The car hadn’t even made it out of the parking lot yet. Fortunately, there was no vehicle behind them, but they were still going twenty or thirty kilometers an hour. Shang Lu broke out in a cold sweat from the scare.
In the rearview mirror, the kid had already turned his back on him and was walking away. Shang Lu cursed under his breath, slammed the accelerator, and reversed after him. “Two thousand!”
Fang Huan Xing thought about it, opened the door, and climbed back in.
Click.
Click.
Every door and window locked. Shang Lu’s face was dark. “Seat belt.”
The words “obedient” and “pressure” did not exist in Fang Huan Xing’s dictionary. He blinked and pretended not to hear.
Team Leader Shang had no choice but to lean over himself and fasten the seat belt for him. “Sit properly. No jumping out of the car again.”
Fang Huan Xing wore an expression that clearly said Shang Lu was making a fuss over nothing.
Great. Now Shang Lu was starting to want to dump this kid on He Zhen after all!
Shang Lu lived in an ordinary residential neighborhood about a fifteen-minute drive from the Anomalous Case Department. He had originally chosen to rent there purely for the convenience of getting to work. Probably worried that the kid might pull something again, Shang Lu somehow made it back in ten minutes flat.
The apartment wasn’t large: two bedrooms, a living room, and a dining area connected directly to it, allowing the entire common space to be seen at a glance. There were very few belongings inside, and even the furniture had been provided by the landlord. There were no unnecessary decorations. The place existed only for eating and sleeping; it couldn’t really be called a home.
The water stains on the windowsill had already been wiped dry. A dead, withered plant that Shang Lu hadn’t had time to throw away sat in one corner. A thin layer of dust still covered the entryway cabinet, except for one streak where a finger had dragged through it. He hadn’t had time to clean that either.
Fang Huan Xing stood in the entryway with his backpack on and several shopping bags in hand—every possession he currently had with him. He didn’t step farther inside. His first priority was to inspect the environment and confirm whether it was safe.
He was accustomed to being on guard, like a cat moving silently through undergrowth. The slightest disturbance would make his fur stand on end and bring out his claws and fangs.
“Slippers.” Shang Lu took a pair of his own from the shoe cabinet and gave them to him. “I’ll buy you a new pair tomorrow.”
Fang Huan Xing lowered his head, checked that they were very clean, and only then put them on.
He still remained standing where he was.
Even though he was clearly inspecting someone else’s territory, he somehow looked a little well-behaved right now.
Shang Lu had never had much patience for children. Even as a teenager, he hadn’t liked interacting with people his own age, finding them noisy and irritating. But the silent type Fang Huan Xing represented was simply another kind of headache.
“Come in. Why are you standing there?” Shang Lu resigned himself to the fact that this headache would probably last for some time and pointed toward the room on the right. “That’s the guest room. No one’s ever lived in it before. From now on, it’s yours. There are clean sheets and blankets in the closet. If you need anything else, tell me.”
Only then did Fang Huan Xing take a step and officially enter the apartment.
He reached the guest-room doorway and repeated the same routine. First he stood there and looked inside with obvious curiosity. Only after he had seen everything clearly and confirmed it was safe did he finally walk in.
The room was even emptier than the living room. One side of the single bed was against the wall, and there was a lamp on the bedside table. One of the wardrobe doors was broken and wouldn’t close properly. Fang Huan Xing reached over and pushed it shut.
It sprang open again.
He slammed it shut a second time.
Then Fang Huan Xing turned around with what looked like genuine confusion. “Two thousand?”
No.
Originally Shang Lu had wanted to charge him three thousand.
Through Fang Huan Xing’s relentless bargaining efforts, it had somehow dropped to two thousand.
Was that reasonable?
Shang Lu had made the rent up in the first place, and now that he had successfully lured the person into the apartment, he gave a small cough. “That’s just what things cost in Fog Harbor. I… I don’t like it either.”
“Expensive.”
Leaning against the guest-room doorway, Shang Lu forced himself to brazen it out. “If you rent somewhere else, it’ll be even more expensive. You definitely can’t compare it to Xueping.”
Fang Huan Xing went straight to the heart of the matter. “I didn’t pay rent in Xueping.”
During the time he lived in Xueping, Fang Lan had regularly sent him living expenses. She only used cash and had different people deliver it each time. For his safety while living alone, the amounts were never large.
By the time news of the terrorist attack on the Earthcore Research Institute broke, Fang Huan Xing had already been out of contact with Fang Lan for two months, and money had become extremely tight.
Then one night, Fang Lan’s assistant had suddenly arrived and handed him a heavy box, passing along Fang Lan’s message that he was to keep it safe.
Inside was the Stabilizer Fang Lan had once mentioned.
More important than Fang Lan’s own life.
Shang Lu had been meaning to ask about this. “Was that apartment your family’s, or was it a safe house provided by someone higher up?”
Fang Huan Xing set his things down. “It was Fang Lan’s.”
He didn’t seem to refer to Fang Lan by any maternal title. Was that simply another form of teenage rebellion, or was there some reason mother and son didn’t get along?
Shang Lu didn’t ask. He only said, “I checked. The place has already been turned upside down, and it’s also a bloodstained crime scene. Most of the things there probably can’t be salvaged. If there’s anything you particularly need, we can have the Xueping police retrieve it.”
“Nothing.”
Aside from the room full of collectibles being a bit of a shame, there was nothing there worth being sentimental about. The most important thing had already been taken out and handed over.
Shang Lu nodded and tipped his chin toward the shopping bags Fang Huan Xing had carried inside. “Try the clothes on first. I didn’t know your size, so I had Zheng Xiao Yu estimate it and buy a few sets.”
He had hauled those bags all over the place today. By now, the entire Anomalous Case Department probably knew Team Leader Shang had developed a new hobby: shopping.
“If anything doesn’t fit, tell me. We’ll find time to exchange it.”
With that, Shang Lu backed out and closed the door for his new roommate.
He went to the dining area intending to pour himself a glass of water. He had barely taken a cup out when the guest-room door opened again.
Fang Huan Xing had changed only his pants; he was still wearing the blue sweatshirt on top. The new trousers were black. The length was fine, but the waist was obviously far too loose, even more so than the pair Shang Lu had ordered through a delivery service before.
The teenager held the waistband with one hand, his expression cold. “Too big.”
With a waist that thin, no wonder he could eat four hamburgers in one sitting.
Shang Lu suddenly felt as though he had somehow become a father at his young age. “There are other pants in there. Put another pair on and let me see.”
“Oh.”
Fang Huan Xing’s figure flickered.
The black trousers he had been wearing were suddenly replaced by a gray pair. He had even somehow brought along the still-attached tag at the waist.
Shang Lu: “…”
The kid now had absolutely no psychological burden about using his ability in front of him.
Fang Huan Xing still had one hand on his waistband. “These are too big too.”
“Wait—”
Before Shang Lu could make another suggestion, Fang Huan Xing had already entered continuous outfit-change mode. The clothes on his body kept shifting—sweatshirt, sweater, jacket, one outfit after another—so quickly it was dizzying. Put a phone on a tripod in front of him and they could have filmed a short-form transformation video on the spot.
Fang Huan Xing’s build was somewhere between that of a teenager and a young man, already beginning to develop into a clean, lean frame. Seeing him switch through different clothes was genuinely pleasing to the eye.
There was no full-length mirror in the apartment, so Team Leader Shang was forced into service. He sat upright and provided live human feedback, drinking water while watching the show and passing judgment.
“That works.”
“A little short. Next.”
“Turn around. Let me see.”
Fang Huan Xing tried on every piece of clothing in less than a minute.
He sorted out what fit and what didn’t.
Wearing the final outfit, he said, “Done.” Then he frowned. “What are you laughing at?”
Shang Lu really was smiling, unusually relaxed. “I’m laughing because even the transformation effects influencers use aren’t this smooth.”
Fang Huan Xing looked blank. “…”
What was that?
Shang Lu’s smile gradually faded. He set his glass down and suddenly asked, “Kid, the thing that was inside your backpack—did you hand it to Dr. Xu, or to the Academy of Sciences?”
The moment those words left his mouth, Fang Huan Xing, who had still been struggling with a clothing tag, abruptly lifted his head. His eyes darkened. “Who told you?”
So he didn’t know the situation yet.
Shang Lu told him the truth. “Director Chen. But he doesn’t know much either. He only knows that what was in your backpack was the Stabilizer, and that it’s still an unfinished prototype.”
After a brief pause, Shang Lu decided not to mention Director Chen’s crueler explanation about Fang Huan Xing being Fang Lan’s adopted son and the first test subject.
“He doesn’t know the specifics of your ability. I haven’t told him either, and I didn’t put it in my report. I’m asking because I want to know whether your ability is connected to the Stabilizer, and how much the Academy of Sciences knows.”
Fang Huan Xing relaxed his guard, turned back toward the room, and said stiffly, “I have no reason to tell you.”
Shang Lu had already expected that answer. He walked over and looked down at him. “I thought coming to the Anomalous Case Department to find me meant you had at least a basic level of trust in me.”
There was trust.
Just not much.
Fang Huan Xing continued sorting his clothes, lips pressed together, and gave no answer.
“Director Chen said the Stabilizer works in both directions. If successfully developed, it can either accelerate positional overlap or stop it.” Shang Lu reached out and blocked Fang Huan Xing’s hands for a moment. “Zhou Jia Ying read some materials to you this afternoon. You should understand the basic concept of positional overlap by now, right?”
“Mm.” Fang Huan Xing sounded slightly impatient.
Shang Lu had already briefly mentioned positional overlap back at Xianlu Hotel, while the Anomalous Case Department’s study materials explained the concept much more clearly.
The world was currently being affected by some unknown form of interference. Mirages were merely one visible projection of that interference and generally caused no direct physical impact. The interference itself, however, could destroy the uniqueness of reality.
The “uniqueness of reality” meant that at the same spatial coordinate, and for the same event that had already occurred, only one established state could exist within the current reality.
Once that uniqueness was disrupted, corresponding states from other realities could begin to manifest.
Online, people called this phenomenon “multiple realities.” The Anomalous Case Department called it overlapping realities.
If another-reality version began forcing itself into the same position within the current reality, the two sides would begin competing for the same physical space. As the two states became locked together, they could overlap, splice into one another, and ultimately fuse.
During the first few years after interference began appearing, strange phenomena emerged all over the world.
Researchers developed calibration anchors based on anomalous scenes, using the current reality as the baseline and measuring how far a target deviated from it.
The value representing that deviation was called the Reality Gradient, abbreviated RG.
The higher the value, the more severe the deviation.
Early statistics showed that buildings and fixed installations were the most commonly affected by interference. Their coordinates were fixed and their structures clearly defined, making it easy for corresponding versions in different realities to locate the same physical position.
After that came insects, birds, and other animals with a certain degree of self-awareness, such as cats and dogs.
Researchers at the time believed that humans possessed a complete and continuous sense of self. This powerful “self-awareness” functioned like a calibration anchor built into the human brain: memory, sensory input, and bodily feedback constantly maintained the continuity of one’s own reality, making humans difficult to affect through interference.
The small number of people who were affected usually experienced only brief mental disorientation, sensory displacement, or unfamiliar fragments of memory that did not belong to them.
But one year ago, the first case of human fusion disease appeared.
Interference had begun invading the human body.
Some patients developed a second set of organs, blood vessels, and skeletal structures inside their bodies. Fragments of memories and habitual movements that did not belong to them entered their minds. Like the buildings that had first manifested anomalies, the human body became a location contested by multiple realities.
“I don’t know exactly what your ability is,” Shang Lu said bluntly, “but I’m certain you don’t have fusion disease. My guess is that those realities aren’t competing for space inside your body. Instead… they all exist there simultaneously.”
Fang Huan Xing’s movements stopped.
Shang Lu could only see his profile. Fang Huan Xing had lowered his head, exposing the small protrusion of bone at the back of his slender neck.
“You can even choose between them. You can select one outcome and make it your new reality, or cause that outcome to overlap with your current one.”
Shang Lu laid out every theory he had accumulated along the way.
“And what the Stabilizer is ultimately meant to do is identify and stabilize the outcome selected by the primary reality. Am I right?”
Fang Huan Xing turned his head. His stark black-and-white eyes met Shang Lu’s directly, clear and completely unguarded.
“I don’t want to say.”
Shang Lu smiled. “The Stabilizer is connected to you, probably inseparably so. You went through all that trouble to deliver it to the Academy of Sciences, but you don’t completely trust the Academy. You may even think it isn’t safe. Right?”
Fang Huan Xing’s eyelashes trembled. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, or you don’t want to say again?”
Fang Huan Xing turned and started to leave.
Shang Lu caught his arm. “Then let’s talk about something you do want to say. Who were those people chasing you? Are they connected to the Academy of Sciences?”
“Let go.”
Shang Lu didn’t. Instead, his grip tightened as he finally broke through the layer neither of them had said aloud. “Kid, if you want me to protect you, then don’t hide things from me.”
That sentence instantly set Fang Huan Xing off.
The teenager’s shoulders and back tightened. He violently shook Shang Lu’s hand away, then raised one hand straight for his throat.
Again?
Shang Lu tilted his head aside and caught his wrist. Almost immediately, however, his hand closed on empty air. Fang Huan Xing called upon another reality, his entire body flashing past Shang Lu’s side before swinging a fist at him.
“What was the first of our Three Rules?” Shang Lu raised a hand to block it. The web of his thumb and his palm stung painfully. The little bastard was serious—he had absolutely no intention of going easy on him.
Fang Huan Xing didn’t listen at all. His body blurred into afterimages again.
Shang Lu grabbed empty air once more. His shoulder was suddenly struck from the right, forcing him half a step backward. Using the momentum, he snatched a jacket from the bed and threw it over Fang Huan Xing’s head.
The jacket fell to the floor.
Naturally, it had missed again.
Shang Lu turned and swept an arm out. Sure enough, he caught Fang Huan Xing at the position he had occupied previously and seized both of the kid’s wrists from behind.
Now he couldn’t get away.
Fang Huan Xing was pressed sideways into the bed, fury all over his face. Give him another chance and he would absolutely kill this man surnamed Shang first.
Zheng Xiao Yu’s earlier joke suddenly echoed in Shang Lu’s mind, and he abruptly realized their current position looked somewhat questionable.
“Your zipper’s open.”
Shang Lu suddenly said it.
Fang Huan Xing froze, then immediately lowered his head to look.
Shang Lu gave a muffled laugh. “Lied to you.”
Fang Huan Xing: “…”
Are you sick?
Shang Lu slowly released him. “You never think about the consequences. You just start hitting people first. Did you really think I couldn’t deal with you?”
Fang Huan Xing glared at him. The meaning in his eyes could not have been clearer:
I’ll kill you sooner or later.
He had pissed the kid off again.
Such a childish temper.
Although it was pretty entertaining, Shang Lu felt slightly as though he were bullying him. He softened his tone. “What I was trying to tell you is that I don’t completely trust the Academy of Sciences either. Why are you getting angry? Just because I noticed you’re looking for someone to protect you?”
Fang Huan Xing froze, unable to believe what he had heard. “You… aren’t you from the Anomalous Case Department?”
“I am, and I trust the Anomalous Case Department, because I’ve personally seen it doing real work. I’ve also seen how hard everyone here works.”
Shang Lu explained this to the little ingrate.
“But I genuinely don’t trust the Academy of Sciences.”
He did not deliberately explain why.
But his attitude was enough to make it clear that he wasn’t merely comforting Fang Huan Xing, nor had he said it casually.
“Forget all the other reasons. Just look at what’s happening right now.” Shang Lu explained it plainly. “Countries all over the world are establishing fusion-disease task forces, and Hua’s Anomalous Case Department has made arrangements too. But there are plenty of investigation groups with more seniority and ability than Group Seven. Several of them have even handled multiple fusion-disease cases before. Logically, there was no reason for Group Seven to be given responsibility for it. But… the moment you arrived, the order came down for Group Seven to specialize in fusion-disease cases. Considering your ability and the Stabilizer, it’s hard for me not to read more into that.”
Fang Huan Xing sat up and rubbed his wrist expressionlessly. “Who cares what you think.”
Shang Lu looked at his wrist.
I barely used any force. How did it get that red?
Was his skin just too pale?
But the kid was proud and stubborn. He obviously wasn’t going to admit anytime soon that he had instinctively been seeking protection, so Shang Lu didn’t force him to acknowledge it now.
Better not make him lash out from embarrassment again.
There would be plenty of time later anyway.
“You have to care what I think, whether you want to or not, because you need to understand where I stand.” Shang Lu said, “And you need to know this too: as long as you behave, listen to me, don’t run off, and don’t do anything reckless, I’ll protect you and stand on your side.”
＊
The sound of running water came from the bathroom. Fang Huan Xing sat on the edge of the bed for a while before getting up and walking to the window.
Fog Harbor glittered with lights at night, but directly outside the window was pitch-black. They were on the twelfth floor—not particularly high. If he looked carefully, there were places to gain footing.
But he could also simply open the door and leave right now.
A pile of new clothes still lay unfolded on the bed, and two pairs of shoes in his size sat on the floor.
He stared at them coldly for a while, then put the shoes away, neatly folded the clothes, and hung the jackets inside the empty wardrobe.
The hinge on the wardrobe door was broken.
He could fix it if he found a screwdriver.
After a while, someone knocked on the door.
Couldn’t he just come in?
Fang Huan Xing was annoyed. He got up and opened the door, only to find the person standing outside oddly unfamiliar.
Shang Lu had showered and changed into loungewear. His black hair, which he usually styled back, had been washed too and now fell messily forward, soft and unstyled.
His features were naturally sharp. When he wasn’t smiling, he usually carried the aura of a polished professional. But now his strong brow bones were partly hidden by damp strands of hair, making him look considerably younger, and the constant sense that he was ready to rush out to a crime scene at any moment had disappeared.
So strange.
Shang Lu actually looked like this in private.
There were still droplets of water along the side of his neck. His shoulders were broad, and even beneath the loose loungewear the outlines of muscle were faintly visible. He looked more like an ordinary living person this way…
but he did indeed seem pretty hard to beat.
Shang Lu dried his hair with a towel in one hand and tossed something over with the other. “Pajamas, toothbrush, underwear. Go shower by yourself later.”
Fang Huan Xing caught them.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” Shang Lu laughed. “The underwear is new. Never worn. If it’s too big, buy your own tomorrow.”
Fang Huan Xing: “…”
The door closed.
Fang Huan Xing shook the bundle open. Sure enough, the pajamas contained a new pair of underwear and a new toothbrush.
He had never lived with anyone for such an extended period before. He had never held a job, much less shared a home with someone.
That left him with a layer of uncertainty—and an even deeper sense of bewilderment.
Was he supposed to say thank you?
That was what people did on television.
When he was little, he had often said it to Fang Lan too.
“Open the door. There’s something else.”
The knock came again.
Fang Huan Xing opened the door once more, his expression clearly asking, What now?
This time, Shang Lu handed him an old phone and a charger. There was some wear around the corners, but otherwise it was perfectly intact. “For you.”
“For me?”
Shang Lu thought he disliked that it was old. “Use it for now. Buy your own after you get paid. There’s no SIM card in it yet. We’ll find time to get one tomorrow. It’s already connected to the home Wi-Fi, so you can use the internet.”
Fang Huan Xing accepted the phone and lit up the screen.
A line of text appeared on startup. He stared until he finished reading it. Then the screen immediately switched to the user agreement and privacy notice.
By the time he looked up again, Shang Lu had already gone back to his own room.
Still…
He hadn’t said thank you again.
Annoying.
＊
The next morning, Diva woke Shang Lu on time. As he washed up, he listened to her read the operational briefings from Anomalous Case Departments around the world. He went downstairs to buy breakfast, and when he came back, there was still no movement from the guest room.
Shang Lu checked the time and went to knock.
“Fang Huan Xing. Get up.”
There was no response from inside.
He knocked several more times. “Kid?”
Still nothing.
The feeling was painfully familiar.
Shang Lu’s temple twitched. He immediately turned the doorknob and opened the door. The window was shut tight. The curtains hadn’t been drawn, and sunlight streamed in across the foot of the bed.
The person on the mattress had wrapped himself in the blanket like a cocoon.
Fang Huan Xing hadn’t run away.
He simply wasn’t awake yet.
Considering how alert the kid’s senses usually were, Shang Lu found it remarkable that someone had entered the room without waking him. He moved closer to inspect his sleeping face.
The teenager was sleeping far more deeply than Shang Lu had expected, curled on his side near the wall. The blanket covered his chin, and half his face was buried in the pillow.
A mischievous thought occurred to Shang Lu. He raised his wrist and told Diva, “Make some noise. Wake this lazybones up.”
Diva understood immediately.
A loud, rousing sports march exploded through the room.
Fang Huan Xing sat bolt upright with the expression of someone ready to kill, his hair sticking up wildly in every direction.
“Breakfast.”
Shang Lu politely withdrew.
Fang Huan Xing spent the entire morning routine half-asleep. Brushing his teeth, washing his face, and eating breakfast took only twenty minutes in total. He even kept dropping his steamed bun while eating, but fortunately he had plenty of tricks at his disposal. The bun would reappear in his hand in the blink of an eye, so none of it went to waste.
Still groggy, he followed Shang Lu down to the car, then turned around and went back for his backpack.
There was nothing he even needed to carry, yet he insisted on bringing the backpack anyway. Shang Lu suspected it might simply be part of the kid’s overall look.
Watching Fang Huan Xing sit in the front passenger seat hugging the backpack against his chest, Shang Lu suddenly remembered something. “Oh, right. I still haven’t bought you those badges.”
Fang Huan Xing came vaguely back to his senses. Remembering the thank-you he had failed to say the night before, his lips moved slightly. “No need.”
“That won’t do.” Shang Lu started the car. “I promised, so I have to buy them. The two I promised, plus one extra as a friendship bonus.”
Fang Huan Xing: “…Fine.”
After a pause, he added, “They have to be official.”
Shang Lu drove. “You even know about official merchandise?”
Fang Huan Xing gave him an odd look. “The merchandise from this series is out of print. There are a lot of counterfeits.”
“Tide Without Shores. I watched it when I was little too,” Shang Lu said. “It’s a really old animated series. I never finished it, though. I just caught bits and pieces while changing channels. You like it that much?”
“Mm.” Fang Huan Xing pulled the phone from his pocket and switched it on.
Talking about the series stirred a faint memory in Shang Lu’s mind.
A room at the far end of a corridor, its curtains kept tightly drawn all year round. An old LCD television sat in the middle of the room and would occasionally turn itself on.
Shang Lu had secretly entered that room several times.
The show playing on the television had always been this same animated series.
The servants said the room was haunted.
Someone had once worked up the courage to go inside and unplug the television, but even that hadn’t stopped it.
What no one knew was that Shang Lu, back then, would always sneak inside afterward and plug it back in.
He wasn’t afraid of ghosts.
He had even stayed in the room several times, hoping he might make a ghost friend.
It had happened so many years ago that Shang Lu had nearly forgotten it.
He turned to look at the kid.
Fang Huan Xing was still staring at the phone, his eyes never leaving the screen.
While they were stopped at a red light, Shang Lu glanced over several times.
He wasn’t playing a game.
He was simply stuck.
Shang Lu wasn’t sure what he was trying to accomplish. The one thing he could tell was that every time Fang Huan Xing opened a new screen, he would unfold and silently read every single word and every single option displayed there before moving on.
“Were you studying the phone last night too?” Shang Lu asked.
“Mm.”
Mystery solved.
That explained why he hadn’t been able to wake up this morning.
Good grief. No wonder he used an old keypad phone before. Put a smartphone in this kid’s hands and his attention sank into it like a stone into the sea. Every page became impossible to tear himself away from.
Shang Lu remembered their first meeting. The kid had even insisted on reading the entire ingredient list printed on a bag of toast.
No wonder Zhou Jia Ying had needed to read the study materials aloud to him yesterday.
It was some kind of compulsive-reading behavior. Once he saw written text, he had to read every single word without missing one. Until he reached the very end, his attention simply couldn’t shift away.
What a strange kid.
Even his little quirks were strange.
After the car stopped, Shang Lu asked for the phone back and quickly set a screen-time limit, immediately provoking outrage.
Fang Huan Xing’s eyes widened. “What are you doing?”
“It’s work hours now.”
Fang Huan Xing looked around. “Where are we?”
I could sell you and you wouldn’t even notice.
Shang Lu parked the car. “At work.”
With that, he tapped his watch and clocked in for field duty.
“Clock-in successful. Current time: 8:42 a.m. Today’s first field assignment is a follow-up visit with the family of a person connected to the Xianlu Hotel case. This will be automatically entered into the investigation log. Friendly reminder: don’t forget today’s rabies vaccination. We recommend asking your roommate or a coworker to accompany you.”
Shang Lu shut her off immediately.
“…”
Fang Huan Xing might not have heard the second half clearly. Looking rather conscious of himself as an employee now, he asked, “How do I clock in?”
“You don’t. Your team leader can verify your attendance. You don’t even have a staff ID badge yet. Go pick that up from Human Resources first.”
“The watch too?”
He had been coveting that watch for quite a while.
Shang Lu laughed. “What are you thinking? Interns don’t get watches. If you want one, learn how to write investigation logs first. We’ll talk after you pass your internship.”
Their car was parked outside a narrow alley off the street.
At the entrance of the alley stood a narrow convenience store selling drinks, snacks, and daily necessities. The sign above the door was old and read RUIRUI GROCERY STORE.
Fang Huan Xing involuntarily read the entire thing.
“What are we doing here? Fighting monsters?”
Fang Huan Xing looked solemn. If it was something like the creature from Xianlu Hotel, he would kill it immediately this time.
But Zheng Xiao Yu had told him that as an intern, the most important thing was to follow his team leader’s instructions.
“Mm. Fighting monsters,” Shang Lu said. “Stay here and behave. I’m going over there for a bit.”
Shang Lu walked around the car. His back remained within Fang Huan Xing’s field of view as he reached the storefront in only a few steps.
There was a plastic stool beside the tobacco-and-liquor counter, but no one was sitting there.
Shang Lu called out twice.
A petite woman emerged from inside the shop. She appeared to be in her fifties, her face pale and her eyes red and swollen.
Fang Huan Xing studied her intently, his gaze sharp as he tried to find another pupil or another floating face somewhere on her features.
Shang Lu politely said something to her. First he showed his identification, then took a transparent evidence bag from his coat pocket.
The bag was small, but Fang Huan Xing could clearly see the memory card inside.
It was the one Shang Lu had recovered at Xianlu Hot Spring Hotel.
Fang Huan Xing reached over to the driver’s side and unlocked the window. As the glass lowered, the conversation outside drifted faintly inside.
“The site is still sealed while we wait for further review. For the time being, we can’t confirm Lin Rui’s condition. But I want to be honest with you—the situation doesn’t look good…”
Shang Lu continued.
“You should prepare yourself.”
…
“Everything connected to the case has been deleted. Under procedure, the original card is being returned to the family. My colleagues said there were also some ordinary videos he had filmed before, and all of those have been preserved.”
…
“And the camera was accidentally damaged at the scene. By rights, we should compensate you. This is the amount after verification.”
Shang Lu had done everything he had promised Lin Rui.
The only promise he had failed to keep was bringing Lin Rui out intact.
The woman accepted the memory card and the cash without even looking at them. She had already broken down sobbing.
“What kind of world is this? The whole world is falling apart. It’s the end of everything… He loved filming things ever since he was little. This time he only went to make a video. Why? Why did this happen? It’s so unfair… my child…”
Shang Lu took some tissues from nearby and silently remained beside the woman for a long time.
When he returned to the car, he praised Fang Huan Xing. “You did well.”
Team Leader Shang didn’t have high expectations for his brand-new intern.
Managing to stay exactly where he had been told without running away was already tremendous progress.
Fang Huan Xing turned his head.
His face was expressionless, but his eyes were red.
“Where’s the monster?”
“There aren’t monsters everywhere. This is what everyday work at the Anomalous Case Department actually looks like.” Shang Lu ruffled the kid’s hair. “We fight monsters too, but most of the time, what we’re really fighting is the monster no one can see.”
Fang Huan Xing remembered Lin Rui’s final pull beneath the water.
Emotion finally surfaced in him. He turned toward the window and said nothing.
Shang Lu started the car again. “Today’s fieldwork is fairly simple. Perfect for your first investigation log. Write one tonight and give it to me to check.”
Fang Huan Xing turned his head.
“?”
Leave a Reply