NB Chapter82

I haven’t slept this well in a long time. Upon waking, there wasn’t a hint of drowsiness, only a state of mind as soft as clouds. Like an infant, I opened my eyes calmly, unable to recall for a moment where I was. One layer of the curtains had already been drawn back, leaving only two thin pieces of dark gray fabric loosely veiling the light from outside.

I slowly propped myself up, only to realize that the pattern on the blanket covering me wasn’t the one from last night. I had no idea when it had been swapped.

I was the only one in the room. Zhang Mingsheng was nowhere to be found.

I felt a pang of loneliness.

Up until the moment I drifted off last night, I wasn’t entirely sure if Zhang Mingsheng had agreed to my request. But in truth, I didn’t even know what I was actually asking of him.

I hated him, yet I didn’t want him to waste his life like this. I wanted to leave him, yet I didn’t want him to be standing there alone the moment I turned away with his soul suddenly shattering. I had saved Zhang Mingsheng’s life and had been so intimately involved in his journey; though mostly by force, that for some reason, I always felt a sense of responsibility toward him.

I knew in my heart that I shouldn’t hold myself hostage like this. But then I thought, all I required of Zhang Mingsheng was that he continued to live harmlessly after I left, and looking further ahead, I simply hoped he would enjoy his life and be a benefit to society rather than a hidden danger. After all, he didn’t seem completely beyond redemption.

Beyond that, I would no longer be involved.

The accounts between us didn’t need to be settled so precisely anymore.

I grabbed the watch on the bedside table and took a look; it was actually ten-thirty. Even more frightening than Zhang Mingsheng crawling into someone’s blankets in the middle of the night was the fact that Ah Hai hadn’t woken me up. I hurried to dress and wash before dragging my leg as I walked out of the room. This villa was decorated in an extremely simple, antique style; the living room was vast and empty, adorned only with a few antiques in the corners, their colors muted, glowing with an elegant luster.

I shouted for Ah Hai several times, but no one answered.

As I passed the dining room, I unexpectedly noticed a deep blue porcelain vase resting on the table, filled with several dew-laden lilies, their pale-yellow centers still shimmering with moisture.

This was definitely not Ah Hai’s handiwork.

When I reached the kitchen, I found a man standing by the stove in a gray wool sweater with his lower half clad in pajama pants covered in cartoon robots. The pants looked oddly out of place on his build, yet somehow still suited him well enough.

“Stealing other people’s clothes is illegal, you know.” I said irritably while leaning against the doorframe.

“Violating which law?” Zhang Mingsheng turned around, holding a plate in his hand. “The crime of desecrating cartoon pajamas?”

On the plate were fried eggs and ham, giving off a perfectly timed aroma of toasted goodness.

“What do you know?” I turned to leave. “They were buy-two-get-one-free. A real bargain.”

“What were the two you bought?” Zhang Mingsheng followed me in a few strides.

“The one you’re wearing, obviously. I bought one for Ah Hai too.” I pulled out a chair and sat down.

Zhang Mingsheng set down the plate and sat across from me before sliding a dish of fried eggs toward me. He remarked, “Ah Hai isn’t short on clothes.”

“Where is he?” Without bothering with formalities, I picked up the cutlery and began eating.

“I had some errands for him to take care of. After eating, drinking, and fooling around with you for so long; not to mention getting a new set of clothes, it’s about time he got back to work.” He meticulously sliced his fried egg, dividing it into several small pieces.

“You’re acting like you’re eating steak.” I said as I had always been unable to stand his posturing.

“I’m used to it,” he said flatly. “Back when I ate at the old family mansion, I always had to cut the steak into tiny pieces first, just so I could find the razor blades hidden inside.”

My guilt instantly peaked. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know—”

“I’m lying to you,” Zhang Mingsheng laughed. He speared a piece of egg and put it in his mouth, speaking as he chewed. “I just like doing it. It feels like I’m dismembering the fried egg.”

I looked up at him, momentarily at a loss for words, only to meet his gaze, which was brimming with amusement.

Dismembering a fried egg… only he could come up with that.

I couldn’t eat another bite and pushed the plate directly toward him. “You can dismember this plateful too.”

“If I do, you have to eat every bit of it.” He accepted it quite naturally.

“Forget it.” I pressed my finger against the edge of the plate. “I still prefer mine whole.”

Zhang Mingsheng didn’t make things difficult for me either. He pursed his lips, let go, and went back to eating his butchered egg. He remarked, “This place is actually quite nice. Better than the Red Residence.”

“Then stay for a long time.” I reached for the pepper, sprinkled a tiny bit onto my egg, and said nonchalantly, “It is peaceful here, and there are plenty of trees and plants outside as well.”

“It’s very suitable for a new start, isn’t it?” Zhang Mingsheng asked.

My hand froze instantly, but only for a second before I went back to eating, pretending I hadn’t understood. “Yeah, it’s very suitable for you to start over by yourself.”

“You know what I mean.” Zhang Mingsheng’s gaze locked onto me.

“I know. So, what do you want me to say?” I never once looked up.

“I just want to confirm one more time,” he said. “You’ve been telling me all along that you’re going to leave in the future.”

“Because I really am leaving.” In just a few bites, I finished the entire fried egg and moved on to the ham.

“You’re telling me this on purpose. Why? Are you afraid I won’t let you go?”

“Because you are stubborn and always making decisions for me,” I blurted out. “So, I have to tell you my thoughts again and again and again.”

“I decide for you because you are always wavering.” Zhang Mingsheng said.

“Even if I waver, it’s still my life.” I picked up a napkin and wiped the corner of my mouth. “You’d be better off thinking about how you’re going to live your days ahead without me.”

Zhang Mingsheng continued to stare at me. “Are you planning for my sake?”

I found it laughable and said, “I am clearly advising you to start planning for yourself as soon as possible.”

After saying that, I thought for a moment and added, “Only the two of us remember the things from before. So sometimes, I think of you as a partner. As for why you and I were able to live a second time… I think it might truly be destiny, and it shouldn’t be wasted carelessly.”

The moment the words left my mouth, I looked up at him and suddenly noticed he was frowning deeply, his complexion looking poor.

I reached out to touch the back of his hand. “Hey, don’t go acting up on me.”

He waved me off and said, “It’s not my heart that hurts; it’s the wound.”

I had completely forgotten, he was in a car accident last night.

Relieved, I withdrew my hand.

Zhang Mingsheng took a few minutes to compose himself before speaking. “The pain in my heart is irregular; there’s no telling when it will act up. However, I’ve noticed that the closer I am to you, the more frequently it hurts.”

“Karma,” I said. “Do you have any idea how many kinds of medicine I used to take? This one made my stomachache; that one made my head throb, but naturally, the doctors would insist they were helping my body.”

“In those eight years, you had three major changes to your prescriptions, and every single time, I was the one who personally listed them out and bought them,” Zhang Mingsheng said. “In fact, if you hadn’t sought death or tried to run away, you wouldn’t have suffered so many injuries.”

“Thank you for buying my medicine, Mr. Zhang. But then again, if someone hadn’t insisted on dragging me back home, I wouldn’t have had to escape over and over. And as for seeking death,” I felt a wave of disbelief and laughed out of sheer anger. “I wonder who it was just the other day vowing to go down in flames with Zhang Yaonian?”

Seeing that Zhang Mingsheng didn’t answer, I pressed my advantage. “Some people really choose to commit robbery at such a young age. If a police officer runs into someone like you, of course they’re going to pull a gun. But you…”

Zhang Mingsheng suddenly let out a small laugh.

“What are you laughing at?” I immediately grew wary.

He said, “I just realized that you actually talk quite a lot.”

I pushed further. “What do you mean?”

He said, “You used to always gather with Aunt Liu and the others to chat, but as soon as I walked over, all of you would stop.”

He continued, “Even when you talk to me, it always starts suddenly without any pattern at all.”

He paused, then spoke again, “And I’ve suddenly realized that you don’t just hate me.”

“You aren’t about to say that I actually love you, are you?” I could barely suppress the profanity rising in my mind.

“I’ve realized that you have a lot of grievances against me; big ones, small ones… there were many of them,” Zhang Mingsheng said. “It’s different from the hatred you felt when you shot me.”

“How is it different?” I couldn’t follow his train of thought at all.

“You resent me for not doing well enough; you have expectations of me.” Zhang Mingsheng concluded.

I had no idea how he arrived at that level of reasoning. I was speechless, truly speechless. I went back to eating with my head down. It was all his fault my ham was getting cold.

As I ate, a memory suddenly surfaced. As the memory resurfaced, I spoke in broken fragments. “Back then, everyone thought I had burned to death, but I hadn’t. I fought with you, and then you dragged me away. So whose body was that?”

“I don’t know,” Zhang Mingsheng said. “I wasn’t the one who set the fire either.”

“It wasn’t your arrangement?”

“If I had arranged it, I would have tied you up and brought you out first before setting the fire. That way, neither of us would have been hurt.” Zhang Mingsheng said with absolute certainty.

“But you were the one who killed that person, weren’t you?” I pointed my silver fork at him through the air.

Zhang Mingsheng arched an eyebrow and didn’t answer.

“Was it you?” I pressed him relentlessly.

“I gave him a push, and he couldn’t get back up,” Zhang Mingsheng said. “I only stepped on and broke one of his legs. It was his own uselessness.”

Sometimes, Zhang Mingsheng would suddenly reveal a flash of ferocity and indifference; a kind of pure malice akin to that of a child.

It seemed to me that he was even better suited for Southeast Asia than I was.

“At that time, why would anyone want to kill me?” I began to ponder. “Were you really not even curious?”

Zhang Mingsheng shrugged. “You police officers naturally have many enemies.”

I gave him an irritated glare.

In the span of a single morning, he had already provoked me numerous times.

To the Zhang Mingsheng of back then, it was more like he was experiencing a thrilling competition: the winner would get the toy.

Even though, at the time, I, the toy, was already half-dead.

“Back then, I also wondered why Teacher was so certain that the one who died was me.” I said, my thoughts are drifting.

“Do you want to hear my perspective?” Zhang Mingsheng had already folded his napkin and leaned back.

Ever since I discovered the issues regarding my mentor, Zhang Mingsheng had not once proactively mentioned him. I could sense that this was intentional.

With my heart fluttering somewhat nervously, I answered, “Tell me.”

He stared at me for a few seconds before speaking slowly. “I dealt with him a few times. Whenever I was around, he was always cutting Li Yi off, belittling him, and apologizing to me on Li Yi’s behalf.”

I forgot to even blink.

“To be honest, in terms of your collective interests, I don’t actually know what Li Yi did wrong,” Zhang Mingsheng said with a faint smile. “Li Yi is very smart; he never crossed me in private. Even at the funeral, he only confronted me in his capacity as a police officer. Of course, you and I both know he was harboring resentment.”

“Exactly.” I murmured.

Li Yi had done his absolute best.

But when my mentor and Li Yi came to the house at that time, Li Yi didn’t say a single word to me the entire time; he didn’t even exchange a glance with me.

“But your mentor treated Li Yi like a child who didn’t know how to conduct himself.” Zhang Mingsheng tapped the tabletop a few times. “Truthfully, your mentor was just a retired police officer who had left the force for reasons unknown, while Li Yi was considered the most promising officer in all of Hong Kong at the time.”

A shock went through my heart as I met Zhang Mingsheng’s meaningful gaze and heard him say, “As I see it, both you and Li Yi were wrong about your mentor. You thought you were still blades of grass that needed to be nurtured by a rock, but the truth is, a tree is meant to grow taller than the rock from the very beginning.”

“Why didn’t you tell me then?”

“Why should I have? I had no need to seek justice for Li Yi.”

“He shot Li Yi!” I desperately wanted to grab Zhang Mingsheng by the collar and punch him.

“That’s why I fired,” Zhang Mingsheng said. “I didn’t expect him to actually try to kill Li Yi. I clearly aimed for a vital spot, yet somehow he was fine.”

Back then, I had thought it was Zhang Mingsheng who shot Li Yi.

“Why didn’t you defend yourself?”

“I didn’t kill Li Yi,” Zhang Mingsheng said. “But I did kill your mentor. Besides, I really wanted to know if you would actually go through with killing me.”

“Why on earth did he do it…” I felt a long-absent pang of agony, having no patience for Zhang Mingsheng’s personal melodrama at all.

In my heart, my mentor had always favored Li Yi more; even when Li Yi was being playful, our mentor wouldn’t easily reprimand him.

I could almost understand that he killed me out of sheer loathing for what I had become back then.

But why? Why would he open fire on Li Yi?

“We’ll know very soon.” Zhang Mingsheng said suddenly.

“What?” I snapped back to reality.

“Didn’t you end up using my method, Officer Yu? Should writing threatening letters really be something a police officer does?” Zhang Mingsheng teased. He brought over his laptop, assuming a posture as if he were about to start working.

Ah Hai, you really are a double agent.

Having been exposed, I felt a sense of shame. He was right; I was a cop, and a cop shouldn’t be doing things like that.

“Don’t be nervous.” Zhang Mingsheng’s face was reflected in the faint blue light of the screen, his gaze fixed on the monitor. “I’m glad you did it. At least you aren’t throwing your life away for nothing. We need to seize this opportunity, Officer Yu.”

“This time?” I looked at him.

When Zhang Mingsheng worked, his expression was cold and his speech was nonchalant, “When he kills the first person, you’d better catch him right then. Because next time, he’ll kill two people at once.”

“I’m not sure. Perhaps he will change the location of the crime.”

“That is why I sent Ah Hai to tail the first… well, the first target.”

I guessed he meant to say, “the victim.”

I fell silent for a few seconds before asking, “Ah Shan went to tail Jin Shunfa, didn’t he?”

“En.” Zhang Mingsheng admitted.

“You leave all the dangerous work to Ah Shan and Ah Hai, what exactly do you plan on doing?” Without realizing it, Zhang Mingsheng had once again taken over my plan; I had originally intended to do the tailing myself in secret.

Zhang Mingsheng was tapping away at his keyboard. Before replying, he picked up his phone and dialed a number; it was picked up almost immediately. “Hello, Jessie, I need you to confirm one more thing for me…”

What followed was a long string of foreign gibberish that I couldn’t understand.

I opened my phone and quietly searched for the locations mentioned in their conversation.

Only when Zhang Mingsheng finally said “bye-bye” to Jessie did I pretentiously switch off my phone.

He said, “On the day of the event, I’m going to kill Zhang Yaonian in broad daylight.”

“I suggest you don’t,” I said. “It’s too impractical. The venue is on the first floor of a shopping mall; there’ll be too many prying eyes. With movie stars attending, the police station might even deploy officers to keep order.”

“Were you just secretly searching for things?” Zhang Mingsheng didn’t take the bait.

“Yeah, my English is terrible. I had to look up what ‘check’ means.” I said, exaggerating the pronunciation of the word.

“Rest easy, Officer Yu. I have no desire to go to prison or to die right now.” Zhang Mingsheng’s eyes returned to his computer screen as he pressed the Enter key. “Plan canceled.”

“I wonder how Ah Hai and Ah Shan are doing.”

“Those two are former special forces; ordinary people can’t beat them, let alone middle-aged men who sit in offices getting fat on kickbacks. Besides, they both have guns, their weapons are even better than mine.” Zhang Mingsheng dismissed part of my anxiety in just a few words.

“But the people they are following probably have guns too.”

“They won’t risk their lives for us just yet,” Zhang Mingsheng said. “I’ll be thanking my lucky stars if they don’t desert the moment things start to go wrong.”

“Actually, I still want to see it with my own eyes.” I used my knife to slice the unfinished ham.

Even though all the clues pointed in one direction, I still held onto a sliver of hope.

“Fine.” Zhang Mingsheng closed his laptop. “Then we’ll go take a look.”

Toward evening, just as Zhang Mingsheng was about to contact Ah Hai, he received a call from him instead.

Ah Hai said that he and Ah Shan were now heading to the police station to give their statements. He then asked Zhang Mingsheng how they should respond if the police questioned why they had been out in such a remote, deserted place.

Zhang Mingsheng grabbed his coat and walked toward the door with me, giving Ah Hai a two-word answer, “A date.”