"Something's come up." Luo Wenzhou opened the door to the office with a display of propriety; seeing his solemn expression, everyone thought there had been another major case; they put down the work at hand in a body and raised their heads to look at him.
But Luo Wenzhou unhurriedly picked up his teacup and slowly waved the stack of things he was holding, which looked like tickets. "I know you'll be very excited to hear this. There's a free collective friendship activity, next Sunday afternoon at two, travel expenses for the round trip reimbursed, limited opportunity…"
Before he'd finished speaking, Luo Wenzhou was already buried in universal eye-rolling.
"What's with the attitude? The organization is concerned about the physical and mental health of you single dogs and has organized this on purpose and given a certain number of letters of invitation to our team," Luo Wenzhou said in a lengthy style. "If anyone happens to be on duty that day and wants to go, tell me ahead of time and I'll take your shift. Those with families have to make a sacrifice for you."
But no one thanked Captain Luo for his "selfless offer"; hearing these words, everyone wanted to rebel on the spot, beat their superior into a ball, then kick him out the door.
"I'm putting the letters of invitation on top of the water cooler. Come take one yourself if you want to go. Those who aren't single, don't come along to watch the fun. If there aren't enough places, you can all mutually modestly decline. The younger ones can have some conscience and line up at the back." As he spoke, Luo Wenzhou passed Xiao Haiyang's desk, casually ruffling his messy hair. He looked at Xiao Haiyang very meaningfully, nodded, and said, "Seize the opportunity, young man."
Unfortunately, Xiao Haiyang couldn't grasp meaning from winks and nudges; he was in the process of shoving bread into his mouth, both ears shut to the outside world, carefully studying an old case. Receiving Luo Wenzhou's attack without warning, the arms of his glasses hung crookedly on his puffed-out cheeks. Xiao Haiyang tossed his head and looked at Luo Wenzhou expressionlessly, suspecting that he may have gone crazy.
Young people didn't have any interest in match-making parties organized by elders. Lang Qiao had worked the night shift the night before and had just handed over her work. Yawning, she lazily packed up her bag and prepared to get off work. As she walked, she said, "During school we were impeded in the pursuit of truth by dating, holding up our development into normal adults. And now, fine, not only do we have to brush shoulders with the Nobel Prize winner, we also have to go to a match-making party because we're single. Friends, how lamentable! Anyone who likes to can go. I'm not going, anyway."
In the corner, Xiao Haiyang raised his head and silently looked at her swaying figure.
Luo Wenzhou said, "It's called friendship! What match-making?"
Lang Qiao said, "Friendship means the men and women are separated, sitting at two tables, with some tangerines and melons seeds and bottled water on the tables, everyone is from the same system, everyone's staring at each other and awkwardly talking shop…"
"Who told you everyone's from the same system?" Luo Wenzhou's voice came from his inner office, interrupting her lines. "The event was sponsored by Director Lu's lady's song and dance troupe. Lao Lu ran the risk of being made to kneel in penitence to get his wife to agree."
Before he'd finished speaking, the acute young men had already seized the key words "song and dance troupe." A few of them leapt up together and started fighting over the letters of invitation. "There's an exhibition arranged at the beginning of the event, and a play in the evening… Hell, there's also a buffet!"
Lang Qiao, who had already swayed her way to the door of the office, paused in her steps. "Buffet?"
Her colleague reported the name of a restaurant. "Gourmet food from every country, unlimited supply of luxury seafood, hand-made Italian ice cream…"
Lang Qiao didn't finish listening; she gave a yowl and called back, "Me! I'm going!"
If you'd arranged all the "princesses" in history in order of seniority, Princess Xiao Qiao could probably only make a contribution in the area of "gluttony."
Luo Wenzhou was very pained. "Lang Big-Eyes, do I starve you normally? You seem to be making progress!"
Lang Qiao was a true disciple of Captain Luo; with utmost shamelessness, she quickly pulled out a letter of invitation and answered briskly, "Imperial Father, I'm not making progress."
Her conduct of cutting in line quickly drew everyone's dissatisfaction. "You're just a little girl, don't you know about order of seniority? Get in the back of the line, hand it over!"
Lang Qiao tossed aside her bag and imperiously raised her fists. "Come on, take it if you can!"
"Hey, no internal strife, we've got a spy in our midst."
"My good dage, your son is two years old already, have some dignity!"
The letters of invitation no one had wanted before had changed entirely, suddenly becoming very exciting. The unmarried young people shoved and jostled, joining together to attempt to throw the non-single people trying to scrounge a meal out of the line.
Xiao Haiyang seemed unable to bear the noise they were making; he silently raised his head and watched. While he was no longer as prickly as he had been when he'd first come, his temperament remained, and he hadn't become especially lively. He still didn't know how to take part in these daily boisterous fights and jeering. On such occasions, he always became a spectator, like a bunting free from the world, looking down from on high and disdaining the chaos.
Just then, Tao Ran suddenly walked over and knocked on his desk. Then, before Xiao Haiyang could speak, he put up his index finger and shushed him, furtively handing over a letter of invitation under the table; who knew how he'd gotten his hands on it in these circumstances?
Xiao Haiyang stared. Tao Ran quietly said, "It'll be quiet, no need to shoot a gun—are you going?"
Xiao Haiyang's first reaction was to shake his head; halfway through, his gaze once again turned to the crowd of his chasing, quarreling mentally deficient colleagues and fell on…a certain person who had spent the night on duty and could still easily knock down a crowd of elders; his shaking head seemed to jam.
Smiling, Tao Ran asked, "Well?"
Xiao Haiyang awkwardly pushed at his glasses and said in a voice like a mosquito's buzz: "…I'm going."
Tao Ran smacked the back of his head and returned to his work station, hiding his merit. "What is there to be embarrassed about?"
When he'd walked over a meter away, the string in Xiao Haiyang's mind, often half a beat slow, finally caught up, and he came around—it seemed that Tao Ran was quietly "giving up" this letter of invitation to him.
For once, Xiao Haiyang "understood something" and quickly said, "Deputy-Captain Tao, why did you give it to me? Don't you want to go yourself?"
Tao Ran: "…"
Xiao Haiyang was a young man who didn't know the meaning of the term "on the quiet." Everyone in the office heard his announcement; they all turned their heads together to stare at Tao Ran.
Then the honest and forthright Xiao Haiyang added another honest and forthright statement: "Do you have a girlfriend now?"
In the inner office, Luo Wenzhou choked on a mouthful of tea; he very much wanted to applaud Xiao Haiyang.
This opportunity to expose the news truly was rather timely. Others weren't aware, but Luo Wenzhou knew the reason Tao Ran had for once gotten off work on time last weekend—he'd gone to a concert with a young lady; it was Fei Du who'd gotten the tickets for them.
Due to his base nature, Luo Wenzhou, on learning of this, had wanted to spread this piece of exclusive gossip far and wide, but to this day he hadn't found an appropriate posture—how to maintain his own glorious character while gloriously spreading gossip?
Luo Wenzhou had been thinking it over for days without thinking of a way, and holding it back was driving him crazy; just when he felt he was going to start talking in his sleep from frustration, the magical object Comrade Xiao Haiyang had risen into the clouds.
"N-n-no…" Tao Ran's face heated up at a speed visible to the naked eye; he became a stutterer on the spot. "I, I don't, girlfriend…"
At Deputy-Captain Tao's slip of the tongue, everyone was silent for a moment, then let out a collective roar. Tao Ran was so embarrassed he wanted to dive head-first into the cracks in his keyboard. Ducking, he waved a hand. "Don't fuss, don't fuss, things aren't even moving anywhere yet."
Luo Wenzhou only wanted to see the world in chaos. "There's no need to worry about things moving if you're all right where you are."
Hearing the familiar stuttering, Xiao Haiyang instantly remembered the young lady who'd spent so much time in Tao Ran's hospital room. He spoke directly: "I know, is it the one from hospital?"
Very ambiguously, Luo Wenzhou said, "No wonder you asked me to get that for you."
Lang Qiao said, "What?"
Tao Ran said, "Luo Wenzhou!"
Luo Wenzhou crossed his legs and calmly watched Tao Ran being pressed to his desk by the crowd.
Just then, Lang Qiao's remarkable crow's mouth came out with the sentence: "Is it the one who sent you flowers that one time?"
Tao Ran froze. "Huh?"
"A big bouquet!" Lang Qiao said, sketching with her hands. "And there was a love poem on a slip of paper. The signature was 'Fei!'"
Tao Ran, pressed to the desk: "…"
Luo Wenzhou, watching the game with pleasure: "…"
Lang Qiao sighed in delight. "Hey, isn't it a coincidence! Another Fei, from the same clan as President Fei!"
There's a saying that goes, "Illness goes in by the mouth and calamity comes out"; material food and speech often carry with them immaterial disaster and bad luck. Lang Qiao's words established the key note of her breakfast for the rest of the year—all cilantro.
And President Fei, whose fate was tied to Officer Lang's, once again became a fish in troubled waters.
Fei Du felt something was wrong as soon as he got home after work. Luo Yiguo didn't put its head out the door to welcome him. When Fei Du came inside, it was curled up on the shoe cabinet in the entrance hall, hugging its tail, silent as a cicada in winter. These two masters had some form of communication; at any rate, after exchanging a look with Luo Yiguo, Fei Du at once acutely sniffed out something wrong with the atmosphere—his footsteps nimbly paused, and he quickly reviewed everything he had done recently.
He'd left early and come home in the evening, not overlooking timely reports; he hadn't participated in any irregular recreation activities; he'd spoken little and worked a lot, firmly put an end to the conduct Luo Wenzhou defined as "flirting all over the place"; he hadn't even speeded or run any red lights. Could it be that he'd drunk the dregs of a cup of wine the afternoon before at a business lunch? It couldn't be that when his car had been under the restriction the day before, he'd brushed against some girl on the subway and ended up with a lipstick mark? Fei Du reviewed himself from top to bottom with a guilty conscience—his attire was perfect, with nothing amiss.
Then could it be…
Fei Du gestured at Luo Yiguo to be quiet, opened the door he hadn't closed firmly, and quietly strolled out, thinking up an excuse to work overtime.
Luo Yiguo turned its head and let out a sound: "Me-ow?"
Fei Du: "…"
He was afraid his friendship with this cat had come to an end.
A hand suddenly reached past Fei Du to close the door.
Luo Wenzhou had been silently repeating to himself the card a certain person had written out with his own hand to deliver flowers and had prepared a heap of belated settling of accounts. Drawing out his voice, he asked, "President Fei, where are you going right after coming back?"
Fei Du gave a start. Then the hand that had shut the front door uncompromisingly looped around his waist. Luo Wenzhou forced him to turn around. With a false smile, he said, "What are you running for?"
Fei Du saw that he had been exposed and quickly admitted his fault. "I was wrong."
Luo Wenzhou said, "Wrong how?"
Fei Du could only make an accurate confession. "The day before yesterday, when you were working the night shift, I played games until three in the morning."
Luo Wenzhou: "…"
Well now, this was an unexpected harvest.
Seeing his expression, Fei Du knew he'd confessed to the wrong thing. He quickly corrected himself. "I drank a couple of mouthfuls of wine yesterday afternoon—a couple of mouthfuls at most, no more."
Luo Wenzhou looked at him, smiling, his gaze as kindly as a butcher circling a lamb for the slaughter, silently assessing where to make the first cut. "What else?"
Fei Du said, "…Last week, I was the one who knocked over your teacup and broke it, not the cat."
Luo Yiguo watched numbly from the side, licking its paw, its figure melancholy.
Luo Wenzhou had an unprecedented awareness that there really were two cats in his house. Luo Yiguo wasn't the only suspect in all misdeeds. According to experience, Fei Du felt that in these circumstances, the best plan was to voluntarily sell his body. Thereupon he firmly held down Luo Wenzhou's hand and drew close to kiss his nose and lips, lowering his voice ambiguously: "I'll make it up to you."
Before Luo Wenzhou could work out how he meant to make it up, Fei Du had invaded his lips and tongue, wandering around inside and out. Luo Wenzhou's fingers suddenly tightened—before withdrawing, Fei Du licked the crack between his lips. "I'll wet your throat for you."
Luo Wenzhou: "…"
This person's skill in courting death was truly professional.
Luo Wenzhou sighed, drew close to Fei Du's ear, and quietly said something. Fei Du's expression altered at once. He turned to run and was held by the waist by Luo Wenzhou. "Didn't you copy it out yourself character by character?"
Fei Du quickly said, "Those ones were all copied, the one I wrote for you was an original!"
For him, the focus was on "an original," but the speaker and the listener were out of alignment; Luo Wenzhou's focus was naturally on the remaining words. He narrowed his eyes. "Those—ones?"
Fei Du: "…"
Luo Yiguo wanted to look on; it eagerly leapt off the shoe cabinet and followed. It was shut out at the door, flattening itself against the door into a cat cake with its hind legs sticking out. It was very unsatisfied, because it felt that the whole blood debt had yet to be settled—for example, Luo Wenzhou's sweater with a hole in it had clearly gotten caught on a zipper on Fei Du's sleeve; it hadn't been clawed up by Luo Yiguo carrying it into its cat bed. Also…
There was a bang in the study, followed by the sound of books falling to the floor. Luo Yiguo pricked up its ears. Its whiskers shivered, and it was scared into clinging to the foot of the wall.
The night was very long, and there were many accounts to settle.