Translator: kirie
Proofreader: celare
Editor: alexie
The white incandescent lamplight of the interrogation room became dim with its reflection off the green wall. The two police officers sat in the shadows, their stern and serious faces sometimes lit up and dark at other times, appearing indistinct.
Like faint shadows in a dream.
Ji Zhinong lowered his head to glance at the silver handcuffs on his wrist.
They were cold and painful.
This definitely wasn’t a dream either.
The craziest dream Wen Che had ever had had never been related to the police station.
A well-behaved child who strove for the top during his nine years of mandatory education like him would never imagine that he would one day sit in an interrogation seat.
Before he had been brought into this room, he’d sat and waited for a while in the hall. In merely ten minutes, three huge men with tattoo-printed arms had walked past him, six clearly discernible gangsters, and two smart-looking skinny youth whose genders were indiscernible with afro hairstyles, one of which who collapsed onto the floor before he made it out of the long hall, his body twitching all over. A veteran policeman came over, took one look, and determined that it was a drug overdose. After five minutes, the hospital dragged the person away.
This had all happened less than five meters away from him.
He couldn’t accept that he was placed in the same category as this group of criminals——it was such a great humiliation that he might as well have died six years ago.
The policeman saw him being lost in thought and knocked on the table with his pen, saying roughly, “I’m asking if you made a sexual exchange to make monetary gain recently.”
“I didn’t. You just said that someone reported me by name for selling my…” Wen Che couldn’t say that word. “Mr. Policeman, did the person who reported it provide any evidence?”
“That video is the evidence.”
“Only I appeared in the video. How could you determine for sure that this was an inappropriate exchange?”
“Then tell me who the other protagonist of the video is,” The policeman said. “If you can prove that the other person was your lover, then this was just a misunderstanding. But if you can’t prove your innocence and there’s someone reporting you by name, we have to investigate.”
“The stuff from the video was from two years ago.” Ji Zhinong clenched his fist and released it weakly. “I can’t remember who the other person is.”
“Two years isn’t such a long time ago. How come you don’t remember?” The policeman knocked on the table again. “If you can’t answer, then we can only detain you for now.”
The policeman pushed the chair and stood up. The door to the investigation room opened just like that, and another auxiliary police officer unlocked his handcuffs, taking him outside and passing through that hall. All types of criminals passed him inevitably once again.
Ji Zhinong only snapped back to reality when he was brought into the detention room and heard the clicking of the lock. The cramped detention cells, cold bars, and maybe even hard steamed buns.
He curled his body and shrank into the corner. The detention room wasn’t quiet at night; from time to time, there were people brought in. After the iron lock was opened, it would fall closed and then open again. It was a night of noise—even in the early morning, there were two drunkards cursing.
Wen Che couldn’t take the noise, but in the latter half of the night, even he became at ease. He couldn’t sleep anyways, so he just listened attentively, simply treating it like gaining life experience. If he had a similar role in the future, he could act very vividly.
It was just that he was afraid that after this, his acting career had come to an end.
Thinking up to this point, he was extremely aggrieved. He had always stayed pure and true to his original intentions, even in a harmful environment. He had never imagined that after getting reborn once, he would end up like this.
Something happened to the main actor, so the film project also temporarily stopped shooting. If Ji Zhinong were a regular actor, they could simply cut his parts, send him to court to get compensation, and end it at that. But Ji Zhinong was the male lead who was pushed in by the sugar daddy personally. If his parts were cut, the shooting for the past six months was all in vain, so the legal affairs department didn’t have the guts to send a legal letter to Li Shaoyao’s people.
The director also had selfish motives. He felt that Ji Zhinong was very good at acting as Lu Yun from the bottom of his heart and was even comparable to Wen Che from back then.
At the present moment, it was impossible to find someone more suitable than him. Upon first hearing that this had happened to Ji Zhinong, he stamped his feet in anxiety, not because of how Zhinong was but because his heart ached for the work that he had spent great effort to create. If he really had to make it from scratch or if it were banned by one document, then… then what was it all for?!
He was so anxious that he flared up, roughly editing ten episodes out of the finished parts of the film overnight and sending it to Li Shaoyao. He wanted the sugar daddy to express his stance in a roundabout way, and those ten episodes were saved in Li Shaoyao’s computer just like that.
In the beginning, he hadn’t wanted to watch, but in the dead of the night, he thought of Wen Che.
He clicked on the videos only when he really couldn’t stop longing for Wen Che.
That shadow in Ji Zhinong came to life vividly through the camera. He wasn’t Wen Che; he surpassed Wen Che.
The rain pitter-pattered for the entire night. With the sound of rain, Li Shaoyao unconsciously fell asleep.
In his dream, the rain had stopped, and several stars had appeared in the sky.
Outside the marble balcony, clusters of peony grew.
The half-grown boy who was wearing a suit leaned on the balcony, away from the hustle and bustle of the banquet hall. He looked at the watch in his hand and counted the seconds. This banquet would last another two hours before ending, but he didn’t know how to hold out for that time.
“Ah Yao, you were here?” A crisp voice sounded next to his ear. A weight settled on his shoulder, and Li Shaoyao turned to look, seeing Wen Che.
He turned his head back, saying muffledly, “It’s quiet here.”
Wen Che stood next to him and bent over slightly, at eye-level with the 19 year old youth. “But there are many people who want to be friends with you inside.”
The youth said in a huff, “They aren’t sincere. They only laugh at me behind my back.”
The smile on Wen Che’s face dimmed, and he asked earnestly, “Who laughed at you?”
“Everyone! Every single one of them! They all laugh at me behind my back, saying I’m short and fat like a battery!”
“Hahaha.” Wen Che was amused by the strange analogy used by the youngsters and laughed.
The youth got even more unhappy after seeing him laugh. “You’re no different from them!”
Wen Che rubbed his head. “They laugh at you because they have bad vision.”
He grabbed a peony flower that was in full bloom from the side. “Look at this flower. It’s so fat that you can’t hold it even with both hands, but would you think that it’s annoying? You’re just like this flower, chubby and very adorable.”
The youth lowered his eyes quietly. “No matter how nicely you put it, it doesn’t change what others think of me. No one likes me. Whether it’s at home or here, no one likes me.”
“I like you.” Wen Che tugged the red flushes on the youth’s face and said gently, “I like you, okay?”
The cold wind of that night became warm because of those words of his.
Li Shaoyao wanted to just sink into this dream that had Wen Che in it and into that night, under the star-filled sky. But the cold of the rainy night awakened him.
The sky had not yet brightened, and a hazy, gray fog covered everything outside. Li Shaoyao randomly grabbed a windbreaker and forcibly turned back halfway when he got to the door, earnestly sorting his clothes and hair.
Then he went to the living room and took out a few of the white roses freshly stuck in the flower vase yesterday night, wrapping them carefully with the brown paper on the kitchen and tied a bow.
Only then did he get into the car.
Before the first rain of the early morning fell, Li Shaoyao placed this bouquet of white roses in front of Wen Che’s gravestone.
Chen Qing, seeing him silent in front of the gravestone, didn’t dare to disturb him.
After who knows how long, when the sky completely brightened and a drizzle began, Chen Qing walked to Li Shaoyao’s side, holding an umbrella.
“Sir, it’s going to rain.”
The rain drizzled finely onto the back of Li Shaoyao’s hand. He wiped the plain ring on his middle finger with his thumb a few times, his gaze leaving Wen Che’s photo. He said to Chen Qing, “Go to the police station with me.”
The third day of Ji Zhinong’s detention, Li Shaoyao came to the police station in the city center with a lawyer, offering to release Ji Zhinong on bail.
The police officer looked through the system and said, “Ji Zhinong was released on bail by his relative yesterday night.”
“…Yesterday night?” Li Shaoyao glanced at the signature. It was Li Wei, Ji Qingshan’s servant.
At least there was still someone from the Ji family who cared about him.
Since he had already gotten out, then he must’ve gone home.
Li Shaoyao felt a little relieved.
“Mr. Police officer,” Li Shaoyao took a pile of paper evidence from the lawyer. “Ji Zhinong was reported maliciously in regards to this matter.”
“I’m willing to prove his innocence.”
Author’s Note:
Low EQ: You’re fat like a battery
High EQ: You’re fat like a peony
A certain sugar daddy still intervened in the end!
3 thoughts on “Chapter 28 – “I’m willing to prove his innocence.””
Heh. I wonder how he would prove Zhinong’s innocence.
Also, I wonder if Zhinong’s grandfather was the one who helped him?
Hmm..
Thank you for the update ❤️
LSY, I really dont like you right now.
thanks for the chapter <3
I agree. I’m not a fan either.
But it makes for an entertaining read.