Chapter Five Agreement

  I don't know if Duan Lan Zhi was really drunk last night or just half-drunk to please me. At least she hasn't woken up yet, I looked at her beautiful face for a while and decided not to wake her up.

  I gazed at the face I had longed for, and suddenly felt a little scared. I didn't know what I could bring to her. Now I have nothing, I'm afraid I'm not worthy of her. I'm afraid that crazy killer will target him. I'm afraid she'll wake up and say "forget about last night" or "I won't hold you responsible".

  Sometimes people are so contradictory, when they can't get something, they hope to get it, but after getting it, they are afraid of losing it, so they greedily pray for more.

  Forget it, don't think about it anymore.

  I didn't think of him, but I couldn't help thinking of my adoptive father Zheng Guotang.

  Taking a deep breath, I still opened the text conversation with Zheng Guotang.

  Have you eaten?

  "It's cold outside, wear more clothes."

  "Go out with me for a walk."

  "Is there still enough money?"

  "Are you used to eating Shandong cuisine?"

  "How is the school food?"

  "I picked out an outfit for you and sent it over, take a look at how it is."

  "Happy birthday."

  ……

  It's always like this, Zheng Guotang's messages to me are often such monotonous concerns, and my responses are careless "oh, okay, uh-huh" and so on.

  Thinking of this, I couldn't help but recall Zheng Guotang's death. A wave of regret once again took over my mind, and my eyes involuntarily welled up with tears.

  Until three years ago, I repeatedly looked at the text messages my parents sent me, silently shedding tears. It wasn't until a chance phone malfunction, perhaps fate, that I completely lost all of my parents' text messages.

  "Look again and you'll be even more heartbroken, can you pull yourself together?" Du Lan Zhi's sudden voice startled me, I stared at her in surprise: "When did you wake up?"

  "When you cry." she replied.

  "I...". I wanted to say something, but the words reached the tip of my tongue and then I thought about what we did last night, so I swallowed them back. All I said was "Sorry."

  "I think you haven't done anything wrong to me, nor have you done anything wrong to others." Duan Lan Zhi looked into my eyes and said in a very soft and slow voice: "The one you should apologize to is yourself. You should stand in front of the mirror and say sorry to yourself. You've been suppressing yourself for too long."

  "I don't have..."

  My words were cut off by Duan Lan Zhi: "If you didn't, why did your personality become introverted, why did you go to study art, and why did you sever all contact with me?"

  Duan Lan Zhi's words hit me right in the heart, and I was left speechless.

  "Let's change the subject, this topic is too heavy." Duan Lan Zhi let out a disappointed sigh.

  "There's nothing that can't be said, I can even tell you about the memories that belong to me that day." I saw Duan Lan Zhi's appearance and seemed reluctant to disappoint her, saying: "On the day of the accident, I remember we had a late class, our class didn't finish self-study until 6:40. I was in a good mood that day, do you remember? It was because my dad sent me a text message telling me he wanted to give me a birthday surprise. At that time, I was excited - I was finally going to have my first phone, and it was the top-of-the-line Apple 4 smartphone! My classmates would definitely be jealous of me, and even Duan Lan Zhi, the class representative, would be jealous of me. If I lent her the phone to play with and she happened to see her own photo on the desktop background of my phone, she should understand my intentions, right?"

  Duan Lanxi leaned against me, quietly listening to my memories. As I spoke to this point, a faint smile appeared on her face, and it was so beautiful.

  I continued to recall the emotions I had at that time, while continuing my story: "With an unusually excited and complex mood, I boarded the No. 12 bus home. My family lives in Renhe Town, and every day I have to take the No. 12 bus for over an hour to go to school. Maybe it was because of New Year's Day the next day, but that day the bus was unusually crowded, and I hate crowds. Many times, I would choose to take a black car back to town, but at that time, my mood was good, and I didn't want to waste time going home because the black car wasn't full, so I still chose the No. 12. I really wanted to see my new mobile phone as soon as possible.

  In our China, due to the large population and dense numbers, there is a crowded bus situation all over the country. What is Chinese-style bus crowding? It's when you don't need to hold on with your hands, but you still can't fall down; the driver keeps shouting "move back", and the ticket seller always shouts "no one gets off at this stop", but the driver still stops the car and squeezes more people in. Having no place to hold onto is not the most crowded, having no place to stand is very common, right? At that time, that No. 12 bus was very crowded, so much so that I stood under the open window, and still felt like I couldn't breathe, but when I thought of my new Apple 4 mobile phone that I would soon own, and how I could show it off to my classmates, I suddenly felt that life was so beautiful, even with many raindrops falling on my face from the window.

  I don't know if you know this, but my dad is a ordinary fisherman, who goes out to sea during fishing season. My mother is an employee of a state-owned textile factory that almost went bankrupt after the financial crisis. Our family isn't poor, but we're definitely not rich either. Going to school in the city was mom's idea, because she was born in Rongwei City and has very strong feelings for it. Although my grandparents passed away in 2002, mom still hasn't sold our old house in Rongwei.

  Compared to you city students, my family background is much more humble, and maybe that's why I developed a sense of inferiority and vanity. I started asking my parents for branded sportswear and shoes, as if I wanted to show off to my classmates how rich I was. It seems like the less money we had, the more I wanted to show off in front of my classmates.

  As I said this, my words suddenly stopped, and a strange feeling flooded into my brain, making my scalp feel numb. I scratched my head, and with some anger, said: "Now that I think about it, I hate how vain I was back then."

  "Duan Lan Zhi's voice pulled my thoughts out of that strange emotion, and my eyes cleared up again, looking at Duan Lan Zhi."

  "After all these years, losing contact with this dream lover, and then reuniting again, don't you have anything else to say to me?" Duan Lan Zhi batted her left eyelid at me coquettishly, but I knew she was deliberately guiding my thoughts.

  I nodded: "Mm, yes. Why did you want to become a police officer? Was it your family's idea? I remember you used to want to study administration." I asked the question that had been lingering in my mind since I found out she was studying forensic science.

  "Has this question been bothering you all day?" asked Duan Lanzhi with a smile.

  "Uh-huh." I nodded.

  "It's what I mean. Before it was for you, now it's for myself." she said.

  I seem to have understood it, yet I don't seem to have understood it.

  "Do you know why I rejected you at first? It's because the one I liked wasn't someone with a tendency to depression. If you had gotten over it quickly back then, we might have been a couple by now. The answer is simple, isn't it?" she said.

  Her words made me sober up, her meaning was very clear, she actually liked me at that time too, she rejected me in order to make me quickly understand and walk out of the shadow, but I obviously disappointed her, even a very simple answer made me not digest for three or four years.

  "I... I've actually moved on." I continued, "It's just that thinking about being alone again from now on fills me with an indescribable sorrow. Even if he hadn't been killed by that person, but had died a normal death due to old age or illness, I would still be heartbroken."

  "You're not alone now, are you? You have me. I became a police officer not for my own happiness, but my happiness is you!" Duan Lan Zhi said as she proactively kissed my lips.

  My eyes, wide open at first, slowly closed, savoring the bliss brought by these fragrant lips.

  At this moment, I feel like I am the happiest person in the world.

  "Do you have any guesses about the killer?" she asked, her lips parting.

  "Uh-huh. The one who killed my parents." I nodded and said.

  "This is impossible!" she said: "The murderer of your parents has already been caught and brought to justice."

  "No, you may not believe it, but those two culprits were not the ones who killed my parents. The real killer, I saw him myself, although he was wearing a Sun Wukong mask at the time, but from his build, I could tell. Of course, you can choose not to believe me, after all, no one believed me back then, those police officers who took my statement even sent me for a psychiatric evaluation, concluding that I had suffered too great a shock and was hallucinating." I sneered with a smile: "Perhaps they later came to believe my words through further investigation, but in order to cover up their own mistake, they still pinned the crime on those two culprits!"

  Duan Lan Zhi's beautiful eyes stared at me unwaveringly and said a sentence that I will never forget for the rest of my life: "No, I believe you."

  This is the most touching and happiest moment in my life.

  "Come to think of it, are you thinking of joining the Major Crimes Unit?" I recalled the several phone calls Duan Lan Zhi made two days ago and couldn't help but ask.

  "Uh-huh." Duan Lanqi shifted uncomfortably and nodded somewhat helplessly: "Yes, unfortunately my teacher's greatest authority is to make me temporarily become the deputy captain of the local police station. He said I don't have any achievements, so I couldn't directly enter the criminal investigation team. But being a deputy captain doesn't come with independent law enforcement powers, so how could I possibly have any achievements?"

  I thought for a moment and then smiled: "Coast guards indeed do not have the right to enforce laws on their own, they are equivalent to security guards on the road, only having the obligation to protect public safety, right?"

  Duan Lan Zhi nodded upon hearing this and looked at me again with her beautiful eyes, as if realizing that I still had something to say.

  "This way, I'll teach you a method that doesn't violate the auxiliary police rules and can also get achievements." I said.

  Duan Lan Zhi's eyes lit up: "You're kidding, right? There's actually a method like this?"

  I smiled and nodded: "Actually, it's very simple, you're just too stupid. The Holy District is said to have a not-so-small gang of thieves, and my classmates often say that things have been stolen from them, but the students are timid and weak, even if they discover that they've been stolen, they don't dare speak out."

  "Arrest the thief? How to arrest?" Duan Lan Zhi smiled somewhat helplessly: "By the time someone reports the case and we arrive, the thief has already run away. If it's that easy to catch a thief, Director Ou wouldn't have criticized our Xianshengjie Police Station repeatedly over the years. This is a problem that has been going on for many years."

  "So you're stuck in your own little world." I smiled confidently: "Find a trustworthy auxiliary police officer to take a sick leave, then dress him up as a rich guy, preferably the nouveau riche type, with a gold watch and a gold chain around his neck. It's best if he's not too muscular. Let him stroll around the Xue Sheng district in style. As for you guys, just follow him discreetly in a private car. I bet you'll get some results."

  "Fishing for the law? That's a bit inappropriate in our country, isn't it?" Duan Lan Zhi's eyes lit up momentarily before dimming again.

  "It depends on how you report it. The auxiliary police officer was not in the system to begin with, and after taking sick leave, he is just an ordinary citizen. He spent his own money, got targeted by thieves, and you happened to be patrolling there..." I said this much, saw Du Lanxi's eyes light up, and knew she had understood my meaning.

  Sometimes, the method of doing things is the same, but the results are different. The main reason is whether the handling after the event is appropriate. I guess even if the leader guessed that Duan Lan Zhi was fishing for the law, based on the actual situation in our country, it's not good to say anything about Duan Lan Zhi, and she will still be given credit, after all, she caught a thief, who is a major threat to the district's security. The report of catching the thief has no loopholes, so there's nothing to pick on, right?

  "Thank you." Duan Lanqi's lips touched mine again and she said with great delight.

  Seeing my astonished and somewhat regretful gaze, Duan Lanzhi lowered her head with a hint of shyness: "It's a pity you didn't study forensic science, your brain is so clever."

  "I hate police because the one who killed my parents was wearing a police uniform." I said hypocritically.

  "Then... will you hate me?" she asked hesitantly.

  "No." I smiled and shook my head: "After all, you learned criminal investigation for my sake."

  I actually understood just now.

  Duan Lanqi's family had some background, and it was impossible for her not to know that there were others involved in the murder of my parents back then. However, since the police system at the time did not want to investigate the case thoroughly, Duan Lanqi's sense of justice became her motivation to study criminal investigation. She wanted to become a professional investigator within the system and find an opportunity to re-examine the old case files.

  For me, Duan Lanzhi cut off her long hair which she had been proud of for years.

  Duan Lan Zhi didn't expect me to answer like that, she was taken aback at first, then asked: "Then why do you want to help me? I'm so stupid, it's not certain that I can help you catch that person."

  I smiled slightly and gently stroked her smooth hair, my gaze firm: "It's for myself too. I only have one request - once you join the Major Crimes Unit, tell me everything you know."