The hearing was scheduled for Friday morning at 9 AM. Gu Group headquarters, 23rd floor, boardroom.



When I walked to the door, over a dozen gazes in the room turned toward me simultaneously. Not curiosity - weighing.



Three independent directors were seated. In the center was a gray-haired man, square-framed glasses, a pair of eyes behind the lenses with no warmth. To the left, a female director with a string of pearls around her neck and a folder spread in front of her. Executives sat in a row along the wall. Gu Lingfeng sat in the first seat on the left side of the long table. Gu Jun was third on the left, dark gray suit, gold-rimmed glasses polished crystal clear.



Next to Gu Jun sat a person I had not seen at the banquet that evening. Early forties, square face, slightly receding hairline. In front of him was not compliance material but a stack of curriculum evaluation reports. On the cover was printed: "Gu Group Education Division Curriculum R and D Department."



I looked at him once, he was also looking at me. The moment our gazes met, I understood who he was - Zhao Zheng, Zhao Yuwei's older brother.



There were two more people in the observer seats. Zhao Yuwei wore a plain-colored outfit, her hair pinned up without a stray hair. Next to her, Lin Yue wore a gray shirt, both hands folded on his knees, like a witness who had come to observe a court session.



I withdrew my gaze and walked over to sit next to Gu Lingfeng. Under the table, he gave my hand a squeeze, his fingertips warm.



The square-glasses man spoke first, his voice not loud, each word seeming to be dragged across a cement floor: "The topic of this hearing: whether the personal relationship between Executive President Gu Lingfeng and the review subject, Ms. Su Qing, affected the fairness of the Tianxing Kindergarten joint venture project review. Principal Su, your qualification materials were reviewed in advance - no issues. Tianxing's financial situation also has no issues."



He paused.



"But compliance review is not just about looking at results. It's also about looking at process."



Gu Jun stood up, moving without hurry, pulling a photo out of a folder and pushing it across the table. A corridor surveillance screenshot. On the day of the review meeting, Gu Lingfeng reached out to tidy the stray hairs on my forehead, his fingertips lingering on my forehead for one second more than necessary.



Pointing at the photo, he spoke: "Esteemed directors, the shooting time of this photo was the very day of the review meeting. There is an undisclosed personal relationship between the Executive President and the review subject. The fact itself is not the problem, but if not for this photo, the board of directors would not know about the relationship between the two people to this day. If this isn't concealment, what is?"



He braced his hands on the table, his body leaning slightly forward: "I request that the Tianxing joint venture project be suspended and an independent investigation be launched into the review process."



Several executives in the conference room began whispering.



I was just about to stand up when someone else spoke first. Zhao Zheng.



"What Vice President Gu mentioned is a procedural issue. I will supplement from another angle." Zhao Zheng pulled out a neatly bound report from his briefcase. "Esteemed directors, as head of the Curriculum R and D Department, I have an obligation to point out a risk at the business level. Tianxing Kindergarten uses a mixed-age teaching model. The three hundred cooperative kindergartens under the Gu Group education division all use age-graded systems. If the mixed-age model is introduced - the entire system's curriculum adaptation will take at least three years, and the teacher training cycle will double. Most critically, parent acceptance is less than thirty percent."



He looked up, his tone not heavy, but each word lodged itself in the two characters "objective."



"A direction that fundamentally conflicts with Gu Group's existing system - just because of the Executive President's personal relationship - can skip business evaluation?"



The square-glasses man flipped through two pages of the report without looking up: "This falls under the scope of business evaluation, not compliance review."



"Exactly the opposite." Zhao Zheng closed the report. "Precisely because the relationship between the Executive President and the review subject was not disclosed, the business evaluation segment was artificially skipped. That's why Tianxing's mixed-age model went directly into the third-round screening."



No one in the conference room spoke. Zhao Zheng had framed me - Tianxing's ability to reach this point relied on Gu Lingfeng.



Zhao Zheng did not sit back down. He pulled out another sheet of paper from under the report.



"Additionally, the industrial and commercial registered legal representative of Tianxing Kindergarten is not Ms. Su Qing herself. The legal representative is Shen Lanzhi, Su Qing's mother. Shen Lanzhi is a retiree from Suzhou with no record of residence in Beijing in the past three years. The actual controller does not match the registration information."



My fingers clenched under the table.



"I am a kindergarten teacher." I stood up, my voice steadier than expected. "Also the actual operator. The industrial and commercial change registration..."



"The change registration was only applied for last month." Zhao Zheng pushed a printed sheet onto the table. "After you had been operating for three years. In these three years, Tianxing signed cooperation agreements with multiple institutions in a status where the legal representative did not participate in operations, including Gu Group."



"Look clearly at the date on the receipt." I placed a document envelope on the table. "The acceptance receipt from the Industrial and Commercial Bureau. The change application was submitted before the compliance review was launched. Vice President Zhao checked the industrial and commercial information very thoroughly. Then did you also find that in the past three years, the Haidian District Education Bureau cooperated with Tianxing on a mixed-age teaching pilot evaluation - the Education Bureau approached us proactively? Why would the Education Bureau proactively approach a kindergarten with flawed legal representative registration? Because what it looks at is teaching results, not industrial and commercial files."



Zhao Zheng's fingers moved on the table surface.



I was not looking at him. I turned to the board of directors.



"Esteemed directors, Tianxing Kindergarten. Percentage of teachers holding international certification: forty percent. Industry average: less than fifteen percent. Parent renewal rate: ninety-seven percent. Safety incident rate: zero. In the past three years, Haidian District Education Bureau selected Tianxing as a mixed-age teaching pilot cooperative partner."



I pulled out the second document.



"Review process. Six institutions entered the third-round screening. All went through blind review. Tianxing was the only institution that scored above eighty points in all evaluation dimensions. The blind review was before the face-to-face interview. That is to say, when the review committee members were scoring, they did not know who the principal of Tianxing was."



I pulled out the third.



"This is the list of innovative education institutions that Gu Group has invested in over the past three years. Seven institutions. Four of them use non-traditional teaching models - Montessori, Reggio, Waldorf, and a forest kindergarten. The curriculum systems of each of these have incompatibilities with Gu Group's original age-graded system that are greater than those of mixed-age teaching. Why did you approve those, but block Tianxing?"



I stared at him.



"Where is the difference? The difference is in pricing power. The Montessori kindergarten operates as a single store and does not challenge Gu Group headquarters' procurement system. The forest kindergarten is in the suburbs, enrolling twenty children a year. But Tianxing - three directly-run campuses, revenue exceeding ten million. Once the direct-run model enters the Gu Group system, the quoted prices of all curriculum suppliers will be benchmarked against direct-run prices."



I pulled the last item out of the document envelope. Original contracts. Kraft paper covers, stamped with the character for "Classified."