Did I Succeed in Redeeming the Villain Today? - Chapter 55

Chapter 55: “A Child Like You, Who Could Ever…”

Lu Ning didn’t know if it was because she had been a system for too long, but words that she would never have been able to utter in the past now came to her with practiced ease. Perhaps when words tinged with ambiguity are on one’s lips too often, the emotional undertones beneath the speech become blurred.

Even Lu Ning herself didn’t know where that heart she claimed “belonged to Mu Qiuyu” actually resided.

Mu Qiuyu, however, squeezed her empty palm and, after Lu Ning finished her sentence, said to her: “Then give it all to me.”

“Okay!” Lu Ning nodded, briskly transferring the data she had gathered to Mu Qiuyu’s phone. The keyboard clattered; a single-threaded program couldn’t possibly parse the deeper meaning of human language.

The events followed Lu Ning’s predictions perfectly. The Principal of Guanghua wouldn’t let go of the No. 1 Principal, clearly intending to spite him. With both sides at a deadlock, the discussion regarding Cen Qin’s punishment stalled, and the meeting was forced into a twenty-five-minute recess.

Li Xiang and Shi Jin, in a rare moment of alliance, followed the Cen family’s attorney toward the restroom, sniping at him in turns.

“I think I might consider becoming a lawyer in the future.”

“You certainly have the thick skin for it, but you need more practice.”

“Maybe practice some courage too? What if you run into a kitten’s ghost at night?”

“What did the kitten do wrong? Since they called it ‘child’s play,’ let the kitten have some ‘child’s play’ with him too.”

Listening to the duo’s coordinated attack, the attorney’s face flushed red and white as he hurried into the men’s room. With the opposition gone, the conference room fell silent.

Mu Qiuyu opened her phone and looked at Mu Jingqin beside her. “Aunt, I have some information here that can force No. 1 to expel Cen Qin.”

Mu Jingqin’s gaze was one of blatant distrust. If the girl had evidence, she should have brought it out long ago. But with a “nothing to lose” attitude, she took the phone Mu Qiuyu handed her. She only read the first few pages before her expression grew complex. “You found all this just to get that kid expelled? It’s like using a cannon to kill a mosquito.”

“A lost life is not a mosquito,” Mu Qiuyu countered softly.

The girl’s voice was flat and firm. Mu Jingqin’s gaze faltered. Once upon a time, she had heard someone say something similar. That person, despite having little strength, had stubbornly pulled her arm and ran toward a dog trafficker’s truck with her. Memories slipped out of Mu Jingqin’s locked heart.

But she didn’t want to remember those things right now. Controlling her emotions, she looked coldly at Mu Qiuyu. “You trust me this much?”

Mu Jingqin casually dangled Mu Qiuyu’s phone, shaking it in front of her. “Aren’t you afraid that once I get this, I’ll use it for my own selfish gain, just like your principal?”

“You won’t.” Mu Qiuyu parted her lips, her words carrying weight without force. “Because you came here today.”

The sun reached its zenith against the window frame; the weather was so clear that the sunlight was blinding. Mu Qiuyu’s gaze was steady and sincere, shimmering with a clean light under the refraction. For a moment, Mu Jingqin saw the shadow of Mu Jingyi in her. They were so alike.

Mu Qiuyu, in her neat school uniform with her hair down, looked just like Mu Jingyi sitting beside Mu Jingqin over a decade ago—if she didn’t see the three-tenths of Su Qinghang’s bone structure in Mu Qiuyu’s face.

“Mu Qiuyu.” Uncontrollably, Mu Jingqin glared at the girl’s face. “Sometimes, I really hate this face of yours.”

Mu Qiuyu had heard such words too many times. Her expression didn’t show the nervous helplessness of the past; instead, she calmly took her phone back. “I’ve sent the files to your phone.”

Inside the police station, the file transfer was lightning-fast. Mu Jingqin looked at her glowing screen and gritted her teeth coldly. “A child like you, who could ever like you?”

“I DO!”

Mu Qiuyu was already numb to Mu Jingqin’s verbal blows. Yet, in this moment, Lu Ning’s deafening voice rang in her ears. Lu Ning could accept Mu Jingqin’s “sharp tongue/soft heart” persona, but she couldn’t allow her to verbally wound her host like this.

She stood firmly by Mu Qiuyu’s side, declaring: “Host, don’t listen to her. There are plenty of people who like you.”

Mu Qiuyu’s gaze froze. After Mu Jingqin turned and left, she slowly allowed a small smile to pull at the corner of her mouth. “Do you really wish for many people to like me?”

“Of course,” Lu Ning replied firmly.

The conference room was lonely and empty. Mu Qiuyu leaned back against her chair, looking toward the window where she might be able to see Lu Ning. “Then why did you repeatedly warn me that minors are forbidden from dating?”

Lu Ning was stunned. She had indeed emphasized that recently. However, the “liking” she meant seemed different from what Mu Qiuyu was talking about. But then again, maybe it wasn’t.

Lu Ning was using her position for personal gain by not letting Mu Qiuyu accept others’ “liking” as romantic love. But what about other kinds of liking? “Liking” was a vague concept; even a system couldn’t distinguish a clear boundary.

But even though Lu Ning wasn’t a real system, she felt like she was crashing. Hearing the sudden silence, Mu Qiuyu called out “Lu Ling,” then said: “It’s too quiet. Play a song.”

Lu Ning immediately set aside her conflict and opened the music engine, fulfilling her duty: “What do you want to hear?”

“The song I sang last time,” Mu Qiuyu asked softly. “Do you remember it?”

A sentence that could have been said in one go was split into two. She seemed to be asking about the song—and about what happened that time.

Lu Ning sensed it too. The search engine responded faster than her, playing the song Mu Qiuyu had sung based on stored memory.

“Short steps, deep breath, Everything is alright…”

The slow intro flowed with the original singer’s ethereal voice, echoing in both Lu Ning’s and Mu Qiuyu’s minds. The temperature in Wucheng was perfect as summer approached; the sun wasn’t too harsh. It was the best time of year. Tree shadows danced across the second-floor room, swaying in the empty conference hall.

In the silence, Mu Qiuyu slowly closed her eyes. Lu Ning’s murmurs from the time she fell asleep involuntarily echoed in her mind. After achieving her goal through “nepotism,” the little kitten had curled up contentedly in her arms. She had openly occupied the best spot near her heart, not forgetting to smack her lips in sleep: “Great, Mu Qiuyu is mine alone.”

How good am I? To have this system so obsessed with me.

Mu Qiuyu never thought of herself as a particularly good person. Such exclusive possession might be something a person like her couldn’t afford. Thinking this, her calm expression flickered. She didn’t like this sudden thought and used the song to settle her mind.

“Qiuyu, do you want some water?” During the fourth loop of the song, Li Xiang’s voice came from beside her. Mu Qiuyu felt her throat was dry and opened her eyes. “Okay.”

But before she could take a sip, Shi Jin excitedly pushed the door open. “Li Xiang, Mu Qiuyu! Come on, come on! Let’s go see the drama!”

Before they could react, a boy’s plea for mercy drifted in from the hallway: “Dad, let me explain, I didn’t…”

Cen Qin was leaning on crutches, pitifully following behind a man in a suit. His gloomy face was twisted in an ugly plea for forgiveness.

Slap!

The plea was useless, earning him only a slap. The entire hallway went deathly silent. Cen Qin covered his face in a daze; had his mother not supported him, he would have fallen.

“Husband, why are you hitting the child like this! He’s still injured!” Mrs. Cen questioned her husband, looking nervously at her son.

“If he’s injured, send him to a sanitarium! If he can’t be fixed, don’t come back to the country to embarrass me!” The man showed no mercy, looking at Cen Qin with disgust.

“I really know I was wrong.” Cen Qin lowered his head, looking at the man with a pleading expression; his trembling eyes looked just like those of the animals before he killed them. He had shown no mercy to the animals, and his father showed none to him.

The man stood over him with his hands in his pockets, whispering his death sentence: “How many times have I told you? If you’re going to play, play with something high-class. You’ve made yourself so filthy—do you think I still want you?”

“D*mmit, what kind of talk is that?” Lu Ning, who had thought the scene was satisfying a moment ago, couldn’t help but curse.

“Standard procedure,” Mu Qiuyu replied softly, watching from afar. Her gaze toward the Cen father and son was cold to the extreme, like a knife cutting through their exquisite skins. “Why do you think he’s angry? It’s just because his son’s evil methods were too low-class, to the point of being expelled. He turns eighteen next month and was supposed to be the public heir. Being unable to clean up his own mess proves he’s incompetent. Not to mention he has no margin for error—he has a sister watching him like a hawk.”

Listening to this, Lu Ning felt a deep sense of alienation from Mu Qiuyu’s world. She was also surprised the man arrived so quickly. “Is Mu Jingqin that fast? It’s only been fifteen minutes.”

“I can be faster than her,” Mu Qiuyu said to Lu Ning in a light, certain voice, as if in passing.

“What?” Lu Ning didn’t hear clearly and asked instinctively.

With that one question, Mu Qiuyu’s gaze turned alert. Then she suddenly laughed. She had almost exposed her identity just because her system praised someone else. Mu Qiuyu felt herself losing control and changed her words into a compliment for Lu Ning: “You are faster than her.”

Lu Ning always accepted Mu Qiuyu’s praise candidly: “Host, you flatter me.”

As she spoke, she chuckled behind the glass window, drawing puzzled looks from passersby. Lu Ning quickly straightened up, pretending to be busy with work, clicking her keyboard as she confirmed Cen Qin’s fate with Mu Qiuyu: “So is it settled? Cen Qin has been abandoned by his family; he’ll never recover.”

“Pretty much.” Hearing the keyboard sounds, Mu Qiuyu’s cold eyes showed a bit of curiosity. “Are you in the coffee shop?”

“Mm.” Lu Ning nodded, her voice hopeful. “Are you coming to find me?”

“I’ll find you when this is over. You can move freely for a bit.” Mu Qiuyu watched the performance in the hallway; privately, she wanted to see Cen Qin cry a little longer.

“Principal Wang, we can discuss things…”

“Sorry, Mrs. Cen, our school has to consider the other students.”

“Principal Wang, that’s not what you said just now. Our Cen Qin has brought a lot of investment to the school.”

“Mrs. Cen, those things are very troublesome for me now, can you understand?”

Mu Qiuyu watched Mrs. Cen and the No. 1 Principal negotiate; both were equally frantic. Mu Jingqin’s methods were sharper than she imagined; she hadn’t spared the Principal either. Perhaps she had always underestimated Mu Jingqin’s wrist. Perhaps she could cooperate with her to investigate her parents’ “accident.”

Sunlight passed through the conference room glass, falling diagonally across the hallway. The slanted shadow of the door frame framed the girl, bathing her alone in the sun. The wind swirled through the hallway, brushing Mu Qiuyu’s hair, blowing from the police station to the coffee shop across the street.

Busy work and silence blended into the melodious music. Suddenly, the chime of the door rang. A new guest had arrived.

Having finished her support work, Lu Ning was holding a controller with interest, manipulating Mario to save the princess. She had to admit, the laptop her database had turned into was quite good. Like any computer, it came with built-in games—this one had every game in the world. Lu Ning hadn’t played in a long time; with Mu Qiuyu’s permission, she was having a blast.

But when the doorbell rang, her concentrated spirit inexplicably looked up at the door. The wind from the street caught a girl’s skirt; a white shirt outlined a youthful, slender figure. She seemed to have an appointment, looking around at the entrance.

The person she was looking for saw her immediately and called out: “Mu Qiuyu, over here!”

Lu Ning’s voice was full of joy and excitement as she waved from the counter seat. The moment Mu Qiuyu saw Lu Ning, her gaze brightened for a second before returning to calm as she walked over.

“You didn’t tell me you were coming in,” Lu Ning said, pulling out a chair for Mu Qiuyu.

“Forgot.” Mu Qiuyu’s voice was flat. To make it easier to sit, she nudged the chair slightly closer to Lu Ning.

Lu Ning found the movement a bit odd but politely helped her adjust the chair. Then, the aftermath of Cen Qin’s matter filled her head again. She was curious and asked as Mu Qiuyu sat down: “What happened with Cen Qin? Did he—”

Before she could finish, her shoulder suddenly felt a weight. As soon as Mu Qiuyu sat down, she leaned against Lu Ning’s shoulder. “So tired.”

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