Chapter 7: I will crush it to pieces bit by bit!

JANUARY 7, 2022 FISH2 COMMENTS

“Ngh….” Qi Chen pulled the quilt over his head and rolled around a bit, before he was unable to bear it and stretched out a hand from the covers. The hand searched around on the bedside table and grabbed the phone with a ‘pa’ obviously extremely annoyed. 

He frowned severely, squinting his eyes which were still heavy with sleep. He swiped the phone without even looking at the caller and placed it by his ear with a rough “Hello?”. 

The other end of the phone was silent for two seconds and then there was the “beep — — beep — —” sound of the phone being hung up. 

Qi Chen: “…..” WTF, which psycho didn’t sleep at night and purposefully harassed people?!” 

He pulled the phone in front of his eyes with a stormy expression and glanced at it with a darkened face. Yet he found the most recent caller in his call history wasn’t some prank number or an unknown wrong number caller but was a name that appeared in Qi Chen’s contacts — — Xu-niangzi 

(T/N: niangzi is a polite form of address for someone’s wife or a young lady) 

Originally, it had been used to address Xu Liang by a dormitory roommate who was unable to differentiate between male and female, yet it was later used by the whole dormitory as a nickname for Xu Liang. 

But Xu Liang always slept at the same time and couldn’t be woken by thunder till daybreak. Even if an atomic bomb dropped on his face, he still wouldn’t wake up. Why would he suddenly call him in the middle of the night?

“Hand slipped?” Qi Chen remembered Xu Liang’s habit of not locking his phone and his face couldn’t help but turn green. 

Carrying an extremely bad morning temper, Qi Chen silently rolled his eyes and prepared to throw his phone to the side and continue to sleep with his head covered. But that damn thing vibrated again until his fingers felt somewhat numb. 

“This shit still isn’t over….” He glanced at it with a bad temper but discovered it was a text. As expected it was still from Xu Liang, only the contents were a bit weird.

Xu-niangzi: You come……! ¥@*kc1 

Qi Chen stared at this string of  unintelligible code. His expression sank and was actually somewhat worried. 

Could a hand slip that many times? 

Even if the phone was unlocked and thrown onto a pillow before sleeping and a finger coincidentally opened contacts and called Qi Chen and could hang up, it wouldn’t be strange. To close it after hanging up and open the texting interface to send a text?! Messing with ghosts? 

Brutal thoughts of every description flooded his brain uncontrollably at this time. 

Qi Chen roasted himself mercilessly ‘who told you to watch so many random horror movies? Now you’re screwed, basically scaring yourself’, while hurriedly clicking on call history and calling Xu Liang’s number.

He held his breath and waited two seconds. When he heard the ringing sound of the call connecting, he let loose half a breath first—— Thank God, at least it didn’t immediately hang up or something like ‘your call currently can’t be connected’. 

 But as the waiting time continued to lengthen, his heart gradually began to seize up again……

After waiting a long while, because no one answered, an automatic busy tone transmitted from the other end. 

“……” Qi Chen glanced at the phone in his hands, froze for a moment and doggedly called again but still no one answered. 

Did something actually happen?! 

His last bit of sleepiness was completely wiped away. He couldn’t help sitting up and continued to call Xu Liang’s number, internally thinking: I’ll call two more times. If there is still no answer I’ll go directly to his apartment to check. 

While thinking that, he got out of bed while holding the phone and lifted the curtain to look outside. 

In this season, the sky would always brighten very late. It was still a blanket of black outside. The chill seeped through the glass of the windowpane, piercing Qi Chen’s forearm and causing goosebumps to rise. Going out at this time, it’d probably be hard to even take a taxi. 

But the heavens didn’t answer his prayers. After two more calls, there was still no response on Xu Liang’s end.

Qi Chen also didn’t dally, throwing down the phone and hurriedly changing his clothes. He stuffed his wallet in the coat pocket and strode towards the door in large strides while carrying his scarf. He only discovered he hadn’t changed his slippers when his hand was on the doorknob. 

He thought he might as well call Xu Liang again. Then he stuffed in earphones, waiting for the call to connect while bending over to change into shoes. 

Just as he’d put on the scarf and was completely ready to open the door and go out, the ringing sound suddenly stopped. 

A burst of rustling sounds entered Qi Chen’s ears. A moment later, a voice that couldn’t be more familiar said unclearly: “Hello…..” 

It seemed like he hadn’t woken up completely and was having some grand dream! 

At first, Qi Chen couldn’t react and froze. Then he took a deep breath and asked with a compressed throat: “Where are you?” 

“Ngh? Orange?” Xu Liang’s whole person was floating outside the situation. After a long while of confusion he replied: “Sleeping in bed ah…..” 

The blue veins on Qi Chen’s forehead snapped. He endured and endured and ultimately couldn’t endure it. Like a whole lifetimes worth of morning temper had exploded at the phone, he said angrily: “Xu Liang you motherfucker!!!!!”  

After two continuous nights of being unable to sleep properly, Qi Chen was somewhat dispirited. His head seemed enshrouded in dark clouds until the afternoon when that sleepiness and tiredness finally returned to normal. 

He helped the HR girls finish a document and was about to get up to pour a glass of water when he saw the local news icon pop up in the right hand corner. Based on the headline, it obviously regarded the museum robbery yesterday and said they already caught someone.

So fast?! Qi Chen clicked open the news quite shocked. Just as he was about to look, he saw Executive Leader Long enter the office carrying a nameplate and a dead expression. 

As soon as he entered, he slammed the nameplate on his own table with a ‘bang!’ and said with a twisted face: “Can someone change the pile of junk metal in the supervision department?! As soon as I enter it starts beeping like hell every time!” 

As he spoke he roughly tapped the telephone three times and connected to a number. Then he said to the recipient of this threatening call: “I’m going there one last time tomorrow. If that stupid thing keeps beeping, I’m going to crush it to pieces bit by bit!” Then he slammed the telephone down. 

Qi Chen: “……” If he didn’t see wrong, Executive Leader Long dialed 001 just now. That was Director Dong’s internal number…..

After hanging up, anger still lingered on Executive Leader Long’s face. He turned to Hong Ming, seemingly to find it incomprehensible: “I don’t understand. They dragged it on for three fucking days already and still say I have a high index. Would I be able to stand here normally if my index was high?! I would’ve long torn it’s head off!” 

Qi Chen listened unmovingly and couldn’t help but whisper: “What index is high?” 

“Ah, it’s quite a complicated index. It’s not easy to explain…..” Hong Ming thought for a moment and said to Qi Chen: “To put it simply, you can understand it as the lower the index the more docile, and the less likely they’ll inflict injury.”

Qi Chen: “……” 

He glanced at Executive Leader Long with a complicated expression. He suddenly didn’t know if he should address the adjective ‘docile’ or address his previous words ‘standing here normally’. 

“What are you glancing at?” After exploding, Executive Leader Long sat back in his office chair with propped legs and crossed arms, giving Qi Chen a cold glare: “Yo, what happened to the big character poster pasted on your face this morning? Reinvigorated now?” 

Innocent faced Qi Chen: “What big character poster?” 

Executive Leader Long gave a cold laugh, stretched out his hand and pointed to his face: “The left said ‘daye’s in a bad mood today’, the right said ‘get lost if there is nothing else’.” 

Qi Chen: “……” You sure you’re talking about me and not describing yourself?

Of course, he definitely didn’t have the habit of liking to touch the tiger’s butt when it was about to eat someone.  Thus he didn’t argue with Executive Leader Long and took the bullet laying down. He quietly turned his head back to look at the news. 

The news this time wasn’t clickbait, they had actually caught the thief. It’s said that after the police got some information from the surveillance snapshots by doing some technological refinements, they quickly identified several suspects. In the end, they determined that it was Qin Mou, an internal staff member of the museum that stole the gilded white jade bracelet. Additionally, she was caught this morning. 

Seeing the photograph attached to the news article, Qi Chen had an ‘as expected’ kind of feeling. Although his conjecture yesterday didn’t have any objective basis, the facts proved that intuition was still very accurate — — Although in the photo, the thief’s face was blurred with mosaic, there was still a trace of Qin-jie. 

Only the news said that when Qin-jie was caught, she was currently heading towards Wen Chang Street in the Jia Yang District. Her mental state appeared unclear, continuously muttering “find him” “someone told me… I, I have to find him” and such indistinct words. And although Qin-jie was caught, there was no trace of the jade bracelet she stole. The police searched Qin-jie’s residence and still couldn’t find it. The specific situation was still being further investigated. 

Wen Chang Street…… wasn’t that the one downstairs?

Staring at the last two sentences of the news, Qi Chen was muttering to himself curiously when he felt someone poke the back of his twice with a finger. 

Qi Chen: “…….”

There was undoubtedly only one person that would poke the back of his head…..

Qi Chen turned around expressionlessly, and swatted away Executive Leader Long’s fingers that still hung there: “What’s the matter?”

Executive Leader Long passed his own cup to Qi Chen: “Didn’t you want to drink water? Get me a cup too. Machine C No.3 water.” 

Qi Chen blinked: “When did I want to drink water?”

The confident Executive Leader Long: “When I came in, you were holding the handle of the cup in one hand. I took a look just now, that cup is empty.”

“……” Qi Chen was silent for two seconds. Then he unhappily received the cup, picked up his own glass and walked out the door, leaving a perfectly content Executive Leader Long to lean back in his chair and sit cross legged with one leg in the air. 

At 5:30 in the afternoon, many Guang He Company employees got off work on time as usual. Qi Chen didn’t return to the dormitory to cook himself a meal like yesterday night but rather exited the company courtyard while holding his phone and propping an umbrella. 

A small SUV was parked on the opposite side of the street. When Qi Chen came out, it honked its horn and then the car window rolled down. Xu Liang stuck his head out of the car and waved at Qi Chen: “Over here!”

After completely waking up, this guy probably saw the call and deceptive text he sent last night. Today, he specially came to pick up Qi Chen and treat him to a meal as an apology.

“Where did you get a car from?” Qi Chen asked somewhat curiously as he shook off the snow on the umbrella and sat in the front passenger seat.

“Oh, borrowed from a colleague. Mainly because the restaurant is a little far and it’s too cold to wait for the bus on a snowy day.” Xu Liang glanced at the rear-view mirror, speaking while turning the steering wheel, reversing the car onto the streets. 

Qi Chen pulled the corners of his mouth: “Change one if it’s far. Is that one especially good?” 

“Last time the company had a dinner party there. Although that restaurant is a bit out of the way, it’s very popular. Many people rush there especially to eat.” Xu Liang smiled.

Qi Chen sneered: “Did your personality change? You actually know how to join the fun? Didn’t you previously make it widely known that you’d rather miss a meal than walk an extra metre?”

He originally thought that Xu Liang’s so-called ‘a little far’ would only be about half an hour by car. Who knew that after driving for an hour, Xu Liang still didn’t show any signs of stopping 

“Why is it so far? It’s already quarter to seven, 8th……” Qi Chen glanced at the time on his phone and offhandedly mocked: “Can we even eat before eight?” 

Xu Liang gave a laugh: “Probably. That’s why I needed to borrow a car.” 

“We’re already in the outskirts. What kind of restaurant is it? Opening in this wild place. Wouldn’t it be midnight by the time we return?” Qi Chen pulled a tissue, wiped the fog off the window pane and looked outside.

A vast expanse of fields and sparse forest flickered within the gradually darkening night. Occasionally there would be a few pale yellow lights scattered amongst the fields and forests, actually making it appear more desolate. It was unknown why but staring at this, Qi Chen’s heart throbbed with fear.