There was sweat at the corners of Fei Du's forehead, whether from the heat or from pain. His face was paper-white. From between his teeth he squeezed out the words, "Are you done?"
Luo Wenzhou stood to one side with a grave expression, as if he were observing a moment of silence. He was silent for two seconds. Then he really couldn't hold back any longer; he turned his head aside and howled with laughter.
"Young fellow, this won't do," said the old orthopedic physician who was taking care of Fei Du's injured arm as he delivered a long-winded speech. "I can see your lifestyle isn't good, right? You young people these days, staying up all night, not exercising, spending all day sitting there playing on your computers, can your health be any good? It baffles me. What's so fun about that stupid piece of junk? Don't think it's all right just because you're young, getting osteoporosis in your twenties and thirties can happen…"
President Fei, who had never stayed up late playing on the computer, was so wronged he couldn't speak.
Near the Chenguang Road exit, Fei Du's passenger's side door had been hit by a car suddenly coming from the right side. The driver responsible was a beginner who'd only gotten his license two months ago. The guy had been taken away in an ambulance. Apparently he wasn't familiar with road signs, had missed his turn, and then, realizing that he'd somehow gone the wrong way, had just happened to see Fei Du's rather tank-like SUV coming towards him. He'd panicked and hit the gas pedal instead of the brakes—that was the conclusion issued by the urgently dispatched traffic police.
In short, the causes of this accident were that driving schools were incompetent and Fei Du was unlucky.
Luckily, Fei Du had been driving a car with a highly advanced safety system today, and his own reaction had been very timely. Therefore it was the other party's car that had been more seriously damaged; he for the most part had been more scared than hurt—he hadn't even broken his glasses.
…Though while the glasses were staunch glasses, President Fei's precious flesh paled in comparison somewhat; his left forearm had been fractured by the airbag springing out.
Fei Du persisted in thinking that it had been because of the coincidence of his posture.
Even more unlucky, by some happenstance, this rare unfortunate predicament of Fei Du's had been seen by that wicked piece of work Luo Wenzhou.
Luo Wenzhou had, while he was on his way, accompanied him on his day trip to the hospital. After learning the state of his injury, he had picked up President Fei's pair of firm-willed glasses and laughed uncontrollably; the depressed feelings caused by a whole day's stressful work were swept away at once.
"Doctor, this type of bourgeois delinquent doesn't play on the computer. They go out night after night for music and singing." Luo Wenzhou, eager to watch the fur fly, supplied color and emphasis from the sidelines. "Look at that face. It's vacant, a testimony to a dissipated life."
Through his reading glasses, his large eyes like a dragonfly's, the old physician scrutinized Fei Du's vampire-like face. "Oh, there is something of that."
Fei Du: "…"
"I've set it for you. The fracture isn't serious. Come get the cast off in a while. Remember not to engage in strenuous exercise. No smoking, no drinking, no sex," the old physician urged seriously. "Also, you must be sure to take calcium supplements, young fellow, otherwise in another decade, you'll just—'snap!'"
The last sentence somehow hit Luo Wenzhou right in the funny bone. He was about to lose his mind, seeming prepared to live the rest of his life based on this joke. While taking Fei Du along to drive him home, he still from time to time let out a strange laugh.
Fei Du pitied him a little, thinking that Captain Luo's life really was wretched, so lacking in interest that he had to gather up these low-grade delights to entertain himself with.
Of the two of them, one had originally arranged to meet Dr. Bai, and the other had arranged to meet Director Lu; after this, they both had to break their appointments.
"Turn left at that intersection up ahead…you've passed it." Fei Du looked up irritably. "My good uncle, do you know how to read a GPS?"
"Haven't you worked out yet that I'm planning to abduct and sell you? I've already contacted the buyer." Luo Wenzhou continued directly along the wrong route, driving all the way to a shopping center. He parked the car and beckoned to Fei Du. "Come on, get out, the buyer's waiting up ahead to inspect the goods."
"Could I trouble you to wait until my packaging is in better condition before selling me?" Fei Du looked irritably at his wrinkled shirt. He tried to move and felt that his whole body was covered in bruises; everywhere hurt. So he sat in the car and didn't move, feebly saying to Luo Wenzhou, "You'd better bring the buyer over. I can't walk."
Luo Wenzhou didn't insist. He only looked at his seeming paralysis and laughed, then walked away on his own, abandoning this man who wasn't as resilient as a pair of glasses in the car.
Fei Du thought that he was planning to take care of something on the way. He was hitching a ride and had no reason to request to be attended all the way home. Therefore he didn't pay it any mind.
He pushed the passenger seat further back, occupying half the territory inside the car. Nearly lying down, he leaned back with his eyes half-closed. Amidst the continuous pain, he recalled the car crash he'd just met with.
Read the road sign wrong, mistook the gas for the brakes… There was nothing new about this. Whether it had been done on purpose, or whether the responsible driver had gotten flustered and slipped up, no one could clearly say.
The only difference was that the former was a murder attempt, and the latter was only an accident.
Looked at like this, a car really was an ideal means of murder.
Thinking these things over, Fei Du had nearly thought himself to sleep when the car door next to him clicked open and Luo Wenzhou returned.
Fei Du carelessly turned his head and looked at him, then discovered in shock that he was actually holding a cake in his hands, with candles and stupid cartoon characters drawn all over its paper box.
Fei Du subconsciously dodged in the direction of the opposite car door, as if what Luo Wenzhou was holding wasn't a cake but a bomb.
"Haven't you ever seen a birthday cake? What are you dodging for, the cake isn't planning to violate you." Luo Wenzhou put the cake box away. "Didn't the guys dealing with the accident take down your information? Don't tell me the date on your ID is wrong."
Fei Du was stiffer than the cast on his arm. He had wholly entered into an unstable state, ready to jump out of the car and run.
But in the end, he didn't. While Luo Wenzhou's car stereo played a forced mix of ballads and folk songs, Fei Du sat there in this state until Luo Wenzhou had stopped the car downstairs at his own house.
"The doctor said no smoking, no drinking, and no sex for you. Look at that cast on your arm. You won't be going out to parade yourself around today, so come experience a taste of elderly life with a 'middle-aged-to-elderly' person." Luo Wenzhou lifted his chin at him. "Get out."
Fei Du looked at him with an unreadable expression for a while, then, carefully holding his dully aching arm, awkwardly crawled out of the car.
He walked too slowly; Luo Wenzhou kept having to stop and wait for him. "That bad, young master? Luckily I live on the first floor, or else I'd have to carry you up on my back."
Fei Du didn't make a sound and didn't retort.
He was like a cat brought to someone else's domain for the first time. Each bone in his spinal column was full of vigilance. Like this, he reached Luo Wenzhou's door a step and a shuffle at a time. As soon as Luo Wenzhou opened the door, the "master of the house" stuck out a long-prepared round little head and looked outside.
Luo Wenzhou said, "Get in, Luo Yiguo, don't block the way!"
Luo Yiguo's field of vision was blocked by the big paper box in his hands. It suspected that this was a new toy its litter box attendant had brought for it as tribute. It rudely stretched out its neck and flung out its paws. When Luo Wenzhou deftly rapped it over the paws, Luo Yiguo irately fell back to the ground and yowled twice. Then it finally saw that there was also a stranger behind Luo Wenzhou.
Fei Du and Luo Yiguo exchanged a look. Fei Du was rather reserved, only taking half a step back. Luo Yiguo, however, bristled on the spot and let out an un-catlike shriek. Simultaneously using all four paws, it executed a full turn in place, its claws and the slippery floor rubbing against each other. It opened its large, marble-like eyes wide and lowered its center of gravity, adopting a stance like it was ready to launch a desperate attack any time.
In this valorous posture, it exchanged another look with Fei Du. After a moment, Luo Yiguo came to a rapid decision. It abandoned the fight and charged into the crack under the couch without a look back. It didn't come out.
Luo Wenzhou: "…"
Having raised such a cowardly cat, he felt he'd rather lost face.
"No need to change your shoes." Luo Wenzhou pointed to the couch. "Sit where you like. Hey, this cat's never had a problem being shy of strangers before. Last time a colleague came over, it followed around after whining the whole time. Why is it only afraid of you?—Luo Yiguo, you get the hell out here. You're going to roll around under the couch getting covered in dust, then rub yourself all over my sheets, asshole!"
Luo Yiguo played dead, not budging.
Luo Wenzhou howled towards the couch, "Are you going to eat or not?"
This time, at his words, two raised whiskers cautiously stuck out from under the couch. Then it sniffed the stranger's scent and once again decisively retreated.
Comrade Luo Yiguo had been scared into a hunger strike.
Luo Wenzhou was helpless. He opened a can of cat food and put it next to the cat's food bowl, then opened a cupboard and rooted around, pulling out a box of candy and dropping it in front of Fei Du, who was sitting perfectly upright. "See if the stuff in there's expired. I'll go throw together some dishes. I'm telling you now, I'm not attending to a young master. You'll eat whatever I make, none of your fuss."
Fei Du for once didn't raise any objections. His posture was unbearably stiff, as if he wasn't sitting on a couch, but on the roof of the world.
A while after Luo Wenzhou had walked away, he at last strenuously used one hand to open the candy box in front him. Inside were all sorts of oddities; likely it was an assortment bought around New Year. The chocolates had already taken on very post-modern appearances that spoiled the appetite on sight… The very bottom layer, however, contained toffees, old-fashioned, with roughly manufactured packaging and irregularly shaped candies that glued your teeth together—he remembered how these things tasted.
Fei Du slowly picked out a toffee, used the tips of his teeth to rip open the package, and tossed the candy in his mouth. Then he oriented his gaze towards the kitchen, where the range hood was roaring, a vegetable knife and chopping board were rhythmically colliding, and Luo Wenzhou's back was appearing and disappearing.
What Luo Wenzhou had described as "throwing together some dishes" had actually been done conscientiously. In a very short time, he'd prepared several matching meat and vegetable dishes, and he arranged them around the cake in the center. He thought about it, then stuck in a candle and lit it.
Luo Wenzhou looked up and met Fei Du's eyes. Then he dryly said, "What are you looking at, I'm not going to sing you 'Happy Birthday'. Are you planning to make a wish? It can be something like, 'May I not get hit by a car again on my next birthday.'"
"Oh," said Fei Du.
The two of them exchanged helpless looks with the cartoon character candle on the cake. The atmosphere was very peculiar, as if it were a moment of deep mourning for ages past.
Luo Wenzhou immediately regretted it. "Hurry and blow it out. This is silly."
Of all the cakes in all the world, there were few that Fei Du hadn't eaten. Only a birthday cake was very strange to him. It seemed that he'd tasted one when he was very little. There had been many guests in Fei Du's house then. His birthday had basically been put on for outsiders to see. He'd only gotten one small symbolic piece of the expensive cake before it had been carried away. The next day when he'd gone to look for it, it was already gone—because the cream was no longer fresh.
In fact, what was the difference between a birthday cake and an ordinary breakfast cake? At most there were only a few holes left behind by candles. But Fei Du had always thought the flavor wasn't the same.
Luo Wenzhou's handiwork was very praiseworthy. The only thing missing was wine. Strictly following the doctor's orders, Captain Luo only gave him a bag of high-calcium breakfast milk.
There were some middle-aged and elderly men who were always making speeches in the outside world; back home in front of their wives and children, they would unconsciously bring out this unhealthy mannerism. When Luo Wenzhou was little, he'd despised his dad's habit of delivering a lecture before a meal. But after twenty years of subtle influence, he'd been infected himself. Ordinarily he only had Luo Yiguo around, and the disease had been incubating; today there was a Fei Du added to the dining table, and the disease erupted.
"Another year gone by." Luo Wenzhou poured the warmed-up breakfast milk into a glass and pushed it in front of Fei Du, launching into a lengthy speech that came down in a direct line from his old dad. "I'm not only talking about you, but you should do something proper after this. How long can you fool around? The greatest benefit of material life should be to give a person more pursuits, not to let him lie like a salted fish on a mountain of riches. A young person's life can't be too empty; sooner or later, something is bound to go wrong."
Fei Du had never experienced this type of Chinese-style head of household culture. Putting a croquette in his mouth, he felt that it sounded very novel.
Luo Wenzhou continued to jabber. "Basic human nature is like this. First we pursue food and shelter, financial security, comfort of the senses. Then inevitably we seek higher types of satisfaction, for example a sense of achievement, for example self-realization. Continuing to lose yourself in low-level extravagance is in fact only self-numbing. As time goes on, the invisible worries involved in it will cause a person great pain. A Maybach today, a Bugatti tomorrow—you can buy it all, but can it relieve the deep pain of struggling against human nature?"
"It can't." Fei Du composedly swallowed the croquette. "Although not being able to afford them at all is obviously a type of pain closer to the surface."
"…" Luo Wenzhou glared at him, but found that the corners of Fei Du's mouth held a trace of a smile. He was joking—even though the joke sounded like it was jabbing into the pit of one's heart. Luo Wenzhou said, "You even dare to interrupt when the head of household is lecturing. If this were my family's house, a little devil like you would have to move a bench to the door and sit there writing a self-reflection. You still want to eat?"
Hearing this, Fei Du thought of something, and his earlier smile gradually cooled. He was silent for a while, then suddenly said, "At my house, no one spoke during meals, unless there were guests. Otherwise my dad was rarely at the dining table. My mom's emotions were unstable. Often, halfway through the meal, she'd burst out for no reason: sometimes looking upset, throwing down the plates and leaving, sometimes suddenly sitting down next to the table and starting to cry."
Luo Wenzhou froze.
"Meals at my house were a very nerve-wracking thing." Fei Du shrugged, seeming a little helpless. "If it was ever calm, it was simply like winning the lottery."
Luo Wenzhou thought about it, didn't comfort him, only lightly said, "That sounds pretty miserable. I don't know whether it's more or less comfortable than writing a self-reflection."
Fei Du raised his brows.
"Seriously, imagine it. You're squatting at the door, leaning on a bench, holding a piece of writing paper towards your house's door. When it's warm, everyone only closes the burglar-proof door. From outside you can see what's happening inside your house. The neighbors all work with your parents, anyone who passes by looks down at you and asks, 'What have you done now, boy?' It's truly a humiliation towards a person's honor and dignity."
Fei Du couldn't resist laughing.
Luo Wenzhou was going to say something else. Suddenly, his phone rang; the call came from the landline at the office. Luo Wenzhou froze, a thread of an ominous premonition rising in his heart.
"Hello." Tao Ran's voice was a little breathless. "Captain Luo, a call came from Chang Ning's family to the police station in their jurisdiction. They say Chenchen's disappeared!"
His phone volume was very loud. Fei Du heard it, too.
Luo Wenzhou said, "When? Where did she disappear? Don't panic, it's not necessarily the same thing."
"She went for a drawing lesson at the Children's Palace today. Chang Ning dropped her off at midday. In the evening the adults arranged it with her, told her to wait half an hour at the Children's Palace and not come out. Her dad could only pick her up after he got out of work. Their class ended…around four-thirty. Her dad called her; she was still in the drawing classroom then. A little past five, when he came over, he couldn't find her."