Chapter 333 - 144: Calling the Parents

Chapter 333: Chapter 144: Calling the Parents

"He wasn’t looking for the notebook, but..."

"Looking for the entrance to the basement?"

Zhang Shutong finished her sentence. Even though he’d already guessed this possibility, his heart still skipped a beat.

"That’s right." Lu Qinglian nodded. "He wasn’t trying to take anything, so just pushing the window open a crack to see inside was enough."

"Wait, if that’s the case, is that why he went up on the roof?"

A thought suddenly struck Zhang Shutong:

"Either that person knew about the basement, or he noticed the wall wasn’t the right thickness. He pushed open all the windows he could, but Song’s room had that poster on the wall. He might have mistakenly thought the entrance wasn’t in the room, so he went up to the roof to try his luck?"

His train of thought became clearer:

"After all, this is a tile-roof building, not one of those flat, concrete-roofed ones. Since it has tiles, maybe he thought he could lift some up and find a hidden space from above?"

Lu Qinglian nodded.

"That would at least explain why he was here, and why two of the windows were opened."

"But how did he fall?" Zhang Shutong couldn’t help but ask.

"It seems you didn’t listen to a word I just said," Lu Qinglian had already turned away. She said coldly, "Don’t get hung up on the details. Sometimes you don’t need to figure everything out."

Zhang Shutong felt a little helpless at her words. ’This woman has so little curiosity. If curiosity killed the cat, Lu Qinglian would definitely be the aloof little kitten that lives the longest.’ He asked:

"Don’t you think there must be something important hidden behind that door?"

"But there are too many important things in this world, aren’t there?" Lu Qinglian said nonchalantly. "Or do you have the key?"

Zhang Shutong was speechless.

’He suddenly missed his three best friends. If they were here, the four of them wouldn’t stop until they’d turned this dorm room upside down.’

But Lu Qinglian had a point. The dorm was "important" because of Song and the notebook, but Song had never even discovered the hidden room, and the intruder wasn’t here for the notebook either.

’If I really wanted to get to the bottom of this, I’d have to ask the school administration. But that dorm room was vacant for a long time before Song moved in, and he lived there for over three years. Who knows how many years that is in total? It’s unlikely anyone would clearly remember something like ’who lived in which room’ back then.’

Besides, it was another question entirely whether that person was even still at the school.

Thinking of this, Zhang Shutong didn’t touch the window again.

’Since there are no leads, it’s better to leave the scene as it is for now.’

He and Lu Qinglian went back into Song’s room. Just in case, they didn’t leave right away. Instead, they pushed the wooden door back into place.

Zhang Shutong looked around. Luck was on his side today; he found a glue stick in the pen holder. ’As expected of a teacher. They’re never short on stationery.’

He spread glue on the back of the poster and stuck it back onto the wall exactly where it was before—

The poster had been there for a long time, and the paper had become brittle. The glue stick was wet, so even though he did his best, the result was a wrinkled, lumpy mess.

Even Andy Lau’s face was crooked.

Zhang Shutong tilted his head to inspect it. It didn’t look exactly the same as before, but if someone were to look through the window again, they at least wouldn’t notice anything was amiss.

He stretched his neck and thought back carefully. From discovering the falling figure on the rooftop, to calling the ambulance, to searching the dormitory building, and finally to finding the hidden room and deducing the intruder’s motive—now, things had finally come to a close, at least for the time being.

He let out a breath. After all that, the two of them locked the doors and windows.

Just as they walked out of the dormitory building, a low rumble of thunder sounded overhead.

The dark clouds hung low, the wind grew stronger, and the blades of grass rustled endlessly.

Zhang Shutong pulled his jacket tighter. Just then, his phone rang again.

He thought it was Song, having remembered some clue, and was about to answer, but his finger hovered over the screen.

Zhang Shutong froze for a moment.

Because the call was from an unknown number.

His phone number was the same as his QQ number, so he rarely got calls from people he didn’t know. He wasn’t expecting any deliveries, so there was no reason for an unfamiliar number to be calling him.

Zhang Shutong subconsciously glanced at the roof of the dormitory. He hesitated for a moment before finally pressing the answer key.

"Zhang Shutong, where did you and Lu Qinglian go?"

But what came through the phone was the furious roar of a middle-aged woman, so loud that Zhang Shutong had to pull the phone away from his ear.

"Daring to skip class together on the very first day of school? You two have gotten bold, haven’t you! If you don’t give me a proper explanation today, I’m calling both of your parents!"