It Seems Like My Senior Seems to Like Me - Chapter 84

“You mean… they might have been hired by someone, and that person could very well be someone from the lab?”

The questions the two girls, with no training in criminal investigation, could think of had also been considered by the local police.

Through surveillance footage, the police quickly caught the three homeless men. Then, with the help of a profiler’s analysis and leading questions, they confessed about one person—

Tall and thin, with golden curly hair, in his early twenties, who paid them 300 dollars to “teach Sooyeon a lesson” on her way home.

“It’s not so simple.”

The police handed them another surveillance screenshot—this one matched the homeless men’s description. It showed a man in a yellow hoodie at a street corner.

Even though it was only a side profile, and even though he wore a baseball cap, Sooyeon instantly recognized him—

“Johnny?”

Her beautiful eyes trembled, sinking into a deathly stillness, as though her head had been forced underwater, suffocating her.

Next to her, Yejia also felt her vision blur. She shot up from the sofa, matching the blurry magnified silhouette in the screenshot, and turned to ask Sooyeon:

“Isn’t that guy from your lab?”

Sooyeon’s eyes didn’t move. Beneath the calm surface of her pupils, the fortress she had built cracked. Her gaze shuddered when it met Yejia’s anxious eyes. Finally, she nodded.

Johnny—a PhD student two years ahead of her, under the same advisor.

The police soon moved to bring Johnny in for questioning. However, under California law, without concrete evidence or a warrant, they couldn’t forcibly take him. So, in one of the world’s top veterinary labs, an unbelievable scene played out—

Johnny cried.

Not out of urgency, nor grievance, but crocodile tears, an act to win sympathy.

“I can’t stand that you doubt a PhD student based on the word of homeless men. Just because I was on the same street as them? Did the cameras catch me making the deal with them? Can you prove I gave them the money? I’m just conducting experiments. That’s legal. Is that what you’re going to arrest me for?”

His act was so tearful that most of the graduate students around—young people in their early twenties—started to believe Johnny had been wronged. They even pleaded with the police, saying Johnny was always helpful, the lab’s administrative assistant, someone who constantly supported others.

But to seasoned detectives, the more agitated Johnny became, the clearer it was that he couldn’t wash his hands of the matter—for they hadn’t even told him yet that the homeless men confessed to being paid.

The string of events alarmed the big professor. And to everyone’s surprise, Yejia brought Sooyeon to the lab.

“Officer, there’s something that might be related to this case. Maybe we should check the lab’s surveillance.”

Her quick thinking reminded the police—if Johnny was truly behind this, he wouldn’t have started by hiring homeless men. He must have done other things to harm Sooyeon first.

For instance, Sooyeon’s recent streak of failed experiments.

“Mr. Green, you wouldn’t mind if we checked the surveillance, would you?”

Though this question was directed at the lab’s head professor, it landed like a heavy blow that shattered Johnny to dust.

At age twenty-five, Sooyeon encountered the biggest trouble of her life—failed experiments and being mugged by homeless men.

Fortunately, with Yejia by her side, she pulled through. And eventually, through investigation, it was revealed that both incidents had been orchestrated by the same person.

Many novels and dramas claim women are the most prone to jealousy—that to get what they want, they often resort to self-destructive schemes. Yet reality proves that men’s jealousy can be far more terrifying.

Johnny, two years her senior, had always carried himself as the lab’s “big brother.” But his own projects stalled, and he never managed to publish a paper. By contrast, Sooyeon published a paper with an impact factor of 17 as a second-year master’s student. Then, only three months into her PhD, she had already developed a new drug.

So he tampered with her reagents, ensuring her experiments failed.

Later, when she purchased new reagents, he injected the same dose of her compound into the control group, so that the control and experimental groups showed no difference.

What he didn’t expect was that Sooyeon still didn’t give up. With Yejia’s encouragement, she threw herself into the lab every day, working herself to exhaustion.

Johnny found it laughable. In his mind, she should have admitted defeat, just like him—raging helplessly at failed data.

But she didn’t.

So Johnny hired homeless men.

He wanted to crush her psychologically, to make her unable to hold her head high, unable to shine in her career, unable to remain in that lab.

“This guy is scum!”

After the case was closed, Xiaoxiao happened to be vacationing in the U.S. She almost wanted to send Johnny straight to the afterlife with a flurry of Taichi punches.

By then, the scabs on Sooyeon’s face had mostly fallen off, and her mood had calmed. She only said:

“He’s been arrested now. It’s over.”

Yejia, furious, slapped her thigh. “That kind of person, being arrested is too easy on him! I should’ve hit him with a Dragon-Subduing Palm and followed it up with a Seven-Injury Fist—he wouldn’t have known what hit him!”

Her best friend Xiaoxiao eagerly chimed in, their temperaments matching perfectly:

“Exactly! If I’d bought an earlier ticket, I would’ve joined you in a double-team smackdown!”

Yejia sobered up slightly, reflecting, “But wait—U.S. laws are strict. Wouldn’t we risk being charged with assault?”

Xiaoxiao scoffed at her naïveté. “Are you dumb? Just find a spot without surveillance, toss a sack over his head, swing a stick—no way we’d get caught.”

“Right, right, you’re absolutely right.”

“Of course! I haven’t survived all these years for nothing. But you’re right about one thing—the U.S. is different. That night when I called the cops for you, my first instinct was to dial 110…”

“Hahaha, you’re so dumb!”

Reunited after so long, the two friends had endless things to say, as though even a grain of sand could become a full-blown novel.

Sooyeon simply watched quietly. With a cup of tea and a sofa, she could happily watch them all day.

“Ugh, I’m a little hungry.”

Xiaoxiao clutched her stomach dramatically. “Do you have any specialty dishes? Show us your skills!”

Yejia blinked blankly. “Uh… eat chips first? It’s only 5 o’clock.”

Sooyeon set her cup down. “I’ll go. It’s about time to make dinner anyway.”

But Xiaoxiao pressed her firmly back onto the sofa.

“President, you’re a patient right now. No way you’re cooking!”

She then turned to Yejia with a mock-pleading look. “Yejia, I’ve never tasted your cooking! Are you telling me I traveled all the way from China, across half the globe, only to miss out on your food?”

With the words put that way, Yejia had no choice but to yield. She put on an apron and walked into the kitchen.

What she didn’t know was that the moment her back disappeared into the kitchen, Xiaoxiao’s expression turned sly.

“President, I saw it.”

Her eyes narrowed, curving mischievously, her brows twitching up and down in mock lewdness.

Sooyeon froze. “Saw what?”

Xiaoxiao leaned in suddenly, lowering her voice. “You bought a ring, didn’t you?”

Sooyeon was struck as if by lightning. She immediately reached for her coat pocket, hurriedly hiding the ring box whose corner had been peeking out.

But before she could explain, Xiaoxiao asked her next question—

“You’re planning to propose to Yejia, aren’t you?”

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