“I never expected it,” Xie Jia Hua said woodenly. Ever since he had brought Lu Guang Ming into his home, he had never once imagined this moment.
Of course he hadn’t. He had never been afraid of playing with fire and getting burned, or raising a tiger only to invite disaster. Could he really be taken down by a little thing like Lu Guang Ming?
With both hands up by his head, Xie Jia Hua braced one knee against Lu Guang Ming’s ass and easily flipped them over, pinning Lu Guang Ming beneath him instead. His thighs clamped around Lu Guang Ming’s waist like iron hoops. Within three seconds, Lu Guang Ming had lost the upper hand. Unable to struggle free, he still grinned stubbornly. “Inspector Xie, nice legs. Nice legs.” Then he casually reached out to feel them.
Xie Jia Hua loosened his legs. Lu Guang Ming slipped free like a little snake. What foot pain? In only a few steps, he had darted far away and dived into the bedroom, trying to shut the door. Xie Jia Hua chased after him and kicked the door open with one foot. Bang!
“Hey, hey, hey! That’s your own door! If you kick it broken, you’ll have to pay to fix it!” Even after burrowing beneath the quilt, Lu Guang Ming was still trying to save him money.
Xie Jia Hua bounded onto the bed like a tiger, fished Lu Guang Ming out from beneath the quilt as though lifting a rabbit, and pinned him firmly to the mattress. With both hands braced beside Lu Guang Ming’s head, the chain of the handcuffs stretched across Lu Guang Ming’s neck as Xie Jia Hua glared down at him like a tiger eyeing its prey.
“I was wrong! I was wrong!” Lu Guang Ming laughed as he begged for mercy. Morning light spilled through the window, catching the sparkling points deep in his eyes. His curved brows and eyes were sly and wicked with amusement. He was the sudden wild surge that had broken into Xie Jia Hua’s strict, stifling life of self-exile and self-punishing asceticism.
Xie Jia Hua’s eyes darkened. Within that furious, icy gaze, a trace of softness appeared without him even realizing it. Lu Guang Ming seized the opening and wrapped both arms around his neck.
The faint morning light fell across the ink-blue quilt, illuminating a vast expanse of violently surging waves. Struggling, entangling, toes clawing at the sheets, arms slick with sweat and bodily fluids, handcuffs softly clinking, muffled moans and sighs. A venomous snake glided through the shadows of the dense forest, silently slipping into Eden and laying that fatal apple before holy Adam. Taste it, said the snake. Look how juicy it is. Taste me. Stroke my smooth scales. Drink my cold blood. This is the sweetest poison in the world.
…
The alarm clock beside the bed rang two hours later. Xie Jia Hua sat at the edge of the bed wrapped in the quilt, clutching his head in remorse. Lu Guang Ming lay sprawled on his stomach with his bare ass exposed, humming a little tune. When the alarm kept ringing, he lazily nudged Xie Jia Hua with his toes. “Turn it off.”
Xie Jia Hua continued holding his head without reacting. Lu Guang Ming gave a wicked hehe and lifted his leg to nudge him again, neither lightly nor heavily. With the exaggerated movement, a thin trickle of cloudy fluid ran down onto the bedsheet. Xie Jia Hua turned his head and stared at it woodenly, then suddenly shot to his feet.
“Hey, hey, hey! What are you doing? My foot hurts, my ass hurts. Be gentle, be gentle…”
Xie Jia Hua wiped Lu Guang Ming’s ass, dressed him, packed him up together with his luggage, and threw the whole lot back into that shabby little room of his. Lu Guang Ming stood in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips and shouted, “You ate your fill and now you want to run! You Big Sweet Potato!”
Big Sweet Potato fled without even looking back. He could not be bothered arguing, since he could never win anyway. Lu Guang Ming’s foot had healed ages ago, and the suspect who had beaten him had already been caught. What was he still keeping this scourge in his home for? This morning’s absurdity was exactly what he deserved for courting death every possible way. He had only himself to blame! From now on, they were cutting ties cleanly with one slash. Never again would they meet in the jianghu!
Never meet again in the jianghu, my ass! Just you wait! Lu Guang Ming stood with his hands on his hips, grinding his teeth fiercely at the slammed door. After thinking about it, however, Xie Jia Hua’s reaction struck him as extremely funny again. Laughing to himself, he walked bow-legged to the bed and flopped face-first onto it.
His ass had been worked over by a piledriver until it was swollen and burning. He awkwardly straddled the quilt and curled himself into a ball. Remembering Xie Jia Hua above him just moments ago, brows tightly furrowed as he panted, Lu Guang Ming’s cheeks flushed bright red. He gave another wicked hehe and buried his head beneath the pillow. Inspector Xie really was a model student through and through. This time he had done all the foreplay properly, and once he got serious, his technique was actually pretty good!
…
Lu Guang Ming took the morning off and slept hugging the quilt until the sun was high in the sky. Only then did he yawn, walk bow-legged out the door, and head to work. At a street corner, he spotted a tail reflected in the window of a parked car. The man furtively followed him to work and then just as furtively followed him home again that evening. Before going to sleep, Lu Guang Ming slipped the pistol he had specifically signed out that afternoon beneath his pillow. He remained cautious and vigilant, but inwardly he felt no fear.
Of the cases he had been investigating recently, aside from the two assigned by his superiors, the rest concerned old cases involving Xie Jia Hua’s father, Xie Ying Jie, which Lu Guang Ming had been quietly probing on his own. Xie Jia Hua’s current superior, Chief Liu, had been one of Xie Ying Jie’s subordinates many years earlier. Chief Liu now headed West Kowloon’s Major Crimes Unit, and Lu Guang Ming suspected that he too had secretly helped Xie Ying Jie stir up storms in the underworld—only he had never been as brazen as the Chinese detective sergeants of old. Chief Liu’s recent invitation to “drink tea” with the ICAC was actually Lu Guang Ming’s doing. He had uncovered a violation Liu committed several years earlier and anonymously submitted the information to his ICAC superiors. The higher-ups assigned other colleagues to investigate, while Lu Guang Ming conveniently pretended complete innocence in front of Xie Jia Hua.
He knew that the deeper he dug, the closer he had come to Xie Ying Jie’s sore spot. Xie Ying Jie and his men had already begun wondering whether someone like Lu Guang Ming was operating in the shadows. Add Lu Guang Ming’s relentless pestering of Xie Jia Hua over the past two years, and he was bound to have drawn Xie Ying Jie’s attention. So Lu Guang Ming simply went with the flow, daringly plucking teeth from the tiger’s mouth by stirring up a “fuck-buddy relationship” with Xie Jia Hua. Hehe. Let that tail go back and report it. Not only would it infuriate Old Man Xie enough to send his old legs kicking toward heaven, it would also make him wary of killing Lu Guang Ming outright. If Xie Jia Hua’s fuck buddy died, would he really let it go? What if he got ruthless and followed the trail all the way back to his own father?
Lu Guang Ming unhurriedly planted poisoned seeds everywhere and patiently waited for them to take root and sprout. February 4 of that year was Tang Jia Qi’s death anniversary. Lu Guang Ming worked at the ICAC until late at night, then walked to the apartment building where Xie Jia Hua lived. Standing downstairs, he raised his head toward the faint glow coming from Xie Jia Hua’s window. It was candlelight, and it remained lit throughout the entire night.
The early-spring night wind still carried a trace of chill. Lu Guang Ming gathered his collar around himself and leaned beside a streetlamp with a slight shiver. From his pocket, he took out an old handkerchief that had once been stained with blood from his forehead. Lowering his head, he stroked the creases in the cloth and thought, Even if you, like me, mourn that person day after day, year after year, when the truth finally comes to light, will you hate your father, the true culprit? Will you hate yourself for having been kept blind? Or will you hate me, who stopped at nothing and used you for my revenge?
If that day truly comes, when this long-standing injustice is finally redressed and the dust settles… will you still be willing to give me this tiny bit of warmth?
…
Late one night in March, Lu Guang Ming remained alone in the ICAC office, bent over his desk working on a case. The brick phone on the desk rang. He answered, and a cautious, serious voice came from the other end.
“Investigator Lu? This is He Chu San. I’d like to meet with you and talk.”
He Chu San arranged to meet him at a public cemetery, where Lu Guang Ming’s parents lay buried. Lu Guang Ming had guessed that He Chu San had thoroughly investigated his background, but he had not expected him to uncover even that old photograph that had been missing for so many years.
That night, he and He Chu San talked for a very, very long time. He Chu San openly told him about his relationship with Xia Liu Yi and all the history he knew, while Lu Guang Ming, for the first time, lowered his guard before another person and told He Chu San about what had happened back then. He Chu San said to him with absolute conviction, “If you want Xie Ying Jie utterly disgraced and forced to repay blood with blood, I have another way.”
To be honest, although Lu Guang Ming trusted He Chu San at the time, he did not believe those words. He Chu San was an interesting person—in some ways, every bit as interesting as Xie Jia Hua—but being interesting did not mean everything would always go his way. Xie Jia Hua had spent ten bitter years investigating and still had not uncovered the truth behind Tang Jia Qi’s death. Lu Guang Ming had also spent ten bitter years investigating, yet he likewise could not produce evidence proving the truth of Tang Jia Qi’s death to Xie Jia Hua.
Still, he was willing to take a gamble and try this “other way” with He Chu San. Over all these years, he had already done everything he possibly could. He wanted to see just how tall a towering tree this seed called He Chu San could grow into.
Once Lu Guang Ming finally loosened his stance and agreed, He Chu San let himself go and shared an entire series of grand revenge schemes with him—specifically including explosions, murder, seizing power and usurping positions, turning allies against one another, imprisonment and abuse, loving and killing one another…
“Wait.” Lu Guang Ming interrupted the grand plan. “Mr. He, do you think you’re a screenwriter for A-TV?”
“Mr. Lu, since we’re already friends who have shared life and death, you may call me A’San.”
“Oh. Then you can call me A’Ming. A’San, don’t you think this script of yours is a little too exaggerated?”
“It is a little exaggerated. You don’t like it, A’Ming?”
“How could I not?! I love it!! Why didn’t I meet you a few years earlier!!! You’ve got so many conspiracies and schemes in that belly of yours—how did you act all obedient and trick Xia Liu Yi into your hands?? Teach me!!!”
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