134: Chapter 134 The Plagiarist's Troubles

"Don't lie to me."

Song Yaoshan's voice wasn't loud, and the wind scattered half of his trailing words, but every syllable landed clearly.

"I've heard the kind of guarantee you're talking about too many times."

He lowered his head to look at the air six stories below his feet, then lifted it back up.

"Teachers have said they would handle it. The principal said they would investigate. When Xu Qi's mother called the police, the police also said they would look into it."

He tilted his head.

"And then what?"

Li Li crouched eight meters away, not answering.

"Even if you trick me into coming down," Song Yaoshan tapped his fingers on the edge of the low wall, "if I don't jump today, or tomorrow, what about next week? What about next month?"

He turned his head slightly, carrying a calmness far beyond his sixteen years.

"The next time I want to jump, I won't notify anyone. I won't choose such a high place, and I won't give you time to set up air cushions."

The three police officers all froze in place.

The Old Police Officer ground his back teeth.

Only one thought remained in Li Li's mind.

Holy crap, are kids these days this logical when jumping off buildings?

This wasn't a threat, but it was better than one.

A sixteen-year-old boy was using the process of elimination to argue that "you cannot save me." It was airtight, leaving no room for rebuttal.

It could get full marks on a college entrance exam essay.

But the problem was, he was right.

Tricking him down without solving the root cause would only mean the next time would be a truly silent disappearance—no livestream, no negotiation, no buffer zone.

Li Li stayed crouched, the safety rope trailing an orange arc from behind him. His mind spun twice, taking the word "guarantee" apart and reassembling it.

He wasn't just saying it randomly.

"You know I can write songs, right?"

Song Yaoshan was taken aback.

The angle of this topic change was so peculiar that even the Old Police Officer beside him tilted his head.

"...I know," Song Yaoshan replied. "Season of Fireworks has over a billion views on TikTok. Say I Love You is even more explosive."

He paused.

"What does this have to do with Xu Qi?"

Li Li stood up. Not rushing over, just standing straight where he was. His knees were a bit numb from crouching for too long, but his movements were controlled and steady, without any posture of lunging forward.

"It seems you haven't had time to watch my livestream recently; the song I wrote a few days ago blew up again. So, my songwriting ability is beyond doubt. I will write a song for Xu Qi."

Song Yaoshan stared at him.

"Anti-discrimination, anti-bullying. To speak out in his name. To let everyone who hears this song know who Xu Qi was, know what he went through, and know that it wasn't the height of that building that killed him."

Li Li's hands hung at his sides, making no melodramatic gestures.

"Let him be the one who sounds the horn."

On the low wall, Song Yaoshan's two legs dangling in the air stopped swinging.

The livestream comments exploded within 0.3 seconds.

[Holy shit, Li Li's move is awesome!!!]

[Write a song??? Is he serious???]

[Please write it, if you write it, I'll put it on repeat ten thousand times.]

[Heh, just empty promises again. Once he comes down, who will remember?]

[Don't be so quick to judge, he also wrote Season of Fireworks, what are you doubting for?]

[Have those doubting it never heard Season of Fireworks??? That song is truly amazing.]

[Not only does it sound good, it's also fitting.]

[Ala Country royalty gave it a like.]

Song Yaoshan didn't look at his phone.

He stared at Li Li. The May sunlight hit from the side, making the reflective strips on the firefighter uniform blindingly bright.

"Do you really guarantee it?"

Li Li could hear it; this was a person clutching at the last straw, repeatedly shaking it to see if it would break.

"I really do."

"Then how long will it take?"

"Three days."

Three days? If he were given three minutes right now, he could finish singing it.

In the system's music library, he could pull out seven or eight classic songs about anti-discrimination and anti-bullying with his eyes closed.

The real difficulty wasn't in writing it, but in "how to explain why it was written so quickly after finishing it."

The troubles of a plagiarist are something ordinary people don't understand.

Song Yaoshan's mouth moved.

"Three days... What if you can't write it in three days?"

"One day for you to tell me Xu Qi's story." Li Li held up one finger. "One day for me to write the lyrics and compose the music." He held up another. "The third day for recording."

When he held up the third finger, he added a sentence.

"Didn't Xu Qi like Jiang Rumu?"

Song Yaoshan's body pulled back by a centimeter.

"I'll go back to Chengdu and have his Sister Mu sing it."

The rooftop was silent for a full three seconds.

Song Yaoshan opened his mouth, then closed it. When he opened it again, his Adam's apple bobbed.

"...He really liked Jiang Rumu."

His voice shattered.

"His phone wallpaper is Jiang Rumu, his textbook covers have Jiang Rumu stickers, and the front page of his composition notebook says 'Go Jiang Rumu'."

He wiped his face with his sleeve.

"He said Jiang Rumu is the coolest girl in the world because she never pretends to be someone else."

Li Li didn't speak.

"He said if only he could be like Jiang Rumu and just be himself."

The speed of the livestream comments plummeted, and the screen was flooded with large swathes of ellipses and periods.

[ . ]

[ ... ]

[Jiang Rumu, come and see this.]

[Sister Mu, if you see this, you must sing it.]

[Damn, my tears won't stop.]

"I can wait," Song Yaoshan's voice drifted over from the low wall. "If three days won't work, then a week; if a week won't work, then a month."

He paused.

"If a month won't work, a year is fine too, as long as you really write it."

Li Li nodded.

"Three days is enough."

He added another sentence.

"After three days, if you listen to it and think it's not good, come and scold me. Scold me to my face, but you have to be standing on flat ground when you do it."

"After you're done scolding me, make me rewrite it."

Song Yaoshan stared at him for five seconds.

Then he smiled.

A sixteen-year-old's smile, one that came after crying, leaking out from his nose, a very light and short sound.

"Okay."

One word.

Inside the iron door, Shen Jue slumped against the wall, his legs weak, his head tilted back, silently opening his mouth at the ceiling.

The shape of his mouth was "Oh my god," but there was no sound.

The Old Police Officer turned around and made a gesture to the two colleagues behind him, the meaning clear: Don't move, let him handle it.

Li Li took a step forward.

"So, can you come down now?"

He pulled his hands out of his trouser pockets and tilted his chin in Song Yaoshan's direction.

"You still have to tell me his story; if you sit up there while telling it, my neck will break from looking up."

Song Yaoshan lowered his head to look at the rooftop surface inside the low wall.

Then he nodded.

He braced his hands on the edge of the low wall.

His palms pressed down, his arms began to exert force, his bottom left the wall, and his two legs prepared to pull back in from the outside.

Li Li took the first step.

The second step.

He saw it.

Song Yaoshan's right hand slipped.

The sixteen-year-old boy had been sitting on the seventh-floor ledge for too long, baked by the sun for too long, and his physical strength had long since passed its limit.

He thought he still had strength, but the moment his palms pressed down, they gave out, and his entire center of gravity tilted toward the outside of the rooftop.

His right shoulder went down first.

Then his whole upper body.

Outside the low wall was a drop of over twenty meters.

Li Li saw the terror and despair on Song Yaoshan's face.

At that moment, nothing was spinning in Li Li's mind.

No plans, no calculations, no conversion formulas for distance and time.

His legs moved.

The safety rope from behind him suddenly snapped taut, then was pulled to give new slack by the force, the buckle clattering against his waist. The soles of his firefighter boots made a harsh, screeching sound against the concrete ground.

Eight meters.

The young police officer started simultaneously from the flank, but he was half a second late in starting.

The Old Police Officer, however, subconsciously reached out to loosely hold the rope behind Li Li.

The comments flooding in within that second were all the same symbol.

[ ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ]

At the scene, the Homeroom Teacher's scream turned on the sound-activated lights of the entire U-shaped teaching building.