WWY Chapter 26
by VolareQi A’s baseball cap was pulled down low, his gaze scanning the people coming and going inside and outside the supermarket, seemingly casual, but actually remaining vigilant.
“The new hairstyle suits you well, it reminds me of certain old times.”
“Thanks to you, I can only cut it like this.”
Through his large mask, Qi A’s laughter sounded muffled: “Your life is pretty tough, how come you didn’t die?”
Lan He also smiled: “You didn’t want to kill me anyway, what are you pretending for?”
“Where does your confidence come from, you traitor?”
“Just now a policeman said, ‘These evil elements are really stupid, if they want to kill someone, why not do it quietly, why bother with a notification sound?’ At that time, I really wanted to defend you, it’s not that you’re stupid, you just can’t bear to see me die.”
After saying that, he clearly felt the body next to him stiffen slightly, and couldn’t help but raise a victorious smile.
“Lan He, go apologize to Dad, he likes you the most, he will definitely forgive you.”
“Not going.”
“Dad has never mistreated you!”
He couldn’t control his volume, attracting several curious glances, and hurriedly lowered his head subconsciously.
Lan He sighed: “Qi A, you know why I left, is there any point in persuading me to go back?”
Qi A’s teeth itched with hatred: “I see you really want to die!”
“Then do it?” Lan He finally turned his head to look at him, smiling sinisterly, “Kill me right here, one blow to kill, do you have the ability!”
Qi A wasn’t stupid, he was currently wanted by the police, and it took a lot of effort to avoid surveillance and sneak in. If he took off his mask now, the police would block him here in less than three minutes.
“Last chance, Lan He! I’ll give you a few more days to consider, I hope next time we meet you’ll give me a satisfactory answer, otherwise I won’t say another good word for you, I’ll pretend those things from the past never happened, I’ll pretend I never knew you!”
He struggled to suppress the sudden burst of hysteria, resisting the urge to pack him up and take him away, and roared lowly.
Lan He pursed his lips: “A break in friendship? Whatever, but if you want to attack me, I’m afraid you won’t have a chance.”
He raised his chin, pointing towards the bathroom, while Jiu Ya was standing not far away by a display cabinet, his hand reaching under his clothes at his lower back, his face full of vigilance.
Qi A took a deep breath, stood up and glared at Lan He fiercely, then turned and walked towards Jiu Ya, but didn’t make any move when their eyes met, just walked past him.
After his tall figure completely disappeared, Jiu Ya ran to Lan He: “Young Master Lan, are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
Lan He pointed to the two large bags of things in the shopping cart, and Jiu Ya hurriedly went to pick them up.
“Why didn’t you tell Officer Ling about being followed? Isn’t it the police’s responsibility to protect citizens?”
Lan He looked at him for a while, squinting his eyes with a headache: “I don’t want to deal with the police too much.”
Jiu Ya: “?”
Then who is it that tries to create opportunities to be together?
He could see that his employer had a good impression of that tall and handsome police officer, only separated by an invisible barrier, but that had nothing to do with him as a bodyguard, his task was just to protect his employer’s safety.
Lan He understood better than an outsider that the police could protect him better.
But if Qi A was caught, he would probably be implicated the next day, and most of the things he had done in the past were enough to put him in jail for life.
Wait, just wait…
–
The city full of ruins and debris had just suffered its sixth bombing this month, with blood, dust, and rubble everywhere.
This time the bombing target was a refugee camp converted from a school, and an entire block was affected. The mottled and hollow buildings were crumbling in the strong wind brought by the warplanes.
As the bombers roared overhead, eight-year-old Lan was searching for food in a collapsed shopping mall. There was a risk of another collapse at any time, but for a child who hadn’t had a drop of water for two days, the temptation of the shopping mall’s food counters was extraordinary, even though it had probably been searched countless times by others.
He struggled to climb through the ruins, avoiding protruding steel bars and glass shards mixed in the gravel, and following the direction in his memory, finally found half a golden biscuit.
The biscuit still had half of the Eddie LOGO left, it was the most expensive biscuit in the shopping mall’s food store, an imported product, and Lan, who occasionally sneaked into the shopping mall to beg, could only drool over it.
He carefully pried it out of the brick cracks, blew off the dirt on it, and tasted it bit by bit, the rich butter fragrance intoxicated him. Even though it was mixed with a slightly fishy soil when he ate it, it didn’t prevent him from crowning it as the most delicious thing in the world.
Although he ate it very slowly, it always came to an end. He even licked the crumbs between his fingers, smacked his lips with lingering aftertaste, but his stomach seemed to be even hungrier.
He lowered his head, staring numbly at his toe that had been cut at some point, the solidified smile on his face gradually disappeared, and two large tears swirled in his eyes for a while, finally unable to stop themselves from falling, carving out two curved gullies on his chapped face.
It was really so unfair, why couldn’t he find a whole pack of biscuits? That way, he could share half with Qi A, who had shared half a can of meat with him last time. Although it had gone bad and smelled terrible, he hadn’t repaid him yet.
Too selfish, he should have broken off half of the biscuit and saved it for him, he must have never eaten such a delicious biscuit like himself.
He slumped down against the wall, extremely sad.
Suddenly, the ruins shook, and someone walked down the half-collapsed stairs.
It was a thin young man with the same oriental face as him, looking very kind.
He carefully looked at the boy huddled in the ruins, and couldn’t help but be amazed when he saw his beautiful eyebrows and eyes.
He put the pendant he was holding in his pocket, chose a solid path and walked up to him, asking in Chinese: “Are you looking for something to eat?”
Lan looked at him blankly, not understanding his words.
So he changed to the local language and asked again.
This time Lan nodded.
The man squatted down: “What’s your name?”
Lan shrank back: “Lan.”
The man smiled and touched his dusty hair: “A very special name, where’s your family?”
Lan shook his head.
The man took out a pack of unopened “Eddie” from his pocket: “Take it and eat it.”
Lan’s eyes lit up, he wiped his tearful eyes, and stuffed it into his clothes without even saying thank you, holding it like a treasure through his clothes.
The man asked strangely: “Aren’t you going to eat it?”
Lan said: “I, I have a friend outside, I want to go back and eat it with him!”
The man was a little moved, staring at his timid face for a while, and reached out to him: “From now on, I’ll be your dad, are you willing to come with me?”
Lan bit his lip, his little hand subconsciously clenched the biscuit in his arms, and made up his mind: “Willing!”
The man smiled and touched his head, saying in Chinese that Lan couldn’t understand: “Then from now on, let’s call him Lan.”
–
Lan He walked away easily, but Ya Gu couldn’t leave.
As the vice president of Gu’s Trading, she was at the scene of the explosion, so she couldn’t avoid accepting a detailed inquiry from the police.
The group’s public relations department had already been dispatched. After accepting the inquiry, she contacted the head of the public relations department, requesting that they must mention the purpose of today’s interview when releasing it to the public. If necessary, they could release the content of the camera through a private account and spread it as a gossip.
On the other side, Tuxi Ling flipped through the inquiry records, asking Shengbo Xia as he read: “What’s the progress on your side?”
“The surveillance didn’t find anything unusual, and then we visited the maintenance department. The reception room is rarely used, except for administrative staff, only the maintenance department people have been in there these past two days, cleaning the air conditioning for the building.”
“Air conditioning cleaning?”
“Yes, this maintenance includes cleaning the exterior walls of the building and cleaning the air conditioning. It started this Monday, and the funding approval document was signed on the 29th of last month.”
“Did you visit the people in the maintenance department?”
“I went, and I also found the two people responsible for the air conditioning network on the top floor. They are both locals with simple backgrounds and don’t seem to have any problems.”
“Nothing has problems, but the bomb was put there by someone, right? What the hell?”
“Uh…” Shengbo Xia was embarrassed, and said in a low voice, “They had an air conditioning repair plan last month, and that reception room is rarely used. The interview with Ya Gu and Lan He was only arranged yesterday, how many people would know about it?”
“When was the air conditioning maintenance for this room carried out?”
“Before getting off work yesterday.”
“In that case, the two maintenance workers cannot be ruled out as suspects.” Tuxi Ling flipped through Shengbo Xia’s notebook, “Take them both back to the team to assist in the investigation!”
The two maintenance workers were father and son. The father was called Sanishi Lin, fifty years old this year, honest and simple. The son was called Hua Lin, only twenty-one years old this year, and always avoided people’s eyes, looking a bit socially awkward.
Sanishi Lin finished the interrogation first and waited for Hua Lin on a bench in the corridor. Tuxi Ling came out and handed him half a pack of cigarettes: “Old brother, how many years have you been working at Gu’s?”
Sanishi Lin took the cigarette in flattered: “Officer, I’ve been working for eight years.”
Tuxi Ling sat down next to him and chatted with him: “How’s the boss treating you? Is the salary level okay?”
“It’s pretty good, thirteen months’ salary, and bonuses, and welfare is given during the New Year and holidays, fruits, shopping cards…” Sanishi Lin took a hard puff of his cigarette, “But it wasn’t given this year, I heard the company’s operating conditions aren’t very good, but I can understand it, I heard that business is very difficult to do now!”
“Is that so? Then it’s pretty good for your father and son to be in such a good company together.”
“It’s alright, that kid can’t save any money, young people love to play, it’s okay, his mother and I will save it for him!”
Tuxi Ling nodded: “What does he play?”
“What’s it called…Two-dimensional?” Sanishi Lin was a little embarrassed, “He goes out in strange clothes on weekends, his hair is colorful and doesn’t look like a human being, sometimes he even wears a small skirt, I’ve scolded him several times, he still says it’s what…”
“Cosplay?”
“Yes, yes, that seems to be it!”
Tuxi Ling smiled, thinking no wonder Hua Lin was socially awkward, he hadn’t met many two-dimensional people who weren’t socially awkward.
“Young people like to play this, it’s normal.”
“Isn’t that…brain…sexuality has a problem?”
“No, it has nothing to do with that, it’s purely a hobby.”
Getting the official approval of the police comrade, Sanishi Lin breathed a sigh of relief, and opened his mobile phone album as if he had met a bosom friend: “Officer, look at this, this is a photo I just saw in his Moments, and I also think it’s pretty good, so I saved it.”
Tuxi Ling took it over with a smile.
Don’t say, the ordinary-looking Hua Lin really looks like something when he dresses up. He is wearing a deep v-neck white shirt, with a bulletproof vest on the outside, a black striped short skirt on the lower body, and a head of golden wavy long hair falling to his hips. Every accessory on his body looks very delicate. Tuxi Ling doesn’t recognize which anime character this is, but he can tell from the makeup that it’s the style of a mature woman.
Sanishi Lin asked: “What kind of thing is this dressed up as? I don’t know it, are there clothes like this?”
Tuxi Ling kindly wanted to eliminate the generation gap between father and son, opened the search engine, and used the image search function, and immediately dense pictures came out below, and the names and origins of the characters were also known.
Tuxi Ling patiently explained, Sanishi Lin listened very carefully, like a student listening carefully to the class, Tuxi Ling slid down casually, and suddenly froze.
In a row of pictures, he saw a screenshot of this set of clothes being sold on a certain shopping platform.
[Official custom, Queen Policewoman suit COS, basic price 30000. 】
He opened the high-definition picture covered with layers of watermarks and carefully compared various details, and felt that it was the same style as the set on Hua Lin.
He frowned, and asked calmly: “Does Hua Lin usually buy the clothes he wears for cos himself?”
“Yes, his mother thinks he’s wasting money, so she won’t give him money to do this!”
“How much does he earn a month?”
“Two thousand four a month, this is still in the internship period, the little money he has is spent on buying these clothes, a full cabinet, it’s really impossible to say!”
Tuxi Ling turned off the phone screen and got up: “You sit here first, I’ll go see how the chat is going inside.”