Chapter 69: Chengnan Bookstore 16
Although He Mo wasn’t in the “Super Perfect Hype Group,” it was as if he was. Because Zhuang Ningyu had seemed completely uninterested in any pursuers during college, He Mo had once thought he had transcended the realm of ordinary human love, with only a yearning for the holy essence in his life.
“You’re in charge of earning money to support the family, I’m in charge of looking at busty hot girls, and Ningyu is in charge of using love to move the sun and other stars, guiding all suffering souls through the gates of spring to finally reach the supreme salvation filled with flowers.” This was He Mo’s specific plan for the future of the three bros during their graduate school days.
And now, Huo Ting did indeed have the highest salary, and He Mo hadn’t held back on looking at hot girls outside of work. The only one who had gone astray was Zhuang Ningyu. The holy son didn’t love God but had fallen for a tall, long-legged, handsome guy of one meter eighty-eight. Vulgar, how vulgar! He Mo crawled out from under the table and shook hands amicably with the star of the PPT: “Hello, brother. How did you do it?”
Yi Ke chuckled. In front of his wife’s friends and family, he always presented himself as modest and polite. Good upbringing, combined with his outstanding appearance and a lazy, noble air cultivated from a life of wealth, indeed made this relationship seem particularly plausible.
Back in the meeting room, He Mo was still marveling, “You know, you two are quite a good match. How about we all go out for a meal this weekend?”
Zhuang Ningyu replied, “I’m not free this weekend.”
His schedule was quite full recently. Saturday was for spending time with his grandparents, and Sunday was for dinner at the Yi family’s home—the first time he would be going not as a friend, but in another capacity.
The whole thing had a strange feeling to it, so strange that even Zhuang Ningyu, with his S++ mental stability rating, felt a slight instability the night before the dinner. Sitting on his bed, he described it as: “an ontological tensile entropy increase at the neuromuscular interface produced by preconscious motor planning.”
Yi Ke: “What’s that little mouth babbling about? Come give your husband a kiss and you won’t be nervous anymore.”
Zhuang Ningyu got a face full of his slobber, all sleepiness gone. He had wanted to go to the floor-to-ceiling window to watch the stars for a bit, but Yi Ke wouldn’t let him go.
He had an extraordinary desire for control in bed, even if this bed was currently just a bed in the literal sense. Zhuang Ningyu pushed him twice to no avail, so he lay back on the pillow and looked him in the eye for a scientific discussion: “Is this mentality of yours not very healthy?”
Yi Ke looked at his jade-like black eyes and the exposed skin under his slightly open collar, and admitted in a low voice, “There are even unhealthier ones. I’m afraid I’ll scare you away if I say them.”
Zhuang Ningyu didn’t try to act tough in this matter. “If you know it will scare me away, then you should hide it well.” He was now used to a sunny and healthy love; he couldn’t twist back to his old ways in a moment’s notice. Pathological love-hate relationships, emotional games, sinful symbiosis, and forced imprisonment were all out of the question. Fortunately, Yi Ke wouldn’t force him either. He kissed him on the cheek and let go.
Zhuang Ningyu turned up the bedside lamp, casually grabbed the book he hadn’t finished yesterday, and lay on his stomach to continue reading. Yi Ke leaned against the headboard, playing with his phone with one hand, while the other hand reached around to pinch his soft earlobe. As he pinched, he might have used a little too much force, and his arm smoothly received a crisp, loud slap. The force was quite strong.
Yi Ke hissed, then casually liked a pet blogger’s video—”When a cat is uncomfortable, the human will cry out.”
He deeply agreed.
Early the next morning, the Yi household was already bustling. His brother and sister sat on the sofa, bleary-eyed. Yi Yue said, “Mom, Ningyu isn’t coming until this afternoon.”
Ms. Deng Zongyun, having navigated the business world for many years, understood the importance of planning ahead. Thus, the moment her youngest son was born, before he had even had a sip of milk, his future wife had already been designated an old-mine jadeite bracelet. In the many years that followed, the list grew to include an antique phoenix crown, a sapphire necklace set, a pigeon’s blood ruby ring, an emerald brooch… And today, when Xiao Yi actually had a wife, it was great—not a single one of those items could be used!
Deng Zongyun said, “So I’ve prepared for him one of the world’s most advanced monster-slaying weapons. It’s produced in Europe, called the ‘Night Judge.’ It’s said to be inspired by exploding stars and is equipped with a full-domain intelligent prediction system that can automatically correct the firing trajectory, cutting off 99.9% of the target’s survival path.”
“Mom! Mom!” Yi Shen urgently halted this lawless behavior. “I have a brand-new Patek Philippe, just arrived. It’s still at the store, I haven’t picked it up yet!”
“What’s the hurry? I’m not finished. The gun is abroad; it can’t get here right away.” Deng Zongyun held out her hand. “What watch? Let me see.”
Yi Shen breathed a sigh of relief and presented his phone with both hands. “I’ll have Xiao Li go get it right now.”
Yi Ke inherited most of his penchant for ceremony from his mother. So, even though Zhuang Ningyu was already a familiar face in the family, Deng Zongyun still meticulously chose a formal suit for her husband. Yi Guodong’s mental state had been in continuous turmoil recently, a turmoil more volatile than the stock and gold markets. Although he greatly admired Zhuang Ningyu, the fact that a friend he treated like a brother had suddenly become his son’s boyfriend was far beyond his scope of acceptance. Even his hands trembled as he tied his tie.
Deng Zongyun slapped him. “What are you trembling for?”
Yi Guodong said, “Ningyu will suddenly be calling me ‘Dad.’ Can you understand that shock?”
Deng Zongyun could understand, but at the same time, she could also understand her son’s choice. So, the biggest problem she faced now was not that Zhuang Ningyu would be calling her ‘Mom’ in the future, but how to explain to her own sister that the son-in-law she had her eye on had suddenly become her daughter-in-law.
At five in the afternoon, the Yi family’s driver picked up the two and brought them home on time. Before coming, Zhuang Ningyu had insisted on buying some gifts. Although Yi Ke felt it was unnecessary, he still went along with him and bought two boxes of new tea. Zhuang Ningyu took out his phone to pay, but the shop owner, who was delivering the goods, quickly said, “The total is one hundred and sixty-eight thousand. Young Master Yi has already paid.”
Zhuang Ningyu: “?”
“What are you thinking about?” Yi Ke asked as he closed the door and inspected the tea.
Zhuang Ningyu replied, “I’m thinking about a fraud case.”
The suspect posted vaguely worded posts online selling “flour,” luring drug users to take the bait. During the transaction, they only ever mentioned flour, and the item traded was indeed flour. Zhuang Ningyu said, “When he was selling the goods, he would often include a small packet of tea. I didn’t quite understand it before, but now I get it.” Because if things were exposed, two thousand yuan per gram of flour would be impossible to explain to the police, but two thousand yuan per gram of tea was very easy to explain.
“May I ask what exactly makes it so expensive?” Zhuang Ningyu asked sincerely.
“It’s not that expensive,” Yi Ke said, taking his hand as they walked out. “I just picked a similar one because I was afraid you’d feel pressured.”
Right now, Zhuang Ningyu was standing at the Yi family’s door, holding this box of tea. He looked at the crowd of familiar faces before him and really couldn’t bring himself to say “Uncle” and “Auntie.” But Deng Zongyun had already taken the initiative to skip this step, pulling him affectionately to her side. “Call me Mom!”
“Mom!” That shout came from Yi Ke. “How can you be like this!”
In the end, he didn’t manage to say “Mom,” but he did manage “Auntie.” All things are difficult before they are easy. Zhuang Ningyu successfully crossed the only hurdle in his heart and sat on the sofa, letting out a deep sigh of relief. Yi Guodong, on the other hand, took a full half-hour to digest the first “Uncle.” However, before his mood could completely stabilize, Zhuang Ningyu called him that a second time… so another half-hour it was!
As for Yi Yue and Yi Shen, they were much more relaxed. Thus, the first visit, through the joint efforts of all parties, achieved a rather good result. Zhuang Ningyu did not accept the watch, and Yi Ke didn’t care whether he accepted it or not. He was just busy rummaging through the kitchen for good ingredients to take home and cook for his wife. The city lights began to sparkle. After leaving the Yi residence, Zhuang Ningyu sat in the back of the car, looking relaxed and staring out the window at the passing scenery.
“You must be tired, right?” Yi Ke rubbed his head. “How many days has it been since you’ve had a good sleep? Close your eyes.”
Zhuang Ningyu yawned, his body slumping to the side as he lazily rested his head on his shoulder.
The neon signs and car lights merged at high speed, flowing into a colorful nightscape.
…
Taking advantage of Guanxing Tower’s geographical location, Yi Ke would show up at the research group with a lunchbox whenever he had time. However, because his lunch-carrying gear was a large, cold-looking black backpack, not the usual cute floral bento bag, and he himself was cool, handsome, domineering, and stylish, even when his colleagues in the research group ran into him in the elevator, they would only sigh with emotion that the rich really have their reasons for being rich. The Order Maintenance Department had missions and training every day, yet he still had the energy to come to the research group to study. It looked like he was destined for a political career in the future.
We must build a good relationship with him!
Yi Ke was completely unaware that he had become a “primitive stock” of a political magnate. He was still busy picking fish bones for his wife. Zhuang Ningyu was eating in a hurry. Next to him was a stack of materials just sent over by the investigation team. They had been trying to figure out the significance of the date on the pull-tab ring for Dou Dekai: June 7th, 898. They had just gotten a lead that morning.
“That day, there was an unprecedentedly heavy rainstorm in Jincheng,” Zhuang Ningyu said. “Even the municipal government wasn’t prepared.”
The world was dim, and the streets were flooded. Because the rain had started near the end of the workday, many office workers had no precautions. Those with cars were fine, at most a bit stuck in traffic. Those without cars either waited in their offices, hitched a ride, took a taxi, or had to run to the subway station in the rain.
A colleague from the software company recalled, “Dou Dekai wasn’t very popular, and he lived in an old building in the city center. That area was already congested on a normal day, let alone when it rained. So he couldn’t get a ride. Taxis were hard to come by too. So many people were waiting in line at the office building, the apps were too crowded to get through, and even with the price jacked up to two hundred, no driver was willing to take the fare.”
The weather forecast said the rain would last until the next day. Waiting wasn’t an option. So, several colleagues decided to run to the subway station together. It was impossible for pedestrians not to be in a sorry state in such weather. And just as Dou Dekai was drenched like a drowned rat, he happened to see a Porsche stopped at an intersection, picking up the prettiest female receptionist from the company.
The colleague continued, “Dou Dekai, you know, he used to harass her all the time. Not the kind of harassment you could report to the police, but eye-harassment, and buying her bubble tea and snacks from time to time. The girl came from a good family and was just working at our company to pass the time. She was tall, fair, and thin, a real beauty. How could she possibly be interested in him? But Xiao Dou was stubborn, insisting that he had a chance. Well, that rainstorm dealt him a heavy blow.”
He walked towards the subway station in a daze, his foot slipped, and he fell flat on his face so hard his front teeth loosened. The next day, his mouth was swollen like a pig’s head. He looked as miserable as could be. Although his colleagues expressed concern on the surface, those who knew the inside story probably gossiped quite a bit.
“Why would he engrave such a miserable date on a wedding ring?” Yi Ke was puzzled.
“Misery is indeed not worth commemorating. But if that misery prompted him to undergo some kind of mental change, or to make a decision that could change his life, then it could be commemorated,” Zhuang Ningyu said.
The known “big days” in Dou Dekai’s life were as follows—
896, bought a house;
897, joined a “subway pick-up artist class.” At the end of the same year, rumors of Universe Group’s bankruptcy began to circulate, which were eventually quelled by the company’s PR department after they made promises to the homebuyers;
899, Universe Group’s bubble completely burst;
910, planned and executed the kidnapping of Bao Mingming.
June 7th, 898, was a date that stood alone. Before and after this date, there were no significant changes in Dou Dekai’s work, family, or life. What was there to commemorate?
“A change doesn’t have to be a change that actually changes one’s life. It could also be a change that Dou Dekai thought would change his life,” Zhuang Ningyu said, in a somewhat convoluted sentence. “It’s a pity his computer was physically destroyed before the incident, so we can’t find more clues.”
The police did have his chat records from the “subway pick-up artist group.” On the night of June 7th, at around nine o’clock, Dou Dekai joined his group mates in cursing gold-digging women for a few sentences before going offline. He didn’t come back online until three in the morning on June 8th, when he liked the post of a “successful group member”—none of which seemed like special behavior.
Yi Ke suddenly asked, “Why did he go to work on June 8th?”
Zhuang Ningyu put down his soup container. “Hmm?”
“He was beaten black and blue and had just experienced a ‘heartbreak.’ Logically, shouldn’t he have rested at home for a day or so? At the very least, he should have gotten his chipped front teeth fixed,” Yi Ke helped lift the lunchbox so he could finish the remaining soup. “Is the work at a software company very busy? Or was the company not allowing leave?”
“Programmers have always had flexible work schedules. They don’t necessarily have to clock in at the office and often work from home,” Zhuang Ningyu said. “The police had already investigated this point when the kidnapping occurred. It was precisely for this reason that his supervisor wasn’t too concerned when he didn’t show up at the company for two whole days.”
“Then he had even less reason to go to the company, unless he had a masochistic personality disorder and needed to seek pleasure through self-humiliation. But he clearly wasn’t like that; he even had high self-esteem and was highly sensitive,” Yi Ke spread his hands. “So the question comes back around: why did he go to the company?”
Nothing happened at the software company on June 9th. The beautiful colleague remained beautiful on her own, while Dou Dekai sat at his desk all day, even ordering takeout for lunch.
Zhuang Ningyu read the testimony of the software company colleagues again. This time, his gaze focused on a few words—loud, sitting up straight, talking and laughing cheerfully.
They were all very positive words, but when applied to Dou Dekai at that particular time, they seemed obviously deliberate. Zhuang Ningyu vaguely had an idea. “Dou Dekai, despite being physically injured and emotionally ‘humiliated,’ and with the option to work from home, still chose to show up at the company with a bruised face, speaking loudly, with his chest out and head held high, talking and laughing cheerfully. This shows that deep down, he knew he was being treated as a joke, so he needed to use exaggerated outward behavior to alleviate the shame and tension.”
“He didn’t want to go to the company, but he still went,” Yi Ke suddenly blurted out. “Could he have been PUA’d? Like, the beautiful woman was his prey, but he was actually someone else’s prey for a compliance test?”
June 7th, 898. That day was the day Dou Dekai began to be “tamed.” He thought his life was about to change significantly because of it, and it did indeed change significantly. But the path he embarked on did not end with a huge sum of money and a beautiful woman, but with the end of his life.
Zhuang Ningyu said, “That ‘mastermind’.”
…
The investigation into the Zeus Group was still ongoing. It was quickly confirmed that Wang Lei had hired someone to kill Bao Yuzhou’s lover. She merely glanced at the evidence and calmly admitted to the crime, then retorted, “Shouldn’t a third party die? When Universe had its troubles, I went to find her. The whole house was full of imported furniture, cabinets full of Hermès bags, a sapphire the size of a pigeon’s egg—that was all our joint marital property. I didn’t even make things difficult for her. I just asked her to leave the things and go. She was unwilling. Her son was already dead, and she was still thinking about that money. I was in a hurry to raise money to save a life at the time and couldn’t be bothered with so much, so I just wanted to find someone to scare her. But it got out of hand.”
“What exactly is your relationship with Dou Dekai?” the investigator asked.
Wang Lei answered as she always had, “I don’t know him,” followed by a long silence.
“She knows exactly what she’s doing,” outside the interrogation room, Zhong Pinghe said to his grandson. “Hiring a killer doesn’t necessarily mean a death sentence. The more secrets she keeps, the more people outside will try to save her.”
“At the time that Zhang Nan from Chengnan Bookstore said Wang Lei first made remote contact with Dou Dekai in the rule zone, where was she?” Zhuang Ningyu asked.
Zhong Pinghe replied, “She claimed to be walking in Donghu Park, but too much time has passed. The public area surveillance and dashcam footage have been overwritten several times. Recovery is very difficult.”
Zhuang Ningyu shook his head like his grandfather.
Zhong Pinghe smiled and patted him. “Alright, it’s the weekend. Go have dinner with Xiao Yi. He’s been waiting downstairs for you for over ten minutes.”
To keep a low profile, Yi Ke would always drive a dusty, shabby little white car whenever he came to the investigation team. It was very inconspicuous, but he couldn’t beat his grandfather’s sharp eyes. He could be spotted ten times out of ten. Zhuang Ningyu got into the car and fastened his seatbelt. “Where are we going for dinner?”
Yi Ke handed him a paper bag.
Zhuang Ningyu opened it. Inside were two sandwiches, two rice balls, two bottles of water, and two bottles of juice.
The promised Spanish seafood paella had turned into convenience store fast food. Zhuang Ningyu asked, “What’s the plan?”
“I’m taking you to meet someone,” Yi Ke said. “We don’t have time to go to a restaurant. Just have a bite to tide you over for now. We’ll eat out tomorrow.”
Zhuang Ningyu unwrapped the packaging. “Who are we meeting?”
Yi Ke was about to lean his face over for a kiss before answering, but the car window was knocked on with a “thump-thump.” He quickly sat up straight. Zhuang Ningyu lowered the window. Yi Ke greeted him with a broad smile, “Hello, Grandpa.”
Zhong Pinghe had come to bring Zhuang Ningyu his thermos, which he had left on the table. Right now, his grandfather’s eyes fell on the already unwrapped “Salted Egg Yolk Cheese Beef Rice Ball” in his grandson’s hand. “Are you two just eating this for dinner?”
“No, we have something to do later. We’re just grabbing a quick bite to save time,” Zhuang Ningyu explained.
“What is it?” Zhong Pinghe asked.
Zhuang Ningyu looked at Yi Ke. What is it?
Yi Ke: “…Ahem.”
Zhong Pinghe might have associated this hesitant “ahem” with something he shouldn’t have, so he waved his hands repeatedly, saying, “You young people go on and be busy. You don’t have to tell me.”
His departing figure was very unsteady.
