Alone

“Don’t worry. If I said I’d cover it, I can cover it.” Li Weiguo’s eyes shifted slightly.

In truth, he had not been entirely honest with Wen Yiqian. The driver of the rear-ended car had only asked for fifty thousand yuan. Li Weiguo had used his position and a combination of leverage and goodwill to bring the final settlement down to a few thousand, and the matter had been dropped.

There was no way he could have genuinely offered to absorb a hundred thousand yuan out of pocket.

But now that Wen Yiqian was offering to take responsibility for the compensation himself, Li Weiguo felt a small pang of something close to guilt.

“Well. Thank you.” Wen Yiqian, who currently had no clear picture of where his next meal was coming from, couldn’t in good conscience claim he would definitely be able to repay a hundred thousand yuan. Gratitude was all he had to offer.

Li Weiguo studied him with a complicated expression.

He genuinely could not tell whether Wen Yiqian was this straightforward by nature or whether it was simply a more refined layer of the performance.

After several encounters, Li Weiguo’s honest impression was that aside from a certain naivety, the man appeared to be a decent person.

But then how did he explain the performances? The terrifying, seamless convincingness of them?

In two days, three psychopathic criminals had been put away, and every one of them had been personally broken by Wen Yiqian. These were people who made ordinary citizens lock their doors at night. And without exception, they had all been left shaking.

What kind of person could do that to them?

Li Weiguo found himself thinking back to the interrogation of Liao Tong earlier. The boy was the son of the city’s wealthiest man, a documented genius. But the moment Wen Yiqian’s name came up, the expression on his face was one Li Weiguo wasn’t going to forget quickly.

Was An Zhi right? Was this a high-IQ criminal operating behind a carefully maintained mask?

Or was the person sitting across from him now, eating takeout with his cheeks full and his guard completely down, the real one?

Li Weiguo couldn’t read him. Not at all.

But he hoped it was the latter.

Because if it was the former, he didn’t want to think about the implications. He genuinely hoped never to face something like that in his career.

“I’ve already submitted your name for the Outstanding Citizen Award. Given what you did over the past two days, it should go through without any problems.” Li Weiguo looked at him. “I’ll reach out when it’s time to collect. Just wait to hear from me.”

“There’s prize money, right?” Wen Yiqian’s eyes lit up immediately.

“There is.” Li Weiguo nodded. “Not a large amount. A few thousand yuan, symbolic.”

He gave Wen Yiqian a look that was slightly hard to categorize. “Are you really that strapped for cash?”

“Private detective work, you know how it is.” Wen Yiqian scratched the back of his head. “Three years without a case, then one case keeps you fed for three days. Heh.”

Li Weiguo considered this for a moment. “Given how tight things are, I could put in a recommendation for you to join the department as a special consultant.”

He thought it through. “When there are no active cases, you essentially don’t need to come in. It wouldn’t interfere with your current work, and the pay is reasonable.”

“No, no. I’m fine.” Wen Yiqian waved both hands quickly.

He knew his own limits. Whatever he had managed these past two days had been improvisation and bluffing. Walking into a police department as a formal consultant and being expected to deliver consistently: that was a fast route to humiliation.

“Up to you. The offer stands if you change your mind.” Li Weiguo let it go, though not without some reluctance.

The honest truth was he wanted Wen Yiqian in the building. Whatever the man actually was, he had proven beyond any doubt that he was effective against exactly the kind of criminals that gave Li Weiguo the most trouble. He could use that.

“Right.” Wen Yiqian stifled a yawn. “Can I go home now?”

“I’ll have someone drive you. Wait outside.”

With An Zhi suspended, there was nothing left to worry about on that front. Saving the cab fare was a welcome bonus.

After two days of spending more time at the station than in his own apartment, Wen Yiqian had started to find the corridors oddly familiar.

He stepped outside and pulled in a long breath of fresh air, feeling some of the weight lift from his shoulders.

Finally. Home. A full night’s sleep.

“Hey.”

A voice made him spin around.

An Zhi was leaning quietly against the wall nearby, watching him.

“Why is it always you?” Wen Yiqian’s face fell. “Give me a break.”

“I’m not here to cause trouble. I just need to tell you something.” An Zhi’s eyes moved with a restless unease.

“What?”

“After I dropped you off last night, I was planning to go straight home.” Her expression turned odd. “But on the way, I ran into someone.”

“You met a ghost? That would be something.” Wen Yiqian couldn’t help himself.

An Zhi gave him a flat look, pressed her lips together, and continued. “It was someone who suggested the idea of disappearing voluntarily as a way to deal with you.”

Wen Yiqian went still. “Did you tell Captain Li?”

“I did. He didn’t believe me.” An Zhi gave a short, humorless smile. “No evidence.”

“And you think I’ll believe you?” Wen Yiqian said.

“Believe it or don’t. That’s your call.” An Zhi shrugged.

Wen Yiqian looked at her and turned it over in his mind.

It was true that people were capable of almost anything when pushed far enough. But An Zhi’s fundamental character was that of someone with a strong sense of justice. She had been willing to put herself in harm’s way to protect other people. For someone built like that to resort to framing a civilian and staging her own disappearance: it didn’t quite fit.

If someone had been working her from behind, feeding her the idea and pushing her toward it, that made considerably more sense.

And the method itself: the style of it, the calculated indirectness, had the fingerprints of someone with a genuinely sharp mind.

“Who was this person?” Wen Yiqian asked.

“I don’t know her. Never seen her before.” An Zhi shook her head.

“A complete stranger tells you to do something like this, and you just go ahead and do it?” Wen Yiqian looked at her the way you might look at someone who had just done something irretrievably stupid.

“Because she told me about her own experience.” An Zhi glanced at him sideways.

“What experience?”

“She told me you were a predatory monster who made a habit of targeting and toying with women.” An Zhi’s voice faltered slightly. “And also…”

“And also what?”

“The general idea was that you’re irredeemably wicked and that if I didn’t find a way to get out from under your reach, things would end very badly for me.” She got through it quickly, like pulling off a plaster.

“And you believed that?” Wen Yiqian’s frown deepened.

“Given what you said and did last night, how could I not?” An Zhi looked directly at him.

Wen Yiqian’s face went slightly warm. He cleared his throat and turned his head to the side.

Last night’s behavior had, objectively speaking, been entirely consistent with that of a predatory creep.

(End of Chapter)