Mo Du (默读) - Silent Reading

Verhovensky XIV

Dumbstruck, Luo Wenzhou watched Fei Du, hands in his pockets, walk into the room. He’d changed into the clothes of an academic style; there was even a book stuck under his arm to complete the disguise. Knocking lightly on the doorframe, Fei Du swept his gaze over the whole Criminal Investigation Team, which was giving off an air of needing support, and issued a collective nod in greeting. “Is my desk still in its place?”

Though Fei Du hadn’t spent very long at the Criminal Investigation Team, since ancient times it had been true that it was easy to go from frugality to extravagance but difficult to go from extravagance to frugality; there was no harm if there was nothing to compare with; everyone remembered the midnight snack specially delivered by the six-star hotel and the endless drinks and snacks. Under the influence of this powerful sugar-coated bullet, they’d nearly developed a conditioned reflex—on seeing this handsome man, their first reaction was to secretly start salivating.

Luo Wenzhou looked on as his unworldly lackeys displayed their atrocious behavior, occupying his office and clustering around Fei Du as though welcoming a household god of wealth; then he finally came around—no wonder when he’d told Fei Du not to come pick him up last night, the wretched child had agreed so readily!

Tao Ran tapped on his shoulder from behind. Lowering his voice, he said to Luo Wenzhou, “Are you two spicing things up?”

Luo Wenzhou at once restrained his lost expression and displayed an unfathomable coolness, meaningfully saying to Tao Ran, “Oh, you. A person like you, sitting at home all day fantasizing about a wife, presently belongs to the germinal stage of socialism, do you understand? Germinal! You haven’t even managed being well-fed and clothed, and you’re going after cultural and ideological attainments? Spicing things up has nothing to do with you.”

Tao Ran: “…”

With deliberate impatience, Luo Wenzhou looked at his watch. “Only coming over at this hour—was he reserving a table at the dining hall? I really can’t do anything with him.”

Tao Ran maintained his smile, earnestly pondering how to break off relations. “Weren’t you just going to pay home visits to those runaway students?”

“That’s right.” Luo Wenzhou waved his invisible tail. “If I weren’t waiting for him, I’d have left already. He’s holding me up.—Fei Du, don’t waste time, if there’s anything you need me to sign, put it in order right away.”

Tao Ran watched Luo Wenzhou pull apart the crowd to go into the room and grab Fei Du. He really couldn’t resist smiling, feeling that his two anxieties had cancelled each other out, like fighting fire with fire. He truly felt at ease. But his easy smile hadn’t yet fully formed when the phone in his pocket vibrated. Tao Ran fished it out to look and saw that Chang Ning had sent him a message.

Chang Ning said: “My friend gave me two tickets to a water acrobatics performance this weekend. She just ditched me at the last minute. Do you want to come?”

Like someone suffering from dyslexia, Tao Ran spent ten minutes reading this short message, wanting nothing better than to pull every word apart and chew it over, swallowing it down into his belly.

Chang Ning wasn’t one of those straightforward young ladies. Even when she was inviting him to see a performance, she had to first give a long string of reasons. And for her, this was already a clear display of her intentions, but…

When Lao Yang had been alive, he’d talked quite a lot with Tao Ran—each time he’d seen Luo Wenzhou’s revolting “Why the hell am I so handsome?” attitude, he’d wanted to complain about him and couldn’t calm down.

Not long before his death, Lao Yang had shown Tao Ran a picture on his phone of his daughter’s university admission notice, showing off. Then, thinking of something, he’d suddenly sighed and said to Tao Ran, “A blink of an eye, and my child is so grown up. My generation has muddled its way through more than half our lifetimes. I remember when her mom first agreed to marry me. It was my superior who introduced us. I felt so happy then, thinking that I’d somehow managed to trick myself a wife and wouldn’t have to be a bachelor anymore. I didn’t think of anything else. Now I think I was too careless. I only thought about how good she was. I didn’t know I was a burden.”