Chapter 7 – Radiating Foolishness

Only the employees knew that the milk tea shop had a back door. The aluminum alloy door looked flimsy and rattled noisily when the wind blew.

Shi Zhen quietly took out the key Zhang Meiren had given her. The thin door panel wasn’t soundproof; she could even hear the noisy conversations from the front.

As soon as she opened the door, she was met with the small storage room of the milk tea shop. Various milk tea powders and semi-finished ingredients were piled together, dust drifting in the air. The dirty and messy environment made it hard to even find a place to step.

Shi Zhen took out her phone and first snapped a few photos, then started recording a video.

The entire environment of the storage room was captured on her phone.

Time was ticking. Shi Zhen quickly scanned her surroundings. The further inside she went, the closer she got to Zhang Meiren and the others.

Considering the shop’s surveillance cameras might record her, Shi Zhen turned off the circuit breaker in the storage room before entering the main area.

After everything was ready, Shi Zhen opened the door from the storage room and entered the area where she usually worked.

The main entrance of the milk tea shop was made of glass. At the moment, Zhang Meiren and Chen Hong had their backs to Shi Zhen. As long as they didn’t turn around, they wouldn’t see her.

Luckily, they were busy dealing with the people outside and were too distracted to notice someone else was in the shop.

Shi Zhen carefully aimed her phone at the plastic bucket under the workbench. It looked ordinary on the outside, but it was filled with expired items. And that rag used to wipe everything—it couldn’t be overlooked either.

Finally, she finished recording. Just as she was about to put away her phone, a man’s loud voice shouted from outside, “Why is there someone else in your shop?!”

Shi Zhen froze on the spot, completely stunned.

Zhang Meiren and Chen Hong quickly turned around and rushed into the store.

“Shi Zhen? What are you doing here?” Chen Hong asked.

Zhang Meiren’s eyes swept over Shi Zhen from top to bottom. “What are you doing here? There were no deliveries today—how did you come in through the back door?”

Shi Zhen took a deep breath and tried to calm herself so she wouldn’t look too panicked. She smiled sheepishly and said, “I saw there were so many people at the front, so I came in through the back. What’s going on, Sister Zhang? Why are there so many people?”

“It’s nothing. Don’t ask things you shouldn’t.”

After speaking, Zhang Meiren gave Shi Zhen a suspicious look. As if something suddenly occurred to her, her eyes lit up and she shouted toward the people outside, “This is the milk tea maker at our shop! What’s the use of talking to a small employee like me? Most of the milk tea in our shop is made by her.”

She pointed at Shi Zhen, her face full of grievance.

Shi Zhen’s eyes widened. She couldn’t believe how shamelessly the blame was being shifted.

“You’re the one who makes the milk tea here?” a man looked her up and down. “The milk tea you made sent us to the hospital. How are you going to compensate us?”

Shi Zhen calmly replied, “Yes, I made the milk tea, but I followed the standard recipes exactly. Everything was done according to regulations. I understand that everyone is anxious after what happened, but please calm down and let’s figure out a proper solution, okay?”

The man wouldn’t back down. “You say you followed the recipe, and we’re just supposed to believe that? Who knows if you added something yourself?”

“Exactly. So many of us had problems after drinking your milk tea. You made it—how could you not be responsible?”

“Miss, how can you be so careless in your work?”

More and more people joined in, voicing their criticism. If words were sharp arrows, Shi Zhen was already riddled with wounds.

Shi Zhen defended herself, “There’s surveillance in the shop. If you don’t believe me, you can check the footage. Also, I’m not the only milk tea maker here, right, Sister Zhang?”

Shi Zhen looked toward Zhang Meiren. Zhang Meiren’s body stiffened, and she stammered, “I-I didn’t make nearly as much as you did. Don’t wrongly accuse me!”

Everyone continued talking at once, not noticing that when Chen Hong heard the word “surveillance,” her heart skipped a beat. Taking advantage of the distraction, she quietly slipped out of the shop.

“We’ve been arguing all morning. We don’t want to waste any more time. Just say it—are you going to compensate us or not?”

“Yeah! Pay up!”

Zhang Meiren’s pupils dilated slightly. Her milk tea shop had been running in Xiaoshan for many years. In recent years, with more and more people drinking milk tea, she had made quite a lot of money.

But if she had to compensate everyone outside, it would still be a considerable expense. Besides, once she cleaned up the shop properly, no one would be able to discover any issues with the ingredients.

With things like this, who could say for sure who was responsible for the food poisoning incident? In the end, it would be whatever she said it was.

Zhang Meiren glanced at Shi Zhen. The girl wore her long ponytail tied with a red bow, her off-white down jacket neat and proper. There was a stubborn defiance in her eyes.

Most importantly, she was a freshly graduated college student who radiated foolishness. When the time came to shift the blame onto Shi Zhen, the girl probably wouldn’t even know how to fight back. She’d be so flustered that she might end up paying the money without fully realizing what happened.

Shi Zhen felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up under Zhang Meiren’s gaze. “Sister Zhang,” she said, “why don’t you show everyone the surveillance footage? Then we’ll all see where the problem actually came from.”

Upon hearing that, Zhang Meiren’s heart sank. Crap—the footage hadn’t been deleted yet!

The cameras were only running to appease the regulatory authorities. Now they were going to be used as actual evidence!

Seeing the panic on Zhang Meiren’s face, Shi Zhen immediately understood that the surveillance was still intact. She pulled out her phone and logged into the employee system.

Normally, Zhang Meiren had her help manage the surveillance system, so Shi Zhen had login access.

As she opened the surveillance app, Zhang Meiren lunged forward, trying to snatch the phone from her hands.

But Shi Zhen was quick. She dodged nimbly and stepped back, holding the phone up for everyone to see. She asked, “What day did everyone start getting food poisoning?”

“The 20th. Girl, check the footage from the 20th.”

“I went to the hospital on the 21st, but I ordered your milk tea on the 20th.”

“Yeah! Just look at the 20th!”

Going along with the crowd, Shi Zhen tapped to pull up the footage from the 20th. For a moment, the crowd finally fell silent, their eyes fixed intently on the screen, afraid to miss a single detail.

Zhang Meiren’s heart was in her throat. On the 20th, she had gotten a new manicure. The nail technician had told her that it would take two days for the chemical smell to completely dissipate. She hadn’t paid it any mind, but those nails had touched the milk tea more than once.

Could it have been because of her?

Subconsciously, she covered her hands, her toes pointing toward the door like she might bolt at any second.

Shi Zhen eagerly opened the footage from the 20th—only for a message to pop up on the screen: Video Deleted.

Deleted?

She quickly exited and tried again. Still: Video Deleted.

“What the hell? Are you messing with us now? You deleted the footage—what the hell are we even looking at?” the man leading the group finally lost his temper.

“You look so decent on the outside, but you’re rotten on the inside,” another chimed in. “Deleting the footage and pretending nothing happened?”

Zhang Meiren jumped in to fan the flames. “Exactly, Shi Zhen! Did you delete the footage because you were the one who did something wrong? Oh dear, how did we ever end up hiring someone like you? We’ve never had a single issue before you came. But now? You’ve only been here a month, and so many customers have gotten food poisoning. You’d better just pay up—we can’t keep someone like you on staff.”

A young guy added with mock sympathy, “Man, hiring her was the worst luck in eight lifetimes. Next time, you better vet your hires properly.”

“Girl, say something, will you? My sister’s still in the hospital waiting for compensation.”

Shi Zhen finally understood what it meant to be wronged with no way to defend yourself. The accusations and insults pierced her heart like needles.

She shrank back, retreating step by step. These people didn’t really care who was actually responsible—they just wanted someone to compensate them.

Looking at Zhang Meiren’s smug face, Shi Zhen felt a wave of disgust. Why hadn’t she just listened to Xiao Yang and gone home earlier?

Oh right—she must have had water in her brain.

“It wasn’t me!” Shi Zhen’s eyes turned red. “It really wasn’t me!”

She looked around and suddenly realized—Chen Hong was gone. She had quietly slipped out of the milk tea shop.

“It was Chen Hong! She must’ve deleted the surveillance. She’s the store manager—she has deletion privileges.”

The crowd started buzzing again, whispering about the possibility.

Zhang Meiren, afraid they might actually discover that Chen Hong had deleted the footage, quickly put on a smiling face and tried to smooth things over. “Everyone, let’s not gang up on a young girl. She just started working, and maybe she panicked after making a mistake and didn’t know what to do. How about this—why don’t you all head home for now? I’ll talk to her and figure out a compensation plan. Our shop’s not going anywhere—we’re not going to run off.”

“Alright, we’re not here to bully anyone,” the leader said. “If there’s a problem, we’ll solve it. We’ll give you one more day. We’ll be back tomorrow.”

The others murmured in agreement and began to disperse.

Once the last of them had left, Zhang Meiren dropped her fake kind face.

“Shi Zhen,” she snapped, “how could you be so careless at work? Now look at the mess you’ve caused—how are you going to pay for this?”

Those words made Shi Zhen’s anger flare up. “Zhang Meiren, you know who’s at fault, and now you’re dumping it all on me? What’s the meaning of this?”

Zhang Meiren admired her manicured nails, not even glancing at Shi Zhen. In a lazy tone, she said, “I’m not the one saying it—it’s everyone else. They all think you’re the one to blame. You’d better start thinking about how to scrape some money together. This isn’t a small amount.”

Shi Zhen took a deep breath. A crushing exhaustion washed over her. She didn’t want to deal with any of it anymore. Was there no justice in this world? Why should she take the blame for something she didn’t do?

“I said I didn’t do it, and I didn’t. If you think I caused the food poisoning, then prove it. If you can’t show proof, then you’re slandering me!”

With that, she turned and walked away without sparing Zhang Meiren another glance.

She had nearly fallen into the trap of trying to prove herself, but luckily, she snapped out of it in time.

Watching her leave, Zhang Meiren was so angry she stomped her foot.

Just then, Chen Hong peeked out from behind the door and whispered to her, “Sister-in-law, how’d it go?”

When Zhang Meiren saw Chen Hong, her eyes lit up. “Sister-in-law, did you delete the surveillance footage? Oh my god, that was perfect timing! Now everyone thinks it was Shi Zhen’s mistake that caused everything.”

Chen Hong gave a sinister smile. “So, did she agree to pay?”

“Nope. You should’ve seen the way she talked back—acting all high and mighty, saying we were slandering her because we didn’t have proof. I’m so pissed off!”

Chen Hong’s eyes narrowed, and a wicked idea formed in her mind. She leaned in and whispered something in Zhang Meiren’s ear.

Zhang Meiren’s face lit up with a crooked grin. “Sister-in-law, you really are full of great ideas!”

Chen Hong raised an eyebrow smugly. A fresh graduate wanted to go toe-to-toe with her? What a joke.