Coercion

"We're here. Want me to go with you?"

The café was filled to the brim with customers flooding in and out in regular intervals. Jiang Shen got off the taxi with Shi Fen on the opposite side of the road.

"No. I'll only take a minute."

Shi Fen nodded as he watched her enter the café with large strides.

Holding onto the notebook filled with sticky notes of various colors, Jiang Shen scanned the crowd and found him sitting in the farthest corner of the place with his friends.

"Yao."

The young man dressed in a flannel shirt and pants looked stern as he turned around. "You're here."

He was with two of his what she assumed to be his friends. They nodded in greetings as she nodded back. The table was sprawled with notes and cups of coffees that it had been obvious they've been here for awhile.

"You've never been the type to study in a public place," Jiang Shen couldn't help but comment as she handed him his notebook.

Qing Yao glanced at his friends and replied, "I'm not. I'm just here to help them study."

She didn't believe it. "I didn't think you were the type to be swayed by friends."

"I'm not."

Not a moment of hesitation. Jiang Shen turned suspicious at the sudden increase of contact. It felt weird. And not to mention how he seemed to shift his feet every time they talked.

She narrowed her eyes. "Well... okay."

Taking a glance at his friends again, one with squinty eyes and the other with an innocent expression, Jiang Shen then turned around and said, "See you around."

"Yeah, see you."

When she finally left, his two friends breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment there they thought that they couldn't breathe. The atmosphere had turned chilly as the temperature dropped. Her presence seemed to turn cold, not at all warm like how she acted in school.

Qing Yao turned to them and said in a blank tone, "Your plan didn't work."

"How could that be..." The squinty eyed one frowned in exasperation. "Doesn't she like you?"

"She does."

"Then why did she act like that?"

"She can be unpredictable, at times," Qing Yao nonchalantly replied as he took a sip of his coffee. "I've already done you a favor. If you'll excuse me."

"Wait a second!" The innocent one grabbed his arm and pulled him back to his seat.

Qing Yao crossed his arms. The two persons before him were thinning his patience as he gazed at them with an irked expression.

"What?" His voice turned cold.

The two shivered as the squinty one said, "Then... if you don't d-do as we s-say, i'll s-spread the r-rumor a-about her."

Qing Yao turned silent, his gaze flashed with contempt and anger, and somehow the temperature dropped even further that the two of them almost cried and peed their pants.

And as if everything was an illusion, Qing Yao retracted his gaze and sipped his coffee. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because if we don't then our friend would never be able to confess her love!" The innocent one hurriedly explained, prompting the other to shut his mouth. The former turned pale as he realized that he spilled their secrets.

"This will be the last time," Qing Yao firmly said. He grew up in a military family, so his bearing was similar to a soldier.

The two nodded, their backs drenched in sweat, before scurrying off the place in a hurry.

Qing Yao looked down at the table sprawled with his notes, his thoughts drifting to before he had been coerced to doing such things.

Hua Institute had just finished the opening ceremony, as the previous student union president gave an inspiring speech before eventually setting off for college. Qing Yao remembered being told by one of his classmates that he had been called by their teacher.

However, when he arrived at the faculty department, there were no teachers. Only two students who looked pitiful with their humped backs and nervous expressions stood by the door.

When asked if they were the ones who called him, both nodded and pleaded to him for a favor. Qing Yao firmly refused them and left the vicinity.

Who would've thought that they had begun stalking him and his close associates. When the two approached him again with photos of two people acting intimately in suggestive angles, Qing Yao flew into a rage as he shred the photos to pieces.

However the two were relentless and had even backed up their photos in their flash drives. If Qing Yao didn't agree to help them, they would spread both the photos and rumors, any student would immediately get the wrong idea with those photos.

It would spark the ultimate scandal!

Words would spread and the truth would become distorted. It would only be a matter of time before the victim's reputation is utterly destroyed.

To prevent that from happening, Qing Yao had to play along for now. At least until he finds out why they're doing this.

He sighed and prayed to the heavens that nothing would go wrong.

When Jiang Shen left and returned to Shi Fen's side, she fell into deep thought with a contemplative expression.

Shi Fen hailed a taxi and told the driver Cheng Muyi's address before he turned to look at her and said, "What's up? You've had this weird expression on you face since you got out. Anything weird happen?"

Jiang Shen snapped out of her thoughts and said, "Not exactly... I just feel like Yao's been hanging out with weird people. I mean, the two people with him in the café weren't the type he'd associate himself with. I know him."

"Maybe he's expanding his social circle?" Shi Fen shrugged as he didn't find anything weird with it. If the guy wanted more friends then there's nothing wrong with that.

"I could only hope so," Jiang Shen sighed.