NB Chapter10

There was no wedding, no legal documents. On the day I arrived at the villa where I now live, Zhang Mingsheng gave me a ring, “One should be appropriately tacky.”

I looked at the pigeon-egg-sized emerald on my ring finger and thought that the “appropriate tackiness” of the rich was a blessing I truly couldn’t endure.

In the elevator, Zhang Mingsheng stood behind me with his face appearing and disappearing on the glass doors opposite us. Sitting in my wheelchair, thinking about the Li Yi I was about to meet, I felt my heart hammer heavily in my chest. Right in front of me, Zhang Mingsheng had just slipped a gun into his pocket; if I so much as made a sudden move, the living room sofa would undoubtedly be splattered with someone’s blood.

Zhang Mingsheng rarely says what he intends to do, but once he says it, he will certainly follow through.

When we reached the first floor, the elevator doors opened with a soft chime. From a distance, Zhang Xiaoyuan came running toward us in sky-blue pajamas, then abruptly stopped in front of us like a disciplined Boy Scout. His small face was scrunched up, his brows like two faint dots, clearly looking displeased.

“What’s wrong?” Zhang Mingsheng asked flatly. He wasn’t asking Xiao Yuan, but rather Ah Hai, who had hurried over behind him.

Ah Hai smiled. “He lost his video game.”

Playing video games first thing in the morning was something I shouldn’t have cared about, but I couldn’t help shooting a sharp glare at the two of them.

Zhang Mingsheng pushed me out of the elevator, the wheelchair wheels emitting a soft whirring sound as they rolled forward. “It doesn’t matter if you lost; I’ll play with you tonight.”

Zhang Xiaoyuan didn’t respond. His eyes were round just like Keke’s, though his were darker, like purple grapes. He stared at me in silence for a long moment, as if seeing me for the first time. Just as I was about to speak, he suddenly turned around and ran off.

There are very few normal people in this house.

The living room is mostly composed of black, white, and gray. The gray softening the absolute boundaries of the black and white, making the light much gentler. While Keke was still fast asleep, Aunt Liu ran down to help set the table. Seeing that a guest had arrived and that Ah Shan was hopelessly tongue-tied, she helped usher the person in, and the two of them sat on the sofa chatting for a while.

Zhang Mingsheng pushed me slowly into the living room. As soon as the wheelchair rolled onto the carpet, the faint whirring of its wheels was instantly swallowed, becoming almost completely silent. When Aunt Liu saw us coming, she stood up immediately, rubbing her hands twice against her apron. A man with a buzz cut sat across from her, wearing a denim jacket, his shoulders broad and his neck long. Still unaware of what was going on, he looked slightly confused when he saw Aunt Liu rise. He gave a small nod and stood up along with her.

That was Li Yi. He looked worn out with a heavy blue shadow of stubble covering his jaw. He didn’t look at me first but instead turned his gaze toward Zhang Mingsheng behind me. When people look toward others, they often instinctively search for a familiar face.

To him, the current me is a complete stranger.

This day was bound to come. Zhang Mingsheng thinks deeper and further than I do; he made preparations long ago.

Li Yi had never been so out of character; his lips were slightly parted, his brows faintly drawn together, as though a child were anxiously waiting for an outcome to be announced.

If Zhang Mingsheng’s gun hadn’t been pressed against my back, I might have said, “Look, junior; sometimes even God refuses to give an answer to everything.”

You must be very surprised, junior. You’re so clever, so brave; even when your thoughts and actions were sharper than anyone else’s, even when you were just barely catching Zhang Mingsheng’s trail, you still didn’t see the face you were hoping to see.

You have always believed that my disappearance was connected to Zhang Mingsheng, even suspecting that he was playing a game of “substituting the phoenix for the dragon.” Because of this, your first object of suspicion was the “Mrs. Zhang” by his side; a woman of unknown origin with almost no photographic records.

You must have searched through countless files, trying to figure out exactly who this Yu Huaiqing, who appeared out of thin air, really was. On the day of the kidnapping, you saw a face peering out from a car window; you probably didn’t see it clearly, catching only a rough silhouette. The bridge of the nose, the forehead; every detail was enough to make you feel as though you were looking at your senior again.

Even if you doubted your own conjecture, you still refused to give up on the possibility. Under your relentless step-by-step pressure, Zhang Mingsheng finally granted you your wish.

You finally stepped into the Zhang residence. When the servant turned around, what met your eyes was not the face you had long been expecting. Instead, you saw only a thin woman with a pale complexion and disheveled hair.

I think, to you, she couldn’t be considered beautiful at all; she looked incredibly plain, dressed in a high-neck black sweater while sitting quietly in a wheelchair. You thought you had made progress, that you had uncovered something important, but in the end, it was as if even God had decided to make a mockery of it all.

My face remained expressionless, but my heart twisted with a sudden pang of pain. I lowered my head to avoid Li Yi’s gaze.

I didn’t want to see the disappointment in his eyes.

I don’t know what instructions Zhang Mingsheng gave the doctors, or perhaps the scars on my face were so deep and severe that surgery was unavoidable. When I sat up in the hospital bed and looked into the mirror as the bandages were slowly unwound layer by layer, what I saw was a stranger.

Only a few places had been altered; but which ones, exactly? I stood in front of the mirror in silence for a long time, trying to use my memory to reconstruct my own face piece by piece.

I can still faintly recognize myself from the features in the mirror, but this paradoxical face has permanently altered my future.

Zhang Mingsheng smiled. “Officer Li, this is my wife.”

His tone was relaxed and cheerful; he had won.

Li Yi’s expression was incredibly complex. He looked at me for a long time, staring until my scalp felt numb. I let out a light cough, which finally startled his gaze away.

Realizing he had overstepped, he quickly turned his head aside and apologized, “Mrs. Zhang, I’m sorry.”

I said, “It’s alright.”

My voice was thin as a thread, worlds apart from my formerly resonant voice.

The questioning process that followed felt longer with every passing second. Zhang Mingsheng sat to one side with his hands crossed over his lap, calmly listening to our conversation. Li Yi sat across from us, separated by a rug, occasionally jotting notes and sketching in the notebook he always carried with him.

“Mrs. Zhang, could you describe the situation at that time in detail?”

I tilted my head and met Zhang Mingsheng’s amused gaze, instantly understanding what he meant. “That day I was sitting in the back with the children. I didn’t see much, and I couldn’t hear their conversation clearly. I only know that someone was chasing our car and they were armed.”

“Was it you who called the police?”

“It was me.”

“Have you encountered any strange people lately? Do you have any enemies from the past you’ve had conflict with?”

I thought to myself, That would be Zhang Mingsheng, but I couldn’t say it. I simply shook my head gently.

Li Yi seemed to have no desire to continue the questioning. He asked a few more inconsequential questions, which I answered occasionally. After glancing at me, he lowered his head again and quickly scribbled something in his notebook. We waited for him for about a minute. Then, with a crisp snap, he closed the notebook, capped his pen, and slipped it into the inner breast pocket of his jacket.

He stood up. “Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. and Mrs. Zhang. We’ll leave it at that for today.”

Zhang Mingsheng made no move to stand. He tilted his chin up slightly. “No need to be polite; it is our duty.”

As he spoke, he grabbed my hand and interlaced his fingers tightly with mine. “My wife is also very happy to be of assistance to your work. Isn’t that right, Laopo?”

He turned to look at me. Meeting his deep, dark eyes made my palms break out in a cold sweat. I then turned back to Li Yi and gave him a nod. “Officer Li, you’re very welcome.”

Ah Shan escorted Li Yi out. He was about the same height as Li Yi, and as he walked behind him, he blocked the view of Li Yi’s back. Without question, he would conduct another search on Li Yi.

Zhang Mingsheng still gripped my hand; even as I struggled to pull away, he refused to loosen his fingers. He flipped my wrist over before carefully examining the deep red scars on the underside.

He said, “I doubt debt collectors in a casino use as much force cutting off fingers as you did when you slit your wrists.”

I replied, “People lose fingers at casinos every day, yet my hands are still here.”

Hearing this, Zhang Mingsheng let out a cold laugh and released my hand.

He said, “Ah Hai, what did Officer Li just write in his notebook?”

My eyes widened suddenly as I turned to look for Ah Hai. It turned out he hadn’t followed Zhang Xiaoyuan to the second floor but had been standing in a hidden corner all along. He was holding a silver-gray laptop, his fingers tapping the trackpad twice.

Just moments ago, Li Yi had been writing and sketching; he had worked with intense focus and never once turned the page.

The television in the living room abruptly flickered on, displaying a surveillance screenshot. The image zoomed in and then zoomed in again.

It was a sketch.

It was a drawing of me, the way I look now.

Li Yi had loved doodling on paper since he was a child, and he hadn’t put it down even after entering the police academy.

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