Chapter 158 True or False Name Otherwise You Will Regret It One Day
The man Zhu Yingning pulled out was short and fat, balding, with black and white hair sticking out like weeds from his round and shiny scalp. There seemed to be something wrong with one of his eyes, with his eyelid drooping and the white of his eye cloudy and yellow.
Xu Sirui ran to Zhu Yingning, holding her shoulders with one hand while using the other to help her control the man. He asked, "What's going on?"
The man struggled mightily under their grasp, cursing them, calling them two idiots, and yelling for help, trying to get the onlookers and medical staff to come to his aid. Zhu Yingning twisted his shirt roughly, wrinkling the collar of his polo shirt, but didn't let go. He gasped, "Don't you recognize me?"
"Where the hell do I even know a crazy woman like you?"
"Then do you know Zhu Dashan?"
The man's struggling body froze for a moment, but he quickly began to twist with increasing frequency and force, raising his voice and saying, "I don't know what you're talking about! Someone, help! There's a madman here!"
When Xu Sirui heard her mention Zhu Dashan's name, he had a vague guess in his mind. He asked Zhu Yingning for confirmation: "Is he?"
"The foreman who worked on the construction site where my dad had the accident." She tugged at Zhao Laiyun's collar tightly, even using her other hand to help, fearing he'd run away. "His name is Zhao Laiyun. When I went to take my dad back home, I asked the workers about the contractor's whereabouts. They said he'd run away, afraid to take responsibility. Not only did he run away, he also absconded with the workers' wages. We've been looking for him and even called the police, but there's no sign of him. I didn't have time to waste on this, so I took my dad back home from the hospital early."
After explaining the whole story, she shouted, "Zhao Laiyun, since you remember who Zhu Dashan is, you should also remember what you did. How dare you embezzle everyone's hard-earned money and abscond? And how dare you show up here?! I'm telling you, I have to take you to the police station today!"
But after his name was called out, Zhao Laiyun didn't panic at all. He smiled twice at the terrified and curious onlookers, took out his ID card from his pocket, and threw it in Zhu Yingning's face: "Look carefully at who I am! What Zhao Laiyun, Zhao Laicai? I don't even know this person you are talking about. Come on, everyone, look carefully - look carefully at the name on my ID card. This yellow-haired girl mistook me for someone else and is throwing a tantrum here. Is there any justice in the world? Huh?!"
The ID card didn't land smoothly in Zhu Yingning's face, because Xu Sirui reached out to catch it. He flipped it over to the name side and saw that the name line read -
Wang Zhiyuan.
Zhu Yingning was completely confused, and Xu Sirui was also bewildered.
The situation was getting out of control. Wang Zhiyuan shouted for the police. Some of the patients and their families who were watching also stood up to criticize them, saying that children nowadays were becoming more and more unruly, with no respect for the elderly and no regard for the young, and actually allowing an elderly man to bully them. Medical staff and security guards came to maintain order, asking them to keep quiet: "The hospital is not a noisy place!"
Zhou Tianqing came over to separate them, pulled Zhu Yingning aside, and asked, "Yingning, are you sure you didn't recognize the wrong person? How do you know what Zhao Laiyun looks like? Have you ever met him in person?"
"No, I... I am..."
She knew Zhou Tianqing didn't mean to blame her, but the questions that kept coming at her in this situation still made her feel a little confused. Until Xu Sirui squeezed her shoulders and said to her, "Tell me slowly, we all believe you."
She then reorganized her words. "I've never met Zhao Laiyun in person, but my father's coworker showed me a photo of him. I'm sure Zhao Laiyun looks exactly like the man I just saw. There's absolutely no mistake! I just don't know why his name became Wang Zhiyuan."
Zhou Tianqing frowned and thought, "This is strange. Either your father's coworker is lying, or this man, who I don't know whether his name is Zhao Laiyun or Wang Zhiyuan, is lying. Yingning, do you think it's the former? Who is your father's coworker? Can you trust him?"
Zhou Tianqing's questioning made her feel depressed. Thinking carefully, she realized she was still too young when Zhu Dashan got into trouble. She couldn't rely on Liu Guifang, nor could she count on Zhu Jixiang. She herself was in even worse shape. She had gone to a completely unfamiliar city alone, knowing nothing, and had returned home bewildered and confused without understanding many things.
As for whether Zhu Dashan's co-workers were trustworthy, she wasn't sure they were good people.
After giving the answer, Zhou Tianqing sighed: "Oh, this is difficult."
Seeing Zhu Yingning's worried expression, she changed her tone and tried to comfort her, "But don't worry. Now that we know this man's appearance and name, if he really did it, he'll be punished. So, I'll find a lawyer later to discuss how to handle this kind of thing. Let's take it one step at a time, okay?"
Her arrangement made Zhu Yingning feel more at ease: "Okay."
**
One day after school started, the lawyer hired by Zhou Tianqing came to their home and asked Zhu Yingning in detail about Zhu Dashan's affairs.
"You said Zhao Laiyun was the individual contractor for this construction site, but I looked up relevant information online and found that the foreman for that site in those years was a construction company. The information you heard contradicts what I investigated."
"I went to the construction company's headquarters and couldn't find your father's labor contract. Did your father sign a labor contract when he was working on the construction site?"
"Do you remember the brand and production batch of the helmet your father was wearing?"
"Do you have direct or indirect evidence to prove that Zhao Laiyun was the project manager responsible for purchasing and reviewing that batch of helmets?"
"Can you still contact your father's former coworkers? The more the better."
Zhu Yingning couldn't answer any of the questions the lawyer asked.
She had never felt so lost, so useless, as she did now. Even when she first arrived in Beijing, she had never been as lost as she was now, like a newborn baby who couldn't understand the language spoken by adults.
Until now, she has not really realized the significance of the difference in perspective caused by the environment she grew up in. She thought that if she read enough books in the mountains, she would be no worse than her peers outside the mountains.
No, that's not the case.
Books taught her tolerance, reason, and a variety of knowledge, but they never taught her how to protect her rights in reality.
She didn't know whether Zhu Dashan had signed a labor contract, nor did she know the supplier of the safety helmet, because when she went to the city where Zhu Dashan worked to pick him up and take him back to his hometown, at that age, she had never even heard of the words "labor contract" and "supplier".
The lawyer left, leaving Zhou Tianqing and Xu Sirui sitting on the other end of the sofa looking at her.
Their pitying eyes made her feel her own incompetence even more deeply.
Zhou Tianqing said, "Look, Yingning, there's no rush for this. A lot of important evidence and information is currently missing. If we prosecute now, the process will be extremely cumbersome and require a significant amount of time and energy. You're in your third year of high school, a crucial year for you. I don't want these trivial matters to distract you and affect the course of your entire life. Do you understand?"
She nodded, her neck feeling unusually heavy.
"It's not that I won't sue, nor that I won't seek justice. I'm just putting this matter aside for now, until you've finished your college entrance exams. When you have enough time and energy, when you're strong, mature, and can afford to take on the responsibilities, then we'll deal with this together. Don't worry, Ruirui and I will be with you."
This is indeed the safest choice at the moment. Zhu Yingning also knew that Zhou Tianqing's words were entirely for her own good.
She had no choice but to agree.
**
Sun Mingyuan's uncle is a lawyer. Afterwards, Xu Sirui, unwilling to give up, asked him to ask his uncle about this matter, wanting to know if there was any other solution. The answer he got was similar to Zhou Tianqing's statement:
"Lawsuits are extremely draining, and many can take years. A thorough investigation of the case you describe would likely yield a breakthrough, but the problem lies in that 'dedicated investigation.' Even if the case were outsourced, the young woman involved would undoubtedly be scrambling to connect with the information. She's currently in her third year of high school and doesn't have any other guardians who can handle this matter for her. I sincerely suggest she wait a couple of years, until she passes the college entrance exam, before reconsidering this matter."
There is no financial cost, no time cost - compared to having nowhere to turn to, this is a more realistic problem that more ordinary people need to face.
After receiving the results from Sun Mingyuan, Xu Sirui was extremely depressed: "...I can't help at all."
He wished he could wake up from a sleep and become a real adult, holding power and stepping on capital, just like the domineering president in romance novels who could call the wind and rain. If he wanted to make someone unhappy, he would just open his thin lips slightly, smoke a cigar and say to his subordinates: "XX has been jumping around long enough." Then this so-called XX would automatically disappear from the world.
Sun Mingyuan found it funny: "Didn't you say you were just friends?"
He said confidently that friends could also help deal with these matters.
Sun Mingyuan just wanted to roll his eyes after hearing this, too lazy to bother with this twisted thing. He firmly believed that Xu Sirui was not suffering from depression, but split personality. He said that he and Zhu Yingning were just friends and that he no longer liked her. But in reality? Haha.
"I advise you to think it over now, otherwise one day you will regret it and won't even have a place to cry. I tell you."
Xu Sirui didn't want to discuss any issues related to feelings, so he hung up the phone after hearing that.
**
Despite hearing the domineering CEO's talk, Sun Mingyuan didn't take it seriously at all. Although Xu Sirui looked more handsome than him, had a higher IQ than him, came from a more affluent family, and, well, his temperament was also a level higher than his, but as a childhood friend who grew up wearing the same open-crotch pants, he always felt that Xu Sirui was not that mysterious. To put it bluntly, he was a very down-to-earth person who could cry and laugh, and was far from the image of a domineering CEO.
So one day in his senior year of high school, when Xu Sirui calmly told him that he had earned more than 200,000 yuan on his own, and according to this earning trend, he should be able to buy a small house in the city during his college years, he felt that his world was cracking and collapsing.
"Wait, wait!" He held his forehead. "Aren't we all seniors in high school? Aren't we all preparing for the college entrance exam? Where did you get 200,000 yuan? No, how did you earn it? Did you rob a bank? Did you sell drugs without telling me?!"
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Author's note: ... I completely overestimated myself. I've written seven chapters and still haven't reached the end of Volume 2. I guess it'll take another two or three chapters to successfully wrap things up. I really can't write anymore tonight, so I'll continue tomorrow night.
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