Her entrance was so abrupt that the reporters didn’t react immediately.
Someone asked, "Are you here to testify about Destiney bullying Asia?"
After all, based on her appearance and attire, Claire clearly wasn’t from a wealthy family. At first glance, she seemed more like Asia.
Claire glanced at the person who asked and shook her head.
She said, "I’m here to testify for Destiney."
I looked at Claire in surprise.
Truth be told, I had prepared a lot for today’s confrontation.
But Claire wasn’t one of the witnesses I had prepared.
After all, to be honest, our relationship wasn’t particularly close.
After I gave her the money last time, she checked the current market rates for tutoring and calculated the hourly fee. Then she returned the excess money to me.
She tutored me in math for an hour every day, packed her bag promptly when the hour was up, like a programmed artificial intelligence robot.
In the previous life, Claire committed suicide by jumping from a building before the college entrance exam.
All her hopes were pinned on getting into a good university and earning money quickly to treat her grandmother.
But one month before the exam, her father lost a large sum gambling and, after drinking several bottles of cheap liquor, subjected Claire to the most severe beating she had ever endured.
Claire’s right hand, her writing hand, was broken.
No one knew what else her father did that day or what else the bruised and battered Claire went through.
When people found her again, the perpetually silent girl had jumped from the rooftop.
In this life, even though Claire and I didn’t become friends, I still wanted to save her.
So, I paid two thugs to beat up Claire’s father and send him to the hospital.
This way, at least until the college entrance exam was over, the man wouldn’t be able to abuse her.
To meticulously prepare for this, I skipped an evening self-study session for the first time.
Then, when I returned, I was caught by Claire, who was responsible for taking attendance.
She asked me, "Why did you skip evening self-study?"
I scratched my head, trying hard to come up with an excuse.
After all, I looked lively and healthy, so I couldn’t tell her that I skipped class to beat up her father.
Just at that moment, Claire was called out by the teacher in the reception room: "Claire, there’s a phone call for you."
It was news about her father’s incident.
Five minutes later, Claire returned, her face still expressionless.
She picked up the attendance sheet again and then put it down.
"This time, I won’t record it," she said calmly. "Don’t be absent again next time."
I sighed in relief and quickly returned to my seat to study.
When Claire said "I’m here to testify for Destiney" in that same calm tone,
I realized then that she might have known.
Facing the gaze of everyone in the room, Claire took out a stack of forms and placed them on the table.
Asia’s face turned white instantly.
According to school rules, one had to fill out a form when entering the dance studio for practice, indicating the time and who was using the studio, all recorded on the form.
However, these forms weren’t strictly enforced, and filling them out was troublesome, so eventually, almost no one filled them out. They would simply inform the dance teacher and proceed directly.
No one expected that Claire had meticulously filled out the forms every time and kept them all.
Thus, under everyone’s watchful eyes, it was clear to all that among the thirty or so forms, there were only two where Asia’s name was listed under "users of the studio."
That meant that out of more than thirty practices, she had attended only twice.
Claire waited until everyone had seen the form clearly before speaking slowly:
"Asia said that Destiney mocked her for not being able to afford the performance costume, which is why she wasn’t allowed to perform."
"But when I told Destiney that I couldn’t afford the costume and didn’t want to participate, she told me to continue practicing."
"The next day, I discovered that she had bought costumes for everyone."
"Asia also said that Destiney bullied her because her father was a maintenance worker and her mother was a cleaner."
"But my father doesn’t even have a proper job, and our whole family relies on my grandmother’s low income for support."
Claire looked at me. "If you bully the poor, then why didn’t you bully me?"
This kind of self-exposing statement left everyone in the room stunned.
In the silence, I sighed, took out my phone, and played a video on speaker.
In the video, everyone could see that Asia missed beats, forgot moves, and couldn’t keep up.
Among everyone, she was clearly the worst.
Indeed, she had spent most of the previous practices stargazing with Cayden.
In reality, Asia didn’t actually want to participate in the performance that badly. When I removed her from the lineup, she went to Cayden and distorted the truth to gain sympathy, hoping to make Cayden like her more and dislike me more.
She didn’t expect the situation to escalate so much, and my side had such substantial evidence.
"Originally, I shouldn’t have taken it upon myself to remove Asia."
"But this dance performance has special admission bonus points. There are two girls in our group who are talented students, and they rely on these bonus points for their college applications."
"If I still allowed Asia to participate, I would be jeopardizing the future of those two girls, so I had to make this decision."
