Mo Du (默读) - Silent Reading

Humbert Humbert XIX

Even if Fei Du had lost his mind, gone drag-racing downtown, and been personally hauled back to a little dark room by Luo Wenzhou, that still would have sounded more normal than what he’d just said.

Luo Wenzhou’s temples throbbed incessantly. His overloaded CPU, just cooled down a little, once again showed signs of bursting into flames.—Enrolled in April. However rich and overbearing Fei Du was, whatever doors were open to him, he still must have started preparing for this last year.

Why?

Had he suddenly woken up enthralled by academia? Did he have an acute case of nothing better to do? Was it to pursue Tao Ran? Or had he suddenly found that he’d grown weary of his world filled with the stench of profits?

Just then, perhaps because it was rather crowded downstairs, a photograph was accidentally knocked out of the hand of a middle-aged woman. She hastily reached out to grab it, but a wind blew past, tumbling the old photo paper away. This was clearly an insignificant little accident, but to a person with sufficiently sensitive, weakened nerves, it seemed like a mystical hint of something. The woman collapsed, stumbling to her knees and beginning to bawl.

The sound of crying, hoarse but rising with penetrating force, pierced through the cracks in the corridor’s window. Meanwhile, amidst this unsettling clamor, a technician from the forensics department trotted over. “Captain Luo, the analysis results have come in on the specimen you delivered yesterday. The blood on the cloth is Qu Tong’s!”

Luo Wenzhou took a deep breath, looked at Fei Du for a while, then wordlessly went towards Director Lu’s office.

Twenty minutes later, Fei Du, holding two cartons of ice cream, walked into the room temporarily being used to hold Su Luozhan. He put the cartons on a little table. “Do you want some? Which one?”

Su Luozhan looked at him, hesitating a moment, then pointed to the strawberry one.

Fei Du left her the strawberry, taking the other carton himself. He got his earbuds and phone out of his pocket, opened a livestream of a basketball game, crossed his legs, and watched while he ate, ignoring her.

The two sat in mutual silence for a while. At first Su Luozhan was calm, not making any eye-contact with him. When she’d eaten half the ice cream and found the other party showed no signs of speaking, she finally couldn’t resist giving Fei Du a look on her own initiative. Her gaze swept over Fei Du’s shirt and phone, finally falling on his wrist laying on the table.

Her head tilted, Su Luozhan considered his watch for a moment, then gently tapped the floor twice with the tip of her foot. “Is your watch real?”

Fei Du may not have heard; he made no response.

Su Luozhan waited a while, then reached a finger across the table and lightly tapped twice on the side of his phone.

Finally alerted, Fei Du pulled out one earbud. “Yes, what is it?”

The volume on his phone was very loud. In the quiet room, you could hear the shouting of the commentator leaking out of the earbud.

Su Luozhan bit a corner of her plastic spoon. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you going to question me?”

“Oh, my colleagues are busy, they made me come over to keep an eye on you.” Fei Du seemed unwilling to tear himself away from the screen. He spared her only a second’s glance before turning back to the game, answering very absently.

When others asked her this and that, this girl would play the fool; but when others weren’t interested in her, she seemed to feel dissatisfied.

At first Su Luozhan looked at Fei Du from time to time. When she finished her ice cream, she simply stared at him, voluntarily opening a conversation. “Are you also with the police?”