He usually only stays at the school for a few days when the school or college has important matters to handle, taking care of various things and squeezing out a bit of time to drive students away for fun.

Driving away a certain student.

When he’s not at school, he’s not always at the law firm in Nanlu, and even less often at his own house.

This once led to a joke—

Six years ago, during Dekama’s sweeping reforms, everyone’s identity files had to be re-registered and confirmed. Of course, these files didn’t need to be entered into the database character by character like in the old days; they were mostly auto-generated based on things like asset card usage, and you just had to glance over them and sign off.

There was a field in the file called “usual residence.” The system would automatically filter this out based on how long and how often you stayed in a certain area.

When William Carter went to the records office to confirm, the “usual residence” field filtered and filtered, and finally popped out five characters—

Long-distance shuttle.

The girl in charge of the records laughed so hard she fell off her chair.

No matter how elegant his expression, it couldn’t cover up the “frequent flyer” Professor Carter’s green face.

However, no matter how green he was then, it couldn’t compare to now.

William Carter took off his earbud and fiddled with it in his hand, then silently glanced again at the message from the apartment.

The lease ends tomorrow, which means he definitely has to move today. Of course, all his worldly possessions fit in one coat pocket, so there’s really nothing to move. The main thing is, he still needs to find a new place to stay...

He only has 5022 West left. After deducting food and transportation, where can he even live?

“Haven’t found a new place yet?” Anna guessed.

She was sitting across from him, her processed holo-screen curved and one-sided, so others couldn’t see the contents. Of course, she didn’t have a habit of snooping; she just noticed William Carter hadn’t touched his lunch and asked out of concern.

“Hmm?” William Carter looked up and said with a wry smile, “Still looking.”

“Why not just stay at the school?” Locke suggested. “Our dorm is close to South Cross, and there’s even a stipend during internship season.”

The stipend was a specialty of the law school. Every year during internship season, the law school would allocate some money to students who dutifully participated in internships, calling it the “internship scholarship.” Its nickname was “stipend,” and its longer alias was: “We know you can’t earn money during your internship and are broke, so here’s some cash to save your life.”

It wasn’t much, really—30 West a day, paid monthly. After covering transportation, there’d be just a little left.

“Even mosquito meat is still meat,” Locke praised the stipend.

William Carter thought: Thanks for the reminder, but I can’t even get mosquito meat.

He was a fake student—he could put on a show at the law firm, but going back to school would just be waiting to get exposed. He was afraid he’d be so used to his routine that he’d walk straight into the dean’s office by accident.

Besides, does the school have explosion case files?

No.

By the afternoon, the spacious office was still William Carter’s alone.

James Bennett clearly wasn’t in the habit of telling anyone where he was going, so William Carter had no idea what he was busy with, or whether he’d be back today. Even if he didn’t come back, William Carter wouldn’t be surprised—after all, he used to live like this himself.

The folded case files were just a thin stack, not so much of an eyesore. William Carter wasn’t in a hurry to organize them, but first searched for “explosion case” in the files.

The AI chimed twice, and all documents related to explosions were filtered out.

One by one, they stacked themselves in front of William Carter.

Convenient, sure... but damn, isn’t this a bit too much?!

And clearly, it wasn’t just one case—there were more than fifty.

William Carter crossed his arms and leaned heavily back in his chair, almost laughing in disbelief—has South Cross Law Firm done nothing but take explosion cases for the past five years??

“Ruan?” Just as William Carter was getting a headache, Locke knocked and poked his head in, looking like a thief.

“You might as well put a sock over your head next time,” Senior Professor Carter started making snarky remarks with a smile when he was in a bad mood.

The target of his jab just chuckled and came in. “You’re really something.”

William Carter: ...Not as much as you.

“Lawyer Bennett isn’t back yet?” Locke tiptoed into the room. He didn’t know why those two girls were so eager to transfer into this office—he himself got nervous just seeing Lawyer Bennett’s frozen, photo-like face, scared before even getting to know him.

“If he were back, would you dare come in?” William Carter cut to the chase.

“No way. He looks even less approachable than my teacher.” Locke pouted.

His teacher was Hobbes, silver-haired and eagle-eyed, thin and stern, a very elite old lawyer. But when it came to cold faces, he was just like James Bennett’s dad.

“How’s your file sorting going? I did something stupid,” Locke said.

“What?”

“My hand slipped and I dragged that form into the permanent delete bin.”

“Which form?” William Carter didn’t catch on.

“Huh? You haven’t seen it yet?” Locke made a square shape with his hands. “Just a form like this, listing the order for sorting the files, which documents go first and which go after, that one.”