CM | Chapter 27

How could Du Tong be here?!

Gu Yao’s attention was instantly drawn to the photo.

She stared at it for a long time, and it felt like every hair on her body had stood on end.

Strictly speaking, Zhu Shengxi and Du Tong in the photo were not doing anything intimate. They weren’t even making eye contact.

The background looked like a stadium, surrounded by people. Zhu Shengxi and Du Tong were sitting together, looking toward the field like everyone else, a smile on their lips, as if they were really enjoying the atmosphere.

Although it wasn’t in some ambiguous place like “Jeane Bar,” a photo like this still somehow made their relationship seem different.

So they were already familiar enough to go to a stadium and watch a game together?

And both of them were the kind of people who usually didn’t smile. After being tense for so long, once those lines finally loosened, they looked even more unusual.

Gu Yao couldn’t help frowning. She took a breath and temporarily set her doubts aside, then quickly took out the other three.

Coincidentally, the women in these three photos were all people Gu Yao had at least seen once.

The woman in the first photo was named Yan Zhen. She was the external relations manager at Chengwen Real Estate.

The day Gu Yao met Yan Zhen was at a cocktail party. Yan Zhen was the center of attention. Later, she got drunk and went to stay in the yard.

Gu Yao happened to pass by and saw Yan Zhen with disheveled hair around her temples and ears, her heels clicking crookedly against the tiled floor. Just as she was about to fall, she collapsed into the arms of a middle-aged man.

But the next second, Yan Zhen pushed the man away, covered her mouth, and staggered out the door. The man immediately chased after her.

When Gu Yao left the party, she saw Yan Zhen and the man arguing at the entrance, pulling and tugging at each other.

Yan Zhen seemed to have injured her ankle. She was in a sorry state, one hand braced against a tree, the other holding a high heel, her bare foot hanging in the air.

Gu Yao waited for her driver to arrive, but she didn’t get in the car right away. She was worried Yan Zhen might not be able to get away, so she asked the driver to go over and pass on a message, saying she was willing to give Yan Zhen a ride.

Yan Zhen’s irritated, striking expression showed a hint of surprise when she heard the driver’s message. Then she looked over at Gu Yao and smiled, waving away the kindness.

Just before getting into the car, Gu Yao looked back and happened to catch the middle-aged man giving Yan Zhen a fawning smile, while Yan Zhen only lowered her head and adjusted her hair.

Everyone in the real estate circle said Yan Zhen was a woman who knew exactly how to handle men, that there wasn’t a man she couldn’t win over.

And in this photo, Yan Zhen and Zhu Shengxi were sitting directly across from each other. The background looked like a Western restaurant, and coffee sat in front of both of them.

Zhu Shengxi’s expression was cold, faintly impatient, his gaze drifting toward the window.

Yan Zhen, on the other hand, showed a trace of grievance, and there was even a pleading look in her eyes.

If one were to judge by the image alone, it was obvious that Yan Zhen had something she wanted to ask Zhu Shengxi for, and this matter must have been very important, important enough for her to lower herself and reveal her most vulnerable side.

But that shouldn’t be the case. Chengwen Real Estate was Gu Chengwen’s company, so even if Yan Zhen had trouble, she shouldn’t be asking Zhu Shengxi…

Gu Yao looked at the second photo.

The woman in the second photo was named Jiang Xinyun. She had just graduated from university this year, and her family ran a renovation company for residential developments. They had worked with Chengwen Real Estate several times.

Gu Yao’s one and only encounter with Jiang Xinyun had been on a rainy day.

The supermarket Gu Yao often went to was only three streets away from the apartment where she lived. Sometimes, if she was only buying a few things, she would walk there and get some exercise on the way.

That day, just as Gu Yao finished shopping and came out, it started raining.

The air was a little sticky. Fortunately, the rain wasn’t heavy. Gu Yao hadn’t brought an umbrella, so she could only pull up the hood of her coat and head back to the apartment.

There weren’t many pedestrians around, and the sound of shoes stepping on the wet ground was especially clear. So Gu Yao immediately noticed that someone had been following her out of the supermarket the entire way, and the route afterward was an astonishing coincidence too.

When she crossed the last street, Gu Yao deliberately slowed her pace and moved toward a tree pit by the side. She set down her plastic bag and pretended to bend over to tie her shoelaces.

Who would have thought the person behind her would bump over the plastic bag as they passed Gu Yao, and the oranges and apples inside rolled all over the ground, covered in rainwater and mud.

The other person bent down to help Gu Yao pick up the fruit, and the two of them finally got a proper look at each other.

She was a pretty, fair-skinned female university student. She said she lived in the same residential complex as Gu Yao, and later even helped carry Gu Yao’s things back home.

But after that day, Gu Yao never ran into her again in the complex.

There was one time Gu Yao went to Chengwen Real Estate to see Gu Chengwen and ran into her and her father. It was only then that Gu Yao learned the girl’s name was Jiang Xinyun.

As for the photo, Jiang Xinyun and Zhu Shengxi seemed to be walking into the entrance of a nightclub.

The doorway was brightly decorated, and the crisscrossing lights spilled down, illuminating Zhu Shengxi’s expressionless face and Jiang Xinyun’s tight expression.

Jiang Xinyun’s hands were still nervously clasped together, while Zhu Shengxi ignored her the entire time.

Gu Yao quickly looked at the last photo.

The woman in the photo was named Song Miao. She was also famous in their circle. Rumor had it that her IQ was above 130, and she had entered university at sixteen, then continued leapfrogging grades all the way to a doctorate.

Song Miao’s mother had died early, and her father was a well-known figure in the city, with a wide social circle. He doted on this daughter completely, and several consecutive girlfriends had ended up breaking up because of Song Miao’s difficult behavior.

Unfortunately, Song Miao was good at studying but had no business sense. Two years ago, her father died of a sudden illness, and the assets he left behind were quickly divided up by several uncles. Even the savings Song Miao had in hand were squandered by one of those uncles under the pretense of failed investments. Song Miao was also arranged by her uncles to navigate one blind date dinner after another.

It was said that Song Qiao had already met more than thirty promising young talents from the business world, but her standards were so picky that to this day, she still hadn’t settled on anyone.

The reason Gu Yao remembered Song Miao was because once, when she went out to eat with Zhu Shengxi, Song Miao happened to be there with her blind date too.

Song Miao’s blind date that day was a newly risen financial elite who worked in investment. He was at the peak of his popularity then, and he had also met Zhu Shengxi before. That up-and-coming star and Song Miao immediately sat down together at the same table, turning a blind date dinner into a business discussion in no time.

Song Miao also took the chance to chat with Gu Yao, but Gu Yao wasn’t interested in the jewelry and cosmetic medicine topics she kept bringing up. In just half an hour, she zoned out several times, and it wasn’t until Zhu Shengxi noticed Gu Yao secretly yawning that he pulled her home early.

In the photo, Song Miao was standing with Zhu Shengxi, though there was only half a step between them.

Zhu Shengxi was shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with a man, and from the look of it, he seemed to be introducing Song Miao to the man across from them.

Song Miao’s expression was nothing special. She only wore a businesslike smile that looked a little fake.

After looking through all four photos, Gu Yao propped her head up with both hands and let out a long breath.

There was a lot of information, the kind that could easily make a person fill in all sorts of baseless things and fall into a dead end of self-inflicted worry.

She closed her eyes, trying hard to pull herself out of it and not get trapped by her own thoughts.

Then she thought of Xu Luo.

These photos, and the one with Tian Fang and Zhu Shengxi from last time, clearly meant the same thing. They only captured one angle, one frozen moment, with no beginning and no end. It was obviously meant to “mislead,” to see whether she’d take the bait and wildly imagine some unspeakable follow-up for these photos. Otherwise, Xu Luo could have simply used a video to show the whole truth, instead of using an image like this as bait.

And Xu Luo must have already anticipated that after seeing them, she would go find him to verify it.

Thinking of this, Gu Yao let out another breath, tossed the photos aside, and picked up the stack of materials instead.

She flipped through them once. Nothing special. Just background checks on Yan Zhen, Jiang Xinyun, and Song Miao, more or less what she already knew, and none of the materials mentioned Zhu Shengxi.

There was, however, one coincidence.

It turned out Jiang Xinyun and Song Miao both graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, just in different years.

If she remembered correctly, Du Tong also came from Penn.

And now Yan Zhen worked at Chengwen Real Estate, making her a colleague of Du Tong…

Were these just coincidences?

Four women, to a greater or lesser degree, all had some connection, and each had contact with Zhu Shengxi during different periods of time.

Gu Yao thought for a moment, but still couldn’t make sense of it. Yet her intuition told her that this kind of seemingly coincidental internal connection might be the only clue pointing toward the answer.

Gu Yao put the materials down, and her gaze unconsciously drifted to the “third diary entry” she had been deliberately ignoring all along.

It lay there all alone on the coffee table.

Gu Yao stared at it for a few seconds, finally gathering the courage to pick it up and lower her eyes to read it.

The handwriting on it was clearly a girl’s, neat and a little immature. The strokes were very careful, with few connected letters, and the writer probably wasn’t very old, by the look of it around fourteen or fifteen.

Gu Yao quickly read through it once.

…

…

201x, Spring Equinox, sunny.

Some time ago, a strange middle-aged man suddenly began coming to our house frequently. He looked fierce, with deep creases under his eyes and deep nasolabial folds, like ditches.

Every time he came, he would look at me and smile at me, but I couldn’t feel the slightest bit of kindness from him. His smile only existed on the surface of his face, while his eyes were cold like a wild beast’s.

A smile squeezed out of muscle like that was terrifying. I was very scared, so I hid behind my older brother.

Later, my older brother asked me whether I liked that uncle.

I hurriedly shook my head.

My older brother urged me to say that I was much better than I had been two years ago, no longer so introverted and shut off from the world. I was already willing to play with other girls. I had grown up, and I should go out and live a normal person’s life.

I was a little confused. What did my older brother mean?

Was that scary-looking uncle going to take me away?

I asked my older brother if that was the case, and he nodded a little awkwardly.

I was so frightened that I panicked, and I locked myself in my room for the entire afternoon.

My older brother came in to see me, and I hid under the desk, telling him that if that man wanted to adopt me, I would definitely end up like Xiao Feng, dead and then thrown into the sewer.

My older brother had to squeeze in with difficulty and hug me to comfort me.

That posture was very hard for him to maintain. We were no longer children, and there was already no room for us under that desk.

I cried for a very, very long time. The sun went down, and the room gradually darkened.

It wasn’t until my older brother said in a low voice that that uncle wouldn’t hurt me, because he was my biological father, that I froze completely.

That man soon took me away from home and even handled my school enrollment, letting me attend the first year of high school.

Every day, I was terrified that the man would kill me.

I was bad at studying and couldn’t keep up with any of my classes. The man said that was because I hadn’t received a good education at the orphanage, but that it didn’t matter. Girls didn’t need to study that much, and once I grew up a little more, I could get married.

I was very surprised. Once I grew up a little more, I could get married?

God! I was only fourteen. How much older did I have to be before I could get married?

The man’s house was very run-down. The decor inside had to be at least twenty years old. Large patches of wall had peeled off, and the places that hadn’t peeled were yellowed and blackened. Especially the bathroom, where the ceiling had already weathered to the point that bricks were exposed, and the whole place always carried a stale smell of smoke.

He had a very heavy smoking addiction and needed a pack and a half a day. The entire house was filled with smoke, making me miserable. Even my clothes were full of the smell, and I couldn’t even open the window to air the place out because he would angrily scold me.

I wore those smoke-stinking clothes to school, and my homeroom teacher arranged for me to sit in the last row. The boy sitting next to me couldn’t stand the smell on me, so he moved his desk away and sat far, far from me.

The homeroom teacher noticed and asked him why he was sitting so far away from me, and whether he knew what it meant to be friendly toward your deskmate.

That boy said very rudely that I smelled like smoke, and it was disgusting.

I sat there without saying a word, too lazy to defend myself. Things like this didn’t matter to me at all. From a young age, I had gotten used to being disliked. Only my older brother was really good to me.

I couldn’t keep up with the school curriculum. I would listen occasionally, and when I got tired of it, I would sleep. I never forced myself, but I could feel that the teachers didn’t like me either, and they often called on me to answer questions.

Nine times out of ten, I couldn’t answer. Some teachers would sneer at me a few times, and the classmates would laugh. Some teachers would ask me what I had been doing before, and how I could still be sleeping after falling so far behind.

Every time, I would keep a blank face, get hauled up, and sit back down after being scolded. A lot of classmates said behind my back that I was thick-skinned and didn’t fit in.

I couldn’t keep up in physical education either. During recess runs, I always came in dead last in my grade. When I got tired, I would rest for a bit, and even my homeroom teacher, who was in his forties, could catch up to me and ask why my fitness was so bad.

I was very calm about all of it. There was nothing I couldn’t accept. It was only later, when my homeroom teacher could no longer stand it and wanted to invite my guardian to school, that I had no choice but to speak to that man for the first time.

It was also that day that I heard two women who lived next door gossiping at the entrance to our house. They even pointed at me and looked me up and down.

I knew they were talking about that man. He lived alone, came and went on his own, and then suddenly a daughter popped out of nowhere. Anyone would have thought it strange.

But I only called him “Dad” on the surface. In private, I only addressed him as “the old man.”

I passed the homeroom teacher’s words on to the old man. The old man frowned, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, his mouth full of yellow teeth, and the moment he opened it, a disgusting stench washed over me.

“Did you cause trouble at school?”

I shook my head. “I’ve been very well behaved.”

The old man didn’t believe me. “If you’ve been behaving well, why would the teacher want to see your parents?”

I frowned, not understanding how he could read something bad into a request to see a parent.

I thought about it and said, “Maybe they want to praise me in front of you.”

The old man looked at me silently. There was a hint of surprise in his eyes, and I didn’t know what he was surprised about.

But now I know. So this is how low-achieving students are treated when the school asks to see their parents.

The old man went to see the homeroom teacher later. I don’t know what they talked about, and I wasn’t interested in knowing either, but that afternoon, the whole class paid attention to me.

I didn’t know why until the class monitor told me that the school had organized a donation drive for disaster relief. It was voluntary and anonymous, and only the names of the three students who donated the most would be written on the blackboard at the school gate.

I looked at the class monitor and didn’t understand what he meant.

Until he said, “Your dad donated a huge amount.”

I didn’t say anything.

Actually, I knew about the donation. I saw other students give ten yuan, twenty yuan, and at most not more than a hundred, but I didn’t take part. I only had enough money for lunch.

I was thinking about what “a huge amount” meant, and in the end I came up with a number: one thousand yuan.

But when I went to look at that small blackboard, I was really shocked.

It was fifteen thousand yuan.

I stood in front of that blackboard for a long time, my mind constantly calculating what fifteen thousand yuan could do. The textbooks for all three years of high school together didn’t even cost as much as five thousand yuan, or if you added in meal expenses too, would there even be fifteen thousand yuan?

Not long after that, the homeroom teacher gave me a task and had me be responsible for arranging class duty shifts after school every day.

It was a thankless, exhausting job. I didn’t want to do it, but I didn’t know how to refuse, so I could only select three people every day in order according to the hygiene committee’s roster and watch them clean the classroom.

At five-thirty in the evening, a teacher would inspect each class one by one, and only the classes that passed could lock up.

But for three straight days, those classmates ditched me and left only me behind.

I couldn’t stop them, so I could only do it myself.

My duty work still wasn’t up to standard, and every day I had to stay until six before I could leave.

But I didn’t care. Compared with that smelly home, I was more willing to stay at school.

Until this evening, when I got home.

Besides the old man, there was another man in the house. He was dressed very neatly, like someone who had received a higher education. I didn’t know how to describe him. In any case, he and we were not in the same world.

His face was clean too, and when he saw me, he even took out several hundred yuan from his wallet and said it was for my pocket money.

I took it and looked at the old man.

The old man wasn’t angry. He even said he would give me one hundred yuan every day from now on, so that school wouldn’t be so hard for me.

I didn’t know how the old man knew I was having a hard time, but I wasn’t going to refuse that one hundred yuan either. At the very least, I could buy the drinks that all my classmates could afford.

I went back into the room to do my homework and heard the two of them talking for a while longer in the outer room, then the man in the suit left.

At that point, the old man called me out and handed me a piece of paper.

I took it and saw that it was a prescription slip, but I couldn’t make out the handwritten words on it. It was all a mess.

The old man said I should take a taxi to a pharmacy farther away and buy the medicine written on it. If the people at the pharmacy wanted to see the prescription, I should show it to them. If they asked why I was the one buying it, and where the adults in the house were, I should say the adult was sick and couldn’t get out of bed.

The old man specifically told me to go to more than one pharmacy, and not buy too much from any single place. Buy it and leave, don’t chat.

Then the old man gave me another five hundred yuan and a brand-new cellphone. He said there would still be plenty of money left after buying the medicine, and if I used it all, I didn’t need to give it back. It was for taking a taxi and for dinner. If anything happened on the way, I was to call this phone, and pressing “1” would reach him.

I gripped the money and the prescription and went out, following the old man’s instructions to a pharmacy very far away.

When the pharmacist handed me the medicine, I deliberately looked at the name on it. I recognized all the Chinese characters individually, but when put together, they looked strange.

-aminophen|trama|dol.

Later, on the ride home, I used my phone to look it up online, and only then did I learn that this medicine was a moderate painkiller, used for cancer or post-surgery treatment, trauma, and obstetric pain.

I thought about it. The old man was a man, so he couldn’t possibly be having a baby, and he didn’t have any trauma either. Could it be… cancer?

…

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