Chapter 170 Tearing Apart Bianca's True Face
Bianca looked at the shocked and furious Alaric, timidly took a step back, and gazed at him with an extremely innocent expression. "Alaric, why are you accusing me? I've never... even seen this calligraphy piece..."
Her voice was soft and weak, looking completely frightened.
Making Alaric seem like an unreasonable, hysterical lunatic.
Alaric was furious. "You're lying! You're lying! You stole this calligraphy piece!"
Bianca looked even more innocent. "Why would I steal Isabella's calligraphy piece? To put my name on it and claim it as mine? But there's no signature of mine on it. It clearly has your mark on it..."
Bianca's words were so logical and well-reasoned that they actually made people in the audience laugh.
"Haha! Is Bianca actually accusing Alaric? Why does this sound kind of funny?"
"To be fair, this calligraphy piece does have Alaric's mark on it. On the other hand, Bianca doesn't really have a motive. She couldn't have stolen it just to give it to Alaric."
"..."
"Alaric, you say Bianca gave you this calligraphy piece. Do you have any proof?" Cillian asked.
Alaric froze.
After a long pause, he struggled to speak. "No... I don't."
"Alaric!" Cillian was truly angry now. He pointed at Alaric. "Not only did you steal a competition entry, but now you're using your student as a scapegoat! You're not fit to be a calligrapher, and you're not fit to be a teacher either!"
"Having such an irresponsible teacher is really bad luck!"
Cillian hadn't really believed Alaric's words to begin with.
This calligraphy piece clearly had Alaric's mark on it. It seemed more like Alaric had stolen it. Besides, if he could claim someone else's work as his own, what else was he incapable of doing?
"It wasn't me, I really didn't steal it!" Alaric's face turned red with anxiety as he desperately tried to defend himself. "It really wasn't, wasn't me..."
"Shut up!" Cillian's chest heaved violently. He had reached his limit. "If you don't want to embarrass yourself further, get off the stage now! Stop being an eyesore!"
He had completely lost all patience with Alaric.
Seeing this, Bianca breathed a small sigh of relief.
She pressed her lips together. "Cillian, may I leave now?"
"You can go." Cillian nodded.
Bianca was about to leave.
Just then, a familiar, cool female voice came from behind:
"Wait."
Bianca's steps froze, and she turned to meet Isabella's gaze.
"Is there something else?"
Isabella didn't answer her, but instead turned to look at Cillian. "Cillian, I actually think Alaric doesn't seem to be lying. Since it was my work that was stolen, I'd still like to get to the bottom of this and find out who's trying to mess with me."
"So, I'd like to ask Kellan, who was in charge of collecting the entries, because my competition piece went through his hands before reaching the competition organizers. It's not impossible that someone tampered with it during that time."
Isabella suggested, and Cillian readily agreed.
"Where's Kellan?" He glanced at the audience and quickly spotted Kellan sitting in the front row. "Come up here for a moment."
"Yes."
Kellan stood up and went on stage.
"Kellan, after Isabella gave you her competition entry, how did you handle it? Did you keep it safe?" Cillian asked.
"Well..." Kellan thought for a moment. "After the students submitted their work, I didn't even look at it. I just put everything in my office drawer. Besides, there's no surveillance in my office..."
He showed a somewhat helpless expression. "I'm sorry, Cillian. I really don't know who stole Isabella's competition entry."
"Alright, alright, I understand."
Cillian waved his hand, dismissing Kellan.
Isabella watched Kellan's figure, her eyes deepening slightly.
Knowing it was Bianca who did it, was there really no way to get proof?
Such a good opportunity—she didn't want to let Bianca off at all.
If only she had known Bianca would pull something like this, she could have turned the tables and exposed Bianca's true face. But in her past life, she hadn't participated in the calligraphy competition, so she couldn't predict the plot in advance and hadn't anticipated this.
Just as she was regretting missing this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, she saw a figure from the audience walking toward them.
It was Sophia.
Isabella looked at her with confusion.
Everyone else noticed Sophia's movement too.
"Isn't that Sophia?"
"What does she want?"
"..."
Sophia walked onto the stage unhurriedly, looked at Cillian, and her lazy voice rang out:
"You want proof that Bianca stole Isabella's competition entry?"
"Well, I happen to have some."
Bianca froze.
Everyone else present froze too.
Under everyone's puzzled gazes, Sophia smiled, finding this quite amusing. Her eyes fell on Bianca. "You bumped into me at the stairway that day."
Bianca immediately remembered the day she stole Isabella's competition entry from Kellan's office, and suddenly felt guilty. "What do you mean?"
Sophia sneered. "You were acting all sneaky that day, like a thief, so I kept watching you."
Bianca's expression turned ugly.
Sophia took out her phone, opened her photo album, and continued, "I even took photos of you entering Mr. Hawthorne's office."
She waved her phone in front of Bianca with a half-smile. "How about it? The sneaky person in this photo—that's you, right?"
When Bianca had bumped into her that day, she felt that Bianca was hiding something under the uniform she held against her chest, but she couldn't figure out what it was at the time.
Later, when she returned to the classroom, she indeed saw Bianca stuffing something into her backpack.
But soon after, Bianca left the classroom sneakily again.
She followed and secretly saw Bianca enter Kellan's office. She didn't dare follow too closely and only managed to capture Bianca entering the office.
Originally, she thought Bianca had stolen something from Kellan, so she specifically kept the photo, feeling it might come in handy somehow. But several days passed without any news, so she stopped thinking about it.
Until today. Until she learned that Isabella's competition entry had been stolen and switched.
Everything matched up.
She finally understood what Bianca had stolen that day and what she had done.
Looking at the photo, Bianca's mind went blank, with only a ringing sound in her ears.
Kellan beside them finally remembered.
"Bianca came to see me that day! Later I got a call from the principal and left."
He quickly pulled out his phone to check the call records from that day.
The time showed 9:23 AM.
"At 9:23 AM, I got the call and left my office, leaving only Bianca alone in my office..."
"Well, that's convenient. The timestamp on this photo I took shows 9:31 AM that same day," Sophia said.
Only eight minutes apart.
During that time, Kellan wasn't in his office.
Everything matched up perfectly.