Chapter 30 : Formulating a plan

Under the shade of the gymnasium wall, obscured by the trees surrounding it, Kelly stood with her back leaning on the wall and arms folded. She tapped her feet impatiently to the ground. Upon hearing my footsteps, she shifted her gaze in my direction.

"You're so slow! What if someone sees us?!" She snapped at me as soon as our gazes met with a frown on her face.

"Sorry. I have to make sure no one follows me here." I approached Kelly with an apologetic expression.

"Whatever, I don't have much time to spare for you. Spit it out already."

I unzipped my bag and pulled out a stack of envelopes from it. Then I handed it over to Kelly. In confusion, Kelly reached out to the envelopes with a face full of question marks. "What are these?"

"They are letters. Slip these into the desk drawer of anyone whom you suspect to be Mr. Gilbert's victim too."

Kelly flipped one of the envelopes in her hand, checking it out. There was nothing special about those envelopes from the outside, so Kelly tore one of them without asking me for permission and read the content.

After she finished reading it, she was eyeing me with a doubtful expression. "You are planning to lure them out by using these? You think they are going to buy it easily?"

I shook my head. "Of course not. The purpose of the letters is to instill a sense of fear and anxiety. After reading these letters, even if they don't believe it, they are bound to be warier, and we will take advantage of that."

"How to do it?"

I raised my index finger in front of her. "First, we will make them more self-conscious. After they realize there are other people like them, they will be worried about their secret being exposed, just like you were previously."

Kelly gulped nervously. "I-I was not like that!"

I ignored her rebuttal and continued my explanation. "Second, after they unconsciously increase their vigilance, we will send them another letter. This time, we will give them a place and time for a meeting."

Kelly's brow furrowed in disapproval. "You want me to expose myself by coming to that meeting? No way! I would never let anyone know I was involved with this!"

"I thought so too. That's why both of us won't be there."

"Huh? What do you mean? Then, what's the purpose of meeting up in the first place?"

"Before the appointment time, we will leave another letter hidden somewhere within the written location. It will become their guide for what they need to do next." As I said that, I unfolded a paper with a simple floor plan of the school drawn in it. I spread it onto the wall to make it easier for Kelly to look. "Take a look at this. The red circle drawn in this is the location of every CCTV in this school. The X marks in this mean safe locations to hide the letter."

Kelly stared at the floor plan with a gaping mouth. She seemed to be in shock. Actually, I hesitated a lot about whether to let Kelly know about this. I made this floor plan based on my observation and experience. I was often dragged to a quiet place far from CCTV by the bullies, so I knew to some extent which place was suitable for a secret meeting.

I planned to make the victims work together without exposing who is the mastermind behind the plan. I wanted to leave a way out for myself in case the plan failed or backfired. However, to have a way out for me meant I had to make one for Kelly too. Since she knew I was the one behind all of this, she would bear a grudge if I treated her the same as the other victims.

The content of the letters was simple. The first letter will serve as a warning for the victims to be wary of their surroundings, since there were eyes in every wall in school, and their secret might not be hidden as well as they thought.

Based on Kelly's information, it seemed Mr. Gilbert had his hands on many students in this school. He was a nasty man who liked to molest female students and beat male students to vent his frustration. However, none of these students dare to go against him since they were threatened using their weakness, just like me. He was more despicable than I thought.

Next, after we successfully made them more conscious, we would send the second letter. After we scared them out using the first letter, in the next letter we would reveal our intention to help them out as fellow victims. No matter how harmless herbivores are, when being cornered to some extent, they would fight back eventually. And what is a more brilliant plan than to gather together to beat their common enemies? To chase away the predator by fighting in a group was a trait of herbivores after all.

I didn't expect too much. I wouldn't hope for every victim to be brave enough to trust a person who reached out to them through anonymous letters. However, I hoped at least I could have 3 more people to cooperate with this. It's too risky to move around with fewer or more people than that.

"You… Did you make this by yourself?" Kelly asked me in astonishment.

I nodded my head. "I happened to know, that's all. More importantly, you need to remember this floor plan quickly."

Kelly scrutinized the floor plan, but seconds later she groaned. "Can I just take a picture of it? Why bother remembering them?"

"You can't. I made this floor plan, so you need to abide by my rules on how to use it. I don't want this floor plan to be known by others."

"What are you implying? Are you afraid I'm going to rat your floor plan to Mr. Gilbert?" Kelly frowned in displeasure.

I shrugged my shoulders. "I was just trying to prevent a one in a million mistake from happening. There is no guarantee Mr. Gilbert won't snoop on your phone. I know the possibility of that is slim, but there is no harm in being careful. We better not keep anything that could give away our plan near our body."

Kelly grumbled under her breath. "So troublesome. It's enough if one of us remembers it right? You could just warn me later about places I need to be more cautious of."

I smiled inwardly. I was glad Kelly was a simple person. She was gullible and pretty careless in general, so I contemplated a lot on how much I should reveal to her. It would be easier for me if I had full control of her actions, so her proposal was very much welcomed.

"I understand. Then, please follow my direction well after this."

Kelly snorted at my nonchalant answer. "Hmph. Then, what should we do after that?"

"After gathering all the actors, next we will let them make a choice. We don't need the spineless one in our plan, right? In the third letter hidden in the meeting place, I will leave a phone number for them to contact. Those who are gutsy enough can contact me if they want to be in our plan."

"Phone number? Yours, I presume?" Kelly eyeing me with her brows raised, as if implicitly warned me to not even think of using her number for that.

"Well, I will be the one to use the new number so yes, it will be my number we use later."

Kelly nodded her head, seeming satisfied with my answer. "It's your job to communicate with the other victims, then what do you want me to do?"

"First, you will be the one to put these letters on the victims' desk drawers. Rather than me, it will be less conspicuous if you are the one who does it. I will tell you what to do next in due time. We will need to make sure how many are willing to help us first after all."

"Are you sure this is going to work? Even if we cooperate, without evidence there is only so much we can do. A little mishap and we may aggravate our situation."

I tapped her shoulder. "Trust me. Even if this doesn't work, Mr. Gilbert wouldn't know which one of us was targeting him. He couldn't possibly suspect that we are in this together. He is too conceited for that."

Kelly brushed off my hand from her shoulder as if there was dirt on it. "I get it. No need to be touchy."

Her actions didn't offend me. Compared to what those bullies did to me, Kelly's hostility was rather mild and even looked cute in my eyes. We didn't necessarily need to be friendly with each other either. It's enough if we could get what we wanted from each other. That's why I was not prepared to hear Kelly's next sentence.

"I still don't like you, but I need to admit, it seems I have a wrong impression about you all this time. I thought you were just a meek, subservient, and pushover type of person. Even watching you is irritating, I couldn't bear to look at you sometimes" Kelly threw her sharp words at me, but her tone was calm. "But I guess you do have some merits in you."

Kelly sounded so sincere and honest all of a sudden. I didn't know how to react to her so-called compliment, so I just gave her an awkward smile. "Uhm, thank you?"