CH 16

This sentence was spoken very calmly, and very quietly. But Yan Suizhi’s heart skipped when he heard it.

Practically the entire universe believed that that explosion was an accident. There were some who sighed deeply at his misfortune, and there were others who lamented his death; the law school had moved his portrait to the Hall of Fame for those who had passed away; the blonde Luke and the rest would correct the title to ‘former dean’ whenever he came up in their conversations. 

In a few years to come, those who feel sad about his death would gradually grow out of their sadness. Fewer and fewer people would talk about him, and would even use him to make the occasional joke…

This was a perfectly normal sequence of events, and this was also what Yan Suizhi expected. So, he had adapted well to it and was very open-minded about it.

Instead, it was Gu Yan’s reaction that came completely out of the left field to him.

He never thought that apart from him, there would actually be others closely paying attention to that explosion case, and would expand extra effort into digging to the truth of the matter. 

And what surprised him most was that—this person actually turned out to be Gu Yan.

Could it be that after roaming around for several years after graduation, this student suddenly remembered his roots, respecting this teacher of his anew?

Guessing this, slight guilt floated up on Professor Yan’s conscience. Perhaps he should have angered this student less and treated him a little better back then.

Yan Suizhi’s brief spell of inattention caught Gu Yan’s measuring gaze.

“You’re from Maze University as well. Haven’t you heard?”

“Hm?” Yan Suizhi came to his senses, then nodded, replying, “If you’re talking about the accident that the former dean was in, then of course I’ve heard of it. I only got distracted earlier because I never expected that you took on so many explosion cases for this reason. Why? Do you think there’s something off about that accident?”

Gu Yan pondered for a moment before he spoke. “Just a suspicion. I’ve no concrete evidence.”

“No concrete evidence? Then why would you suspect so?” 

Gu Yan, “Because it’s him.”

Yan Suizhi, “???”

This remark was so simple that the esteemed Professor Yan had to broaden his understanding. Generally speaking, the phrase ‘because it’s him’ meant that the attitude one had when this scenario befell upon certain individuals would be different from the attitude one had when it befell upon others.

“Because it’s him?” Yan Suizhi joked, “Is it possible that out of your deep respect for this teacher, you’re particularly concerned to know the truth?” 

Fortunately, the esteemed Professor Yan had a thick skin and could act so shamelessly without any scruples. He even wanted to poke fun at himself as he said those words.

Hearing this, Gu Yan shot him a ‘who are you trying to kid’ type of look. Then, he sipped at his coffee and said blandly, “On the contrary. If you knew how many points I gave him in the professor evaluation every year you wouldn’t make such a ghastly claim.”

Yan Suizhi, “How many points?”

Gu Yan, “Not even 50.” 

Yan Suizhi, “Tch.”

Gu Yan slid a look at him.

Yan Suizhi, “You must’ve been taking advantage of that it was anonymous, right?”

Gu Yan, “I would have given him 20 if it wasn’t anonymous.” 

Tjc Velhtl, “Kmt.”

Student, you’d never guess who you’re talking bad about your teacher to.

Dea ktja kjr wbra vfqgfrrlcu jybea atlr kjr atja ktfc Tjc Velhtl fcnlrlbcfv la obg j wbwfca, klat Xe Tjc’r afwqfg rijwwlcu bea bo atf gbbw jcv mtbxlcu bc tlr kbgvr yjmx atfc, la gfjiis kjrc’a j ragfamt obg tlw ab abrr j 20-qblcar rmbgf ab tlr ojmf.

He really would do it. 

So… Screw any teacher-student sentiment.

Yan Suizhi raised his eyebrows and smoothed his own ruffled feathers. The more he thought about it the more perplexed he became. “Then what do you mean by ‘because it’s him’?”

Gu Yan crushed his empty coffee cup and threw it into the recycling bin. He replied, “I don’t mean anything by it.”

Yan Suizhi really wanted to roll his eyes, but Gu Yan abruptly came with a sentence out of the blue. “I heard a few of those interns say the other day that you look a little similar to him.” 

“What?” Yan Suizhi gave a slight start before coming back to himself. The corners of his lips lifted with a smile. He affected nonchalance as he asked, “You mean that unlucky former dean? There were others who said so before too, but I never really saw it myself. How about you? Do you think I look like him?”

As a matter of fact, Yan Suizhi wasn’t worried regarding this at all. There was a saying that strangers looked at the appearance of a person as a whole, therefore it was easy to feel that two people looked alike at first glance. But the more familiar people were, the more they would look at the details of the facial features and subconsciously notice the differences, conversely finding it hard to feel that they looked similar.

It was akin to the way people would sigh, “Wow, you look like a spitting image of your parents.” And the other would often reply in surprise, “Do I? Not that much, right?”

Compared to Luke and the rest, Gu Yan was really too familiar with his face. 

Moreover, so what if he looked similar to his past self? Many strangers in the world looked like doppelgangers of each other.

But even then, Yan Suizhi still got a shock when Gu Yan suddenly bowed down slightly to stare at his facial features.

He took a small step back to pull the distance apart, and tried to hold himself back for two seconds to no avail—he impatiently said, “Why don’t you just hold up a magnifying glass?”

As he spoke, Gu Yan had straightened back up again. He said calmly, “You don’t look like him.” 

Sure enough.

“If you looked that much like him, I would’ve invited you out of my office on the first day.” After saying this, Gu Yan turned on his heels and left without waiting for his response.

Yan Suizhi was caught between laughter and tears. “You didn’t just invite me out of your office that day, you wanted to send me straight home; have you already forgotten this?”

Gu Yan walked in front of him without saying a word. Who knew if he actually hadn’t heard it or was pretending to be deaf, out of sheer laziness to bother with him. 

The two people walked step in step with each other to the elevator. There were many people around them, so Gu Yan simply turned to walk towards the stairwell.

“What are we going upstairs for?” Yan Suizhi asked, following behind him with a head full of fog.

“As we were talking earlier, our client Mr Dale got into the elevator.”

According to reason, all formalities that should have been done in the hospital were completed, and all the bills that should have been paid, paid. Even if they hadn’t been paid, it had nothing to do with him; the one paying for it was Gu Yan, after all. Rosie Dale was still getting an infusion drip on the first floor, so why had he headed upstairs? 

Yan Suizhi thought back for a moment and suddenly recalled that Kitty Bell, the victim of the burglary, just happened to be warded in this Spring Ivy Hospital.

Evidently, they had both thought of the same thing. When on the third floor, they tacitly turned to the corridor leading to the inpatient department at Block B.

The third floor of Block B was a special ward of the Spring Ivy Hospital provided to certain patients with special statuses, such as criminals who sought medical care outside prison, and such as victims like Kitty Bell whose cases weren’t settled.

A password-secured door separated the ward on this floor from the floors above and beneath it, leaving only this corridor allowing doctors and families access to the ward. 

There were uniformed police officers guarding the door to Kitty Bell’s ward, seated on lounge chairs on both sides. Two of them were napping against the wall. From their faces, they didn’t appear to have gotten much rest in the past few days.

Gu Yan and Yan Suizhi saw Joshua Dale on one side of the corridor as soon as they entered it, looking at the ward from a distance.

But from his point of view, he could only see a white corner of the bed through the open door of the ward.

Joshua Dale stood there for a while. The police looked up and glanced over. One of them frowned, and was just about to get up. 

However, before he could do anything, Joshua Dale had already turned around and walked away.

“Hss—” his eyes lowered, he almost ran into Yan Suizhi not more than two steps later, and drew in a sharp inhale. He looked up, “Why are you…”

“We saw you enter the elevator downstairs, earlier,” Yan Suizhi said.

Joshua’s face changed, turning extremely ugly with deep indignance for a split second. “So what if I come upstairs? Are you that scared that I’d charge into the ward?” 

Yan Suizhi arched his brows, muttering in his head: this kid sure has triggers all over his body. Any sentence or other could make him snarl at them.

He put a hand to Joshua’s shoulder and pushed him away from the ward back down the corridor. “Come on. If we were really afraid that you’d charge into the ward, we wouldn’t have bothered coming up. Wouldn’t those police on guard catch you like a chicken?”

Joshua Dale, “…”

He twisted his shoulder away from Yan Suizhi’s hand, asking gruffly, “Then what did you follow me for?” 

“In case Kitty Bell’s family beat you up if they catch you,” Yan Suizhi casually said.

Joshua Dale’s face filled with anger. “I wasn’t the one who did it, why would they beat me!”

“What do you think?” Yan Suizhi said, “Before the true perpetrator is found and takes your place, other people would always want to find someone to hate. As long as the court hasn’t declared your innocence, it is natural that people would assume your guilt.”

Joshua Dale glared over at him with wide eyes and was about to open his mouth when Yan Suizhi cut in, “Quiet, don’t shout. You young’uns have such a temper. Don’t always be this easily agitated.” 

“…”

Joshua Dale yanked his head away and breathed heavily with rage.

Gu Yan kept silent all this while, watching silently from the side as if watching a play.

“Stop wheezing, are you the reincarnation of a bellows?” said Yan Suizhi, smiling, “You may think this way, but you’re not the only unlucky fellow, you even implicated both of us. Generally speaking, they not only hate you, they also hate me, the one helping you escape conviction. You should count yourself lucky that the courthouse has security checks, or it won’t be outside the realm of possibility that a family member as easily blinded with anger as you are would bring in two buckets of sulfuric acid. Splash a bucket at you, splash a bucket at me, and douse the remaining over his head.” 

He said this with a smile. Even Joshua Dale’s heart had chilled listening to him.

After scaring the other, he even added consolingly, “There really was such a precedent before. Look, am I wheezing?”

Joshua Dale, “…”

Beside him, Gu Yan’s eyebrows furrowed imperceptibly, but they very quickly relaxed, as if he had never shown such an expression. 

The esteemed Professor Yan frightened the child so thoroughly that he completely forgot he had a special skill—the crow’s mouth.

As they conversed, the three people were right about to walk to the end of the corridor when a person appeared from around the corner.

It was a youth with short brown hair and looked no more than two years older than Joshua, probably seventeen, at most. He carried a bucket of hot water from who-knows-where in his hand; from the steam billowing off it, it likely wasn’t boiled too long ago.

Most of the water supplied on this side of the ward was cold or warm water that could be directly drunk, so boiling water as hot as this had to be boiled elsewhere. 

For a fleeting moment, Yan Suizhi thought that the boy looked a little familiar, but he didn’t think too deeply into it and automatically made way for that youth to pass. After all, he had gone to great pains to boil this water, it wouldn’t be of any use spilled to the ground.

Little did he know that as soon as he gave way, the brown-haired boy would stare at them for two seconds and abruptly curse. “Fuck! It’s you!”

“Scoundrels!”

And as he said this, he held the bottom of the bucket and flung it over them. 

I have to find a place to cleanse my bad luck; why have I encountered something like this again…

This thought actually popped into Yan Suizhi’s mind in such a situation. He only had the time to raise his arm to cover his face, but swiftly after, he simultaneously felt a sharp pain on his leg and a warm body knock into him.

And then, the shrill shriek of some little nurse.

Ten minutes later, Yan Suizhi sat in a consultation room, showing a doctor the burn running from his right calf to his ankle. 

This was still the end result after Gu Yan’s coat blocked most of the water for him. As for Joshua Dale, he was even luckier and had only hurt the back of his left hand.

The doctor administered first-aid to them, prescribed some medicine, and asked Gu Yan to go help them handle the payment.

The semi-charitable nature of Spring Ivy Hospital made it such that every diagnosis and treatment had to be associated with an identification file, so an identification form had to be filled out when making the payment.

Gu Yan hung his wet coat on his arm and went straight to the payment counter. 

The young nurse at the desk said, “Is this your first visit here? If it is, you have to fill out this identification form.”

Eyes half-lidded, Gu Yan scanned the fields of the form, and selected a new form on the photon computer.

Name of Patient: ______

Gu Yan unwittingly wrote a word with an electronic pen. Then, he paused. 

The young nurse looked over and asked in concern, “Why? Is there an issue?”

Gu Yan mildly replied, “No. I wrote the wrong word.”

The young nurse smiled and glanced at the name column in passing.

Thus, she saw that the character for ‘Yan’ was neatly written on it. But, by the next second, Gu Yan had clicked on delete.