alibi and we are checking that too. Do you want to live the rest of your life lying to yourself that you have what it takes to make it here? Aren’t you tired? Isn’t it suffocating?"
Suddenly, Chen Wei stood up and pushed the chair back. The detectives were rattled. But then, the boy took a deep breath, gulping air in and expelling it as if he had been drowning.
He Xiao Yi smiled. He just knew they had him now. Because, Chen Wei had been suffocating on the inside, indeed.
"I didn’t an to!" Chen Wei, exhaled. "I was just....it is...." He groaned, like there was sothing he wanted to say but he could not get it out. "Do you know how hard it is to survive in this place?
Everything runs on a clock. You ti yourself when eating, you ti yourself when taking a dump, you ti yourself when taking a bath, you ti yourself when taking a nap. I cannot even recall the last ti I had good night’s sleep?" He fell back into the chair. "Oh wait, I do. It was when I was admitted to the hospital and drugged."
Liwu wanted to speak up but He Xiao Yi shook his head and signaled that she not say a word.
"It is always competition here. You eat fast but soone can eat faster than you. You read fast but there is always soone that reads faster than you. And everyone knows the truth, it is hard to keep up with the stupid system hosts with their big artificial mories!" He burst into hysterical laughter. "Imagine doing exams with soone that can rewind ti back five minutes!"
Liwu thought to herself that she would definitely hate soone like that as well.
"I thought it was unfair and I tried to make the professor understand that an ordinary genius could not keep up with a system aided genius. Just look at his special students, the biggest number are system hosts and the winner of the ring is always a system host. How could he expect us to compete with them?"
Chen Wei’s voice deepened and beca more hysterical, like he was experiencing so kind of episode. "I went to see him because I just wanted him to listen. To lower the grading a bit. He said no. I begged. He refused.
So I told him that I had a system that could show his secrets. It activated the mont I jumped out of the window. I told him that if he didn’t his personal grading system, I would find his secrets and put them out there."
"I can’t imagine he liked that very much." Liwu comnted.
"He laughed!" Chen Wei scread angrily. "Then he said that this was why psychological evaluations were done before students were given admission here. Apparently I ranked low. He regretted giving a chance."
"So you killed him." He Xiao Yi concluded.
Chen Wei shook his head. The detectives wanted to punch the air. It was like they were standing at the edge of the cliff, and all they needed was one push.
Then Chen Wei voluntarily threw himself down. "Not then. Even after all he said, I still thought that I could convince him. So I appeared in his office and then I saw the wall. All the pictures of the top 20 were gone. He had written a resignation letter."
He Xiao Yi’s mouth dropped open.
The students in the library, who were eavesdropping on the interrogation dropped their books. How could the professor have resigned!
"He was abandoning all of us. After screwing with our heads, he was moving to so villa in Dubai to live out his life in retirent!"
"You saw that as a betrayal." He Xiao Yi said slowly.
Chen Wei nodded. "No...it was okay for him to leave if he wanted. But, he was leaving behind a manual for the school to follow when grading. He was making 100% the only A . Everything under 90 would be an F. If a student could not have such grades within the first sester of their arrival, they would be expelled. Can you imagine that?"
"Oh my God!" Su Jin whispered.
More gasps ca from different corners of the library.
"And he was recomnding that I be expelled because I was an uncontrolled variable." Chen Wei looked at He Xiao Yi. "I am a person, not a variable. Not a statistic. Not a thing."
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