The Cannon Fodder Stole the Male Lead’s Script GL - Chapter 9

Li Yue was startled, but she quickly regained her composure.

With wide, innocent eyes, she looked at the teacher, puzzled. “Teacher, I’m doing the dictation. What’s wrong?”

“Then why were you looking at your deskmate’s notebook?”

Li Yue immediately tried to explain. “Teacher, I wasn’t—”

“You’re still lying.”

Wang Yazhi pushed up her glasses, her gaze sharp. She turned her eyes to Jiang Yun and noticed something on Jiang Yun’s side of the desk. There was pencil-written text—the original text of The Song of the Lute.

“You there, can you explain what this writing on your desk is?” Teacher Wang’s eyes locked onto Jiang Yun like knives.

The whole class fell silent in an instant, everyone turning to look in Jiang Yun’s direction.

Jiang Yun glanced at the teacher, didn’t speak, and instead turned her gaze to Li Yue’s face.

Li Yue immediately panicked and looked back at her. “Jiang Yun, answer the teacher’s question. Don’t look at me!”

Jiang Yun frowned and still said nothing.

Infuriated, Wang Yazhi snatched the dictation notebook from her hands. “You, step outside. Come to my office after class.”

Jiang Yun looked up, her deep eyes full of defiance and a touch of arrogance. But after a few seconds of silence, she obediently stood up and left the classroom. Instead of standing outside, she walked straight out of the teaching building.

Li Yue let out a breath of relief when Jiang Yun left. To her surprise, the next moment, Teacher Wang looked straight at her.

“You too. Come to my office after class.”

Li Yue’s face went pale.

After class, Jiang Yun appeared on time at the stairwell of the teaching building. Yinchuan High School’s classroom buildings were square-shaped, with hallways on each side. The east side held the restrooms, the west side the offices. Jiang Yun waited by the west stairwell, which was far from her classroom. Before she could head to the third-floor office, Li Yue suddenly appeared and grabbed her arm.

“Jiang Yun, what should we do? The teacher called us both. Do you think she’s going to punish us? What if this ends up on our record? I heard she’s super strict and might put a mark on our honesty file. I can’t have a stain like that. I worked so hard to get into this school. If I can’t get into university, my mom will kill me.”

Li Yue’s tears streamed down, dripping onto her round cheeks like a scene from a weepy drama.

“Don’t cry yet. Maybe it’s not that serious.”

“But what if the teacher finds out those were my words? What if she thinks I was the one cheating? Jiang Yun, could you maybe take the blame for this?”

Jiang Yun turned her head and looked at her, puzzled. “What do you mean, think you were cheating? And what do you mean by me taking the blame?”

Li Yue widened her eyes at her. “Isn’t that how it was? I copied it down for you. I wasn’t the one looking.”

“Didn’t you say you hadn’t memorized it and needed a glance or two?” Jiang Yun emphasized the words a glance or two.

“But even if I didn’t glance, I could’ve written most of it. But if you didn’t copy, you wouldn’t have written anything at all. I copied it for your sake. You can’t just throw me under the bus like that.” Li Yue sounded frantic, her voice shrill from crying.

More students were beginning to gather and look their way. When they saw it was Jiang Yun and Li Yue, the whispers started.

“What happened? Isn’t Li Yue her only friend? Why are they fighting now?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Probably Li Yue finally got sick of Jiang Yun’s temper.”

“Word is Jiang Yun’s been acting crazy since Yan Kuo kept rejecting her. She even splashed him with dirty water this morning.”

“Just another rich girl with an attitude. That speech at the opening ceremony? Total nonsense. If she didn’t have power and money behind her, how could she win all those awards?”

The chatter around them was overwhelmingly against Jiang Yun.

Jiang Yun found it laughable.

Ever since she got labeled the “vicious supporting female,” no matter what she did, no matter who she argued with, everyone always assumed it was her fault.

No one listened to her explanation. No one cared what she thought. No one ever considered her side.

There was one person, however.

One person had shown her kindness from the start. Someone patient and gentle, who had quietly tried to guide her down the right path.

She loosened her clenched hand.

A strange strength welled up inside Jiang Yun. She looked at Li Yue. “Crying out here won’t help. The teacher is waiting. Let’s go.”

“No. Promise me. When we go in, just say you copied it, okay? If the teacher recognizes my handwriting, tell her you asked me to write it for you, okay?” Li Yue grabbed Jiang Yun’s arm, trying to stop her.

Jiang Yun looked at her deskmate and felt disappointed.

Li Yue had been one of her few friends over the years. When Li Yue had troubles, Jiang Yun had always been willing to help.

But now, it seemed that their feelings had never been mutual.

Jiang Yun pulled her hand away and said coldly, “Let’s go.”

Inside the office, the teachers were already waiting. Judging by the extra teachers seated inside, word must have spread before they even arrived.

Li Yue nervously hid behind Jiang Yun.

Wang Yazhi glanced at the two of them, annoyed but not harsh. “Come in and sit.”

Just then, Zhan Rao walked in carrying a stack of notebooks. “Teacher, all the notebooks are here.” She set them down with effort, then looked up and saw Jiang Yun and Li Yue standing in front of the desk, surprised.

Wang Yazhi nodded. “Thank you. That’s all. You can go now.”

Zhan Rao pressed her lips together. She knew it wasn’t appropriate to stay, but her feet refused to move. She stood at the doorway, peeking in Jiang Yun’s direction.

Wang Yazhi didn’t stop her. Instead, she turned back to the girls. “If you won’t sit, then stand and explain. What happened with the dictation today?”

She looked at Jiang Yun. “Why were the poem lines written on your desk in pencil?”

Then she turned to Li Yue. “And why were you looking at Jiang Yun’s desk during the test?”

Her voice was loud enough for every teacher in the room to hear. They were all experienced educators. Even the younger ones had been students once. This wasn’t hard to figure out. In addition to Jiang Yun’s notorious reputation and Li Yue’s top ranking in the art class, everyone had their own assumptions.

One teacher even chuckled. “Teacher Wang, do you really need to ask? It seems obvious that Li Yue is a top student. Why would she cheat?”

She threw a disdainful look at Jiang Yun after speaking.

Li Yue felt secretly pleased.

Thank goodness she had good grades and a good image. As long as she acted innocent, the teachers would take her side out of respect for her academic record.

At the door, Zhan Rao clenched her fingers tightly. Her tiny, delicate face puffed up with anger.

“Teacher, that’s not fair. If something happened, you should investigate it properly to find the truth. Making assumptions without evidence is disrespectful to both students.”

The young teacher who had spoken was momentarily stunned.

Wang Yazhi smiled and nodded approvingly. “Xiao Zhan is right. As responsible educators, we must be fair. So, let’s investigate properly. Girls, explain what exactly happened.”

Still, neither girl said a word.

Jiang Yun didn’t feel like speaking.

Li Yue was too nervous to know what to say.

Wang Yazhi wasn’t in a hurry. She said calmly, “You don’t have to speak. But if you don’t, you’ll stand here until you do. Cheating on a dictation might be a small thing, but it’s not about grades. It’s about integrity. If you cheat and admit it, and truly change, I can pretend this never happened. But if you have the guts to cheat and not the guts to admit it, then I really can’t respect you.”

Li Yue’s heart was pounding out of her chest. She peeked at Jiang Yun, who still said nothing, but she couldn’t take it anymore.

“Teacher, I’m sorry. That was my handwriting.”

The female teacher who had mocked Jiang Yun nearly dropped her cup in shock. “Li Yue, how could you cheat? You’re not that kind of student!”

She had taught Li Yue in middle school and knew her as a top student—well-behaved, obedient, never the type to cause trouble. How could she cheat?

Li Yue’s tears started falling again. “But I only did it for Jiang Yun. She said she wanted to copy mine, but I hadn’t memorized it well either and was scared she’d get caught, so I wrote the poem on the desk for her. I’m sorry, teacher. I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry.”

She kept crying and bowing, apologizing again and again. Her sorrowful appearance tugged at everyone’s heartstrings.

The sympathetic teacher turned to Wang Yazhi. “Look at her, Teacher Wang. She clearly knows she was wrong. Just let her off this time, okay?”

Wang Yazhi held her teacup and smiled, showing no reaction to Li Yue’s tearful act.

“Jiang Yun, is that true?”

Jiang Yun still didn’t answer. She simply looked at Li Yue’s tear-streaked face.

Zhan Rao couldn’t stand it any longer. She rushed forward, tugging on Jiang Yun’s sleeve. “Jiang Yun, say something. You didn’t even want to cheat!”

Seeing Zhan Rao, Jiang Yun’s lips curled slightly. The tight feeling in her chest cracked open, letting sunlight shine through.

“I didn’t plan on cheating. Li Yue meant well but misunderstood, which led to this mess.”

The female teacher scoffed. “A misunderstanding? If Li Yue wasn’t trying to help you, why would she write the text on your side of the desk? And if the text was right there, why didn’t you copy it?”

Jiang Yun turned to her, and the coldness in her eyes startled the woman.

“If you don’t believe me, check my notebook.”

The teacher scoffed again, annoyed that she’d been intimidated by a teenage girl. To save face, she grabbed the notebook and opened it before Wang Yazhi could move.

One side was filled with Li Yue’s neat, perfect handwriting.

The other side was chaotic. Messy cursive scribbles, the content roughly correct—but what were these lines?

“Silver coins nodding and clapping in rhythm, the crimson robe fluttering through the wine hall?”

“Under a thousand moons, I buy tea from the beams?”

The sound matched the poem, but the characters didn’t. No one with basic intelligence would copy like this.

This could only mean one thing: Jiang Yun hadn’t copied at all.