At first Fei Du stared. Then he leaned back, seeming very careless. Understanding but feigning not to, he asked, "Hm?"
There was a great deal of the playboy in that lean; the corners of his lips were ready to smile but not smiling, and his head was tilted as he looked at Luo Wenzhou. He asked, clearly knowing the answer, "What did I do last night?"
Luo Wenzhou: "…"
He found he was dismayingly base. He was far more accustomed to a Fei Du with the words "asking for a beating" stuck to his forehead than this strange, ambiguous manner of his.
When the two of them were alone, if either showed signs of getting flustered, the other would quickly take advantage of his weakness.
Luo Wenzhou's temporary silence made Fei Du mistakenly think that he couldn't get the words out; it awakened his interest, and he couldn't resist teasing Luo Wenzhou some more. "Last night, I voluntarily sent some comfort to you good officers. Is Captain Luo thinking of requesting another silk banner for me?"
Saying so, he pressed a little closer to Luo Wenzhou, his eyes giving off varied light, radiating from the irises, distinctly spreading out, like a freeze-frame of ripples. "What are you planning to write this time? I'm thinking…"
"Fei Du," Luo Wenzhou suddenly said with a great show of propriety, "if you provoke me like that again, I'm going to think you have some 'unspeakable intentions' towards me."
Fei Du: "…"
Because of their unusual relationship, the majority of the time, Luo Wenzhou was in deadly earnest in his presence. As time went on, it had given Fei Du the mistaken impression that this person had shame.
After a pause, Fei Du executed a "retreat at the enemy's attack," turning to look out the window at the somber funeral parlor. "Captain Luo, are you sure you want to discuss such an indecent subject with me in surroundings like these?"
"Besides the indecent subject, I also have a decent one," said Luo Wenzhou. "Are you planning to become a hand-offs leader in September and hand your vast wealth over to others to manage?"
"There's no need to worry about that. I have a reliable team." Fei Du shrugged. "They don't even need to be all that reliable, just a little more reliable than me.—Even though I'm stepping back from daily operations, the company's major policy decisions will still require my signature. I'll still have my controlling interest. Anyway, even if it all goes to pieces…"
"The leftover flotsam and jetsam will still sell for more money than we lowly public servants will earn in a lifetime, including our pensions, enough for several people for several lifetimes—right?" Luo Wenzhou cut short his ostentation. "Stop talking nonsense. When your dad had his accident, you were still in school, though your studies were sloppy and brainless enough—why weren't you willing to trust that 'reliable' team then, sit back and collect your annual dividends like a well-behaved shareholder?"
Fei Du looked up and met Luo Wenzhou's eyes in the rearview mirror; his gaze was deep, with a frank and familiar severity.
"You didn't take on your dad's company for the money. You were investigating him," Luo Wenzhou said positively. "According to this inference, you applying to Yan Security Uni now has the same aim. What is it for— or rather, who is it for?"
"Maybe it's to hit on you?" Fei Du said without turning a hair. "Perhaps my taste has suddenly changed, and I've started to salivate for Captain Luo's type of…hm…deadly serious dark horse charm?"
Not a single straightforward word ever came out of this bastard's mouth; it was all circles and obfuscation.
He narrowed his eyes, his gaze sweeping invasively over Luo Wenzhou's straight nose bridge and slightly sharp lips, seeming ready to kiss him at any moment. With a trace of a nasal drawl, he gently asked, "How do you know my studies were sloppy, Captain Luo? Aside from secretly sending gifts, were you also concerned about my report cards?"
Luo Wenzhou: "…"
He let a breath out through his nose, unlocked the car, and under the attentive, ambiguous gaze of this bit of goods, without any warning, he reached out and grabbed the collar of President Fei's thoughtfully arranged shirt, spoiling his large-tailed wolf's posture.
"First," Luo Wenzhou said sternly, "my good looks have always received wide social approval from the masses. They belong to a classic, timeless style of male beauty. If you think that I'm a dark horse, that only goes to show that you haven't studied enough and are ignorant and ill-informed.
"Second." His gaze swept over Fei Du's arm in its cast, looking like the sight was a little too tragic to behold. "Darling, it's been a long time since I've seen anyone bold enough to talk as big as you do. You want to hit on me in your condition? You'd be better off hitting the milk and building up some calcium first, President Fei!"
Then he pointed to the car door and said to Fei Du, "Get out."
President Fei had been invariably victorious in all forms of flirtation. Meeting for the first time with such a rude rebuff, he felt it was very novel. Shooed out of the car by Luo Wenzhou in his disabled state, he watched Luo Wenzhou's back with a look that said he was itching to have a go; but for the moment he laid down his arms, closed his mouth, and followed him to the memorial hall.
The memorial hall's atmosphere was harsh, and the cooling system installed inside was perhaps not central air but a refrigeration unit.
As soon as the door opened, a dense chill came rolling out. Some staff members verified Luo Wenzhou's ID with unusual suspicion, not understanding why the police would want to come investigate a box of remains.
"What would you like to see?" said the memorial hall's manager as he swiped his card and led them in. "We haven't broken any laws. Even if we're being haunted, since when has the scope of business of our People's Public Security been so wide?"
Luo Wenzhou was in fact only calm on the surface. Having just eaten a certain person's full broadside of harassment, those last husky words were still going around and around beside his ear, making his heart flutter. All he wanted was to make the entire world shut up. Therefore he irritably responded, "What if someone's planted a bomb in the wall of remains?"
The storage room's manager gave him a shocked look, evidently taking Luo Wenzhou for a novel type of psychopath.
The storage area covered the surface of an entire wall, one small square after another reaching from the very bottom all the way to the ceiling. Su Xialoan was in a corner…in a tiny crystal frame.
"Area C, 106—Su Xiaolan." The manager checked the name. "That's her. Her daughter and fiancé put her there. Ask if you need anything. I'll withdraw now and be back in twenty minutes."
Then he put his palms together, made a little bow towards Su Xiaolan's photograph, and withdrew.
Luo Wenzhou batted away Fei Du's hand on its way to pick up Su Xiaolan's photograph. He took a pair of gloves from his pocket and checked whether the crystal frame had a double layer. Seeing there was nothing out of the ordinary, he passed it to Fei Du and went to go through the "burial goods" beside the box of ashes.
"This photograph is very interesting," said Fei Du.
"Too interesting," Luo Wenzhou said as he went through the stuff. "It's exactly the same one as in our bureau's file room from twenty years ago."
The space inside the little square where the box of ashes was interred wasn't big. It was clear at a glance what the family had put there. Aside from the frame, Luo Wenzhou pulled out an old dress, menthol cigarettes, lipstick, and other things a woman would carry on her; it seemed like conventional burial goods, all without any value.
"So-called commemoration of the deceased is in fact all a rite for the living. At the memorial ceremony, the photograph that gets set out often shows the image of the deceased as they lived in the imaginations of their friends and relatives.—If these were people who associated often with the deceased, it'll often be a recent photograph. If they were more distant friends and relatives who didn't have many opportunities to see the deceased, it'll be a photograph with commemorative significance. Besides that, some of the dead have comparatively strong self-awareness; after they pass, their friends and family will honor their last wishes and choose the photograph they're most satisfied with, generally showing the deceased's greatest accomplishment in life. These are the usual circumstances." Fei Du tapped lightly on the crystal frame. "So the most worthwhile moment in Su Xiaolan's life was when she was twelve or thirteen? And after that, in a certain person's eyes, was she tantamount to already dead?"
Luo Wenzhou was just checking whether there was any place he'd overlooked; he hadn't spoken yet when his phone suddenly rang.
The abrupt sound of "Five Rings Song" vibrated back and forth inside the tortuous storage room, the echoes going up and down, producing a perfect horror movie effect. Luo Wenzhou himself felt his flesh crawl. The manager who'd said he was "withdrawing" seamlessly appeared, sticking his head in and darkly saying, "Turn off the sound, officer. You have to be responsible in public places. You're disturbing people's rest like this."
"My good dage," Luo Wenzhou said murderously, "if I weren't responsible, you'd definitely be in the ground by now."
The manager didn't dare to attempt reasoning with a barbarian; he retracted his head at once.
Amidst the ill wind, Luo Wenzhou, his face greenish, picked up the phone. "Tao Ran, what have you found?"
"The estate from back then is still here." Under the scorching sun, Tao Ran pulled at his uniform collar. While making his phone call, he strode into the shade of a tree to get out of the heat, ceaselessly fanning himself with a photocopied old map. "I'm about to burn up.—This estate is called the Sunward Estate, among the earliest commercial housing batch from over twenty years ago, high quality by the standards of the time. The old uncles playing chess around here say, when Jinxiu was still here, many students from rich families rented apartments there."
"What about the surrounding wall?" Luo Wenzhou asked. "According to what Guo Heng said, he looked through the fretwork on the wall and could see Wu Guangchuan's house. Can you determine approximately where it is?"
"This place has been rebuilt so its own mother wouldn't know it. You sure know how to make things difficult for a person, boss." Gasping, Tao Ran very improperly wiped the sweat from his forehead on his sleeve. Not far off, he saw his colleagues, dripping sweat like rain, beckoning to him.—They had invited over a few surveyors from a nearby construction site. Following the Sunward Estate's foundations and the proportions on the old map, they were drawing the traces from back then on the wholly altered surface.
The road had widened more than twofold; Wu Guangchuan's house had been leveled by it. Luckily the streets were deserted in the midsummer afternoon. Two policemen, each holding up a wooden staff level, stood a meter and a half apart in the road, restoring the main door of Wu Guangchuan's house.
Tao Ran followed the thickly weeded perimeter wall of the Sunward Estate for a span, then said to Luo Wenzhou, "I think the place must be between Building 7 and Building 8—according to Guo Heng's description, the place was just facing a corner, and you could spy on Wu Guangchuan's house from some dozen meters off… This is a hard place to find, Wenzhou. The original building's bicycle shed is here, the path isn't wide enough for a person. I had to turn sideways when I came in.—Back then, Xu Wenchao took Guo Heng through very familiarly. How do you suppose he found the way?"
He'd just spoken when a mass-mailed message arrived on both of their phones. It was Lang Qiao.
Lang Qiao had gone to Jinxiu Middle School to go through the old files the school had preserved. She'd found the contact address recorded for Xu Wenchao during junior middle school—Sunward Estate, Building 8, Unit 3, Apartment 201.
Holding his phone, Tao Ran turned to look at the old buildings with their mottled outer walls, then quickly came out through the small crevice, turned, and ran up to the second floor of Building 8. The window in the corridor, open year-round, had rusted in place. It was covered in a layer of year-round greasy dirt built up over time. It faced in the same direction as the window of the master bedroom in 201.
Tao Ran opened his eyes wide and pressed close to look. Out the window he saw his two colleagues holding staff levels. Some meters behind them, some stones had been arranged to represent the basement of Wu Guangchuan's house—old houses's basements had often been rented out separately, so many of them were sealed off and had windows. There would be a railing around the house, with flowerbeds around the railing, to protect against people falling in, and also to prevent people from spying.
Twenty years ago, this city hadn't been so grandiose. Past nine o'clock at night, the streets would be deserted. There hadn't been so many night owls.
Certain people who could only exist in the shadows would cautiously scope out the surroundings, determine that all was still in the deep night, then peel off their painted faces and take out their pitch-black bones and desires, letting themselves go to their hearts' content in basements that wouldn't see the light of day.
Would there have been a pair of eyes watching from on high then, able to see past the flowerbeds, glimpse everything from this seemingly fated point of view?
Covered in mingled sweat and gooseflesh, Tao Ran dashed to Building 8's committee office and smacked his work ID on the table in front of the staff member. "Could I trouble you to have a look for me, who is the owner of Apartment 201 in Unit 3, has it changed hands in the last few years?"
"201?" The staff member flipped through the records. "It hasn't. It's still the original owner."
Tao Ran panted twice. "Surnamed Xu?"
"Not Xu, surnamed Sun—an elderly couple." The staff member turned to the old building's manager to verify, "Right, Zhao-jie?"
"Right! They're getting on in years, have a daughter, I think the daughter's in her forties?" The middle-aged woman poured Tao Ran a cup of water. Tao Ran forced himself to thank her; he couldn't help feeling a little disappointed—in the corridor just now he'd had a feeling coming out of nowhere, as if there was something on the other side of the wall in 201; it turned out that his nerves were just oversensitive.
Tao Ran was about to take his leave when the middle-aged woman who'd poured him water said, "The daughter's very capable, settled down abroad. Some years ago she brought her parents over to live with her. I talked with the family's uncle back then. He said they were planning to sell the apartment before leaving—what happened then? Maybe they didn't find a suitable buyer or something. I see the ownership was never transferred.—Although maybe it's been rented out, the water and electricity fees have always been paid…"
At this point, Zhao-jie suddenly thought of something, and her words came to a halt. She exchanged an embarrassed look with her colleague.
Tao Ran stared. "Dajie, do you know who the tenant is?"
Zhao-jie gave a "haha," her gaze very unnaturally flickering down. "I don't know. I haven't run into them. They all buy their own water and electricity now, the owners don't come to us if they don't have any problems."
Tao Ran's eyes turned to the "Eliminate Safety Hazards, Crack Down On Overcrowded Rentals" poster on the wall of the committee office and deliberately asked, "Wait a minute, you wouldn't have illegal overcrowded rentals here, would you?"
The two staff members' faces altered simultaneously. Zhao-jie hurriedly defended herself: "No, no, that family's luck hasn't been too good, the tenants keep changing, it's not an illegal rental, it absolutely…"
Tao Ran stood up at once. "Give me the keys!"
Deceitful property management companies tacitly accepted privately set-up illegal rentals, but were the people coming and going in 201 really an illegal rental?
At this time, Luo Wenzhou had already completed his raid on "Su Xiaolan"'s house and come up empty. He turned helplessly to Fei Du. "President Fei, you can be unreliable sometimes, too."
Leaning on the wall of remains without a trace of superstitious taboo, Fei Du said, "Why don't you check the last place before determining whether I'm reliable or not?"
Saying so, he picked up the box of Su Xiaolan's ashes. It was tightly wrapped in two layers of silk. Like removing a lover's clothing, his fingers moved over it lightly, and the silk eagerly slipped off, revealing the square wooden box within.
Luo Wenzhou: "…"