It was a sweltering afternoon.
The blinding sun hung hazily in the sky, its light so intense it made one dizzy at first glance. Not a single pedestrian was on the street. Everything seemed faded by the sun, displaying a dull, grayish-white hue.
The intricately patterned, openwork iron gate cast a pale, slightly purplish shadow on the white ground. As the sun moved, the shadow gradually became shorter and flatter.
"Cicadas—cicadas—"
A cicada was chirping somewhere, but soon it seemed to tire of this monotonous work and gradually fell silent. This bland and ordinary afternoon seemed even more tedious.
A voice broke the silence.
"Wrong! That's not how you stand!"
Li Ruhui turned around and frowned slightly: "Where exactly are we supposed to stand?"
Li Yiming peeked out from behind the shelf and said impatiently, "Seven Steps, why don't you ever learn your lesson?"
Li Ruhui's lips moved, as if he wanted to refute something, but in the end he didn't say anything, he just took a small step back.
"Stand still." Li Yiming stood behind the shelf, closed one eye, and held up a thumb to indicate Li Ruhui's position in the air. "Alright, that's fine this time."
The doors and windows of the mansion were tightly shut, making it stuffy and suffocating. In such weather, every movement felt somewhat hot and restless.
A large plate of freshly washed cherries sat on the cupboard beside Li Yiming, their bright red color and juicy appearance adding a touch of coolness to the room.
Li Ruhui stood motionless, while Li Yiming grabbed a handful of cherries, popped them into his mouth one by one, and then spat the cherry pits into his palm. Soon, his palm was filled with a small handful of cherry pits.
Li Yiming stuffed the cherry pit into a wooden device on the shelf, then tied a red string to the device. He then pulled up the red string, walked to Li Ruhui, and wrapped it around Li Ruhui's hand.
"Try pulling it," Li Yiming commanded succinctly.
Li Ruhui hesitated for a moment.
"Hurry up," Li Yiming urged.
Li Ruhui had no choice but to pull the red rope as instructed.
With a soft "thud," the cherry pit in the wooden device suddenly flew out, hitting Li Ruhui on the back with a series of thuds before falling to the ground with a series of thuds.
The remaining bright red pulp on the pit stained Li Ruhui's white shirt, leaving plum blossom-shaped red stains. At first glance, they looked somewhat like blood.
A cicada chirped once.
"It's done!" Li Yiming clapped his hands. "How was that?"
Li Ruhui recalled the feeling of the cherry pit hitting his back: "It was itchy, and a little painful."
"Replace the wooden device with a pistol, and the fruit pit with bullets, and you'll see how powerful it is."
Li Ruhui examined the red thread in his hand: "Is this what you said was something more powerful than my gun-disassembly technique?"
"You seem pretty dismissive?" Li Yiming raised an eyebrow. "This device can disguise suicide as homicide. I don't believe your Kaka University would teach this."
“First, there’s the Carterline Strategic Academy.” Li Ruhui untied the red rope, looping it around and around. “Second, what’s the point of this device? A person who wants to commit suicide should have no attachments to this world. If that’s the case, why bother disguising their corpse?”
Li Yiming rolled his eyes: "You think our line of work is too simple, don't you? Sometimes we not only have to die, but we also have to die in a fancy way—never mind, you bookworm wouldn't understand these things anyway." With that, he snatched the red string and went back to eating cherries in silence.
“I’m not a bookworm,” Li Ruhui emphasized. “I have six ways to subdue you immediately, and two more ways to snipe you from outside the mansion window…”
"Alright, high achiever. Since there are so many loopholes around me, why don't you go and clean up the mansion inside and out?" Li Yiming sneered and spat a cherry pit at Li Ruhui.
Just a second before the cherry pit was about to hit Li Ruhui's Adam's apple, Li Ruhui raised his hand and precisely blocked the cherry pit, holding it in his palm.
“It’s getting light,” Li Ruhui said, pulling back the curtains and opening the window, letting a blast of hot air rush into the room. “Look at the weather outside. Going out to ‘clean’ in this weather, isn’t that just making yourself look suspicious?”
Tian Guang Yi Hao, utterly bored, pressed his face against the cupboard: "It's because of this awful weather that I'm stuck here, teaching you, you bookworm, these lousy tricks. When will autumn come..."
Li Ruhui couldn't stand Tian Guang's arrogant attitude and couldn't help but retort, "It's cooler in winter, why don't you stay in your room all winter long?"
“In autumn there’s wheat and rice, but in winter there’s nothing but snow.” Li Yiming tilted his head. “Ah, I remember now—you, a top student, were born in winter too. Now you hate winter even more.”
“That was fabricated information by the organization,” for some reason, Li Ruhui felt it was necessary to explain this to Li Yiming. “Actually, I was born in the spring.”
A cicada chirped once.
"Cicadas—"
The camera pans to the cherry pit on the ground, and the image gradually blurs. Two lines of regular script appear in the center.
Episode 36
【Spring in the Wild】.
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"Waaaaaah..."
A gloomy cloud hung over the Huang family's residence.
Huang Min's father patted Huang Min's mother on the back and repeatedly comforted her, "Old friend! Don't cry!"
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