The family of the old man named Hu arrived very quickly.
In about 20 minutes, Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin saw an old lady appear. She looked slightly younger than the old man, but was still at least 60 years old.
This old lady was dressed plainly, in a gray shirt and gray trousers, with her hair cut in a simple bob. The hair falling by her temples was pinned up with two of the most basic black bobby pins.
Looking at Old Hu’s fashionable flair, one truly couldn’t tell that his wife would be such an unadorned woman.
But in a marriage, the two people are either aligned or complementary. The fact that this couple could stick together all the way into their old age was perhaps precisely due to them complementing each other.
They didn’t enter the police booth. They only saw the old lady bowing repeatedly as the police lectured her, before reaching out to grab the old man’s hand, wanting to support him as they walked out.
“Their marital bond is pretty good,” Ji Xun mused.
The very next second, he was slapped in the face by reality.
The old man irritably swatted the old lady’s hand away, truly not giving her a single ounce of face.
Yet the old lady didn’t get angry. She merely offered a good-tempered smile, and a moment later, reached out to grab the old man’s hand again.
This time, the old man quickened his pace, stepping out of the booth a step ahead of the old lady.
Upon exiting the booth, the old man came face-to-face with Huo Ranyin. His face still carried a hint of reluctance to part and an unfulfilled desire, as if he very much wanted to say something to Huo Ranyin. However, the police officers were glaring at him menacingly from right behind him.
In the end, the old man could only sullenly get into the car with the old lady who had come to pick him up. In the final moments before the car started, the old lady rolled down the window and first thanked the police, then thanked Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin. The Old Hu beside her, however, sat with a cold face, not saying a single word.
The car sped off, kicking up a trail of dust.
The abandoned port, the police booth, and the two people by the roadside were left further and further behind in the car’s rearview mirror. They shrank into sesame-sized dots before completely disappearing around a bend.
The car had entered the city’s main arterial road. The multicolored, vibrant night lights reflected on the car windows, leaving faint, rainbow-like streaks of color.
The awkward silence was finally broken by the old lady sitting on the right.
She was a very patient, very polite woman. Seeing the sand clinging to Old Hu’s clothes, she meticulously brushed it off. “You, really… you should at least let the family know before you leave the house. The kids went crazy looking for you.”
Old Hu crossed his arms over his chest. The lights outside constantly flickered across his face, making his deeply wrinkled visage look moody and unpredictable. In the interplay of light and shadow, he looked like a skull with a layer of skin draped over it.
“Really?” Fortunately, he quickly spoke up, the sound of a living person’s voice diluting the terrifying atmosphere. “I doubt it.”
“Don’t view yourself as so unimportant. Let alone Little Fei, even Little Yuan in Ning City called twice to ask if I had picked you up,” the old lady said. “She sounded worried to death on the phone. I reckon if I had said I hadn’t found you, she would have immediately asked her colleagues here to help search. Then it would have blown up and everyone would know; you’d lose a lot of face too. So just rest easy, neither of these two kids is unfilial.”
Old Hu had two children, a son and a daughter. One was named Hu Zheng, the other Hu Yuan.
Old Hu always had a sharp tongue but a soft heart. Hearing these words, his expression softened. Sitting in the car, he no longer looked as terrifying as a skull.
“At least Hu Yuan still knows to call me. Did she say when she’s coming back?”
“About that…”
“What, she still doesn’t want to come back?” Old Hu’s face pulled long again. Those layers upon layers of wrinkles made him look exactly like a miserable pug. “She wasn’t even willing to come back for my eightieth birthday banquet, yet you still talk about filial or unfilial? Ridiculous. I suppose I’ll only see her again when I’m dead!”
“It’s not like you don’t know…” the old lady tried to smooth things over. “Yuan-yuan has her reasons for not coming back. She and Little Zheng have a knot between them. Rather than making a scene at your birthday banquet, it was better to avoid crossing paths. The kids are grown up now and have their own minds; just let them be.”
“What reasons?” the old man said in annoyance. “Isn’t it just because Hu Zheng is eyeing my inheritance and doesn’t want to share it with Hu Yuan? He just doesn’t want to see a thorn in his side, right? Who I give my inheritance to is my own freedom! Knowing Hu Zheng has those intentions, Hu Yuan should be parading in front of me every day, buttering me up so I leave everything to her and not a single cent to Hu Zheng! Where is the logic in retreating without a fight? I certainly don’t remember teaching her to be like that!”
“Why are you talking about inheritance again? It’s so bad luck!” the old lady scolded. “Your health is perfectly fine. You’re nowhere near the point of leaving an inheritance!”
“Hmph, whatever you say, I’ve already made my will anyway…”
The old lady didn’t want to argue with the stubborn old man and smoothly changed the subject. “Your brooch is crooked. The police said you wanted to give it to a young man you had just met. Haven’t you always liked this brooch? Why were you going to just give it away this time? If you couldn’t find it later, you’d be throwing a tantrum again.”
She reached out to adjust the brooch, but Old Hu raised his arm and swatted her away.
Old Hu impatiently muttered something incomprehensible, clearly still angry about the two children.
The old lady teased him:
“See? You treat it like such a treasure that I can’t even touch it, yet you were thinking of giving it away. You definitely would have started regretting it the moment you handed it over. Anyway, we can talk about the rest later. Making a call to the kids to tell them you’re safe is the proper thing to do right now.”
They rode in silence for the rest of the way, and the car quickly arrived at their destination.
Old Hu hadn’t lied to Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin.
He indeed had a “big home”—it was quite large, a three-story villa with a small garden.
The garden was well-maintained. Even in February and March, it provided a canopy of green shade, the flowers and trees looking serene and joyful.
The old lady got out of the car first and helped Old Hu out. As she guided him through the garden toward the villa, she asked, “…You must have gotten cold coming back from the seaside, right? The soup at home is already done. I’ll bring some up for you; have a sip first?”
“No need, go busy yourself. I’ll stay in the garden for a bit,” Old Hu said.
“Then you need to wear more clothes. I’ll go inside and get the wool shawl hanging on the coat rack for you to drape over yourself,” the old lady said. She went into the house and came back out with a coffee-colored scarf in hand.
She draped the scarf over the knees of Old Hu, who had sat down on a garden chair, and then turned back inside.
There were still many things to do tonight.
Because she had gone out to pick him up, she had only made the soup; the dishes hadn’t been cooked, and the medicine hadn’t been brewed.
Old Hu’s medicine couldn’t be skipped.
When people get old, they suffer from countless ailments here and there. Missing even one dose of medicine was a major issue.
Right, he had gone to the seaside to catch the wind today too. Maybe when drawing his bathwater tonight, she should add a cold-dispelling herbal pack?
Like a worker bee, she bustled about within the massive hive that was the house, not resting for a single moment.
It wasn’t until the brief pause after finishing the cooking and while waiting for the medicine to brew, that she casually glanced up through the open window and saw two people standing in the garden.
Old Hu.
And a young woman.
They were hiding in a corner obscured by the shade of the trees, invisible to outsiders. A pair of aged, wrinkled hands was firmly gripping a pair of young, delicate hands.
On that young, fair, soft wrist—like a pristine section of lotus root—rested an intensely green, drippingly vibrant jade bangle.
“Gulu, gulu—Gulu, gulu—”
The medicine boiled, and the dark brown liquid bubbled out of the clay pot, leaving trails of thick, sticky tears down the spout.
The woman wearing the jade bangle hummed a song, her footsteps brisk. Her light, graceful demeanor as she tread through the night made it look as if she were dancing with the darkness. Tucking her waist-length hair behind her ear, she turned into an alley behind an ancient tree—
The alley was very short, about fifty or sixty meters deep, with three or four shops squeezed tightly inside. At the very deepest part of the alley was a coffee shop.
Next to the coffee shop was a flower shop. A string of wisteria was planted along the exterior wall. In the right season, the wisteria of varying shades of purple would drape down like a painting of a young girl’s secret thoughts.
But in late winter and early spring—it was much less impressive.
The bright flowers had yet to bloom; only the cold-resistant greenery remained to decorate the iron-gray walls.
She walked past the flower shop and pushed open the cat-shaped handle of the coffee shop door.
“Meow—”
The meows of cats eagerly rushed out from inside. One of them—a cat completely snow-white except for two coffee-colored ear tips—was lying in a cat hammock right by the entrance. It stretched two snow-white paws through the hammock’s netting, the pink toe beans beneath the fur just barely brushing against the woman’s cheek.
“Ah!”
The woman let out a cry, not out of fright, but pleasant surprise.
She expertly scooped the cat up, bouncing it lightly in her arms, and said to the shop owner, “Snowball has gotten heavier again.”
This was a Ragdoll cat named “Snowball,” a new arrival the owner had brought in before the new year. It had been quite small when it first arrived, but after the new year passed, it had already grown to more than double its original weight. And because it was constantly fawned over by the customers, it had developed a haughty, regal, queen-like temper.
“It’s a Ragdoll, they grow like weeds in the wind,” the shop owner looked up from the bar counter. “Luo Sui, been busy lately? You haven’t been here in a while. What would you like? The usual?”
“Busy—” Luo Sui carried the cat to a round table and sat down. “The usual. A slice of matcha cheese cake, a cappuccino, and give me a portion of freeze-dried cat treats too.”
“Snowball is already full today. She won’t eat even if you offer freeze-dried treats,” the owner reminded her. “Every customer who comes in makes Snowball the very first one they feed.”
“It’s fine, feeding the other cats is the same. I’m a lover of all cats,” Luo Sui lifted her chin. Although she claimed to be a universal cat lover, she still liked this Ragdoll the most, especially its cornflower-blue eyes. Those blue eyes were as beautiful as a pair of sapphires.
The Ragdoll lazily rested its head against her hand, its long, snow-white fur spilling over the jade bangle. The exquisite snowy coat made the jade bangle look even more dazzling, as if it had condensed the very essence of green in the world.
Luo Sui also thought this scene was beautiful.
She pulled out her phone, aimed it at the bangle, and with a click—
Ding. A notification rang out for a new Weibo post.
A’kun had been sitting in front of the computer for a while. Feeling his eyes getting a bit dry, he closed them and leaned back in his chair to rest. The elementary school teachers who constantly preached about looking at green to relieve eye fatigue were peddling a complete pseudo-proposition. In all his life, he had never felt it helped even a little. His computer screen moments ago had also been green—a pool of precious, luxurious jade green.
The photo was the latest picture posted by the owner of the Weibo account “Melancholy Florence”. Along with the picture, the owner had written a caption.
[Couldn’t control my hands again and bought this new bangle. I used to think green was tacky and always preferred buying purple, pink, or white ones. But as I get older, the more I feel that if you buy jade, it HAS to be green! If it’s not green, what kind of jade is it!]
A’kun rested for about five minutes, but that brilliant smear of green still wriggled back and forth on his pitch-black retinas, making it impossible for him to forget. He opened his eyes, right-clicked to save the picture, and then checked its properties.
Location data: No. 172 Guanxia Street, Qin City.
A’kun opened the map and typed in No. 172 Guanxia Street. A “Meow Meow Coffee Shop” popped up. He then used Dianping to search for the shop’s decor and its best-selling desserts. The top-ranked dessert, a matcha cheese cake, looked very similar in color to the smear of light green visible in the top right corner of the photo.
Florence still likes cats as much as ever, A’kun thought. It was a pity she didn’t have a cat of her own and could only occasionally visit cat cafes to satisfy her cravings. Young girls were always so careless, having no idea how to protect their privacy, always posting unedited photos online. Compared to Florence, those people who constantly slapped various light-pollution filters over their food photos inadvertently protected their privacy much better.
He picked up his phone and chose a Weibo account that frequently interacted with Florence to leave a comment.
[So pretty, I want one! Too bad I’m broke [cry]. I can only draw a circle with the matcha cake next to me and pretend I have one too.]
It didn’t take long for Florence to reply.
[Wow! Are you eating matcha cake too? I was just eating one, what a coincidence! Whispering: the happiness value a matcha cake brings is way higher than jade. Is this the power of sugar? [drool]]
So simple. Young girls were always so easy to approach and please.
A’kun smiled, screenshotted the conversation, and saved it in a computer folder named “Bright Green”. All the images inside were traces Florence had left on the internet.
A’kun flipped through these images and picked out a screenshot of Florence’s ‘following’ list.
Florence didn’t follow many people—103 in total. When A’kun was bored, he would go through this list, one by one. Living in society, a person was nothing more than a representation of complex social relationships; it was the validation of these relationships that constituted the person themselves. The online society was exactly the same. An unknown ID in cyberspace was like a wandering ghost; only when it was known by others and mutually established connections did it gain the necessity of existence within the online society.
Florence liked zodiac signs. She was always following astrology bloggers and occasionally retweeted posts to draw lots for fortunes. It was a very interesting way modern women prayed to gods and Buddhas, simplifying the process of old people going to temples to pray for blessings into a simple lot-drawing click. But at its core, it was the same—both were praying for an illusory, intangible feedback.
Cats went without saying. Florence also followed five official mobile game accounts. She was completely unguarded when playing games, always using the same ID. If it weren’t for the fact that one of the games didn’t allow searching directly by ID, A’kun would have become her friend in all her games. However, A’kun hated playing games. Logging in daily and grinding dailies felt just like being forced to work for a game company every day. A’kun loathed that feeling, so after adding her as a friend, he handed those accounts off to power-levelers.
Young girls always liked makeup, so beauty bloggers were also a key focus of Florence’s follows. The way people shopped had also changed; it used to be TV shopping, now it was KOL promotions. But this was good news for A’kun. He could judge what new cosmetics she had recently bought and what she was interested in based on the Weibo posts she had liked and retweeted recently. Once, he boldly placed an order on Taobao and mailed her a plush toy. When the toy arrived, Florence thought it was a surprise from a friend and even asked on Weibo who it was from.
Taobao was great. It truly achieved anonymous surprises.
Yes—A’kun knew Florence’s address.
It was too simple.
Once, Florence was trying to buy an out-of-print, second-hand figurine she had missed out on. A’kun used a burner account to leave a message saying he had one. In reality, he found someone else and spent a hefty five thousand to buy it. Through this exchange, he obtained Florence’s address. Her phone number and address were real, though her name was thinly veiled as ‘Melancholy Florence’. But how could that stump A’kun? One Saturday, A’kun went to the express delivery station downstairs from her apartment, gave the last four digits of her phone number, and easily saw her real name on a Tmall package—Luo Sui.
