When he'd gone out in the morning, the sun had been shining brightly, the sky clear enough to see for thousands of li, but around evening clouds came out of nowhere to provocatively drop a snow shower.
Using his bicycle as a snow plow, Luo Wenzhou slid it along the ground as he walked. When he was about to reach the City Bureau's gates, Tao Ran suddenly came hurrying after him and hung a very festively-wrapped box from his handlebars. "You left so quickly, are you in such a hurry to go home and cook? This is some cured meat my mom sent from home, all natural eco-friendly food made from organically fed pigs. I've just been handing it out in the office. This is your share."
Before Luo Wenzhou could say "thank you," he saw Tao Ran put his hand on the box of meat, his index finger quickly tapping on it three times.
As soon as the weather turned cold, Tao Ran had started wearing a down coat like a tortoise's shell, wrapped up so firmly you could see nothing but his eyes. When Luo Wenzhou looked over at him, he saw that there was no smile in his eyes and immediately knew that this "local specialty" box didn't purely contain local specialties.
Luo Wenzhou paused, then thanked him as if nothing were the matter and weighed the box in his hands. "When I see cured meat, I know it's really winter.—Why so heavy? How much did your mom send you?"
"A whole lot," Tao Ran said. "I even went and gave a box to shiniang yesterday."
Luo Wenzhou instantly froze—when Tao Ran had tapped the box, he'd been indicating that there was something in it other than cured meat; adding in these words, he meant that the thing came from shiniang—Yang Zhengfeng's widow.
The two of them silently exchanged a look.
The only thing that could have come from shiniang was something left behind by Yang Zhengfeng.
Tentatively, Luo Wenzhou said, "Shiniang doesn't like seeing us, and it's not a holiday right now. She didn't throw you out when you went over to bother her?"
Lao Yang had given up his life three years ago. If she had something, why was she only now willing to hand it over?
Tao Ran paused, something indescribable filling his gaze.
The night wind carrying snow was chilly and piercing. It could blow through your flesh straight to your lungs. The red banners at the City Bureau's gates had been hung up for National Day and hadn't been taken down yet. They fluttered in the snowy wind, so red they seemed about to pierce the twilight.
Luo Wenzhou stood up straight, suddenly having an ominous premonition.
"Shiniang…shiniang went to the hospital last month." Tao Ran subconsciously looked at the murky light, then aimlessly at his own feet, quietly saying, "They've found she has lymphoma."
Luo Wenzhou was stunned. "What?"
"Late stage," Tao Ran said, sounding as if the winter wind had choked him, pronouncing the words with difficulty. "She doesn't…doesn't have long."
"I'm going to go see her." After a moment's staring, Luo Wenzhou suddenly turned and got on the bike, stepping on the peddles. "What's going to happen to the child? She hasn't graduated yet…"
Tao Ran grabbed his elbow, shaking his head at him.
"It's too late today. Go home. Don't disturb her rest." Saying so, Tao Ran tapped again on the wrapped box of cured meet, meaningfully saying, "And it's not like everyone likes you at a glance. She won't necessarily be happy to see you. Go home and eat well. I'm off. You ride safely."
"Tao Ran!" Luo Wenzhou spit out a white breath, saying at his back, "Did she get sick because of Lao Yang? Is this all because Lao Yang died and she's been depressed ever since?"
Tao Ran waved at him from afar, not answering.
There was no answer to give; however they dug into the cause, it still wouldn't change the effect. At this point, it was too late to say anything.
Perhaps it was fate.
Whether you had genius, ability, or magic on your side, however great a fortune you possessed, however vast your power and influence, none of it mattered.
The box of cured meat Tao Ran had hung on his handlebars really was heavy, encumbering Luo Wenzhou's front wheel. He went face-first into the wind, his progress difficult.
When he'd gone out in the morning, this bicycle's two wheels had been like a pair of magical wind-and-fire wheels; on his way back in the evening, they seemed to have become misshapen metal circles.
As Luo Wenzhou was riding the bicycle across the street, he glanced to the right, passing the parking lot at the shopping center's doors. He suddenly instinctively looked up, then immediately realized that the car he'd just passed looked somewhat familiar.
Luo Wenzhou quickly put his feet on the ground to brake the bicycle and turned his head to look, coming face to face with his own car.
His head covered in bits of snow and ice, he opened his eyes wide and exchanged a helpless look with his car. The car's engine was running, letting out a droning sound; snowflakes revolved in the warm light of its low beam headlights.
Had Fei Du come to pick him up?
Luo Wenzhou's heavy heart seemed to have had a maglev installed; it rose in midair with a flutter, swimming around his chest. He focused, then casually strolled over to the car's window, bending down and planning to knock, when his surprise suddenly turned to fright—
He didn't know how long Fei Du had been waiting; he was curled up in the driver's seat asleep. The heating inside the car was obviously turned up high, and he, perhaps afraid of the cold, had the doors and windows tightly sealed!
A cold breath inundated Luo Wenzhou's chest, his lungs nearly bursting, and he hit the car window a few times. "Fei Du! Fei Du!"
When he was getting ready to break open the door, Fei Du finally woke up. He moved somewhat hazily, as if he'd forgotten where he was, then noticed the sound next to him.
Fei Du rubbed his eyes and unlocked the car door. "Did you get off…"
Before he finished asking the question, Luo Wenzhou grabbed his collar and pulled him out of the car, howling into his ear, "Were you trying to die, or do you have no fucking common sense!"
Fei Du stumbled. Suddenly pulled from the inside of the car that was as warm as springtime into the cold wintry air, he shivered, thoroughly waking up, realizing what he'd done—Fei Du hadn't meant to smother himself; he'd gotten out of the car to stroll around while waiting for Luo Wenzhou, but he really couldn't stand the cold and had gone back to the car to warm up for a while. He just hadn't expected that his stay in the hospital would have injured him to such a degree; before the blood had fully circulated to his hands and feet, he'd accidentally fallen asleep.
Fei Du very rarely did stupid things like this in front of others; he was quite upset. "I actually…"
"Go, go, get the hell over there." In his rage, Luo Wenzhou didn't want to hear his explanations. Pushing and pulling, he tossed Fei Du into the passenger's seat, then charged around and got into the car, pulling out of the parking spot like a whirlwind, leaving a ten-meter trail of exhaust. Then he remembered something and, swearing, got out of the car and brought over the forgotten bicycle and box of meat, dragging them into the trunk.
He slammed the car door thunderously and furiously drove home.
Fei Du had reached his present age with little experience of people howling into his ear. His ears rang from Luo Wenzhou's outburst, and he hadn't quite pulled himself together, like Luo Yiguo after knocking over and breaking a porcelain bowl.
After a period of dumb staring, he finally pulled himself together. To cover up the awkwardness, he showed an overly slick smile, put one hand on his head and the other, very ill-manneredly, on Luo Wenzhou's thigh. Lowering his voice, he said, "Shixiong, are you so worried about me?"
Luo Wenzhou didn't want to fool around with him. He slapped away his paw. "Get away."
The invincible President Fei instantly changed tactics, slowing his voice. "I was just too cold and got in to warm up. I wasn't going to stay long. I was…oh, I was resting my eyes just now."
Luo Wenzhou coldly said, "Were you resting your ears, too?"
Fei Du: "…"
Fei Du's few sentences of justification started up a counter-reaction. Luo Wenzhou had recovered from his initial almost overpowering fear, and it was as if some button had been pressed; he took a deep breath and unleashed a lengthy and explosive lecture upon Fei Du.
Luo Wenzhou naturally came by his superior ability to improvise lectures and scoldings from his father. Starting from an enumeration of every shameful thing Fei Du had ever done, he came down to him thoroughly forgetting the doctor's orders as soon as he'd gotten out of the hospital, going out to play who knew where first thing in the morning, trying to make himself sick.
Finally, he issued a rather forceful question in response to Fei Du's paltry explanation. "You're cold? If you're cold, why don't you wear long underwear?!"
This question rendered Fei Du speechless. He could only keep quiet, listening to the lecture all the way home, not attempting to put in another word.
Seeing that, after going inside with the box of cured meat in one hand and the clanking bicycle under the other arm, Luo Wenzhou still showed no signs of ceasing hostilities, Fei Du, without any warning, suddenly hugged him, kissing him like a surprise attack, this time saying the proper lines. "Shixiong, I was wrong."
"…" Luo Wenzhou kept his face as stern as possible, but his voice relaxed uncontrollably. "Don't give me that."
Fei Du lowered his head slightly, burying his face against his neck. He thought about it, then said, "Can I make it up to you with my body?"
Luo Wenzhou had known he couldn't expect anything good to come out of a scoundrel's mouth. He lightly smacked the small of his back, then gave him the bicycle, saying, "You can put the bike away in the basement—get some exercise before we eat, you look like you need it."
Fei Du knew when to quit. He held the handlebars, pushing the big, crude bike into the basement. There was a full-length mirror on the cabinet in the stairwell. Coming back up, he carelessly looked up and found that there was a rather indistinct smile at the corners of his mouth.
The bicycle's chain had just been oiled; Fei Du's neatly pressed pant leg had picked up a clear stain in the process of moving the bike. He paused, as if not understanding what he had to smile about. Just then, Luo Wenzhou hurried him from the kitchen. "Don't just wait around to eat, come over here and help. Can you wash vegetables?"
The one-time domineering director-general, reduced to being a porter and vegetable-washing lackey, scratched his nose. "…no."
Luo Wenzhou said, "You can't do anything! You're as useless as Luo Yiguo… Ah, you little whelps!"
Luo Yiguo was harmlessly licking its paws, not knowing how it had ended up dragged in. Hearing these words, it was beside itself with rage, jumping down from the top of the fridge, landing with perfect precision on Luo Wenzhou's instep, stamping furiously, then taking to its heels and dashing off.
In the winter night, with the frost like flowers, the city was ablaze with lights—
…and there were also unknown corners where unimaginable shadows spread.
The girl was hiding inside a garbage bin, her feet in a sticky mess, the pungent smell constantly assaulting her nasal cavity. She was trembling, curled tightly into a ball, biting her own wrist. In the dark, she heard a man's rough breathing not far off, and the dull sound of a sharp blade cutting through bone.
She was fifteen years old, as tall as an adult. Perhaps she ought to act like an adult, push open the garbage bin and go out to fight him.
There had been two of them at first. Two against one. They may have had a chance.
But she was too cowardly. She never dared to face things, didn't dare to resist at all; she always instinctively hid.
Suddenly, the sluggish and heavy footsteps sounded again, coming closer and closer. The girl's heart shuddered along with the steps. In the extremity of fear, her whole body started to go numb.
The footsteps suddenly paused, stopping outside of the garbage bin.
How far away was he? One meter? Half a meter? Or…thirty centimeters?
The girl held her breath. Separated by a thin plastic bin from an insane killer, she seemed to already smell the blood on him.
Suddenly, there was a gentle knock on the plastic garbage bin.
A boom.
The girl's tense nerves instantly collapsed. She shivered violently, the metal zipper of her jacket knocking against the side of the plastic bin—
There was a strange soft laugh in the dark. In a hoarse voice, a man crooned a wildly off-key song: "Little rabbit be good, open up as you should…"
The girl gave a heartrending shriek. Not two meters from where she was hiding lay a boy's corpse. His eyes had been smashed, and his limbs had all been chopped off; they lay in a neat row beside him. The torso was covered with Yufen Middle School's uniform jacket.
It was ten-thirty at night.
Luo Wenzhou locked up everything in the house that contained caffeine, held down Fei Du's head and gave him a cup of milk to drink, forcing him to go to sleep.
"It's ten-thirty." Fei Du looked at his watch, scoffing at this regimen for the middle-aged and elderly. "Never mind the night life, the social scene hasn't even properly gotten started yet. Shixiong, let's talk it over…"
Luo Wenzhou refused negotiations, rejecting him with one sentence. "Shut up. Lie down and sleep."
Fei Du thought this brazen dictatorship of Luo Wenzhou's was very unreasonable. He was getting ready to protest when he saw Luo Wenzhou get a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket.
Fei Du wisely submitted to the circumstances, immediately lying down without making a sound.
Luo Wenzhou stayed with him until around midnight. When he was sure Fei Du was fully asleep, he got up and kissed him gently, leaving the bedroom and closing the door. He got the box of cured meat Tao Ran had given him out of the kitchen storage room. Amidst the smell assaulting his nose, he found a thick folder.
As soon as he opened it, a handwritten letter fell out.
This was…the kind of red-squared writing paper that very few people would use in this era, written all over in fountain pen in a handwriting Luo Wenzhou had seen countless times—it belonged to the old criminal policeman Yang Zhengfeng.
The letter was addressed to his wife. Yang Zhengfeng wrote: "Jiahui, I'm writing this letter just in case. Just in case I die unexpectedly one day and you find what I've left behind, I hope it won't put you and Xinxin in danger. In my profession, no one wants to endanger his family. But I have no one else to entrust this to."
Luo Wenzhou's heart lurched.
"When you've finished making arrangements for my funeral, at all costs remember not to contact anyone at the City Bureau. There are people there who have changed. I don't know who they are. You must be careful. Wenzhou and Tao Ran and the other children were all brought up by me. I'm certain of them, but they're all too young. They may have an abundance of heart, but their abilities are insufficient. Don't involve them, and don't get too close to them, in order to avoid the younger generation making a pointless sacrifice."