Chapter 46: Spring and Jingming

30TH MAY 2023~ VERALUCTL

Spring slowly revealed its tracks and in the midst of the shifting temperature, the willows unfurled their hidden sprouts. R·Li pushed closer and closer;

sacrifices bloomed forward everywhere like hateful eyes from the shadows, giving An Jie no peace.

The police took the case in secret. Countless people watched out for the murderer whether openly or behind closed doors. An Jie didn’t know how long he could keep his stolen peace for.

Everything started when one day, Mo Cong told him with a weary expression that Mo Jin seemed to have gotten back together with her old gang.

Ever since she heard about her father, Mo Jin had evolved into a good girl, studying so studiously that even Mo Yu couldn’t compare to her. Even though she never spoke anything of it, she never did anything out of line again… or rather, she stopped doing anything that Professor Mo would have disliked. Sometimes, people could be shocked into maturity in one night, and An Jie had relaxed around her.

The problem was though, An Jie walked the two girls to their classrooms everyday before school, then walked them back home after school to be safe; he had become close to them. No matter how closely they referred to him though, he still wasn’t their real brother. In terms of caring about what they did or guiding them on the right path, everything he did was just an act. So if it wasn’t his place to pry into her business anyway, why had Mo Jin felt the need to put all of this effort into sneaking around An Jie to meet with someone?

It would have been fine had it been a few months ago. That girl was old enough to decide what sort of path she wanted to walk and even if An Jie didn’t agree with her, as an outsider, he wasn’t about to interfere. But now was not the time to allow a young girl who was still a minor to roam around at night.

He briefly discussed with Mo Cong. The two then followed Mo Jin as she snuck out once more.

The girl first went to an internet cafe, waved to the idiot Zhuo Yihang with a wide grin, then sat down at a computer for a while. Then she looked around, ensuring there was no one watching her, before sneaking into a small cubicle of the internet cafe like a thief.

It was clear that the girl was nervous. Her cowering movements, careful expression, and her choice of exit route that was so dodgy it would have caused a crowd had she not been surrounded by a bunch of youths shouting, “Headshot!” all proved it.

Mo Cong looked from afar and couldn’t help but shake his head. He gently pointed in Mo Jin’s direction with his chin and whispered to An Jie, “Who’s she meeting with so secretively?”

Ever since An Jie had drawn his line in the sand, Mo Cong suddenly turned over a new leaf and became a virtuous man. He never made another inappropriate joke in his direction and all of his flirtatious actions and words returned to normal. It was as if he was returning to being a good, upstanding member of society. 

When he saw An Jie, all he would do was essentially nod to acknowledge him, and when he explained things, he did it quickly and concisely. It eased An Jie’s attitude towards him and he stopped going out of his way to avoid Mo Cong; the two returned to their earliest form of casual, joking interactions, without the horrible atmosphere of An Jie pressuring him like some judgmental uncle.

In short, the pink alert was lifted. Ignoring R·Li causing civil unrest and disrupting the peace and cooperation of society, everything was developing in a good direction. Spring came easily.

“People meeting in secret, actions done in secret… Not very promising.” An Jie sighed.

“I hope it’s that girl’s secret boyfriend hiding in that cubicle; at least that’ll be safe.” Mo Cong shook his head. “Even if it’s that stupid delinquent called… something Hang, I’ll deal with it.”

Before he finished, An Jie quickly tugged at him. “She’s out.”

“It’s over.” Mo Cong’s expression turned stern. “From the speed of the meeting, she wasn’t with any sort of boyfriend.”

Mo Jin seemed a little distracted, her expression terrible. As she walked out, she even ignored that noisy cricket Zhuo Yihang. She floated out of the cafe like a ghost, crossed the street, and headed home. An Jie patted Mo Cong’s shoulder. “Go after her quickly. Don’t let anything happen to her. I’ll go see what sort of rat is hiding in that room.”

Mo Cong didn’t waste any words. “Be careful,” he said, then left.

An Jie thought about it, then headed straight into the internet cafe. He skipped right over Zhuo Yihang, ignored the countless thugs playing at being bouncers, and kicked open the door to the cubicle. Inside was only a bed and a broken chair. The person on the chair faced the door. Sixteen smiled gleefully at An Jie as if he had been waiting for him.

“Yin Hu-gege.” Sixteen nodded and pointed at the bed beside him. “It’s a little shabby but please sit.”

An Jie ignored him. He leaned against the door and out of his throat came a gentle yet undescribably dangerous voice. “I never expected for you followers of Li to have any righteousness, but I didn’t expect for you to reach your hands out to little girls. In this regard, even that worthless coward Zhai Haidong is better than you.”

“Reach my hands out to little girls?” Sixteen laughed. “I didn’t do anything. You saw with your own eyes that she walked in herself, then walked out herself, with nary a piece missing – don’t look at me like that, Yin Hu-gege. I know you don’t want to cause any trouble. We’re in public, you don’t want our family business to be intercepted by the police, do you?”

An Jie looked at him and lowered his voice. “Do you really believe I won’t deal with you properly one day?”

Sixteen stood up and made a flourishing bow – the smile on his face made An Jie really want to kick him – and lowered his voice. “I look forward to that day. R as well.”

An Jie narrowed his eyes, glared at him, then turned and left.

Sixteen leisurely added from behind his back, “But we’ll also need… Yin Hu-gege to give us this chance.”

An Jie knew that Li was impatient for this unavoidable battle; he didn’t know what Li would do if he insisted on not responding. 

What’s due would always come.

An Jie took out his phone and dialed a number. “Zui She, you want to know what happened back then, right? Give me a time and location, I’ll tell you…” He paused, and enunciated each word carefully. “From the beginning, everything you didn’t know: I will tell you everything.”

There was a phrase in The YueYang Tower: “In spring and sun, the waves are unruffled”. The ‘sun’ was pronounced as ‘jingming’. The teachers in high school said that the ‘jing’ referred to daylight in old texts, and that ‘jingming’, ‘sun’, meant bright daylight. Every time An Jie recalled this, he found it terribly ironic. 

Because he could never connect that old bastard He Jingming with bright daylight.

The first time he met He Jingming, An Jie was six. His father had taken home a small dirty child of around eight or nine and said that this child had lost both parents and was pitifully homeless. It was only later that they discovered this child who didn’t like to speak was already over ten, but years of malnutrition had made him look smaller than those around him.

Back then, An Jie was still just a little thing that enjoyed mimicking adults. He didn’t understand what it was like for a child to beg on the edges of an unfamiliar city without any family. Intuitively, he didn’t like this new older brother, because this older brother He never started any conversations with him, and always watched people with an uncomfortable, guarded assessment. 

Then from sometime onwards, that older brother who didn’t like to speak nor smile became dearer as he grew older and taller. Even though the cynicism and paranoia were still buried deep in his bones, An Jie knew that he was the best to him out of the four brothers.

It was an omnipresent yet soundless gentleness. An Jie never thought that this gentleness would turn into such a despicable thing in the end. In their youth, emotions were always the most easy to ignore.

Especially when he met the light of his life at that time – Mu Lian.

Mu Lian’s surname was Cui and she had two thick, black braids. She wore ratty clothes that other girls refused to wear, and old but clean espadrilles. When she smiled she would lower her chin slightly, and she blushed before she spoke.

This was a typical village girl, thoroughly unfashionable from her name to her clothes. No one knew how she managed to make An Yin Hu obsessed with her. The more artsy explanation was that someone had joined them together on the Sansheng Stone1; some complained that while they were together, someone had dumped a bucket of ‘romance trope’ over them both. Even An Jie himself couldn’t understand why he began to care so much for her; after so many years, all he could remember was still her goodness.

After his father died, An Jie became the most trusted person under R·Li with his high capabilities. He was like who Mo Cong was now: he had free access to any of Li’s venues and as long as it wasn’t excessive, he could even speak out of line to him. He had both a career and a love – if love could be counted as part of a career. And he was so well-off, so proud of his achievements, that he didn’t realize the good older brother he grew up with had changed a little. 

His opportunities to meet with He Jingming became less and less frequent, so much that An Jie suspected he was being avoided on purpose. But behind turned backs, he felt as if there was someone unfriendly staring after him like a shadow. 

But these feelings didn’t trouble the young An Yin Hu for too long as not soon after that, he discovered something that almost destroyed twenty years of faith – he discovered that the real culprit behind Father’s death was Li.

1A stone on which a person’s past, present and future are all carved. By having their names connected on that stone, it means that they are connected ‘by fate’.