Chapter 61
There are many bars in Hong Kong, and Iris usually goes to quiet bars. Today, while running errands, she happened to pass by a bustling street and decided to turn around and have Derek take her to see Ting Wai-wai.
Iris has always had mixed feelings about this former friend. Before Ding Huihui fell for Zhuang Zhuoyuan, they got along very well, and Iris even considered having her as a bridesmaid. However, now, she is not even sure whether to send her the wedding invitation.
Under the dazzling lights, Ding Huihui swayed gracefully on the dance floor. Iris observed her for a while, confirming that her condition had returned to normal as the report stated, and then instructed Derek to withdraw his attention from her. Picking up her bag to leave, she took two steps when an unexpected turn of events occurred. A group of lecherous men followed Ding Huihui closely, surrounding her as she returned to her booth to rest. Iris stopped, sat back down, and kept a close watch on the situation, while instructing Derek to find a good vantage point and to intervene if necessary.
At first, she couldn't see clearly, but as Derek's photos arrived, Iris suddenly realized that the leader of the thugs was none other than Ding Youtian, whom she had seen from afar in the walled village that day. What a small world!
However, there was no benefit in clashing with them at this point, so after considering her options, Iris decided to wait at the door for Derek, who had already stepped in to help. Unexpectedly, Derek, who had helped Ding Huihui several times for the sake of his mission, had left a deep impression on Iris, so much so that a few minutes later, it was Ding Youtian and his group who first encountered Iris.
"What a blunder," Iris thought to herself, and quickly avoided the group by pretending to answer a phone call. The tactic worked, but unfortunately, halfway there, the phone rang, and instantly the group rushed towards her.
"Hey beautiful, why are you running away when you see us? Want to have a drink together?" Ding Youtian rubbed his nose and blocked her way like a boss.
Iris frowned, hung up the call from the company, and while considering whether to call Zhuang Zhuoyuan, she slowly backed away, preparing to go to the bar to find Derek. It wasn't that she didn't have the ability to take down these thugs, but as she said before, she didn't want to confront them directly unless absolutely necessary.
Seeing her expression, Ding Youtian assumed the young girl was frightened, and his smugness grew even stronger. He felt he could finally regain the face he had lost inside. As he spoke flirtatiously, he reached out to put his hand on Iris's shoulder: "Little sister, you have a great figure. Don't frown, come on, let big brother take you to have some fun."
"Go away!" Iris didn't want any physical contact with this kind of person, but seeing him turn around and about to touch her face, she forced herself to raise her hand to slap his hand away, or better yet, break it! She didn't care if he made it to the police station!
"Do you really need to lift a finger for something this small?" A low voice suddenly came from behind. Iris turned around and was immediately pulled behind her. It was a man. She had never heard that voice before, and she had no recollection of his figure. Looking at him from behind, Iris could only see stray hairs peeking out from between his fisherman's hat and mask, long and short, like wild grass that defied the rules and seemed ready to grow rampant.
"What, what are you doing?" Ding Youtian's terrified voice rang out. Iris took another half step to the left to broaden her view. That annoying hand was now held in the palm of the man in front of her. The fingers adorned with several punk silver rings tightened suddenly, and Ding Youtian let out a wail. He almost knelt down.
A madness slowly crept into the man's eyes. His mask covered the lower half of his face, but Iris instinctively knew he was smiling. A crowd was gradually gathering around them, and fearing it would escalate, Iris quickly grabbed the man's arm: "You should go."
Upon hearing those three words, the man turned his head, gave Iris a deep look, and then the icy coldness in his eyes faded, replaced by a hint of amusement. He was quite the actor, immediately transforming into a righteous hero, and declared magnanimously, "I'll spare you today, but don't let me see you harassing my sister again, or I'll beat you every time I see you!"
The crowd scattered like birds and beasts. Such things are not uncommon in this kind of place.
The man was about to leave, and Iris followed without hesitation. At first, he seemed to want to shake her off, but then, for some reason, he gradually slowed down, only stopping when they reached a quiet corner of the street.
The man turned around without saying a word.
Iris remained silent, simply observing him quietly.
He suddenly burst out laughing, a very short laugh.
Iris blinked. She asked, "What's your name?"
He countered, "You don't know?"
"I want to know."
"It's best not to know."
He was about to leave again when she ran up to him and opened her arms to stop him: "Tell me, where is she?"
"Who is she?" A flash of light caught Iris's eye, her eyes glistening with tears. This was an unpleasant trait; the two sisters were fundamentally different.
"Go away." He had been watching her all along, which was why he appeared so quickly. Was Ella nearby too?
Iris ran back to where she started, but how could she still be there? He led her through twists and turns, just to give her time to leave. After running two steps, she realized the outcome, and when she turned back, he was indeed gone.
Why won't you even see her this once?
He didn't want to answer any of the phone calls all night. Using his phone's location tracking, Zhuang Zhuoyuan found Iris at the beach. Her brow was furrowed, and tear tracks were still visible on her face. Zhuang Zhuoyuan felt a pang of heartache and carefully pulled her into his arms: "What's wrong, baby?"
Iris remained silent, only sobbing softly in front of him.
Zhuang Zhuoyuan, recalling Derek's description, tentatively guessed: "It's Hui..."
“Ella doesn’t want me anymore.” Iris sobbed, but Zhuang Zhuoyuan was stunned. He stared at her red eyes for a long time before he came to his senses. A thought struck him, and he took off his coat to wrap around her, wiping away her tears as he softly asked, “Have you seen your sister?”
“…No.” Her voice trembled again, her grievances growing even stronger. With someone leaning on her side, Iris cried even louder: “Kenny came to help me, but he won’t take me to see Ella.”
Zhuang Zhuoyuan was even more shocked: "You saw Kenny?"
To everyone's surprise, Iris shook her head again: "I'm not sure either."
So what exactly happened?
A sea breeze blew in gusts, and the beach grew colder as the night wore on. Without waiting for Iris's reply, Zhuang Zhuoyuan picked her up and prepared to return to the hotel. He was genuinely worried about her condition.
After taking a hot shower, Iris calmed down for a while before finally recounting the events in fits and starts. After the outburst, her mind was blank and foggy. Zhuang Zhuoyuan, worried she might catch a cold, forced her to drink another bowl of ginger soup before stopping. He truly hadn't expected that an unverified matter could cause Iris to lose control so completely. He feared he would have to take Iris to see Edgar tomorrow.
In the end, he didn't tell his elders about this, firstly because he didn't want them to worry, and secondly... Zhuang Zhuoyuan was subconsciously avoiding the topic. According to Iris's description, the man who saved her was indeed suspicious. He had Derek find the surveillance footage from the area near the incident site, and after Iris fell asleep, he got up and carefully reviewed it. Following the trail, the man was quite composed; apart from his face being completely covered by a mask, there were no other suspicious points. He watched the video over and over again, and later reviewed the information about Ella's kidnapping and falling into the sea years ago, but still, just like before, he had no clue. Zhuang Zhuoyuan took a bottle of wine to the balcony, and halfway through his drink, AK called.
He rarely contacted them, especially Zhuang Zhuoyuan; this was the first time he had called. He guessed that Derek had reported what happened today to the boss, which was why AK had come to talk to him specifically.
“Iris had severe post-traumatic stress disorder,” AK said, getting straight to the point. “It happened when Ella was kidnapped, and later when she fell into the sea, Iris’s old condition relapsed. Doctors tried to help her accept reality, but they couldn’t. In the end, Jennie and Edward decided to create a dream for her.”
A dream? Zhuang Zhuoyuan found it hard to believe that everything Iris had told him was a fabrication by his parents-in-law. "Then Kenny is fake too?" he asked AK.
The answer they received was negative: "Kenny was one of the kidnappers who abducted Ella, but we don't know what happened between them in those years. In any case, Ella fell in love with him and left with him despite her family's objections. In the end, she fell into the sea with that man."
"They're dead?"
“Dead.” AK paused for a moment after saying this. Zhuang Zhuoyuan heard a knocking sound in the background from his voice. Then, Edward spoke to him instead: “Zhuoyuan, go open the door. Mommy is outside.”
The two kids suddenly said they wanted some alone time. Jennie didn't think much of it at first, but the more she thought about it, the more uneasy she felt. To put her mind at ease, she asked Derek, but it unexpectedly led to a whole host of other issues. When she talked to Edward, she was incoherent. When she met Zhuang Zhuoyuan again, Jennie still didn't know how to start the conversation. She first watched the surveillance video on the computer and could only express extreme worry: "Zhuoyuan, when you go out with Iris again during this period, make sure to keep a close eye on her and try not to let her go out alone."
“Mommy?” Jennie’s hands were icy cold. Zhuang Zhuoyuan leaned forward to comfort her, but she stopped him. “I… your daddy and I discussed it, and we weren’t planning to tell you these things. Of course, we don’t consider you an outsider; we just hoped Iris could have a new life with you. That’s why we agreed to your marriage so readily—our daughter has been so much happier with you. But now it seems you need to know the truth. The closer your wedding gets, the more Iris seems to miss her sister.”
Zhuang Zhuoyuan finally understood the reason for Iris's emotional turmoil. He figured that his in-laws had probably sent the family cartoon to their home as a precaution, but they hadn't expected that their outbursts of emotion back then would be completely useless this time. Jennie lowered her head and wiped away her tears. Zhuang Zhuoyuan handed her a tissue, wanting to pick up where he had left off with AK: "AK said that Ella and Kenny are no longer here?"
“Yes—” Jennie’s heart still ached as if being cut by a knife when she thought of her eldest daughter, but now, for her other daughter, she had to endure this pain. The door to memories opened, and everything from the past seemed stained with blood: “We don’t know how they got in touch. Ella ran away on her way home after seeing the psychologist. Edward sent a lot of people to investigate, and the police were also searching for the organization that man belonged to. So in the end, they were trapped on the cliff edge of the island by two groups. There are probably two versions of this story. One is that Kenny volunteered to be bait to save their leader; the other is that they were discarded pawns.”
Jennie trembled as she recounted this, still unable to comprehend why Ella would abandon her family to die with Kenny. Through her repeated pauses in her narration, Zhuang Zhuoyuan finally understood what had happened—
Both sides were ordered to protect the hostages. A group of men pressed closer to Kenny and Ella, but their guns were actually aimed at the former. However, to everyone's surprise, after Kenny was shot and fell into the sea, Ella immediately jumped in after him. Iris, who rushed to the scene with her father and AK to try to persuade her sister to come back, unfortunately witnessed this scene and suffered from nightmares after returning home. During that time, Iris's PTSD relapsed, so until three months later when their people recovered Ella and Kenny's bodies, Jennie and Edward dared not tell their youngest daughter the truth. The whole family was put on a gag order, and the news was temporarily blocked, but they still worried that the secret would eventually be exposed.
"So the dream-making operation began. We hated Kenny, but we had to treat him like family. Only in this way could we bring Iris a glimmer of hope."
Zhuang Zhuoyuan now understood why the painting was taken back to the basement shortly after Jennie returned.
“Tonight’s events should just be a coincidence, but they’ve reminded us that something’s wrong with Iris. Ah Yuan, I know the dream-making plan is only a temporary fix, but psychological problems can’t be solved so easily. So I hope you can keep this a secret with us and not tell Iris everything you heard tonight, okay?” Jennie pleaded as a mother. Zhuang Zhuoyuan didn’t have a better solution at the moment, but he still hesitated because his older sister was a prime example. If the core issue wasn’t addressed and they continued to avoid facing it, he feared that Iris would ultimately be hurt even more.
Edward, who had been listening in the conversation, gave him one last option. He sent Zhuang Zhuoyuan an address and said, "This is Ella's grave. Now you are Iris's closest person, and you know her best. We are leaving the decision to you. You can make your choice at any time. But it would be best if you could inform me and Mommy before telling her the truth, as we also need to prepare."
Losing a loved one in this way hurts not only the younger sister, who shares the same mother, but also the parents, who are suffering immensely. Zhuang Zhuoyuan looked at the pain and exhaustion on his elders' faces, his heart filled with unbearable sorrow. Iris will know the truth one day, but not now, not now.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
