Me After Meeting You

This series of gossip lasted for a few days. When Amber went to go teach, even her students asked her about it. Like the majority of people on the Internet, these excitable kids were poor and bored. Because the matter involved doctors and rich people, they passionately wanted to learn more about the male and female leads implicated in the whole scenario. This led to news articles popping up about many of the rich people in town; the buzz had ended up causing many of them to release statements clarifying their lack of participation in this affair.

Whenever something like this popped up, Amber would end up going ‘Ng’. Even her parents had heard about the news, and her mother had even specifically called her to ask, “Who was it that got all her appointments booked in your department?”

Amber bluntly replied, “I don’t know.”

Her mother was disdainful. “Then what are you doing at work? Everyone’s saying that that woman is from your department, but you don’t even know who she is?”

Amber was so ‘Ng’ that she couldn’t ‘Ng’ any further. At least those reporters had some semblance of decency and hadn’t reported her name.

Her mother implored her to find out more about this gossip, and her brother made even more excessive demands. He asked, “See who was it that managed to tame such agenerous man, and find a way to introduceme to her; I’m doing business and really need to be familiar with such people!”

Amber couldn’t respond. While she was glumly waiting for this fiasco to blow over, Ian suddenly called her. “That man named Stanley is here. Do you want to meet him?”

“Elly’s math teacher?”

“Yes.”

Amber was quite shocked. These past two days, she had actually been following up with the police about Elly’s affairs. At the beginning, they had investigated for quite a significant period of time, but their conclusion had solely been that Elly’s mental condition was caused by her loneliness and sensitivity. In other words, they hadn’t heard about any bullying at all.

Amber believed the police, and slightly suspected that what the little girl had said was untrue. She was still debating on whether or not she should return to the town to speak with Mr. Stanley. But unexpectedly, he had shown up here.

“Sure, where is he? I’ll go and meet him.”

Ian told her to meet him at the cafe on the third level of Axton Hotel, in a private room. When Amber arrived, she saw Ian and Mr. Stanley already sitting face to face; the former wore a cool, bored expression while the latter was antsy, fidgeting, and constantly looking around.

Seeing Amber’s presence, he even seemed to relax. This time, he put on the face of the kind and caring teacher she had seen first. “Lawyer Camille.”

Amber nodded. “Hello.” She looked at Ian, and he coolly looked back at her before saying, “He has something that he wants to tell you.”

Amber then turned to Mr. Stanley. “Please, do tell me.”

Mr. Stanley rubbed his hands together. “Didn’t you ask me about why Elly quit school? Actually, I know the reason why, but I hope that you’ll keep it amongst the three of us, and that you won’t request me to be a witness on any occasion.”

Amber’s heart started pounding. From this first statement, she could already imagine that the truth behind Elly’s illness was not simple indeed.

After thinking it over for a moment, Amber replied, “Okay.”

Mr. Stanley then looked towards Ian, who nodded his head non chalantly.

“What you promised me earlier, I expect it in full.”

Ian merely replied coolly, “Yes.”

Amber looked him over once. “What did you promise him?”

Ian didn’t deign to reply. “You can start talking now.”

Both men fluidly ignored Amber’s question. After he sitating for a long moment, Mr. Stanley started talking. “The reason why Elly decided to quit school was, as my daughter said, because she was bullied. More specifically, she was a victim of schoolyard violence.”

“Elly’s personality was reclusive and eccentric. Not only that, but her parents were frequently gone, so she only had her old grandmother by her side. For most of her school life, she was crowded out by her peers. When she was small, the kids couldn’t do all that much to her, but in middle school, as they grew older, the students developed more ways of bullying her.”

“Not long after she entered middle school, she became very popular with the boys due to her looks. You know how jealous and rebellious teenage kids can be, more so than at any other age. Some of the other girls didn’t like the fact that she was so popular, so they gathered a crowd of people to surround her after school. Perhaps at that time, with so many people there, the bullying got out of control, and what they did … was particularly vicious. And from that time on, Elly never came to school again.”

‘This sort of thing seems to be happening every where lately.’ Amber sighed. Despite her already being able to largely guess what had transpired, in order to understand Elly’s condition more thoroughly, she could only say, “May I ask, how bad?”

Mr. Stanley silently retrieved a phone from a bag. After pressing a couple of buttons, he held it out in front of Amber. “I have a video here that you can watch.”

Amber took the phone and opened the video. It was very short, fewer than twenty seconds long, but its contents were a ghastly sight.

Despite her being prepared for a brutal scene, she was still flabbergasted, and a righteous fury consumed her.

She hadn’t imagined that kids could be this vicious. “This is illegal!” She looked at Mr. Stanley stood up, and slapped her stack of documents on the table. “As a teacher, while knowing the truth, how could you not call the police, but instead actually try to cover it up?”

Mr. Stanley’s head drooped slightly. “I also didn’t have a choice. As a paltry math teacher, I could only meekly follow what my superiors told me to do. As you’ve seen, the children who took part in the violence weren’t just one or two kids; it was a whole crowd of them. Two of the children’s families have deep connections, so that entire crowd was essentially able to do whatever they wanted.Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

Furthermore, they are all underaged children. Even if we had called the police, what could they have done? Elly’s grandmother thought that this was a very embarrassing thing and also decided to keep quiet about it, not pursuing the matter any further.

She was especially quiet after she received a bit of money as reparation fees. If the victim doesn’t call for an investigation, then the school will always let the matter drop, regardless of the severity.”

Mr. Stanley’s words weren’t very logical; clearly, this matter was a large burden on his chest, so even just mentioning it again made him anxious and defensive.