Chapter 9: Chapter 9: Show the Top Supporter Some Abs
The massive special effects from the Carnivals instantly flooded the screen, coming one after another and leaving Yannick and Sean completely stunned.
"Holy shit, thank you! Thank you, ’Sunny,’ for the Carnivals."
"Holy crap, there’s more! Thank you, Sunny! Thanks for the Carnivals! Thank you, thank you! Yannick, hurry up and show our top donor some abs!"
Sean was ecstatic. After rattling off a dozen ’thank yous,’ he finally remembered to give his top donor a reward and spun around to pull up Yannick’s shirt.
Yannick instinctively flinched back, but his washboard abs still flashed into view for a moment, giving everyone in the livestream a real treat.
Cecilia Sterling was watching on her phone, thoroughly enjoying the show, when Sean suddenly ended the stream.
She froze. ’This is all I get for twenty Carnivals?’
’Wasn’t this basically fraud? Taking the money and running?’
Meanwhile, Yannick had been the one to snatch Sean’s phone and shut down the livestream.
"What are you doing?" Sean demanded anxiously. "We finally get a rich woman on the stream, and you end it?"
With a strange expression, Yannick looked up toward the other bunk, where Shawn Lane was lying and staring blankly at the ceiling.
Then, he turned to Sean and said, "Let’s call it a day. No more streaming."
"We should at least follow our top donor! You know, follow so you don’t get lost!" Sean snatched his phone back, muttering, "Sunny... Sunny... that’s the name, Sunny..."
Before Yannick could clamp a hand over his mouth, Shawn Lane suddenly shot up from his bunk. He stared at Sean with a dark expression and asked, "Who did you say your top donor was?"
Sean was normally a little intimidated by Shawn Lane. His family background was just too powerful, so Sean was always subconsciously careful around him.
Knowing Shawn was in a bad mood after his recent breakup, and now seeing that expression on his face, Sean instinctively shrank back. "Her name... her name is Sunny."
Shawn Lane leaped down from his bunk, snatched the phone from Sean without a word, and opened his Tiktok livestream dashboard. All the gifts he’d received were recorded there.
"Sunny sent Carnival x20!"
He tapped on the user’s profile. Although there were no videos, the familiar username, avatar, and the line in the bio—"This world can’t be without kittens"—were all too familiar.
’Cecilia Sterling!’
’Twenty Carnivals... You’re really willing to splash out, aren’t you!’
Shawn Lane’s eyes blazed with fury. His entire face trembled and contorted with suppressed rage. Seeing this, Sean was too scared to even breathe.
Yannick, however, just watched him with a deep frown.
The next moment, Shawn Lane slammed the phone down on the desk, spun around, and stormed out of the dorm room.
"What... what’s wrong with him?" Sean asked Yannick, still shaken.
Yannick pressed his lips together before answering. "The person who sent you the Carnivals was... Cecilia Sterling."
"What?" Sean shot to his feet, his face pale with shock. "Cecilia Sterling? That ’Sunny’ is Cecilia Sterling?"
Yannick nodded.
Sean looked utterly incredulous. ’How is that possible?’
’One Carnival is three thousand! Twenty of them is sixty thousand!’
’How could Cecilia Sterling have sent me twenty Carnivals for no reason?’
Suddenly, Sean stared at Yannick as if he’d just realized something. "Wait a minute. How did you know that person was Cecilia Sterling? You grabbed my phone and ended the stream because you knew Cecilia’s Tiktok account was ’Sunny’?"
Yannick nodded, not denying it. "I stumbled across Cecilia’s account a long time ago," he explained. "She posted a video of herself but deleted it pretty quickly. I remembered her username, though. The name was memorable because in Chinese, her username and my name share a character. That’s why it stuck with me."
"Oh, I’m screwed. Cecilia Sterling sent me gifts... Shawn Lane isn’t going to take it out on me, is he?" Sean’s face went white with fear.
’The young master of the Lane Group! How could I possibly afford to get on his bad side?’
Yannick didn’t know. He and Shawn Lane weren’t particularly close, but based on Shawn’s reaction just now, he was clearly furious.
’It was understandable, though. His girlfriend breaks up with him one day, and the very next day she’s in her ex’s roommate’s livestream, dropping twenty Carnivals. How could he not be angry?’
’The only thing Yannick didn’t understand was Cecilia Sterling’s behavior.’
’Cecilia Sterling, what on earth are you doing?’
Cecilia Sterling was looking at houses.
Wearing a new silk robe she’d bought today, she was curled up on the hotel sofa with her laptop, browsing Lorcain’s most luxurious properties.
In her past life, she had worked hard for sixty-five years, only to live in a small apartment less than a thousand square feet. It was enough for one person, of course, but deep down, it was because housing prices were too high, and she couldn’t bring herself to spend money on a bigger place.
Things were different now. As she looked at the information on the luxury properties, she saw that a standalone villa in Hearthstone Villas, Lorcain’s best development, was only around ten thousand. A massive, 5,400-square-foot river-view penthouse could be hers for just over three thousand. With her current wealth, it was practically a steal.
So it didn’t matter whether she needed a place to live or not; she just wanted to buy one for fun.
But while she was engrossed in her house-hunting, a furious Shawn Lane had already stormed over to the women’s dormitory at Lorcain Tech.
"Cecilia Sterling!"
"Cecilia Sterling, get down here!"
"Cecilia!"
"I need to talk to you! Get down here!"
Overcome with rage, Shawn Lane stood below the women’s dorm and screamed Cecilia Sterling’s name as if he’d lost his mind, causing students to poke their heads out of their windows to watch the drama.
’What’s going on now?’
’Didn’t they just have a big scene yesterday? Why is there an encore performance today?’
Shawn Lane shouted until his eyes were bloodshot and his voice was hoarse. In the end, he didn’t manage to summon Cecilia Sterling, but he did bring out Cindy Underwood.
She wore a long, pale-yellow dress, with lip gloss on and her eyebrows neatly done. She had clearly put effort into her appearance.
"Shawn, stop shouting. Cecilia isn’t in the dorm."
Cindy Underwood stepped forward, looking at Shawn Lane with a pained expression. "Why are you doing this to yourself? She can’t even see you torturing yourself like this, and she doesn’t care at all."
Shawn Lane was in no mood to listen to Cindy. He grabbed her by the wrist and glared at her. "You said she’s not in the dorm? Where did she go?"
Cindy let out a soft cry of pain and looked up at Shawn Lane pitifully. "Shawn, you’re... you’re hurting me."
Hearing this, Shawn immediately let go. Cindy shook her sore wrist and said, "I don’t know where she went. She packed her things and left the dorm last night and hasn’t been back. It doesn’t look like she’s coming back, either."
She let out a soft sigh and said with feigned sympathy, "Shawn, don’t be so naive. You don’t know Cecilia at all. For someone like her, who’s always surrounded by so many male admirers, how could she possibly be content with dating just one person?"
"It’s true you have a great family background, but you’re not the only one. Maybe Cecilia..."
Cindy didn’t finish her sentence, but her meaning was perfectly clear.
Her words, combined with the fact that Cecilia had just gifted twenty Carnivals that day, made something in Shawn Lane’s mind snap.
’How could Cecilia possibly be willing to spend that kind of money on gifts for someone else in a livestream?’
’I know her family’s financial situation perfectly well. That’s right. Someone else must have given her the money.’
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