Chapter 325 - 141: Fall from the Rooftop

Chapter 325: Chapter 141: Fall from the Rooftop

A figure fell from the rooftop.

Then.

It vanished.

There was no sound.

"..."

Zhang Shutong subconsciously shot to his feet, his mouth opening silently.

It all happened too fast, without any warning. The figure’s body was swallowed by the surrounding block-like buildings.

Gone in a flash.

There wasn’t even a muffled thud; it was too far away.

On the wide-open rooftop, the sunlight was dazzling, but a bone-chilling cold suddenly crept up his back.

’Who was it?’

’Why were they on the roof of the staff dormitory?’

Zhang Shutong’s pupils constricted. He had been to Song’s room before—it was at the very end of the hallway. If he wasn’t mistaken, right before the figure jumped, it had been standing on the edge of the roof, directly above Song’s room!

Muscle memory had him pulling out his phone. Zhang Shutong quickly found Song’s number, but a second later, he gritted his teeth and backed out of the screen.

He couldn’t be sure who the falling figure was, but he braced himself for the worst. Whoever it was, they had already jumped. The right thing to do wasn’t to confirm their identity, but to—

Call for an ambulance! Immediately!

He frowned, waiting for the operator to pick up, and stood on his tiptoes, trying to get a better look. It was futile. The buildings blocked his view of the ground; simply standing on his toes wouldn’t be enough.

Lu Qinglian was frowning too, staring intently in the direction of the dormitory building, completely silent.

The call connected quickly.

"Someone jumped from a building at the Yingcai Middle School staff dormitory!"

Zhang Shutong kept it brief. He verified the location and time with the operator, and once it was confirmed, he immediately hung up and dialed Song’s number.

’Pick up, pick up...’

Zhang Shutong even started praying. His thoughts grew uncontrollably frantic. ’What the hell? Why would someone suddenly go up there and jump? Were they trying to kill themselves? Has something like this happened before? Who could it be? A staff member? Or Song?’

’Why isn’t the call going through?!’

But, contrary to his hopes, Song Nanshan’s line was busy.

’But wasn’t he supposed to be in a hospital off-island?’

Zhang Shutong cursed under his breath. Beside him, Lu Qinglian had already looked away. Without a word, she had assessed the situation.

"Go."

The girl uttered a single word.

The two of them ran off the rooftop at the same time.

Zhang Shutong followed close behind Lu Qinglian. He wasn’t as fast as her to begin with, but her pace wasn’t particularly quick either—perhaps her foot injury hadn’t fully healed.

It was the middle of the lunch break. Two sets of hurried footsteps tore through the hallway, shattering the silence.

A few students tiptoeing out of their classrooms brushed past them in surprise.

They rushed down from the fourth floor to the first, then one after the other, burst out of the academic building and headed for the bike shed.

"Hold on."

Zhang Shutong said, panting. It was already a struggle for him to have kept up this far.

"Let me get my bike."

He pulled a set of keys from his pocket. His bike had been parked at school since he rode it here on Thursday. He hadn’t touched it during his hospital stay, so it had been sitting here for almost a week. The bike had a quick-release trunk box mounted on the back rack, which he’d bought at the same time as the one for Qingyi’s family’s motorcycle.

He had once joked that installing a trunk box meant he couldn’t give a girl a ride, but now it just felt like it was in the way. Zhang Shutong tossed the box directly onto the ground.

"Get on."

He said to Lu Qinglian. But just as he was about to swing his leg over the bike, he froze.

Zhang Shutong looked down at the left arm hanging in a sling across his chest. He had forgotten he was injured. He was no longer the guy who could just hop on his bike and go. He couldn’t ride at all right now, let alone with a passenger.

’But there are no taxis on the island. It would take seven or eight minutes to run from the school to the dormitory, and by the time we get there, the person might have already been taken away by the ambulance. So should we head straight for the hospital? But the hospital is even farther from the school, at least a twenty-minute trip.’

In the instant Zhang Shutong hesitated, a flash of cyan swept past him. Lu Qinglian vaulted onto the bike, the hem of her long robe fluttering.

"You know how to ride a bike?" Zhang Shutong was stunned.

Lu Qinglian never wasted words. She put her foot on the pedal and simply glanced back at him.

"Get on."

For the first time, Zhang Shutong sat on the back of his own bicycle.

With Lu Qinglian giving him a ride.

He grabbed the hem of the girl’s long robe with one hand, not yet fully processing the situation. Or rather, he felt a bit awkward. With his arm in a sling across his chest, it was too troublesome to sit facing forward.

So, Zhang Shutong was now sitting sideways on the back of the bike, holding onto Lu Qinglian’s clothes. He suddenly felt like he was the little girl getting a ride. Even without seeing it, he could imagine how awkward and proper he must have looked.

But he was in no mood to care about that. ’Isn’t today’s incident a bit too much of a coincidence?’ a thought belatedly struck Zhang Shutong. ’This happened right after we decided to go to the dorms to get the notes.’

’And I never even planned on going to the rooftop. If it weren’t for that mix-up, I probably would have just rested in the classroom. Lu Qinglian usually eats earlier than this, too. If she didn’t need a key for the rooftop, and if she hadn’t happened to see me heading this way, she wouldn’t have followed.’

’In any case, the result was this—the two of them went up to the rooftop at the perfect time to witness a figure fall from the top floor.’

He voiced these speculations to Lu Qinglian. She nodded, then frowned slightly.

"Don’t wobble."

Zhang Shutong didn’t ask her where she learned to ride a bike.

"It’s a little hard for me to keep my balance right now, so be careful. But it’s best if you ride fast..."

"Then hold on tight," Lu Qinglian cut him off, her tone commanding. "Classmate Zhang Shutong, I’m not that delicate."