Chapter Fifty-Four: Your Father Has Returned (10)

With a slight frown, the proud young man lifted his schoolbag. There was a trace of impatience between his delicate brows as he gazed down at the desk with evident disdain.

His eyes, already slightly upturned at the corners, became more pronounced with discontent, and the natural flush at the end of his eyes made his presence all the more commanding, almost dangerously captivating in his striking beauty.

His jet-black eyes swept over the dilapidated desks and chairs, the filthy rubbish bin, and the cowering girl. Then, turning to face Xu, he looked at Lu Yuehong with a smile that never reached his eyes. “Teacher, could you please explain to me why this place is in such a state?”

He lifted his foot, his long leg gently kicking the desk beside him.

The battered desk, unable to withstand even that slight force, toppled to the ground and lost one of its legs.

The fallen table leg rolled into the pile of garbage, disturbing several flies that began to buzz noisily around, making the place all the more intolerable.

“The desk is a broken one that’s been replaced, but what about this pile of rubbish? And her desk—what’s going on with that?”

His black, feathered eyebrows arched, and there was a hint of mocking laughter in the young man’s eyes—a look that chilled Lu Yuehong to the core.

Could it be that he’s noticed something?

Just then, the impatient youth turned his attention to the desk beside him, his pale fingers tracing slowly over the gouges in its surface.

“What’s all this written here?”

Seeing his gaze land on the venomous curses scrawled across the desk, Lu Yuehong’s heart leapt into her throat. She could no longer maintain the composure expected of a teacher and rushed forward, throwing herself over the desk to shield the mass of words with her body.

With her limbs gripping the four corners of the desk, she looked for all the world like some crawling creature.

Startled, the young man instinctively took a step back, then regarded Lu Yuehong’s unseemly posture with a puzzled tilt of his head.

“Teacher, what are you doing?”

What was she doing?

How could she possibly answer that?

Lu Yuehong clambered down in some embarrassment, cold sweat soaking her hair. The tension of the entire day had robbed her of the arrogance she’d worn before, leaving her looking ten years older and utterly dejected.

“Chi’s desk was broken earlier, so we had to use an old one as a temporary replacement. We’ll get everything sorted out soon. As for the garbage, it’s from the last class clean-up—it’s only been there for a short while. I’ll have someone come clear it all away.”

Anyone with half an eye could see Lu Yuehong was covering something up.

But since Chao Xu had already achieved her goal, she was in no hurry to expose it.

She wanted to keep the suspense alive, teasing out the nerves, pushing Lu Yuehong to the brink of madness—so there was no need to rush.

Though she seemed displeased with the answer, the young man finally accepted the explanation and pressed, “You’d better hurry. Don’t make me keep looking at this mess. I can’t imagine how awful it must have been if this really was my sister’s seat before.”

He frowned, gazing at the filthy, out-of-place corner that clashed so starkly with the rest of the classroom, as if he simply couldn’t believe such a dreadful place could exist in this world.

With fists clenched, Lu Yuehong’s mind went blank, and her thoughts grew hazy.

The boy seemed… especially protective of his sister.

If Chao Si ever learned that the original Chao Si had lived in this dark, joyless corner, bullied day and night…

The fury he would unleash would be beyond imagining.

“You must be joking,” she forced herself to sound calm, lying through her teeth. “As a teacher, how could I possibly allow a student to study in an environment like this?”