17.
Over the next few days, I completely took over Lục Dật Lâm’s computer.
After all, he taught English and rarely needed to use a computer.
His office chair was so comfortable that whenever I came to his office at noon, I’d easily doze off.
When I woke up, the curtains had been drawn, and his jacket was draped over me.
The clock’s hands crept forward. I stared at the trees outside the window and suddenly felt disoriented, unsure where I was.
…
Tiểu L and I finished our assignments at about the same time. When we sent our designs to each other for feedback, I noticed a very serious problem.
A lot of Tiểu L’s design was plagiarized.
As it happened, a few days earlier I’d browsed the website showcasing that foreign artist’s work. Tiểu L’s design was, quite frankly, copied straight from that artist.
Maybe she thought an obscure foreign artist wouldn’t be recognized.
Honestly, plagiarism was the most shameless thing you could do in the design world, and my opinion of Tiểu L immediately took a nosedive.
Especially since this was a design I’d worked on with her.
I called her and explained the situation.
But her voice was perfectly calm.
“Oh, it’s fine. Our professor won’t catch on.”
“You’re such a coward. You’re worried about getting caught over something this small?”
“Who still does everything from scratch these days? I’m busy. I don’t have that kind of time.”
“…”
I told her that if she didn’t make changes, I’d tell our professor she’d plagiarized the work.
She fell silent for two seconds, then her tone began to change.
“Ngô Lâm Nghiêu, do you think you’re so amazing?”
“You think you’re so high and mighty, huh? Let me tell you, I’ve been sick of you for a long time.”
“Why do you keep pretending to be such a good girl? You’re already cozying up to Professor Lục…”
I frowned. Lục Dật Lâm and I already went to great lengths to avoid interacting at school.
“Say whatever you want. If you don’t make changes, tomorrow I’ll send your work and the material you copied to our professor.”
With that, I hung up.
But before the next day came, our professor had already contacted me.
Maybe Tiểu L had gone to the professor and said I was too stubborn and always deliberately isolating her, so she wanted to work on her own.
I could hear the reproach in the professor’s voice, but I didn’t care how Tiểu L had tried to win the professor over. If she wanted to split off and work alone, fine. At least then I wouldn’t have to worry about where else she might plagiarize from.
My workload suddenly doubled, and I spent night after night staying up.
On the day we submitted our designs, several professors came to discuss whether to choose my work or Tiểu L’s.
I arrived five minutes early, but to my surprise, Tiểu L had gotten there even earlier.
She’d even already shown her work to the professors and was explaining the meaning behind her design.
Besides the professors in our department, there was someone else in the room whom I knew.
Lục Dật Lâm was there too.
He’d never told me he was taking part in the judging, but that was just like him.
Tiểu L was presenting her work. I arrived after her, and the professors were listening intently, so I could only quietly find a seat.
As I listened, I realized something was off.
Her work was far too similar to mine.
The model had been altered to look exactly like the one I’d shown her when we were still working together.
That couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.
Why was this happening?
Cold sweat trickled down my forehead. I stared at her presenting my work in disbelief.
The professors kept nodding. Even some of the stricter ones smiled in approval.
When she finished presenting and everyone turned to look at me, I had no choice but to stand. I even found myself wanting to give up.
I opened my mouth, but suddenly I didn’t know what to say.
Was I supposed to say, “Tiểu L, you copied my work”?
Who would believe me?
Maybe I’d been standing there stunned for too long. The professor looked at me with a frown, clearly displeased.
“Ngô Lâm Nghiêu, are you ready?”
“Professor, I…”
“Professor, maybe she isn’t ready yet.”
The young woman hugged her laptop to her chest, curled her lip, and gave me a malicious smile.
“After all, when I was working with her, her work was by a foreign artist.”
???
“You’re the one who plagiarized! What are you trying to say? Isn’t your model copied from mine too…?”
I immediately braced my hands on the table. Maybe I’d spoken too loudly, because everyone turned to look at me.
The suspicious, contemptuous, disbelieving looks dragged me, bit by bit, down to the coldest place in the world.
Because Tiểu L had presented first.
Because Tiểu L had always been on good terms with the professors.
My trembling gaze turned to the young woman who was always smiling sweetly.
What she’d done was truly shameless.
It didn’t seem like something someone my age could do.
I could only open my presentation first. Sure enough, as soon as it came up, several professors frowned.
Tiểu L went even further, pretending to gasp.
“Since you couldn’t do better than me, you decided to copy my work, Ngô Lâm Nghiêu?”
“But you didn’t expect me to present first…”
“I didn’t…”
“Ha.”
My voice rang out almost at the same time as another mocking laugh in the classroom.
I said nothing. It wasn’t just me—everyone in the classroom looked toward him.
Lục Dật Lâm clicked his pen.
The sound was faint, but somehow strange and threatening.
Perhaps few people had ever seen Lục Dật Lâm angry.
He didn’t frown or say much.
But he still made everyone afraid to breathe too loudly.
Maybe he really was angry. He looked straight at Tiểu L, who seemed not to understand what was happening.
“If this student likes putting on a show so much,”
“why didn’t she apply to the Beijing Film Academy instead of coming to our school?”
18.
Perhaps it was his presence, or perhaps the sternness in his voice. Either way, Tiểu L, who had been swaggering just moments ago, now had red-rimmed eyes.
“Professor, I, I…”
She looked up pitifully, tears slowly welling in her eyes.
Caught off guard, Tiểu L seemed overwhelmed by injustice and sobbed uncontrollably.
Lục Dật Lâm glanced at her without showing any reaction.
“These two pieces were definitely created by the same person. You can tell who copied whom by looking at quite a few details.”
He took the mouse from my hand and scrolled back several slides in my presentation.
“Designers tend to have familiar habits. Even when they’re not doing it deliberately, some habits are hard to change.”
“Let’s look at this draft. When writing in English, the designer marked the names of architectural structures. They tend to join the two c’s together.”
“The same goes for the letter l. When the person who drew the draft wrote an l at the beginning of a word, they extended the tail.”
“I’m her professor. I know what her handwriting looks like.”
The room was dark, and the light from the screen cast a cold pallor over his skin. I felt a little more weight on my right shoulder—his hand was resting there.
He stood beside me.
His gaze turned toward Tiểu L.
“Can you explain why none of the letters in your work have the same characteristics as the ones in this draft?”
“If you’re going to forge something, you should at least pay attention to the details.”
“…”
Everyone in the classroom looked at the flustered young woman.
She stared wide-eyed, shaking her head and denying everything.
I heard a professor sigh. Even the instructors who were usually on good terms with Tiểu L could hardly believe it. One of them asked her softly,
“Did you really copy her work? You’re not usually like this.”
Perhaps she was too flustered, or perhaps Lục Dật Lâm’s attitude had been too firm. Suddenly, Tiểu L burst into tears.
As if she had nothing left to lose, she kept asking why.
She asked why, after trying so hard, she still couldn’t get first place.
She asked why there were still instructors who took my side.
She said she wasn’t inferior to me; she just wanted to knock me down.
She just wanted to win too badly.
Her eyes red, she stared at me and suddenly rushed over. Lục Dật Lâm frowned, pulled me back, and put some distance between us.
Her eyes looked wild after all that crying. It was a little frightening.
“I’m not inferior to you! I’m far more capable than you. I can do your designs too, I just, I just…”
The girl covered her face and sank to the floor, sobbing.
“I just didn’t want to lose. I just didn’t want to lose…”
“You’d already lost from the very beginning.”
The quiet room held only the sound of sobbing as Lục Dật Lâm’s words rang out, each one heavy.
“The moment you had that bad intention, you must have known that no matter how clever or careful you were, it would come to light one day.”
“I heard Professor Dương say you’re very talented, a highly capable student.”
“But you shouldn’t have turned that talent toward bad intentions.”
“You’ve placed unrealistic expectations on the things you value and attached importance to things that have nothing to do with them…”
“One day, it will destroy you.”
…
It seemed that was where it all ended.
Even a second before I entered the classroom, I hadn’t expected things to turn out this way.
Tiểu L’s design obviously wouldn’t be used. What’s more, her instructors probably wouldn’t trust her for some time.
I followed Lục Dật Lâm out of the classroom.
The long school hallway was deserted. The shadows of swaying trees fell across his white shirt.
“Did she touch you when she rushed over just now?”
He’d been furious in the classroom, but with me, he was so gentle.
The light seemed a little too bright, making him lower his eyes.
“I’m fine. If anything, I should… thank you, Professor Lục.”
“There’s no need to thank me. I would’ve explained things the same way no matter who it was.”
“But Professor Lục is really handsome.”
“Really handsome?”
The man in front of me raised an eyebrow, seeming a little surprised. The dim light caught in his eyes, leaving tiny glimmers there.
I nodded emphatically, and he gave a quiet cough.
“Lục Dật Lâm, why did you want to become an instructor?”
I looked up at him. There had to be so much hidden in his eyes that I didn’t know about.
He simply looked at me in silence for a long while.
“I didn’t particularly want to.”
“…What?”
He remained silent, lowering his head to look at me.
“Right now, I don’t particularly want to.”