Lady's Home

Chapter 2

Jian Dongping had known Ling Ge for two years. When his father's good friend, Officer Lin Zhongjie, introduced her to him, he described her as honest, kind-hearted, and kind-hearted. Hearing this immediately dampened his interest, as he knew girls described that way were usually not very attractive. However, after meeting her, he was pleasantly surprised to find that 24-year-old Ling Ge was actually a beautiful girl, 165 cm tall and slender, with fair skin, long hair, and a straightforward manner. Although it was a blind date, she hadn't bothered to dress up, wearing only a simple red jacket and jeans. "Uncle Lin said you're very picky. If we don't make it work, wouldn't all my dressing up have been for nothing?" she said frankly. He immediately took a liking to this carefree young policewoman.

But after getting to know each other, he discovered that the two had countless differences in their lives, and their interests and hobbies were worlds apart. Putting aside everything else, just take eating as an example. Ling Ge hated eating raw and live food, considering it a cruel atrocity, while Jian Dongping particularly loved sashimi and freshly cooked seafood. In order to uphold their respective dietary beliefs, they had argued at the dinner table more than once.

Later, Jian Dongping discovered that Ling Ge was probably the worst policeman he had ever encountered in his life. Not only was his marksmanship poor and his martial arts skills lacking, but he was also cowardly, extremely afraid of death, and couldn't distinguish between east, west, south, north, left, and right. Sometimes he would even forget his identity as a policeman and often acted on his emotions, doing things that were both laughable and absurd.

After being rebuked, Jian Dongping looked at Ling Ge's expression and guessed that she must have been scolded by her boss again for some mistake at work.

"What's wrong with you now?" he asked lazily.

"What do you mean, what's wrong? I'm fine, perfectly fine, better than ever, I've never been better than I am now, how much better could I be?" She poked at a pile of bean sprouts on her plate with her chopsticks, but her eyes were fixed on the plate of stir-fried shrimp in front of Jian Dongping.

"What exactly happened?" Jian Dongping asked.

Ling Ge turned her head away, as if gathering her inner energy, while Jian Dong waited calmly. After a full minute, she finally spoke: "I've been suspended. They said they want me to do an office job, saying I'm not suitable to be a criminal investigator."

As expected, except this time the leaders seemed to have punished her a bit too severely.

"What trouble have you gotten yourself into?" Jian Dongping chuckled inwardly.

“Hey, it’s really not a big deal,” she said. Every time she started her conversation with this line, Jian Dongping had a bad feeling. Usually, what she considered a small matter was considered a big deal by others.

"What did you do?!" he asked sternly.

“Last Wednesday, we received a call from a woman who said she had killed her husband, so Xiao Wang and I rushed over. When we arrived, we first checked the situation and then requested backup. During that time, I talked to the woman. You have no idea how tragic her life was.” Ling Ge paused here.

"Oh, so what did you do?" Jian Dongping asked.

“I told her that the man deserved to die, and that it was a good thing he was killed.”

Is there anything else?

“I…” Ling Ge suddenly shrugged, trying to sound casual, “I cried with her.”

Jian Dongping was eating a piece of salted meat when he heard her words, and the piece of salted meat fell onto his plate.

"You cried with her?" he asked.

I even asked her why she didn't run away?

Jian Dongping was speechless. After a long while, he finally said, "I'm curious, how did someone like you manage to get into the police force? Suspension is actually quite lenient on you!"

"What's the big deal? I was just asking her, I wasn't really going to let her go. I know I can't release prisoners without permission. But that man deserved to die, you have no idea how miserable that woman was!" Ling Ge was surprisingly self-righteous, and she didn't forget to add, "She was just as miserable as these live shrimp you ate. She hadn't even had any alcohol, she was perfectly clear-headed while she was being tortured!"

As she spoke, the policewoman's eyes were already brimming with tears. It seemed she wouldn't be able to finish the dish of stir-fried shrimp.

Jian Dongping waved to the waiter.

"Please put these shrimp in a bowl of clean water for me," he said to the waiter.

The waiter didn't understand what he was saying.

"Let them sober up first, I'm going to release them later," Jian Dongping said casually.

The waiter looked at him as if he were a patient who had just escaped from a mental hospital. But in the end, he still politely said to Jian Dongping, "Please wait a moment." Then he took away the plate of stir-fried shrimp.

"Now, you should be satisfied, right?" Jian Dongping thought to himself as he looked at Ling Ge.

Sure enough, Ling Ge's tone softened.

“Eating raw food is bad,” she said softly, then asked, “Where are you going later?”

“I need to go find someone,” Jian Dongping said.

"who?"

"Zhou Jin is the columnist you like."

"My Little Inn Travelogue? She writes very well. Why did you go out of your way to find her? Haven't you been keeping in touch online?" she asked curiously.

“I haven’t been able to contact her for two weeks. I can’t find her, so I thought I’d go to her house to check on her.” Jian Dongping’s mind flashed back to the last impression Zhou Jin had left on him: in the heavy rain, wearing a brown suit, with a small mustache on her face, her voice trembling slightly, rushing into the deep alley of Xincheng Road… A faint sense of unease swept over him. Could something have happened to her?

Ever since he saw her in the heavy rain, she seemed to have vanished without a trace. He hadn't been able to contact her again; she wasn't online, he couldn't reach her by phone, and her cell phone was always switched off. He anxiously waited until the last day before the newspaper closed for publication, but finally, he had no choice but to temporarily remove her column and place a small advertisement to fill the space. The worst thing for a newspaper is a sudden shortage of articles, and he was furious at Zhou Jin's irresponsibility and broken promise. But a month later, his anger gradually turned into unease. Where had she gone? Could something have happened to her? Was there a special reason for her sudden disappearance? Finally, he found the address she had given him in his drawer and decided to go to her house in person.

"I'll go with you. I've been so bored these past few days," Ling Ge said, pouting.

Jian Dongping glanced at Ling Ge, finding it amusing. She had been the one who resolutely told him she could never marry a man who didn't save money, a man who spent half the month wandering around, or a man who ate dog meat. Yet now she was always hanging out with him. And him? Although he had initially decided to remain a carefree bachelor for life and had never considered taking things further with her (even if he did, he quickly dismissed the idea), he still sought her out whenever he had the chance, constantly treating her to meals, and never forgetting to bring her local specialties when he returned from out of town… They were probably both just too lonely.

"I can drive for you if necessary. I've already learned to drive." Her enthusiasm suddenly soared.

"Thank you, but I'd like to live a couple more days," Jian Dongping said with a smile.

Jian Dongping absolutely did not believe that a coward who couldn't tell east from west could drive a car well.

The address Zhou Jin left him was No. 3, Lane 254, Jinsheng Road. According to the map, this place was in the suburbs. Jian Dongping roughly estimated that it would take at least an hour and a half to drive there from the restaurant where they were eating. During this time, with a beautiful woman by his side, he didn't think it was a bad thing.

"Alright then," he readily agreed.

Ling Ge felt that Jian Dongping's greatest strength was that he neither smoked nor drank, which made him look very clean. Although he wasn't exactly handsome or tall, cleanliness was far more important to Ling Ge than good looks. A non-smoker naturally wouldn't smell of smoke or cough up phlegm easily.

Their first meeting left her with an extremely positive impression of Jian Dongping. She still clearly remembers his attire: it was autumn, and the tall, slender man wore a lightweight, dark blue zip-up sweater over a black long-sleeved sweater, black trousers, and stylish casual shoes—a style she had never seen in stores before. He wore a rugged sports watch on his wrist and a platinum or silver ring on his pinky. He also had a neat short haircut, and his skin was clean, without any acne scars. In short, he left her with the impression of being clean, sunny, and handsome.

However, after dating for a few weeks, she discovered that their lifestyles and interests were completely different. She never expected that he, as the chief editor and reporter of one of the city's top fashion magazines, earning nearly ten thousand yuan a month, would never save a single penny. He even shamelessly told her that he was practically broke every month. What surprised her even more was that this seemingly refined and sunny man frequently ate horrible things: pufferfish, live shrimp and fish, pangolin, monkey brains—he had eaten them all. When she learned that he had even eaten cat meat and that he routinely went to eat dog meat hot pot every winter, her goodwill towards him vanished. She felt he was a barbarian, and the more time went on, the more she felt he was rational to the point of being inhuman.

Once, while watching TV together, they stumbled upon a charity program that interviewed a migrant mother in the city who was struggling financially. Her husband had passed away, and she was supporting her three children by doing odd jobs. Due to their poverty, all three children had dropped out of school. The program hoped that viewers would donate money to help the mother and her three daughters.

After watching the program, Ling Ge immediately decided to donate money to help. Although two hundred yuan is not a lot, it is at least a token of his appreciation.

"How much do you plan to donate?" she nudged Jian Dongping beside her.

"I'm sorry, not a single cent."

His decisive answer surprised her.

"You earn so much money every month, and you won't even donate a few hundred yuan? You're so stingy!"

"If she can't afford to raise them, why have so many children? She even had three in her lifetime. If she had 50 children, and 40 of them got leukemia and 10 got cerebral palsy, would you save them or not? If you wanted to save them, could you? How much social resources would it cost? Isn't this just a pure burden on society? So I don't support this kind of donation. She should bear the consequences of her irresponsible indulgence," he said coldly.

Although his words seemed to make sense, and although he eventually handed her the wallet and told her to take whatever she wanted, his cold and heartless reply still chilled her heart. She didn't want to spend her life with someone who lacked compassion, so she later made her attitude clear to him directly.

"I'm sorry, Jian Dongping, let's just be friends. It's not suitable for us to be in a romantic relationship," she said earnestly.

He looked at her for a moment and smiled, "That's exactly what I was thinking too. Okay, since we'll be just ordinary friends from now on, I won't be so reserved. Come on, Xiaoling, let's be as close as brothers."

Without saying another word, he gave her a tight hug and kissed her on the cheek with lightning speed.

"What are you doing! Jian Dongping! You, you want to assault a police officer, don't you?! Be careful, or I'll..." At that moment, she was so angry that her face turned red, and she even wanted to draw her gun, but unexpectedly found that the place where she usually inserted her gun was empty. Only then did she suddenly realize that she had left the gun on the table when she left home today. No wonder she had felt a little strange all day! As she was scolding herself for being careless, she heard Jian Dongping talking to her.

"Sorry, I'm always very close with my friends, especially female friends, hahaha. I thought every policeman knew martial arts." After saying that, his eyes glanced at the place where she usually kept her gun, and then he left with a gloating smile.

Watching him walk away, she was seething with hatred. But from then on, they truly became acquainted. He would visit her every few days; sometimes they would eat together, sometimes they would go out together, and sometimes he would ask her for favors. Before she knew it, Ling Ge felt that they had become good friends. In her life, this was the first time she had a true male friend, and she found this feeling very comfortable.

“No. 254 Jinsheng Road, I’ve never heard of that road before. It’s probably in the suburbs. How come she lives so far away?” she asked Jian Dongping in the car.

"I don't know." His tone carried a hint of uncertainty and unease.

Is she a local?

"No, she said she was from Guangdong, but her accent sounded like she was from Nanping, Fujian."

"You haven't had much contact with her, have you?" Ling Ge asked curiously.

"not much."

What kind of person is she?

"She has a very feminine charm," Jian Dongping said with a smile.

"What are you laughing at?" Ling Ge thought his smile was malicious.

"Do you know what she was dressed like when she first came to see me at the weekly magazine?" Jian Dongping turned around and glanced at her.

"Like what?"

"It reminds me of Anita Mui in 'Rouge,' I almost started speaking Cantonese dialogue." Jian Dongping suddenly asked her, "Have you seen 'Rouge'?"

"Do you think I'm a country bumpkin? How could I not have seen Anita Mui and Leslie Cheung's 'Rouge'?!" Because her family still didn't have a DVD player or VCD player, Jian Dongping would often bring this up to provoke her. Ling Ge was annoyed, but when she thought of the scene when Jian Dongping met Zhou Jin, she couldn't help but laugh. "You mean she wore a cheongsam? That's too exaggerated. What month was that?"

"It was late February. She wore a fur coat or something over her cheongsam, though it was fake fur, of course," Jian Dongping said. Ling Ge suddenly noticed a new white sports watch on his wrist. Judging from its unique design, it was obviously expensive. This guy really spent money like water to pursue this kind of understated fashion. There was nothing to say about him.

"How many times have you seen him in total?" She turned her head away, trying not to think about his regrettable bad habits.

"Twice, no, if you include the last one, it should be three times."

Does she always dress so strangely?

“The second time is normal, but a bit tacky, jacket and jeans, similar to when you came on the blind date,” he said sarcastically again.

"Am I really that unsophisticated?" she asked angrily.

"Yeah, don't you know that yourself?" he said mercilessly, "You're the most unfashionably dressed beauty I've ever seen."

The word "beautiful woman" immediately brightened her mood.

"Was she also at the magazine office to see you that day?" she asked.

“No, I ran into her on the street. She said she was going to Parkson to buy something, so I gave her a ride. She was in a very good mood that day.”

Is she pretty?

"I don't know how to describe it, maybe I can only say she has regular features," Jian Dongping said, looking straight ahead. "You know, Ling Ge, I don't just casually call her a beauty. It requires a combination of many qualities, such as height, appearance, temperament, manners, and speech. I think her temperament is a little lacking. Do you understand what I mean?"

“Yes, I understand,” she said.

He glanced back at her, as if to say, "What do you know?!" But he didn't say anything. He was a refined man; he only used his eyes to express his rudeness.

"Is she speaking normally?" she asked, ignoring him.

“It’s normal, except… she likes to have physical contact with the other person when she talks, and she loves to act coquettishly towards men. But I think it’s just her habitual behavior, not something she’s deliberately trying to do,” Jian Dongping said calmly. He seemed to have thought of something and subconsciously frowned.

So, she's making physical contact with you when she's talking to you? And even acting all cute and affectionate? Any man would be overjoyed, wouldn't he? Thinking this, Ling Ge couldn't help but roll her eyes at him, but he had already noticed her expression and immediately laughed.

"What are you laughing at now?"

He didn't answer her, but said:

"Ling Ge, can you do me a favor?"

"What is it?" Whenever he asked her for a favor, his voice was always particularly deep, as if a microphone had suddenly appeared in front of him, and he himself had instantly transformed from a pop singer into a bass singer, making it impossible for her not to listen to him.

"Help me check Zhou Jin's file and the phone records from the last three days, especially the last day from 5 pm to 7 pm. I need to know who she contacted during that last period."

“The phone records are fine, but as for the file, you don’t even know where she’s from, how am I supposed to check? Her name is so common, the scope is too broad. Besides, I’m not from the archives department, I’d have to ask someone for help!”

“Just check Shantou in Guangdong and Nanping in Fujian. I guess she’s from Nanping, Fujian. I lived there for a while, and some innate language traits can’t be changed.” Jian Dongping’s expression suddenly turned serious.

His serious attitude dispelled her thoughts of teasing him. She vaguely felt that his concern for Zhou Jin might not be because he was interested in her, but for some other reason.

“Alright, I’ll give it a try,” Ling Ge said.