The Daily Life of a Grade-A Fool
During this performance, Wen Yiqian found he could snap out of character quickly and without effort.
Nothing like the previous two times, when he had felt completely unable to pull himself free.
After thinking it through, he traced the difference back to his emotions.
Whenever a performance got him excited or exhilarated, he would lose control and start doing things he hadn’t planned.
But this time, threatening Li Weiguo and playing the psychopath in front of a room full of armed police officers had been psychologically grueling from start to finish.
Wen Yiqian was fundamentally decent, and he had always held the police in a certain quiet regard.
Doing that in front of them had felt like a slow torture. Every second he wanted it to be over.
Because he never got any kind of rush from it, stepping out of the role had been effortless, almost seamless.
After discovering the problem the night before, he had promised himself to keep performances to a minimum, to avoid the day he lost himself in the role entirely and couldn’t find his way back.
Now it seemed that if he could master the trick, the side effects might not be a concern at all.
Turning this over in his mind, he got into the car the police had prepared.
He was well aware the vehicle almost certainly had a tracker, a listening device, and probably a pinhole camera or two.
But that worked in his favor. As long as he stayed in the car, the police would sit still.
As long as he didn’t do anything to alarm them, they probably wouldn’t move on him.
Settled in the driver’s seat, Wen Yiqian buckled up but didn’t start the engine.
The first priority was to clear his head and work out a plan.
Driving around with no direction would be a waste of the little time he had.
An Zhi disappeared somewhere between Happiness Residential Complex and her home.
The disappearance almost certainly happened between 2 and 3 a.m.
The police would have already pulled the surveillance footage along that route.
They had clearly come up empty, otherwise Li Weiguo would never have been pushed into using Wen Yiqian as a lead.
As he worked through his thoughts, his brow creased.
Wait.
He was a struggling writer, not some seasoned investigator.
The station was full of people with far more experience piecing cases together than he had.
Anything he could think of, they had probably already considered.
If those approaches had worked, An Zhi would already be home.
They wouldn’t be standing here with nothing, reduced to leaning on Wen Yiqian.
I need to play to my strengths, not try to work the case like a detective, following breadcrumbs one by one until something adds up.
Besides, there isn’t time for that.
Wen Yiqian checked his phone: 11:13 a.m.
More than eight hours since An Zhi went missing.
If she had genuinely ended up in someone’s hands during that time, the situation could already be beyond repair.
His expression darkened. He covered his eyes, shutting out the light.
The darkness brought a kind of stillness that made it easier to think.
If I were An Zhi, what would I have done after last night?
After convincing herself I was a high-IQ criminal, this woman actually went out alone and put herself up as bait, trying to goad me into revealing my so-called true nature.
Which means that beyond the princess complex and the spoiled streak, she is also completely reckless.
You could even say she’s…
Beep. Beep.
The honking cut straight through his train of thought.
Wen Yiqian’s eyes opened. He turned toward the noise, visibly annoyed.
“Are you moving or not? Some of us have places to be!”
Behind him, a middle-aged man with a shaved head had his window down and was leaning on his horn.
Wen Yiqian leaned out of his own window.
On his monitor, Li Weiguo watched the scene unfold and felt his stomach drop.
Given everything he had seen of Wen Yiqian, being shouted at like that by a stranger was not going to end quietly.
And the man had mentioned having a temper. At the time it hadn’t sounded like a bluff.
“Team Two, stand by. On my signal, move immediately. Nobody touches the civilian.” Li Weiguo spoke into his radio, his voice flat and controlled.
Back at the car.
Wen Yiqian leaned out of the window and looked back at the bald man behind him.
He thought it over for a moment, recognized he was in the wrong, and let the irritation go. An apologetic smile replaced it. “Sorry, I got distracted and didn’t notice. My apologies.”
The bald man, confronted with that, felt slightly sheepish about his own reaction.
He scratched at what remained of his hair. “I was just getting impatient. If you’ve got something to sort out, I can wait. I’m not actually in any hurry.”
“No, no, it’s my fault. Let me pull over and let you through.”
“Really, big brother, there’s no rush on my end. You go ahead.”
“Please, I genuinely have nothing pressing. You go first.”
On his monitor, Li Weiguo, who had been braced for the worst, nearly choked.
“Something’s off about this,” he muttered, staring at the screen. “He’s not like this with me.”
The memory of Wen Yiqian’s expression from that morning sent a fresh chill through him.
It’s an act. It has to be an act. I am not letting this man fool me.
After an almost absurd amount of polite back-and-forth, Wen Yiqian finally pulled away.
He didn’t go far: he stopped in front of a breakfast stall.
Shortly afterward, the undercover officers on his tail reported in. He had gone inside and ordered a bowl of wontons and a bowl of millet porridge.
Then he had sat down and started eating with every appearance of contentment.
Li Weiguo recalled the man’s parting words to his landlady.
Could he actually have meant it?
No. It couldn’t be that straightforward.
According to the undercover report, Wen Yiqian had initially asked for a large bowl of wontons. After hearing the price, he had switched to a medium bowl and added the millet porridge instead.
On the surface it looked like penny-pinching, but Li Weiguo knew someone like him had no reason to fuss over a few yuan.
“Look into the shop and the owner.”
He gave the order, then sat back and turned it over in his mind.
The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that there was something underneath. With Wen Yiqian’s methods, nothing was accidental.
Ordering large, switching to medium, adding porridge: some kind of signal?
No, too obvious. There had to be a deeper layer.
Li Weiguo was operating on the second level. Wen Yiqian was already on the fifth.
A large bowl of wontons: twelve yuan. A medium bowl: eight yuan.
The large bowl would fill you up comfortably. The medium bowl might leave you slightly short. At that point, a small millet porridge for three yuan rounded it out perfectly.
Same result, and one yuan saved.
Did one yuan actually matter?
For most people, no. For Wen Yiqian right now, it mattered quite a bit.
He had no access to mobile payments and no way into his phone.
His entire fortune was the hundred yuan the old woman had pressed into his hand the evening before.
Last night’s instant noodles had cost five yuan, leaving him with ninety-five.
That kind of money wouldn’t last more than a few days.
Until he found some way to bring money in, every yuan counted.
Otherwise, he might go down in history as the first protagonist driven to begging for survival.
(End of Chapter)