Chapter Ninety-Seven
"..."
Some people were also speechless.
"What's with that expression, Li Yingqiao?" Yu Jinyang found her righteous indignation unbelievable. He propped himself up against the headboard, pinched her chin hard with his thumb and forefinger, and looked down at her indifferently.
They've known each other since they were five. Li Yingqiao rarely feels guilty around him. Even when she makes a mistake, she's always self-righteous and defiant. Just like when they broke up, in order to get her Conan back, she could break the ice with something like, "Aren't you awesome? I'm talking to you using the Fibonacci sequence, don't be ungrateful."
She wasn't like that with anyone else, but she doted on Li Shuli the most, who had been sensible and obedient since childhood. Even before she was tall enough to reach the door, she would tiptoe to help Grandma Chunzhen pull up the roller shutter. Whenever she saw his parents, even though the feud between the two families hadn't been resolved, she always addressed them politely as "Uncle" and "Aunt." She was especially grateful to Liang Mei, always wanting to make her proud.
Zheng Miaojia, Wu Juan, Zhao Pingnan, Lilith, Xu Quyu... She seems to have inexhaustible patience and thoughtfulness towards her friends. If she encounters stray cats or dogs on the roadside, she immediately runs home, grabs a handful of leftover food, holds it in her palm, squats down, and patiently feeds them. She seems to have some empathy for everyone. But when it comes to him, she is stubborn as a mule and refuses to listen to any reason.
"Still glaring at me? Explain yourself, whose birthday is March 15th?" He leaned back, pretending to grab his phone from the bedside table. Whether he was genuinely angry or flirting, he said in a mockingly cold voice, "Want me to play 'I Loved the Wrong Person' for myself?"
"..."
Li Yingqiao chuckled as she half-propped herself up from the bed, observing his expression. A slight smile played on her lips as her eyes slowly scanned his face. Finally, she couldn't help but laugh and say, "Yu Jinyang, who do you think it is? Do you think any of the men around me have a birthday that sounds like March 15th?"
To be honest, he had suspected Zhang Zongxie after receiving that text message, but then he felt it couldn't possibly be him. If it really was him, Li Yingqiao wouldn't have come back and been messing around with him. But besides Zhang Zongxie, there was indeed another person around him whose birthday happened to be March 15th.
"Who?" Li Yingqiao asked curiously.
"Pan Xiaoliang".
Li Yingqiao burst out laughing, "Wait, how did you find out about him? I've had a few conversations with him outside of work?"
“You called him Xiaoliang once during a voice conference.”
“I’ve called Sun Taihe that before.”
"I know his birthday."
"..."
Heavens above!
Li Yingqiao wanted to laugh but couldn't, yet she couldn't hold it in; if she laughed, she was afraid he would get angry: "Meow."
"what."
"Do you think Pan Xiaoliang can threaten you?"
"Do you remember when you kept dung beetles at Liang Mei's house? You told me you thought they were great, that there are so many flowers and plants in the world, but they were only interested in dung balls."
You're saying Pan Xiaoliang is a dung beetle?
“No,” Yu Jinyang looked at her apologetically, but his mouth didn’t hold back at all, “I said he’s a dung ball, you’re the dung beetle.”
Li Yingqiao slapped him on the forehead.
The man's forehead was pressed down by her, forcing him to look up. His eyes were raised at the corners, and he looked at her lazily, without any interest in life, asking knowingly, "Feeling sorry? Sorry, I really shouldn't have used that analogy."
"..."
"Oh, I understand. Okay, I'll apologize to him tomorrow. Anyway, in your eyes, I can do whatever I want."
“You’re so difficult,” Li Yingqiao said with a laugh. “No matter what you do, it won’t work.”
"Okay, you're implying something about me."
Li Yingqiao felt as if a notebook had been silently written down in his mind again; her crimes were now countless.
Yu Jinyang leaned lazily against the headboard, his legs bent, and unexpectedly bumped his girlfriend, who seemed "nonsense" to him at the moment, with a cold glance. She looked at him as if she had the moral high ground but was pretending to be magnanimous, and hummed as if she was too lazy to argue with him.
Without a word, she pinched his face, her thumb and forefinger digging hard, pulling the flesh from his cheek. She said with a half-smile, "What are you humming about? Can your expression be any more arrogant?"
Yu Jinyang felt a lump in his throat, and immediately reached out to pinch her face. Without saying a word, his long legs clamped around her waist, pulling her into his arms and holding her tightly. The two of them instantly became a tangled mess on the bed, pulling each other's cheeks relentlessly, neither willing to let go first.
Li Yingqiao could barely breathe. Only now did she realize the vast difference in strength between men and women. Yu Jinyang used to just joke around with her. She was both anxious and angry: "Yu Jinyang, you're going to strangle me. Just because of a password?"
"Is it a password problem?" He used both hands and feet, watching the person in his arms unable to move. He seemed to be serious, his eyes darkening and sharply locking onto her, not allowing her the slightest escape. "Li Yingqiao, is it a password problem? You were so decisive and clean when you blocked me. Are you the kind of person who lingers on? How long have we been together? Is it that hard to forget? Is he special to you?"
"Yes, he is special."
Yu Jinyang was visibly taken aback, not expecting her to be so direct. For a moment, he was so angry he almost laughed, as if he had been struck a heavy blow to the chest. "Then what am I? Are you kidding me? Li Yingqiao, we've been together for over half a year, and now you're telling me there's a man who treats you specially?"
Li Yingqiao found the whole thing absurd. Even if she told Yu Jinyang every single word, he would only look at her with a self-pitying and indifferent expression, saying, "Keep making this up."
Just like the night before she saw Zhang Zongxie and the others off, she had actually tried to bring it up. She wanted to talk to him about 0315, but at that time she decided to go back to Beijing. The feeling of separation overwhelmed everything, and she swallowed back the words that were on the tip of her tongue several times.
She said helplessly, "My dad is a policeman."
Sure enough, he sneered: "So? Because your dad's a policeman? You can be fickle when you're dating, is that it?"
"..."
"It's still because my dad is an April Fool's Day prankster. I've been pranked like this by you every day since I was a kid."
"..."
She was instantly dumbfounded, "That's his police badge number, not someone's birthday!"
For Yu Jinyang, this is as absurd as Spider-Man being called Zhang Zongxie in Chinese because of the abbreviation zzx.
"...Okay, I understand."
"You believe me?"
"I slept."
She knew it.
Li Yingqiao tried to break free from him, but his arms held her tightly like iron. His dry, hot breath sprayed against her ear. Their young bodies were pressed together tightly, their passion surging uncontrollably. Li Yingqiao felt a surge of heat in her heart, and she crawled out of his arms, tilting her head back to kiss his lips.
He was being coldly turned away, and although his breathing was actually unsteady, he controlled it very well. Only his voice was low and hoarse as he glanced at her: "Change the password, and I'll pretend I don't know anything."
"you……"
"What can I do to you, Li Yingqiao? Never."
He got up and sat on the edge of the bed with his back to her, his back slightly hunched, seemingly lost in thought. After a few seconds of silence, he remained silent.
“You’re right. I don’t seem to have a temper,” Yu Jinyang suddenly reached out and turned on the bedside lamp, bent down to pick up his slippers, still without turning around, his voice devoid of any emotion, “but I’m just hard to deal with, nothing I do works, especially with you.”
He took a pair of socks from the bedside table drawer, and while putting them on, he said expressionlessly, "I'm actually jealous. It's not just 0315, but Lu Yingchuan, Zhang Zongxie, people I know and people I don't know, I've even been jealous of Pan Xiaoliang. You called him Xiaoliang a few times in the conference call, and I remember it. You probably never realized, but I've even been jealous of Gao Dian, because he always calls you Qiaoqiao, so I don't. That's just how I am. I want you to only look at me. But I never dare to show it, because I know you won't, I'm afraid you can't stand me."
He paused for a moment, picked up his phone from the bedside table, unlocked it, and glanced at it. There were a few unread messages.
Yu Jinyang flipped through the screen hastily, seemingly not even paying attention, before locking it again and saying coldly, "From childhood to adulthood, I've always found you adorable, but today you're anything but. I'm going to sleep in the guest room; we'll be sleeping separately for the night. Don't knock without my permission."
Ten minutes later, Li Yingqiao, clutching her pillow, pushed open the door to the guest room.
Within two minutes, the old bed in the guest room, which had been in disrepair for years, began to creak even louder.
The sound was muffled and deep, like a cry squeezed from deep within the bed, echoing repeatedly in the quiet duplex. It sounded as if someone was planting trees in the small garden.
Each shovelful was heavy and deep, leaving almost no room to breathe, and the soil was almost instantly filled with plants.
Someone was planting trees silently, their face cold, their pace sometimes slow, sometimes fast, their breath hot against her ear. Before she could recover from the afterglow, she saw him expressionlessly pull up his trousers.
"Is that enough? If so, go back to your room."
Li Yingqiao: "...Yu Jinyang, I suggest you stop now, otherwise I really won't be able to coax you tomorrow."
Reversing the Heavenly Stems.
Who is it that can't be appeased? That's just how she is, always so stubborn and indignant, even when she's in the wrong.
When Xiao Bo received Li Yingqiao's call, he was handling Jiang Le's police report. Originally, this case wouldn't have been assigned to him; according to procedure, domestic violence cases are handled directly by the police station. However, Jiang Le also claimed to be a victim of kidnapping in the Xiaohuacheng case, so the police station contacted him directly after receiving the report and proposed to combine the case with Qian Dongchang's case for investigation.
Unlike other domestic violence complainants who cower in fear like frightened deer in a corner, Jiang Le's gaze almost never left him. She was a very vigilant complainant, even scrutinizing the police with sharp eyes.
After Xiao Bo gave a brief self-introduction, he happened to receive a call from Li Yingqiao: "Yingqiao, what's up?"
When Jiang Le heard the name, her brow twitched slightly, and Xiao Bo noticed something unusual in her eyes.
"Uncle Xiao, there's something I'd like to ask you for help with."
"you say."
"Do you have time tomorrow? I'd like to visit the cemetery."
"Perfect timing. I need to ask you about the situation in Little Painting City. See you at the usual place tomorrow at noon."
*****
Although Xiao Bo and Li Yingqiao had only eaten noodles once at the noodle shop opposite the government building, Li Yingqiao quickly realized where the "old place" he was talking about was.
When they arrived at the store the next day, Xiao Bo glanced at the two people at the door, smiled and tossed the menu to them, saying, "You're quite clever. Actually, Yingqiao, you'd be very suitable to be a policeman."
As she spoke, she turned her gaze to Yu Jinyang, who was standing to the side. The slender junior high school student from back then had been completely transformed. Now, Yu Jinyang was tall and strong with an excellent physique.
"You've grown more and more handsome, Jin Yang. Tsk, you've transformed from a top student into a mature and elite man." Xiao Bo greeted him familiarly, with the care of an elder and the sternness of a policeman. His gaze seemed to be scrutinizing him on behalf of someone else.
"The two of you?" Xiao Bo asked knowingly.
Li Yingqiao: "Isn't it obvious?"
Xiao Bo chuckled, "It's obvious. If I still couldn't tell, I'd have wasted all these years as a policeman."
From the moment Yu Jinyang saw Xiao Bo, he called out "Uncle Xiao" after Li Yingqiao and then fell silent, because he suddenly realized that he might have made a mistake in last night's conversation.
The adults in Xiaohua City gossiped a lot, especially about single mothers. Li Shuli had been married twice, and one of her ex-husbands was in prison. Many adults speculated that he was Li Yingqiao's father. Li Shuli rarely explained her marriages to outsiders and never paid attention to these rumors, but Li Yingqiao cared a lot about them.
She didn't want her father to be a murderer, so she always dreamed of him being a hero, tirelessly emphasizing to him, "Meow, actually my dad is a policeman, he's a great hero."
He never took it seriously. He didn't care who her father was, he wouldn't look up to her just because he was a hero, nor would he look down on her just because he was a murderer. In his eyes, she had already become the hero she admired since she was a child.
So when he stood in front of a tombstone that had nothing but "KL-0315" on it, and felt the biting wind from the martyrs' cemetery, he suddenly understood what was going on.
Yu Jinyang rarely felt this helpless.
A rare sense of bewilderment left him frozen in place, silently gazing at the tombstone.
Xiao Bo stood beside Li Yingqiao, gave a straight military salute to the tombstone, and then gently brushed away the dust from the tombstone, as if it were a thousand pounds heavy.
He smiled and said, "I went to a meeting at the Provincial Public Security Bureau last week and saw your father's photo in the file of an old criminal police officer. Yingqiao, do you want to know his real name?"
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