“The brand positioning of Little Mermaid is a light luxury. As its brand leader, Lin Xia must have maintained a good relationship with the executives of Yi Ka Apparel, probably even related in blood. Now you have built a good image of me in front of her, also you smeared my stepmother at the same time. That was equal to bringing shame to my stepmother in front of all the upper-class wives of B city, and also consolidating my image of a poor kid bullied by his stepmother.” Di Qiuhe couldn’t help smiling at the thought of He Bai defending him. He slightly laughed and continued, “My stepmother wanted nothing but getting closer to you so that she could get to know my current situation thus she could trick me accordingly. That’s why she called you. She bribed my former roommate like this before, so you don’t need to respond to her at all. She tried to play the same trick this time, but she failed to consider about Yi Ka Apparel. She deserved that. As for Lin Xia’s expression…puppy you should never underestimate women’s sense of justice and their deep hatred towards some ethical issues.”
“…” He Bai was so enlightened and asked, “What are you laughing about?”
“I’m laughing because you are adorable.” Di Qiuhe unbuttoned the collar of his camouflage uniform and looking up at the burning sun. He spoke slightly in a slow and gentle voice, “Bai, you really have a terrible sleep look, and you snore like a piggy.”
In the very beginning, He Bai was touched by his voice, but later on, he was irritated by Di’s words and hung up the phone. He sneered and thought, “Snore? For so many years that I have lived through, no one ever said I snore! How dare this dumbass try to fool me? Never!”
Listening to the engaged tone on the phone and thinking about the angry look of the puppy right now, Di Qiuhe bowed down his head and laughed for a while. He then called Wang Boyi and told him, “Go check to whom will Little Mermaid lend the Princess collection, and spread some pieces of news about how Di Chunhua bullies her classmates and how Qin Li connives her daughter’s bullying behavior. Let’s cheer my father up.”
Wang Boyi said yes and asked as he didn’t really get it, “Why would the boss be happy when seeing that kind of news?” Well, in order to be a reliable assistant, you have to keep it up with your boss’s mind, or you will fuck it up sooner or later. Wang was obviously trying to keep it up like that.
‘It is absolutely a good thing that your subordinates like to use their brains and raise questions when they don’t understand.’ Di Qiuhe was in a good mood, so he explained a bit, “Your big boss is trying so hard to take control of the Qin family and Qin Li. If there appear some unpleasant rumors about his wife and daughter, he will definitely add fuel to the flame secretly. And of course, he will pretend to worry about the situation of his wife and daughter and act like a good husband and father. Now such a nice chance is at his doorstep, why wouldn’t be happy about it?”
“Yes, he would.” Wang Boyi was speechless and got a deeper understanding of family love in rich and powerful families. If all of those assumptions were true, then what kind of human was the boss who set traps to his own wife and daughter? He trembled and felt abruptly lucky that he betrayed his big boss.
“Go get things done if you understood.” Di Qiuhe wiped out the sweat on his forehead and hung up his phone. He took out a coin out of his pocket and played it with his eyes squinted.
He sneered and thought, “How dare she try to get to puppy. It seems that somebody is going too far off the line.”
Soon a week had passed, Qin Li called twice to try to connect with He Bai, but got all rejected by him politely. Maybe she had realized something, or Lin Xia had responded to her, Qin Li finally stopped her action when it entered August.
The countdown had begun for the market news conference of the Little Mermaid. The publicity department finally started to change ideas quite often and He Bai was getting busier gradually.
Just three days ahead of the news conference, the news of the daughter of Huangdu’s chairman bullying classmate at school broke out on the internet all of a sudden.
The news was quite detailed in describing the evil behaviors of Di Chunhua, such as always escaping from school events by feigning sickness, throwing her weight about, bullying students from ordinary families relying on her money, being rude to the teachers, forming cliques with the reason of helping students become celebrities and messing up school discipline, etc. All of those improper behaviors were pointing to the misguiding of Qin Li as a mother to her daughter so that she was raised up as a bully at school.
This news was soon brought up to the top news board. Many students who knew the truth spoke up in the comments. They said that Di Chunhua had done way more bad things than those, yet money talks! Those bigger things were covered by her family, so those things we saw right now were just side dishes.
For example, Di Chunhua once forced a newly-assigned teacher to kneel down and apologize to her, just because she scolded her once in public. Also, Di Chunhua once pushed a girl who was more popular than her off the stairs, which almost disfigured her face. In the end, her family paid a lot of money and forced that girl to change her school and leave B city.
The netizens were attracted by this scandal, but all of a sudden, it just went 404 before they could discuss it at all. And those heating topics disappeared too as if they had never existed.
There must be something shady going on in this. Someone was paying the PR to handle this!
The netizens were shocked then thrilled. They all went to the official Weibo account of Huangdu and asking for the details. However the official account had closed its comment, so they could only stay curious as they had nowhere else to share their enthusiasm.
Without exposure, the heat of the news was soon cooling down. In that night, a Weibo account that was famous for its righteousness and neutrality posted a piece of anonymous breaking news. It said that Qin Li and her daughter were so shameless that not only did they let the PR cover the news, they also went to the school to threaten the school principals. How dare they do that!
The person in the know was a student at school. And according to her words, she must be an introvert girl. She claimed that she was the child of a teacher and was in the same grade as Di Chunhua. And the young teacher who was forced to kneel down was her relative who was forced to resign. Probably out of the grievance for her relative, she spoke out a lot of deeds Di Chunhua had done at school, and she said that it was true that Di Chunhua pushed a student off the stairs. That girl was now in D country for medical treatment, for she had got mental issues.
Finally, the netizens had found a place to vent their raging anger about the scandal, so they rushed into this Weibo post and started to voice their comments. More and more breaking news showed up in the comments, and this post was right about to go up to the heating news board. Yet suddenly, it got deleted again. The poster sent a sticker of “too weak to provoke” and then disappeared.
Once and again. Now the poster dared not to show up all because of the excessive behavior of Qin Li and her daughter. And the speed of their PR operation also proved that all those breaking news were true!
Now the netizens were furious, and the public opinions had fermented, and you could see people talking about Di Chunhua incident at all the comment sections of heating Weibo posts that they almost occupied the platform. At the same time, a group of people showed up and said it was totally reasonable that Qin Li had brought up a daughter like that, as she once bullied the son of the first wife so harsh.
Therefore, the public opinion has turned from “opposing the bully of the rich daughter to the students” to “checking out those bad things done by the stepmother”. Those secrets of the Di family were digged out by netizens by all means and became the topic of their gossiping.
“Bullshit! Full of bullshit!” Di Chunhua smashed her phone to the ground and her mind was blown up, “They were all licking my ass before and trying so hard to appease me when they want to become a superstar. Now they are cursing me so hard like that! What a bunch of bitches!”
Qin Li was also quite unsettled and impetuous, she jumped on her after hearing that, “Just shut up! What the heck did you just say? Who taught you those dirty words? For how many times have I told you to stay low at school? Look at you, causing trouble every day as if you’re crazy, finally someone has turned you in. Now you are labeled as a bully who bullied both the student and teacher, how am I supposed to find you a husband when you grow up?”
“Mom!” Di Chunhua said in a lower voice, but also with some disturbance and anger, “I was so wronged! I didn’t do that!”
“Did you force that teacher to kneel down? Did you push that student down the stairs?” Qin Li tried so hard to keep herself calm down, indicating Chunhua to sit down next to herself. She eased her temper for a bit and said, “Chunhua, now you are a big girl, you have to understand that people will talk. You can, of course, look down upon those who are inferior to you, but you should always keep it to yourself and never show it up! Rumor can never really hurt you, but it can cause damage to your interests. This time you should have learned a lesson and please behave yourself in the future. That bastard Di Qiuhe is indeed a pest, yet he does one thing better than you, which is with his camouflage. He is just so good at it that people all think he is the one getting bullied.”
Di Chunhua was very resentful, “Mom! So you want me to copy that bastard? Never!”
“I didn’t want you to copy him, I just want you to learn to only show them the good side of yourself.” Qin Li tapped her and cuddled her into her arms then said, “It just happened so instantly. I talked with the headmaster the day before and clarified the whole thing, but the disclosure of me threatening the headmaster came out right on the other day. I couldn’t even help you through the channel of the school. Besides the trick of putting it up to the heating news board then deleting it, which worked the netizens up into a frenzy. That was just so well-planned and quick. There must have been someone behind the scene.”