When it was almost nine o'clock in the evening, Yu Xiaorong and Hannah finally went back to the bedroom, claiming that they had some homework to prepare. Without Hannah's laughter and Yu Xiaorong's figure sitting on the sofa, the living room suddenly became deserted. Even if the melody on the record player is cheerful, it lacks reality like the echo of a dead soul.
Luo Binhan really wanted to turn on the TV and make something more alive than a record player. But Malcolm was already leaning on the sofa pillow, breathing heavily and falling asleep. The remote control was pressed under his butt, half of it exposed. He was busy enough today, so Luo Binhan gave up the idea of playing with the remote control. Instead, he walked to the table and poked his head to see what Yu Qingshu was writing. "Greeting card?" he asked, trying to read the words on the red card backwards. He vaguely recognized the words "youth" and "graduation", but before he could form a sentence, Yu Qingshu flipped the card over, revealing only the blank back.
"What are you writing?" Luo Binhan said loudly on purpose, trying his best to hide the smile on his face. Yu Qingshu pushed his head back.
"Liu Ling may come over tomorrow." She said hurriedly.
"Come to see Fluffy and Mal?"
"Look at you too. You two haven't seen each other for two or three years."
When Luo Binhan heard this, he was still thinking about the words he saw on the greeting card, and he blurted out: "She doesn't like me very much."
Yu Qingshu looked at him as if he had just recited a dangerous spell. In order to eliminate this inappropriate atmosphere, Luo Binhan immediately reached out and pretended to steal the cards on the table. Yu Qingshu had to knock his hand off: "Don't make trouble here."
"Then what can I do?" Luo Binhan said, "How about dancing?"
Yu Qingshu raised his eyebrows, seeming to find this idea interesting. "Did you teach it in school?"
"I taught national standards for a few days." Luo Binhan said. He saw that Yu Qingshu really wanted to let him perform live. He quickly begged for mercy and said that he had forgotten it a long time ago. He also brought up the old story about how his face scared the female classmate to vomit. shirk. This was the first time his mother had heard about it, and her reaction was similar to Hannah's, but more ruthless.
"She may have a digestive tract problem." She said with certainty. "My friend's daughter is like this. She will vomit when she exercises strenuously."
This is something they will never be able to verify. In Luo Binhan's impression, middle school followed a rigid and old-fashioned school rules, which were much stricter than ordinary public schools. A boy who goes to talk to a female classmate for no reason will definitely attract attention, so he is not familiar with the female students in the same grade. Of course, Zhou Yu is an exception. In addition, it was difficult for him to accurately remember the names of most of his female classmates, including the one who asked Zhou Yu to come to the rescue. It was an unsolvable mystery unless he went back and dug out his graduation book and eliminated every face one by one.
He swore that he had quit dancing for life, and his mother just watched him having fun, with a look on her face that was akin to drunkenness. She grabbed his wrist and swayed across the table to the melody of the music, the way her upper body would move when dancing. The candles that decorated the atmosphere had long been put away, but when the shadow of the arm swayed on the table, Luo Binhan felt that it was not the shadow that was beating, but the chandelier above their heads, the fire hidden in the light. He calmed down and heard his mother whisper like she was dreaming: "You should find a companion."
"This has nothing to do with our previous topic," he protested, "How about we wait until the Chinese New Year?"
"Someone should take care of you," Yu Qingshu smiled, and the light seemed to rotate on her face, "You are the kind of person who takes a step forward after being whipped. If no one is watching, you will run away again. Where have you gone?"
"This is arranging me." Luo Binhan said. He exerted a little more force on his hand, no longer completely swaying according to Yu Qingshu's rhythm. It almost turned into a game where children shake each other's arms to see who can't stand it first. But he still didn't take his hand back. He looked at the shadow on the table and thought about something he had never told anyone. And they're about this thing called "Rules of Survival."
The principle of survival is not a wise, profound or even difficult concept. It is something that people can easily observe and draw in their limited life and life. It is something that people can learn from trivial things. Everyone lives according to certain rules and believes that such rules will make their life better. For his parents, Nan Mingguang, or all the old-school people who were in the same circle as them, they believed that a broad network of people or solid social relationships could be invincible on the battlefield of life, at least in the impact of the big environment. Survived; people like Malcolm believe in romance and beauty, and in the intimacy that biological instincts and trivial daily life can accumulate, even if it cannot bring him success in the worldly sense, it can protect his soul's eternal peace; some people believe that Blood and local feelings, or some kind of "morality" based on customs, may be what Liu Ling calls "loyalty"; there is also a kind of person, like his cousin Luo Jiayang, who claims to believe nothing, but in fact On the contrary, what he believes is that by denying the aforementioned norms, through pure self-interest, self-proclaimed ruthlessness and the "cruelty" he is proud of, he can become a person who controls his own life and even the lives of others.
He did think about these believed principles, and observed that they sometimes succeeded, sometimes failed, and sometimes were difficult to judge. And since no one can escape death, everyone can retain their own opinion about what kind of life is victorious or valuable.
He held his mother's wrist and could even feel her pulse beating. This was the man who brought him into this world, the closest they had ever been to each other, no other form of relationship could bring them closer in fact or physicality, this closeness was better than Malcolm, better than Zhou Yu , better than the blood connection he and Yu Xiaorong could achieve. But even with this kind of relationship, even if every bone and nerve in him took shape from her life, she still couldn't control what he thought, and she couldn't make him believe in a certain way. Code of survival. Even if she is the person who is most afraid of him losing his life, she cannot decide how to live for him.
The flickering light and vivid pulse made him dizzy. The strange atmosphere that echoed in the Fountain Square in the evening quietly entered the house again. He suddenly had an urge to tell Yu Qingshu everything, to admit all the failure, shame and confusion he had felt for so many years. It was already clear to him that she couldn't guide him anymore, he just wanted her to know... for her to accept...
The doorbell rang.
When the bell rang for the second time, Luo Binhan hadn't come back to his senses yet, he was just thinking about those trivial things. But when Yu Qingshu stood up and said, "Zhou Yu is back," he woke up with a start and frowned suspiciously.
"It doesn't seem to be Zhou Yu." He said and stood up from the table. When he finished saying this, the doorbell had rang for the third time. This is considered impatient by ordinary people's standards, not to mention that Zhou Yu has always been extremely patient in knocking on doors and ringing bells - in Luo Jiayang's words, the time he knocked on the door three times was enough for everyone in the entire underground dance hall to pay attention. Put on your pants.
Luo Binhan moved slowly from the table to the door, just ahead of Yu Qingshu, but he was not in a hurry to open the door. Luo Jiayang, tonight he thought of Luo Jiayang twice in a row, the cousin who asked him to go to the detention center to fish him out late at night, and this did not seem to be a good sign.
Before he had even taken two steps, he heard a door slam open in the corridor on the second floor, and then Yu Xiaorong's quick and decisive footsteps came down the stairs and stopped in the middle of the stairs. Luo Binhan turned to look at her, reading a look of surprise and uncertainty on her face. The moment they looked at each other, Luo Binhan concluded that this matter must have something to do with her, at least she knew something.
His lips moved silently, which was considered to express the intention of asking. Yu Xiaorong looked at Yu Qingshu, then shook his head slightly. Her expression was a little confused in her displeasure, but it was far from being in a first-level alert state. It was enough to show that the person outside the door was at least not a professional killer who would shoot in his face.
Luo Binhan decided not to embarrass his imagination. He quickened his pace and opened the door before the fifth bell rang. There was a man standing outside the door, his head lowered, as if he was studying the pattern of the mat under his feet. In the first few seconds, Luo Binhan couldn't see his face at all. Only because of the wet black leather coat, he thought of him as Doppler Colon in the dog park.
He instinctively wanted to ask Yu Xiaorong to deal with it, but then the other person raised his head, revealing a face with a black and swollen left cheek, and blood slid down his cheek into his collar. He should be much younger than the old Cologne, probably ten years younger than Malcolm. When he squinted his swollen left eye and looked at Luo Binhan, his face showed a typical tough guy indifference.
Luo Binhan's eyes followed the blood stains in his collar upwards, wondering where exactly the other party was injured, or whether it was his blood. He saw the source of the blood stain disappear into the other person's dark forehead. This man was not a neighbor he was familiar with, nor did he seem to be a friend of a certain Malcolm. His temperament was not very similar.
"Want to help?" he asked in English.
"Don't mind my face, I'm here to find someone." The man also replied in English, grinning half of his mouth to express friendliness instead of a smile.
Luo Binhan took a step aside, enough for everyone in the living room to see the face of this strange visitor, but not wide enough for him to come into the room. He stared closely at the other person's hands hanging on his sides, and only raised his ears to listen to the movement behind him.
Malcolm had woken up on the sofa, and his deep breathing turned into a lake of breath. Yu Qingshu pushed the chair away, probably wanting to come over to see what was going on, but someone got there first. Yu Xiaorong came to the door in three steps and pushed Luo Binhan half a meter closer to the door frame. She crossed her arms and looked up and down at the guests hanging decorations outside the door.
"Ged Schilling?" she said.
"That's right," the man replied, lowering his head and looking at Yu Xiaorong from beginning to end, "You were right, little girl."
If Luo Binhan can't distinguish the emotional color of a German speaker from his tone and tone, then Yu Xiaorong's unfriendly expression and the contempt in the other person's eyes are enough to explain it for him. This is not necessarily a person who respects strangers of the opposite sex and children, and it is certainly not one of Malcolm's artist friends.
Luo Binhan stretched out his finger, tapped Yu Xiaorong's tense shoulders, and asked in Chinese: "Who is this man?"
Yu Xiaorong still stared at the other side and answered him in Chinese without moving her lips: "Police."
"What did you do again?" Luo Binhan asked reflexively. Yu Xiaorong immediately took time out of his confrontation and gave him a hard look.
"I didn't do anything! He was... I guess he came to find you."
"Nonsense," Luo Binhan said, "I haven't thrown out any garbage this week."
Yu Xiaorong wanted to say something, but at this moment Yu Qingshu had already walked to the door, stretched out his hand to push his son and daughter away, and then spoke for a long time quickly and fluently. Luo Binhan could not understand a word of this rare daily conversation, but he could tell that these high-speed bursts of syllables contained a certain stereotyped accent, some skilled pauses and accents, and a kind of professional indifference. This is what Malcolm described as "talking like a lawyer."
Taking advantage of this time, he quietly pulled Yu Xiaorong to the sofa. Leo also got in through the small door in the backyard and looked at the stranger with hostility. Yu Xiaorong reached out to touch its ears before it started barking, and kept giving commands for it to be quiet.
"Okay," Luo Binhan whispered, "What's going on?"
Yu Xiaorong's face was straight, and his lips were drawn into a straight line: "The tourist who died in the woods."
"Don't tell me you killed him." Luo Binhan said. When he saw the real anger in Yu Xiaorong's eyes, he immediately shut his mouth.
"We're talking about business!" she growled, "can you hear me out?"
Luo Binhan made a gesture of invitation.
"The day he died was the day you came here." Yu Xiaorong said quickly, "Doppler told me that the man died very strangely, as if he was killed by a long scimitar or some kind of weapon without a handle. "
Luo Binhan moved his lips and wanted to say that this was very different from the version Yu Xiaorong told the night before. But he didn't do this because he judged that Yu Xiaorong was really furious right now, even though he didn't know what the problem was.
"Unfortunately," he said perfunctorily, "but what is this policeman doing here?"
"Because you are a suspect."
"Oh..." Luo Binhan said, "Ouch?"
He looked down at Leo, who was also glancing at him under the little master's palm. He thought for a while and asked in shock: "Am I the only one in your entire town who doesn't have an alibi?"
"You are a foreigner with the right timing." Yu Xiaorong emphasized, "Foreigner."
“I thought that would make me feel at home.”
"Who do you think you are?" Yu Xiaorong asked sharply, "Ambassador?"
Luo Binhan shrugged and touched Leo's head again. He felt very strange, as if he had accidentally broken into the stage of a drama being performed, and the audience also regarded him as a character in the script. But that was all, this scene actually had nothing to do with him, and he didn't know a single line.
"I'm a suspect," he said. "Then what is he going to do? Take me away now? Your mother will start thinking of making him lose his job tomorrow."
"He'll say he just wants to talk to you."
"Is this legal?"
"He's not searching you, he's 'investigating' - like he'll just say he's questioning you, not 'interrogating' you."
"Indeed. Then why don't I go to bed and fall asleep now." Luo Binhan yawned, "If I don't go to bed on time, I will die. Let him find a time that belongs to a living person. After all, he is quite dedicated. It's you. Are all the police here looking for someone to talk to at this hour?”
Yu Xiaorong rubbed Leo's ears uncertainly, seeming to be considering whether Luo Binhan's strategy was feasible. She suddenly asked: "It's not you, right?"
"what do you mean?"
"That dead man in the woods has nothing to do with you."
"You detective has seen too much." Luo Binhan knocked her on the head.
"You promise you have nothing to do with this."
"I must admit that I have something to do with this matter," Luo Binhan said sincerely. "Your mother and I joked about this matter this afternoon. I am guilty. But I don't think your mother will confess me. "
Yu Xiaorong stared at him for a while, and his expression gradually softened. This seemed unbelievable to Luo Binhan, as if she had really suspected that he had gone to the woods to kill someone. A brother and sister who love each other shouldn't think like this. Besides, Yu Xiaorong is much more enthusiastic about the subject of murder than he is. He should look into her too.
Hannah's head poked out from behind Yu Xiaorong: "What are you talking about? Can you speak English?"
"They were talking about me," Luo Binhan said in English, "about how I killed a person as soon as I got off the plane last weekend, and at the same time used a perfectly forged taxi invoice to create an alibi."
Hannah laughed: "Really?"
"The invoice is still in my room."
He walked back to the guest room and took out the spare handwritten invoice from the outermost layer of his suitcase. With this invoice, it was not difficult to find the driver who took him there. The smart neighbors and the surveillance at the door of No. 15 were enough to prove his whereabouts after getting off the taxi. He handed the invoice to Yu Xiaorong and declared with his eyes that he was as safe as the diplomatic ambassador and could do whatever he wanted in front of all the police in this town.
"I also heard about the dead man in the woods." Hannah said, her voice as cheerful as a murderer returning to a crime scene. "I really want to know what news the police have."
"The news from the police is that the man in front of you is very suspicious." Luo Binhan said, "And I want to reveal to them who is the most suspicious person in this room."
“Obviously,” Hannah mused, “it’s the one character that’s always been forgotten, the one we shot on Mahjong night. People always rule out the dead person first. , but in fact they are all fake deaths.”
Luo Binhan wanted to tell some nonsense about how Zhou Yu would fall asleep at the murder scene, but the conversation between Yu Qingshu and the visitor suddenly stopped. The three of them looked at Yu Qingshu walking over, with a faint look of sullenness on their faces.
"It's nothing." She said concisely, "It's about work."
Luo Binhan and Yu Xiaorong glanced at each other.
"I heard that he came here to investigate." Luo Binhan said, "What we said this afternoon was leaked, Mom. The fire can't be contained in the paper."
Yu Qingshu glared at him: "I told him you don't know anything about this matter. If he insists on talking to you, then find a normal time to come over with the documents he should have."
"Why are you so unfriendly?" Luo Binhan shook the invoice in his hand, "We can also make it easier for him, since I really have nothing to do with this matter. Have you known this policeman before? What's his temper like?"
"He was transferred from nearby. I didn't know him before."
"Oh?" Luo Binhan said, glancing at Yu Xiaorong triumphantly, indicating that he had caught the information that she and Doppler Colon were secretly trading with other police officers.
Yu Xiaorong stood calmly, without showing any discomfort. "This man can be very rough," she whispered quickly in Chinese. "He doesn't like foreigners. He may have beaten up homeless people."
Luo Binhan didn't feel too nervous. Even if the person standing outside the door is a genuine sectarian, he doesn't think that the other party can really do anything to him. He has no shortage of witnesses to prove his innocence, no shortage of money, and no shortage of local connections. He is already the most difficult of all foreigners to deal with. If he wanted to, he could just go back to the guest room and fall asleep, but that wouldn't be particularly advantageous because there would be no need to make things particularly bad between the rest of the room and the local police. After all, he is not someone who wants to live here for a long time.
Malcolm also leaned over from the sofa. Compared to everyone else in the room, he was genuinely relaxed about the police coming to his door. This sounds strange, but Luo Binhan has an intuition that Malcolm may have seen more police officers from various countries than Yu Qingshu. And if the guy outside the door caught him spending the night in the park, he might be looking for an opportunity to give him a good beating.
"You can beat him with your physique." Malcolm assured confidently, "If you feel unsure, just shout."
"Mar!" Yu Qingshu said sharply.
Luo Binhan felt that he had an obligation to terminate this suspects' staff meeting. He shook the invoice in his hand: "I'll go talk to him - anyway, I even found the evidence from the bag."
