DP Chapter 48
by Volare“Come in and talk,” Xiang Yiye said.
Xu Chuo came in, looking slightly disheveled. His suit jacket had gotten wet last night, and he hadn’t bothered to change it, letting his body heat dry it.
He looked at Xiang Yiye’s face: “Is just a routine checkup enough? Should we do a blood test again? Is there anything else that feels uncomfortable?”
Xiang Yiye poured a glass of hot water and placed it on the table, cutting to the chase: “What did you find out? Yesterday, a waiter tried to break into my room. Your people must have caught him.”
Xu Chuo bent down to pick up the paper cup, and said through the rising steam, “The water he was delivering to you wasn’t clean.”
Xiang Yiye was slightly alarmed: “No wonder I felt like someone was following me yesterday. Where is he? Where is he now?”
“He’s locked up in the hotel. He hasn’t said anything yet, but he will soon. Don’t worry, I’ll get it out of him for you,” Xu Chuo said.
As he said this, Xu Chuo’s eyes were dark, with red veins showing. Xiang Yiye sensed that besides being thinner, he also had a hint of ruthlessness that he hadn’t had before.
Xiang Yiye thought, it was an accident that he blocked that glass of wine for Tao Muya. The waiter and Manager Wang shouldn’t be in the same group.
Tao Muya also thought of this and quietly said, “Brother, have you thought about who you might have offended?”
Xiang Yiye had no clue at the moment. He had always focused on improving himself and had no intention of making enemies. At most, there were occasional negative press releases about him online, but recently there seemed to be more, as if someone was deliberately spreading them.
“It should be someone in the industry. My people also found paparazzi around you,” Xu Chuo said. “To prevent them from having any backup plans, can I leave a few of my bodyguards with you?”
The most likely culprit would be his rivals then. Xiang Yiye thought and said, “No need for Mr. Xu to trouble himself. I can handle the rest.”
Tao Muya also said, “Thank you, Mr. Xu. I’m a lawyer, and I’m here for my brother’s affairs.” She had met Xu Chuo once, but Xu Chuo had changed a lot, and she didn’t remember him.
Xu Chuo didn’t respond to her but said to Xiang Yiye, “I know some private detectives who can find out who it is faster. You can leave the matter to me.”
After listening, Xiang Yiye didn’t refuse and found a business card: “Then please coordinate with my manager. This is his business card.” Then he turned to talk to Tao Muya.
“Xiang Yiye,” Xu Chuo suddenly said, “I’d rather you scold me like you did last night than talk to me so formally.”
Tao Muya keenly caught a hint of a secret.
“That’s easy. If Mr. Xu pays enough for the role, prepare the script, and I’ll scold you however you want,” Xiang Yiye said. “…Just kidding. Yesterday’s situation was special. I don’t usually have a habit of insulting strangers.”
The water in the cup had cooled down. Xu Chuo drank it, picked up the paper cup and business card, and said, “Whenever you need anything, you can always come to me.”
“Then please leave now,” Xiang Yiye said.
Xu Chuo silently went out, holding the empty paper cup in his hand. The bodyguard saw it and thought it was trash, about to take it, but Xu Chuo pulled his hand back into his arms and glared at him.
In the ward, Tao Muya fired off questions like a machine gun: “Brother, do you know Mr. Xu? He’s interested in you, isn’t he? Luckily, Liu and I arrived yesterday, or who knows what he would have done to you.”
When she and Assistant Liu arrived, Xiang Yiye was in the bathroom arguing with the showerhead, saying that the weather forecast said it was sunny and telling it not to rain anymore.
Tao Muya: “But listening to you two talk this morning, I feel like there’s something between you two…”
If there was anything, it was in the past, long gone. Xiang Yiye turned the tables: “Let’s put my affairs aside for now and talk about you.”
Tao Muya said, “I didn’t know Manager Wang was so bold, daring to put something in the glass in public.”
Xiang Yiye: “Do interns at your company often have to attend social events? That’s too unsafe.”
“Not often,” Tao Muya said, “maybe once a week. It’s okay, I’ll be careful next time.”
Xiang Yiye saw that her attitude was a bit careless and became serious: “You must be careful. I can block it for you once, but not necessarily next time.”
Tao Muya said, “I’m really sorry for hurting you. As soon as you left yesterday, that Wang guy pretended to be drunk and went back. I heard from Assistant Liu that you were drugged, so he secretly collected the cup you used and will give him a piece of his mind later.”
“We’ll see,” Xiang Yiye said. “How long before you can become a full-time employee?”
“It doesn’t matter if I can’t become full-time for now. What I learn in a big company in one day is more than what I would learn in an ordinary place in ten days,” Tao Muya said.
Xiang Yiye said, “I think you’re a bit too fixated on big companies. The stage is bigger, and it looks glamorous, but there’s also more dirt. Why don’t you change jobs and stay away from the entertainment industry?”
Tao Muya: “You’re in the industry yourself.”
Xiang Yiye: “It’s because I’m in it that I’ve seen too many similar things, so I don’t want others to get involved.”
Tao Muya said, “Brother Xiang Yiye, you’ve helped me a lot in the past few years, and I’m very grateful to you, but you’re not really my brother after all. There’s no reason for me to listen to everything you say.”
Xiang Yiye choked, feeling a bit stabbed. At this moment, he knew that he was still subconsciously treating Tao Muya as a sister.
He was an only child and didn’t know what it was like to have siblings. While the people around him wanted to have an older brother or sister, he wanted to have a younger brother or sister. He tended to be the caregiver in relationships, feeling that that was what being responsible meant.
Once, Xiang Yiye injured his leg while filming and had to use crutches for more than two months, hiding it from his parents. During that time, Tao Muya visited the bedridden Xiang Wan in the hospital on his behalf. Afterward, they became familiar, and Xiang Wan and Qiao Sha would invite her to join them during festivals.
No matter what the relationship, it can’t withstand the words “I thought.” If the relationship that “I thought” was established isn’t what the other person sees it as, there will be a gap. Perhaps that was also the reason why Xu Chuo felt sentimental toward Xiang Yiye.
Xiang Yiye sighed: “Okay, I’m meddling. I won’t bother with you anymore.”
Just now, she spoke without thinking, and Tao Muya also regretted it a bit, but she couldn’t bring herself to show weakness and said dejectedly, “If you don’t bother, then don’t bother. I don’t have parents anyway, so no one bothers with me.”
Xiang Yiye: “Also think about your brother, don’t let him worry about you in the afterlife.”
Mentioning Tao Mujia at this time, Tao Muya’s nerves, which had been tense for a day and a night, suddenly broke down a little: “I really miss him. You say twins can be born on the same day, why can’t they die on the same day?”
“What are you saying,” Xiang Yiye frowned, “think about it from another angle. If you’re here, your brother is here. As long as you live well in the future, isn’t that the same as living your brother’s share as well?”
Xiang Yiye knew that Tao Muya had never come out of her brother’s death and tried not to mention Tao Mujia in front of her. But this was like an old wound that would never heal if it was always covered up.
“I’m not qualified to live for my brother,” Tao Muya paused, her eyes reddening, “I haven’t even found the person who killed him yet.”
Xiang Yiye was stunned: “Didn’t your brother drown…”
“No, his death was not an accident at all. He could swim. He was killed!” Tao Muya looked at the closed door. “I’ve seen his autopsy report, and the wounds on his body don’t match at all. At first, I thought I was being too suspicious. I went to look through his belongings from before he died. His phone was completely broken and couldn’t be repaired, but there was an automatic backup in the cloud. I found a video.”
Tao Muya trembled as she took out the video from her phone and showed it to Xiang Yiye.
The angle was obviously taken secretly, and the people in the picture weren’t all there. You could only tell from the voices that someone was beating Tao Mujia.
“It’s all my fault,” Tao Muya said, her face full of tears. “I was preparing for graduate school at that time and rarely went home. I only knew that Tang Shuqin introduced him to a company executive as a driver, but I didn’t know who it was…”
Afterward, Xu Chuo arranged a job for Tao Mujia in City M, but he didn’t go. He felt that he was causing trouble for Xiang Yiye and took the initiative to back out.
The abuser in the video said a sentence. Xiang Yiye was stunned, pulled back the progress bar, and listened to it several times.
“Did you find something?” Tao Muya said immediately. “Is it someone you know?”
Xiang Yiye shook his head: “I’m not sure.”
The voice sounded a lot like Xie Zhimin.
“Whoever you suspect, you must tell me. Whether you’re sure or not, it’s a clue,” Tao Muya said. “I must make the person who killed my brother pay the price.”
Xiang Yiye hesitated. If Xie Zhimin really killed someone, with his power, he must have taken care of everything well. Otherwise, Tao Muya wouldn’t have gotten nowhere for three or four years.
“I seem to have heard it somewhere, but I can’t remember it for a moment,” Xiang Yiye said. “So you’ve been focusing on entertainment law and working at Xie’s these past few years to find out the cause of your brother’s death?”
“Yes.”
Xiang Yiye couldn’t imagine how she had gotten through these past few years and patted her back, saying, “It must be a lot of pressure.”
It would be a lie to say there wasn’t a lot of pressure. She was having a lot of trouble investigating on her own, and she was often complained about for asking too many questions at work. This time, she almost got caught in sexual harassment.
“If I can get justice for my brother, I’m not afraid of any amount of pressure,” Tao Muya said. “I just didn’t expect to drag you into it.”
Last night, Xiang Yiye fell asleep and didn’t wake up, and she was terrified. If something really happened to Xiang Yiye, she wouldn’t be able to face Xiang Wan and Qiao Sha in the future.
“What are you planning to do next?” Xiang Yiye said. “Are you going to stay at Xie’s and keep investigating? What if you alert the enemy?”
“Tang Shuqin has a close relationship with Xie’s. I want to go deeper through her,” Tao Muya said. “There are several artists in the industry who have had their resources skyrocket after contacting Tang Shuqin. There must be something fishy going on.”
“Which artists? Do you have any information? Let me see,” Xiang Yiye said.
“Yes, but I don’t have it with me. I’ll show it to you when we get back,” Tao Muya said.
After returning to City S, Xiang Yiye looked at the information and found that those artists all had one thing in common: they all had some similarities to Xu Chuo.
Some had a similar profile, and some had a similar smile.
This discovery made Xiang Yiye even more certain that the person in the video who was beating Tao Mujia was Xie Zhimin.