CH 144

Translated by Dust Bunny

Edited by Crooked 

Gu Xizhou was instantly alert: this was the day Ji Ji’s parents died, but Gu Xizhou wasn’t clear on the cause of his parents’ deaths, and because Ji Ji never brought it up, Gu Xizhou also didn’t dare to mention it again.

After eating breakfast, Gu Xizhou left with Ji Ji. In the distance, Gu Xizhou saw a boy of seventeen or eighteen coming out of a neighborhood gate. He was pulling a suitcase in one hand, yelling at the people behind him. “Do you still know that I’m your son, ah? Yesterday I was on an IV in the hospital, and the doctor asked why no one from my family was there! When the doctor took my card to pay the fee, what were you and mom so busy with? Are they more important, or am I?”

“Forget about it, I don’t want to argue with you guys about it! Think about it carefully!”

The teenager was very tall, no less than 1.8 meters in height. He was wearing a white t-shirt with a gigantic logo printed on it, a student’s outfit. 

His hands were clean, the bones neatly articulated and his fingers slender and fair. His crow black hair shone faintly red under the sunshine, casting a halo on his body. The shadow of his eyes lashes fanned out across his face, the black lashes curling up slightly at the end.

However, his whole face was filled with anger. After venting his dissatisfaction to the stairwell, suitcase in hand, he ignored the people chasing after him, walking in the opposite direction.

This was Gu Xizhou’s first time seeing Ji Ji as a rebellious child. He was obviously a little fart who ran away from home after arguing with his parents.

As soon as eighteen year-old Gu Ji Ji left, Gu Qing came out after him. Seeing Gu Ji Ji’s retreating back, he kicked a pebble to the side in frustration, clearly feeling a little disheartened.

At the present, Gu Qing’s face was more deeply marked by the years than when Gu Xizhou had seen him before, but it couldn’t hide the handsomeness of his face, and his body was still straight.

Gu Ji Ji stood next to Gu Qing, staring at him in a daze.

“Ha,” Gu Qing said, taking note of the handsome young man staring at him and finding it a little strange. There were a lot of emotions in the other person’s eyes that he didn’t understand. He pointed at the kid who was receding into the distance and explained, “That’s my son. I got into an argument with him. I was too busy yesterday.”

“He can walk all he wants, but his mom and I don’t have time. There’s still a case under investigation…” 

Gu Ji Ji was silent, and after a short period of time when he realized no one was going to answer Gu Qing and it got awkward, he spoke up, his downcast voice slightly choked with emotion. “He will understand one day.”

Gu Ji Ji’s dad shrugged helplessly and said, “I wish that was true. But in the end, I’m the one in the wrong, ai…”

Hearing Gu Qing’s words, Gu Xizhou suddenly felt his heart throb. Gu Ji Ji lowered his voice and said again, “He will.”

Gu Qing gave Ji Ji a nod and said, “You look familiar. Have I seen you somewhere before?” 

Gu Ji Ji looked at Gu Qing and said, “Maybe, ba.”

Gu Qing was silent for a moment before he ‘en’ed, waving his hand at Gu Ji Ji, “I’m going back.”

After Gu Qing had been gone for a long time, Gu Ji Ji’s choked voice came out.

“Good.” 

Gu Xizhou knew that Gu Ji Ji was responding to Gu Qing’s last sentence, ‘I’m going back.’ In the next second, Ji Ji disappeared and Gu Xizhou looked down at his empty hands, feeling unwell as his brow furrowed. Leaving the neighborhood, he caught sight of someone unexpected.

The boy dragged the suitcase, his lips pursed and his eyes slightly bent as he pointed to Gu Xizhou. With a pleasantly surprised expression he said, “Uncle, it’s you!”

Xe Wlhtbe kjr raeccfv. Tbecu Al Al vlvc’a ulnf tlw atf mtjcmf ab rqfjx jr tf mbcalcefv ajixlcu ab tlwrfio. “Vagjcuf, jt, sbe vbc’a rffw ab tjnf mtjcufv ja jii, jcv kts vb P offi ilxf sbe ibbx j iba ilxf wf?”

“Pa’r gfjiis rlwlijg!” 

Slutaffc-sfjg-biv Al Al rjlv ab tlwrfio.

As the two of them stood in the street, Gu Xizhou’s eyebrows relaxed. After a moment of silence, the piercing sound of a siren cut through it. “You still remember me,” Gu Xizhou said dully.

“En!” Eighteen-year-old Gu Ji Ji confirmed with a nod, “You saved me on the first day of the Lunar New Year! Later I saw you at school, but…”

Gu Xizhou’s eyebrows furrowed slightly, “But what?” 

“But my parents, Wang Shu, and Tong Jia said that there was such a person, but they don’t remember what he looked like. It was like I was the only one who remembered who you were.”

“So Uncle, are you a ghost? A ghost that only I can see!” Eighteen-year-old Ji Ji said naively.

Gu Xizhou glanced at him and said, “Are college students still superstitious?”

“Before I wasn’t convinced,” Ji Ji’s eyes scattered the faint light, “but now I am. Six years and you haven’t changed a bit.” 

“Ah.”

He gave a barely audible laugh, and Ji Ji lifted his head to look at Gu Xizhou. For a moment neither of them had anything to say before Gu Xizhou said, “The police are very busy.”

“How busy are you?” The young man asked, shoving a hand into his pants pocket.

Gu Xizhou thought for a moment and said, “The cases come one after the other. One here, one there. But they will be completed slowly. Being an officer is very tiring, ah. I want to resign everyday.” 

“Why don’t you resign then?” The handsome young man asked, raising his eyebrows.

Gu Xizhou looked at Gu Ji Ji and said deeply, “Because of someone else.”

“Oh, the person you like!”

Gu Xizhou made a noise of contempt, “Nonsense, he and I are ‘good brothers,’ I like a fart!” 

The young man didn’t forget to tease Gu Xizhou, “Heng, It’s your words that make people misunderstand! Your brother is just a brother and you have to say ‘someone’, what if you’re gay?!”

“Get lost!” How did eighteen year-old Ji Ji already have such a quick mouth? Gu Xizhou was getting a headache.

“Thanks, I know you want to tell me about my dad.” The young man smiled, lowering his eyes. Suddenly he asked, “Uncle, are you really a ghost?”

Gu Xizhou looked lost having experienced this before. Why did Ji Ji begin suspecting he was a ghost just like Si Yu? 

“I’m not!”

“Don’t go to school angry!” Gu Xizhou said heavily after they had talked for a while.

Gu Ji Ji nodded and did what he was told. “Okay, I’ll listen to you.”

Seeing Gu Ji Ji return home, Gu Xizhou was shocked. Weren’t children in their rebellious phase the most difficult to persuade? Why was Ji Ji so obedient? 

Gu Xizhou scratched his head. When Gu Qing pulled open the door, pleasant surprise flashed through his eyes when he saw Ji Ji pulling the suitcase. He was clearly thinking that his son wouldn’t turn right around and come back after quarreling with him so fiercely.

“What’s the matter?” Gu Qing clenched his fist, coughing lightly as he tried to put on parental airs. “Forget something?”

At this moment, Zhou Xinyue rushed out, running into Gu Qing. She glared at him coldly, “What are you saying? Isn’t my son angry? Yesterday was all about work, you have to understand… The victim’s relatives were crying so bitterly. Your dad and I really did just overlook the time and worked too long. Don’t be upset.”

“Do you still have a fever? Do you want to go to the hospital?” 

Hearing Zhou Xinyue’s concern, young Gu Ji Ji glanced at his father who was knocked aside by his mother and was forced to drop his air of disdain. He shook his head and said softly, “I was okay yesterday. Mom doesn’t need to worry.”

When young Ji Ji returned home, he remembered the man he had just met, but he hadn’t even asked for his name…

He knew that the other person’s appearance wasn’t just a coincidence. The day after he met the man, his classmate Tong Jia had tried to commit suicide. He remembered asking Uncle Wang about what had happened. He said that an officer named Fang Ran appeared, but that it was strange, no one remembered what he looked like and he didn’t know why. He thought maybe it was Fang Ran who talked to him today, and that maybe he was a person and not a ghost.

The young man thought so. At eleven o’clock that evening, Gu Ji Ji calmly laid down and went to sleep. 

The next day.

“Xiao Zhou, there’s milk bread at home so you can heat up something to eat yourself. Your dad and I are going to work!”

“Okay—” Young Ji Ji said without turning his head to respond. He was already dressed standing by the window and looking down. As expected, he saw a familiar figure standing at the neighborhood gates.

The instant his mom and dad appeared, the young man with facial features as sharp as knives followed them. 

The young Ji Ji rushed out of the house and went after him.

Gu Qing raised his eyebrows slightly. “Why do I feel like someone is following us?”

“Don’t you just think too much?” Zhou Xinyue laughed, putting her hand in his, just like when Gu Xizhou had first seen them. The affection between the two of them was still strong.

They were walking along the road when suddenly they saw a ten-year-old child running in the bike lane behind a bike, their hand in the bag on the back of the girl’s bike rummaging for something. 

Zhou Xinyue and Gu Qing looked at each other in tacit understanding. Gu Qing grabbed the child, simultaneously calling for the girl to stop, whose bag had already been pickpocketed!

The girl checked her bag to make sure there was nothing missing before thanking Gu Qing and Zhou Xinyue repeatedly. Gu Qing turned to the child and asked, “Who told you to steal?”

The kid opened their mouth and mumbled. No one present, including Gu Qing, could understand a word.

Looking at their silhouette, the childs eye sockets were very deep, his facial features sunken. They should be a child from a remote area. They spoke in a regional dialect that people from Ningqing couldn’t understand. 

Gu Qing and Zhou Xinyue took the child with them to the police station.

Gu Xizhou didn’t know why he followed Gu Qing and his wife. He knew that these two people would have an accident today, but they had just caught a child from a remote area. The child only appeared to be no more than ten years old and couldn’t possibly hurt them.

Gu Xizhou’s brows furrowed slightly. He couldn’t understand why Ji Ji’s parents were going to die today. Maybe curiosity had driven him to do it. Gu Xizhou couldn’t help but follow the two people to the police station where Gu Xizou found a shop and ordered breakfast before sitting by the door to wait.

What he didn’t notice was that there was another person following him. 

Half an hour later, Gu Qing and Zhou Xinyue came out of the police station together with two young policemen and the child. The three of them were still talking to the child when they came out, but the kid kept shaking their head. Because of the language barrier and being unable to use writing, the two sides couldn’t communicate at all.

“These wicked men only know how to kidnap children to steal and beg!” Gu Qing scolded, but he still couldn’t communicate with the child. “When we drive off, the person who controls the child will surely follow us to get the kid back,” Gu Qing said to one of his colleagues.

“Don’t worry, team leader Gu, we know what to do!”

Obviously they were all familiar with this process. When Gu Xizhou saw the four people leaving with the kid, he immediately took a taxi and followed them. 

There was another person who did the same as him.

As Gu Xizhou followed, they soon drove into the suburbs. Gu Qing and the others left the child there as agreed upon before and appeared to drive away. In reality, they found a place to wait for the person controlling the kid to appear.

After waiting for a while a silver gray van appeared in their field of view. When the person in the car saw the child it stopped at the curb. The person in the passenger’s seat rolled down the window and waved to the kid who had done the stealing and the kid immediately followed.

“Team leader Gu, should we arrest them now?” One of his colleagues asked in a low voice. 

“No, keep following them. They must have a criminal stronghold. If we arrest them now, the other children will never be found,” Gu Qing said in a low voice.

The driver had listened to Gu Xizhou’s request and followed them into the neighborhood. The driver looked at Gu Xizhou suspiciously in the rearview mirror and said in a low voice, “Hey Xiongdi, you’re following a car that came out of a police station. You aren’t going to do anything bad are you?”

“No.” Gu Xizhou’s lips curled slightly. “Just keep following.”

“You see the meter has just hit a hundred…” The driver’s voice was a little hesitant. He was clearly a little suspicious of Gu Xizhou. 

Hearing that Gu Xizhou took out his wallet, retrieving three one hundred notes and handed them to the driver saying, “Hold on to these, don’t lose them!”

“Okay!” After taking the money, the driver seemed refreshed, patting his chest with the clear message of ‘You can count on me.’

Gu Xizhou let out a long breath. He was eating noodles when all of a sudden he jumped to 2010. At that time, the money being used was the new RMB and the money in his wallet could be used. Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to afford the taxi fare with the two 50 RMB notes that Li Yaomu had given him. What’s more there was only a one yuan coin left in his pocket from the 100 he had spent.

Following Gu Qing’s car they drove all the way to the north gate of Ningqing. Container homes were rare in 2019, but there were lots of houses like that in the suburbs of 2010 Ningqing. 

When the silver van turned down a small road, Gu Qing and the others estimated that they weren’t far away. If they continued to use the car, it would be easy to lose it. Additionally, the target was too large, so after discussing it, the four people parked the van on the roadside and got out to track the van.

“This road, look, it’s covered in mud. I’ll have to wash my car if I drive in there…” The driver said, scratching his cheek and looking at Gu Xizhou with a bashful expression.

The taxi was very conspicuous, so after thinking about it, Gu Xizhou opened the door and got out, letting the driver leave. 

As soon as he got out of the car, he heard an argument behind him. “Hey, kid, you aren’t going to pay? What kind of taxi can you take without money, ah?”

Gu Xizhou glanced over at the young Gu Ji Ji idly. Seeing that he looked a little stunned, he hurried over, pulling out two hundred yuan and giving it to the driver, saying, “I’ll help him pay.”

The driver swore and took the money, telling Gu Xizhou to manage Ji Ji better, gesturing in Ji Ji’s  direction before driving off.

After the two taxis left, Gu Xizhou raised his eyebrows, looking at the young Ji Ji as he lowered his voice. “Why are you following me?” 

“Why are you following my parents?” the young Ji Ji asked, raising his chin.