Ever since Mo Zhenbang mentioned Huang Qiulian's name, Wei Ansheng had been looking around, his gaze intently scanning every corner.
The volunteer at Sacred Heart Manor remained silent for a long moment in front of Zhu Qing.
In the end, she turned away, first going to comfort the child.
She crouched down and gently took Wei Ansheng's hand.
"Ansheng, your mom didn’t come today."
"But she called to ask if you’ve been good."
"Mom said she’ll visit once she’s done with her work, okay?"
The child’s eyes lingered on the direction of the gate before he obediently nodded.
"It’s time for dinner. Let’s go upstairs first."
The volunteer shielded Wei Ansheng’s line of sight with her body, casting a pleading glance at the two officers.
The child appeared quiet and unaware, but in truth, no one knew exactly what a special child like him could perceive. Any question that might seem harmless to an adult, or even the slightest shift in expression, could affect Wei Ansheng.
He had already lost his father—that was cruel enough.
The volunteer’s expression remained grave. Fortunately, the officers maintained a respectful distance, following behind until they saw Wei Ansheng led into the dining hall and seated in his usual spot.
Only then did she exhale deeply, ushering the two into the reception room.
"Let’s talk here."
On the windowsill of the reception room sat a peculiar flowerpot, likely a craft made by one of the children at Sacred Heart Manor.
Inside, a small flower bloomed under the sunlight.
"When Mr. Wei first brought Ansheng here, the child had undergone several major surgeries but had finally stabilized."
Zhu Qing flipped open her notepad and began recording.
"Back then, no one had noticed his uniqueness—only that one of his eyes appeared cloudy. Mr. Wei emphasized just two things: take good care of the child, and..."
"Keep it absolutely confidential. No one but him was allowed to visit Ansheng, and the boy was never to leave Sacred Heart Manor."
She paused. "By then, the case was two years old. Public outrage had long faded, and people no longer clamored for the truth or pried into others’ private affairs. But we speculated among ourselves—was he hiding Ansheng here to keep him away from his abusive ex-wife?"
"Then, last year, he brought a woman to see Ansheng. Mr. Wei said, 'This is Ansheng’s mother.'"
"We were puzzled at first. Was this woman really the 'monstrous mother' from the news? How could a father who loved his child so much let him fall back into her hands?"
But that day, they arranged for Huang Qiulian to meet Ansheng.
Ten-year-old Ansheng had no memory of his mother, yet when Huang Qiulian reached out to him with trembling hands, he extended his own small hand in return.
"None of us expected Ansheng to respond to her."
"This child, though not shy, rarely reacts to anything around him. But that day, when he saw his mother, he didn’t resist at all."
"And Huang Qiulian’s tears... To be honest, they moved everyone."
"Even without Mr. Wei’s explicit instructions, we kept a close eye on their interactions. Truthfully, Huang Qiulian was just like any other loving mother. We couldn’t reconcile her with the cruel woman from the news." The volunteer gazed out the window, lost in thought. "That was the first time Mr. Wei brought an outsider to see the child. Though perhaps it’s not accurate to call her an outsider—Huang Qiulian wasn’t a stranger."
Mo Zhenbang asked, "How did they get along? I mean, Ansheng’s parents."
"It’s hard to describe," the volunteer said carefully. "They were... ordinary. They didn’t talk much, but there was a quiet understanding between them. Their focus was entirely on Ansheng. Even when he didn’t respond, they patiently played puzzles with him or read him stories. They seemed like the most typical, devoted parents, putting their child first."
That was the only time they stood side by side in front of Ansheng.
Afterward, Huang Qiulian always came alone. On visitation days—twice a month—she arrived half an hour early, waiting for the gates to open.
"You might not realize it, but Ansheng understands everything," the volunteer murmured. "He often checks the calendar. These past few days, he’s been staring out the window from dawn till dusk because he knows his father was supposed to visit. And on the days Huang Qiulian comes, he starts waiting eagerly long before she arrives."
She admitted that Sacred Heart Manor had been keeping Mr. Wei’s secret, but not for any personal gain.
They simply couldn’t refuse his plea—he cared for the child too deeply.
"Mr. Wei didn’t want us to publicize anything," she continued. "What this family has been through isn’t for us to question. Through them, we’ve learned that sometimes, listening with your ears isn’t enough—you have to feel the truth with your heart."
"If you’re asking about motives, conspiracies, or harm... we don’t know how to answer that." The volunteer spoke earnestly. "Here, we just focus on caring for Ansheng, watching him grow bit by bit. That’s all."
"Even now, Ansheng doesn’t know what happened to his father. Every time we see that hopeful look in his eyes, it breaks our hearts."
Zhu Qing kept writing, but her notes weren’t cold, detached statements. Every word carried the warmth of genuine concern.
Finally, the volunteer asked, "Officers... Ansheng’s mother—she’ll still come, won’t she?"
The child was still waiting.
He had lost his father forever, but at least he could still hope for his mother’s return.
Zhu Qing’s grip on her pen tightened. She didn’t know how to answer.
Mo Zhenbang glanced at the calendar in the reception room. "When is her next scheduled visit?"
"Next Tuesday."
As they stepped outside, Mo Zhenbang suddenly smiled. "There’s still time."
Zhu Qing turned. "What?"
His voice was gentle but firm. "Let’s wrap this case up before next Tuesday. We shouldn’t keep them apart."
During her time at the Yau Ma Tei Police Station, Zhu Qing had been learning from her seniors, filling her notebook with investigative principles. Aside from Mo Zhenbang’s recent reminder—"Cases hinge on evidence"—there was another rule she had unknowingly internalized long ago.
Policing must have heart.
——
At the station, Huang Qiulian’s hands were tightly clasped together.
Countless days and nights in that cell, she had watched darkness fall and light return, losing all sense of time. She no longer trusted the police—or anyone, for that matter.
But now, the officers’ silence was different. There was no indifference, no scrutiny—just quiet patience.
"What if I told you..." She took a deep breath. "That I didn’t push my child down the stairs? Would you believe me?"
Huang Qiulian’s memories were far more complete than the yellowed case files of the child abuse incident.
She remembered when they got married—she was thirty, he was thirty-eight. It wasn’t a marriage of convenience; they had genuinely loved each other.
But after the child was born, everything changed. She would sit alone in the empty living room from sunrise to sunset. The only person she could talk to during those long hours was the old housemaid, who would always remind her, “Madam, you should rest more.” But she couldn’t sleep. Night after night, she lay awake until dawn.
Wei Huasheng grew busier, and she grew more restless, her emotions plummeting to their lowest point. She often cried for no reason, then erupted in anger.
Then came that day.
The housemaid was off that day—Wei Huasheng knew that. So he called to say he’d come home early to take care of the child. Huang Qiulian remembered feeling relieved, thinking she could finally wash her face and get some sleep.
But the moment he stepped through the door, he heard Yangyang’s piercing wails.
“Do you know what the staircases in those old tenement buildings are like? Narrow and steep. Every time I carried the baby downstairs, I was terrified, never daring to be careless.”
“At the time, I was washing my face in the bathroom. When I heard the crying, I rushed out.”
“The child was covered in injuries, his face smeared with blood, crying so hard he could barely breathe.”
She closed her eyes, her body trembling uncontrollably.
Yangyang’s tiny body lay curled at the foot of the stairs, blood spreading across the wooden floor. Wei Huasheng stood frozen in the doorway, his briefcase still hanging from his arm, his face twisted in horror.
“The neighbors came running too.”
A decade had passed, and many details of that day had blurred. But she remembered Wei Huasheng’s expression with perfect clarity—the shock in his eyes as he rushed forward, nothing but shock.
In that moment, the only thing that mattered was the child. A neighbor screamed and called the police. Others rushed to help, someone phoned for an ambulance… In the chaos, Huang Qiulian stood rooted to the spot, watching as Wei Huasheng carried Yangyang out the door.
At the hospital, the child was rushed into emergency care.
Her body felt numb, her mind stretched taut like a wire that refused to snap—until Wei Huasheng suddenly turned to her and asked, “Why did you do this?”
When the police arrived, she finally understood: they were blaming her.
“The medical report stated that based on the position and angle of the fall, Yangyang had been thrown. Not slipped, not fallen—someone had… deliberately thrown him.”
The scene flashed before her eyes again.
Yangyang was so small. He couldn’t walk yet, barely even crawled. There was no way he could have climbed over the crib railing. That afternoon, before his nap, she had bathed him herself, dressed him in that onesie. The police said there were no signs of friction on the fabric, not even a speck of dust on his knees.
“I was in the bathroom, exhausted after a long day. The baby was asleep, and even if he cried, I could have gotten to him immediately. But when I came out, it was already too late. I know you don’t believe me—the police didn’t either. It was just me and my son in the house. Wei Huasheng had just gotten home; he hadn’t even taken off his shoes. If he had gone up or down the stairs in that short time, there would have been footprints. The police checked everything.”
“Those tenements are full of longtime neighbors. If a third person had entered—whether through the window or the door—someone would have noticed.” She sighed wearily. “They turned the whole building upside down, questioned every household.”
“Nothing… absolutely nothing…”
All the evidence pointed to her.
Through the endless interrogations, she never confessed. They said Wei Huasheng hired the best lawyers for her, arranged psychological evaluations, psychiatric assessments…
“Sometimes I even doubted myself—had I done something in a moment of madness and forgotten?”
“But how? How could I? He was my flesh and blood, my precious child. Could I really have been so lost that I pushed him down the stairs?”
“It must have hurt so much. Once, I fell down the last few steps myself, and the pain was unbearable… I can’t imagine what Yangyang went through. He was so little.”
Then came the trial, the appeals.
At times, Huang Qiulian felt dazed. She knew her emotions had been unstable back then—but could they really have driven her to harm her own child?
She refused to believe it. Or perhaps she simply couldn’t.
“I begged my lawyer to let Wei Huasheng visit me, to tell him the case was flawed. But he… only sent a letter of forgiveness, calling it his last act of kindness, then filed for divorce.”
The scratch of the police officer’s pen reminded her of her teaching days, when her students would write endlessly, the sound filling the classroom.
“I had been abandoned.”
“Every day in prison, I wondered where it had all gone wrong. It wasn’t me, it really wasn’t… But in that house, it was only me and Wei Huasheng, who had just walked in. I knew him—he would never hurt our son.”
Perhaps human adaptability is truly remarkable. Gradually, she adjusted to life behind bars.
In prison, she kept appealing, relentlessly pushing her lawyers to reopen the case. Then one day, her lawyer brought news—Yangyang was gone.
Not long after, she received word that Wei Huasheng wanted to visit.
“I refused,” she said softly. “With Yangyang gone, what was the point of seeing each other?”
For good behavior, Huang Qiulian’s sentence was reduced. But in prison, she also received the crushing news of her parents’ deaths, one after the other.
After her release, Wei Huasheng appeared before her again.
“Wei Huasheng said he believed it wasn’t me.”
“He claimed something dark had been following him—that it was the thing… that pushed Yangyang.”
“How could I believe that?”
Yet Wei Huasheng took her to see the child.
He said a church-affiliated institution was the safest place. Even if evil spirits were real, they couldn’t touch Yangyang there.
“The child was still alive.” Huang Qiulian’s voice trembled. “That was all that mattered. Nothing else.”
Uncle Li: “When he said ‘ghost,’ he meant—”
Liang Qikai silently took notes.
Earlier, they had joked about how rare it was to find a wealthy man who wasn’t superstitious.
“I don’t know. He said the ghost watched him, followed him, observed his every move.”
“Wei Huasheng had no proof, only claimed strange things kept happening. It wasn’t until he published an obituary that the disturbances stopped.”
Huang Qiulian gave a weak, humorless smile.
“Should I appeal the case? Tell the judge it was a ghost that pushed my child?”
The years she and Wei Huasheng had shared were now outweighed by the time they’d spent apart.
During the child abuse case back then, he couldn’t bring himself to trust her. Later, when he spoke of a ghost haunting him, she couldn’t believe that either.
So, the only agreement they could reach was to conceal their son’s existence.
Everything was for the sake of their child.
“Did you stay in touch afterward?”
“At first, yes. Until I started working at the tea restaurant, and rumors about my criminal record spread…”
“Wei Huasheng said it was the ghost’s doing. After that, we never contacted each other again. I suppose it was for the same ignorant reason—he was trying to protect me.”
In those days, Huang Qiulian pleaded desperately for Wei Huasheng to see her just once. But faced with their son’s injuries, Wei Huasheng was consumed by rage, refusing to even hear her out.
As she awaited trial, the days blurred together, the line between night and day fading. She spent every moment thinking of her son in the hospital, yet couldn’t suppress her resentment toward the man who had once been her rock.
Now, Wei Huasheng was dead.
Huang Qiulian thought she had cried all her tears, but when she saw the news of the Tin Hau Temple murder case, her tears smudged the bold print on the newspaper.
Huang Qiulian suddenly looked up, meeting the officer’s gaze.
“You don’t believe me, do you? Neither do I.”
“But the case is closed, the sentence served… Whatever. All I care about now is my child’s safety.”
Finally, the police asked if she could recall any details about the “ghost.”
Huang Qiulian thought for a long time.
“He mentioned once that it would harm those close to him. A child he sponsored was also targeted.”
“Do you know the name?”
“I asked. He said it was a car accident.” Huang Qiulian added, “Officer, do you actually believe in this ‘ghost’ nonsense?”
“I even suggested he see a psychiatrist.”
……
Little Sheng Fang returned from his fencing lesson, his steps light and bouncy, occasionally swinging an imaginary sword.
The moment he saw his eldest sister, he tilted his head up proudly, boasting that he was now unbeatable—none of the kids in class stood a chance against him.
Aunt Ping played along. “Young master’s a real prodigy now.”
“A real prodigy!” Fangfang echoed.
Sheng Peirong had been in the study all this time. Just as she was about to put away her files to spend time with her little brother, his adorable face suddenly filled her vision.
“Big sis,” Fangfang said, “have you ever played Monopoly? I can teach you!”
Clearly, it was the little one who wanted to play.
Like Zhu Qing, Sheng Peirong could never resist softening for this child.
She checked the time and relented. “Twenty minutes, max.”
The little one cheered, swiftly dragging a chair over to sit beside her.
Fangfang had once “promised” Sheng Peirong that when she woke up, she could play as the glamorous “Madame Qian.” But now, the little rascal had no intention of sharing—the coolest character was still his!
The computer in the study was usually reserved for her niece.
Yet little Sheng Fang navigated it effortlessly, booting it up, connecting online, and launching the game in one smooth motion. He enthusiastically explained the rules until a notification popped up in the corner.
“What’s that?” Sheng Peirong asked.
“An email, of course!” Fangfang tapped the screen and turned to her. “Big sis! The DNA email Second Sister got—I was the one who saw it first!”
Sheng Peirong had heard about this from her daughter.
The young master of the Sheng family had proudly “drifted” into her life on a go-kart, announcing their relation with all the flair of a hero.
“Really?” Sheng Peirong feigned surprise. “So you’re the one who brought Keke home?”
Fangfang leaned against her smugly. “I’m the uncle, after all.”
Just then, their eyes fell on the new email’s subject line.
“Big sis, it’s from Dr. Cheng,” Fangfang read aloud.
Sheng Peirong raised a brow.
So Keke had been keeping in touch with Dr. Cheng.
The little one’s hand hovered over the mouse, about to click—
“No peeking.” Sheng Peirong covered his eyes. “That’s grown-up privacy.”
Fangfang kicked his little feet. “Dr. Cheng must miss me too!”
“Silly boy.” She gently tapped his forehead. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me!”
“Even if I did, you wouldn’t get it.”
“Then teach me—”
……
Fangfang’s gaming time was strictly twenty minutes.
Big sis was even stricter than Qing-jie—not a second more.
After leaving the study, he wandered into the courtyard, staring at his little bike in thought.
Big sis’s first day at work was a big deal, and he was pondering how to chauffeur her to the office when a soft laugh came from behind.
“Don’t worry about it,” Sheng Peirong said. “I’ve asked Aunt Ping to arrange driver interviews.”
Aunt Ping now wore many hats—joking that she’d become a “supervisor” one day and a “housekeeper” the next. She noted the eldest miss’s requests diligently, marking them with care.
When Zhu Qing returned, the adults were whispering in the living room while Fangfang pedaled circles around the yard.
The moment he spotted her, he screeched to a halt and jumped off.
Fangfang dashed toward her at full speed.
Zhu Qing crouched, catching him effortlessly. “Want to go for a ride?”
“Yes!” His eyes sparkled as he turned to fetch his bike. “Let’s go!”
Behind them, Sheng Peirong’s voice called out.
“Keke, you got an email—”
“I’ll reply later.”
Zhu Qing’s voice faded into the distance.
Sheng Peirong sat in the living room, watching through the window with a frown.
“Aunt Ping, how did she know who sent the email?”
“Miss, how would I know?” Aunt Ping pondered. “Maybe… she only emails one person?”
Sheng Peirong narrowed her eyes. “Makes sense.”
Aunt Ping blinked.
Had she actually guessed right?
“Riding out in this cold…” She shook her head, watching them through the window. “Those two.”
On the winding roads of Kadoorie Hill, the chilly wind whipped through their hair as they laughed, playing their silly “eating the wind” game.
“Fangfang, are you the little monster devouring the storm?”
“Then you’re the big monster!”
In kindergarten, Fangfang would’ve scoffed at such childishness.
But with Qing-jie, he grinned wildly, pedaling down the sidewalk, heart full to bursting.
Zhu Qing followed behind, watching that small, joyful figure.
She hadn’t properly spent time with him in quite a while. The workload at the police station kept her too busy to spare a moment. Fortunately, Fangfang never complained or acted aggrieved, happily amusing himself by shaking his little head.
"Wow! So much fun!" Fangfang cheered as they went downhill, lifting his short legs gleefully.
He held onto the handlebars with just his tiny hands, his little legs dangling freely in the air, the wind of freedom rushing past him.
"I want a turn too."
"You can borrow it!"
Sheng Fang braked and generously patted the bike seat as he got off.
Zhu Qing could sit on the four-year-old’s bike, but she couldn’t pedal. They pushed it back up the slope, ready for another round.
"Charge!" Fangfang instructed from behind.
Zhu Qing leaned forward and sped down the slope, the bike’s wheels spinning wildly, her hair dancing in the wind.
Moonlight bathed her face, making her eyes sparkle like they were dotted with starlight.
Sheng Fang shouted after her like a tiny coach, "You have to cheer, or it’s not fun enough!"
By the second round, Zhu Qing’s voice carried up with the wind.
"Wow! So much fun!"
Shouting like this seemed to double the joy.
Little Sheng Fang chased after her bike, yelling, "My turn, my turn—"
And so, aunt and nephew went back and forth, playing their sliding game along the mountain path.
Even the cool breeze turned gentle, their laughter echoing clearly through the night.
……
After a brief respite, the Major Crimes Unit plunged back into their relentless workload.
The next day, the meeting room remained closed as officers rushed in and out, barely stopping to report to Mo Zhenbang before diving straight into business, not even pausing for a sip of water.
"The 'ghost' theory—Wei Huasheng only mentioned it to his ex-wife. We interviewed his friends, partners, and employees, but no one noticed anything unusual."
"Next time, don’t send me to question his brother," Hao Zai grumbled. "He wouldn’t let me go, begging me to ask Wei Huasheng’s lawyer for a favor to clear his gambling debts. Kept saying his brother would ‘look down from heaven’ and couldn’t bear to see his only sibling suffer. ‘Look down from heaven’? More like rolling in his grave."
Xu Jiale cut in, "Could Huang Qiulian be lying about the 'ghost'?"
"Unlikely," Liang Qikai said, producing a sign-in sheet from the community center. "An employee confirmed she was discussing shift changes with Huang Qiulian when the incident happened at the Tin Hau Temple annex. Besides..."
"If she wanted to overturn the case, making up a ridiculous 'ghost' story would only weaken her argument—even she found it laughable."
Little Sun brought out a photo.
In it, a delicate-looking teenager in a school uniform stood on a podium, Wei Huasheng smiling beside him.
"We found the student Huang Qiulian mentioned," he explained.
She had said the deceased had sponsored a student who later got into a car accident, yet Wei Huasheng insisted it was the ghost targeting those close to him.
"This straight-A student… Wei Huasheng thought highly of him, even visited his home, showing fatherly care to the boy who had lost his own dad. The neighbors praised their bond as akin to father and son."
"But five years ago, he was in a crash—left paralyzed from the waist up."
"After that, the deceased stopped his one-on-one donations. If he blamed himself for every misfortune around him… was Wei Huasheng trapped by his own demons?"
The photo circulated the office.
The boy in the picture beamed brightly. Had Wei Huasheng, in his admiring gaze, ever imagined what his own child might have looked like, had they lived?
"The student’s address is here," Little Sun handed over a note. "Shall we pay a visit?"
Just then, Zeng Yongshan hung up the phone and hurried over.
"After pressing her, Huang Qiulian remembered—the 'ghost' was a burden Wei Huasheng carried since his twenties."
"During their relationship, he mentioned it was something from his volunteer days."
"It haunted him, but Huang Qiulian wasn’t sure if it was relevant to the case."
The officers pieced together the clues.
"Could it be… Wei Huasheng had a mental breakdown?" someone broke the silence.
"Back then, only Huang Qiulian and Wei Huasheng were home. She swore she didn’t do it and refused to believe he’d harm their child."
"But what if… it wasn’t 'Wei Huasheng'? What if another personality took over?"
The room fell silent as they followed this line of thought.
"Remember, Huang Qiulian said she urged him to see a psychiatrist."
"And she made it clear she didn’t want the case reopened. As she put it, it’s over, the sentence served…"
"Could it be that she suspected this possibility? But out of respect for her ex-husband—a philanthropist—she chose silence, opting for willful ignorance?"
Huang Qiulian would never hurt her child. Neither would Wei Huasheng.
But what if it was another personality, lurking beneath his benevolent facade?
The idea sent chills down their spines as the investigation pressed on.
……
The police continued their inquiries, verifying leads one by one.
They tracked down the boy Wei Huasheng had sponsored.
The accident had been sudden—the teen was sent flying, his textbooks scattering across the road. Once a top student, he struggled to feed himself in the years after, let alone return to school.
At home, only his ailing mother remained.
Tearfully, she told the officers, "Mr. Wei never stopped sending money… but he never visited again."
As for the "ghost" that Huang Qiulian spoke of, its roots stretched back over two decades.
In his early twenties, Wei Huasheng had just begun dabbling in toy design while volunteering at a hospital. He was assigned to a six-year-old terminally ill boy who lived for their weekly playdates, counting down the days until Wei Huasheng arrived with new toys.
But one weekend, Wei Huasheng overslept. Waking to sunshine, he made a decision he’d regret forever—since he was already late, he might as well meet friends for a game first.
By the time he reached the hospital the next day, a nurse, eyes red, handed him a toy—the very one he’d brought the week before.
Until the end, the child had clung to it, waiting for him, before being rushed into emergency surgery.
"From then on, Mr. Wei devoted himself to helping others. At first, it was with his meager part-time earnings. After starting his business, he poured even more into charity."
"Having raised his younger brother, he always felt a strong sense of responsibility."
"Personal responsibilities, family duties, social obligations... Mr. Wei has carried too much on his shoulders for far too long."
"Mr. Wei often says that if he hadn’t been absent back then, he could have at least accompanied his child to the operating room. But life doesn’t offer second chances. Truthfully, he’s already done his best—after all, charity work isn’t an obligation."
These clues deepened the police’s suspicions about Wei Huasheng’s mental state.
Yet when they pulled his medical records and contacted his doctor, they received a clear response.
"Mr. Wei also suspected he might be ‘ill,’ so he came in voluntarily for a full examination," the doctor explained. "But after a specialist consultation, we confirmed he has no mental disorder. He’s simply under immense stress—company burdens, worries about his son... We didn’t prescribe medication, only advised him to rest more."
By 5 p.m., the officers of Major Crimes Team B returned to the station.
Once again, the investigation had hit a dead end.
The meeting room door stood open.
Zhu Qing stood before the whiteboard, staring at Wei Huasheng’s photo.
His stern, rigid face bore eyes that gleamed with vigilance.
"What if..." she murmured, "the ‘ghost’ isn’t his hallucination, but a real person?"
"Someone who’s been following him all along."
"Harming his son, tearing his family apart, destroying the students he mentored..."
Wei Huasheng’s acts of kindness were always met with universal praise.
Yet his fears were casually dismissed as him "overthinking."
But what if that "ghost" truly existed?
And had been watching him all this time...
Until death came knocking.
---
Yesterday after school, Sheng Fang had no choice but to attend fencing lessons to "build skills." Today, he bargained with Aunt Ping first thing in the morning, demanding compensation with all the entitlement of a pampered child.
In this household, no one dared spoil Fangfang any less.
When school let out in the afternoon, Aunt Ping made a special trip to Kowloon Tong to pick up the young master, then drove him straight to the Yau Ma Tei Police Station.
"Young master, I’ll go buy groceries first," she said.
Only after seeing him safely upstairs did Aunt Ping leave with peace of mind.
Little Fangfang had bought a bag of egg waffles on the way, munching happily the entire ride. Now, stepping into the station, he was instantly swept up in the intense investigative atmosphere.
The officers were swamped, scrambling in every direction.
As Zhu Qing passed by, she greeted him like just another colleague: "You’re here?"
Then, without breaking stride, she tossed over her shoulder, "Wait for me—I’ll be quick."
Her uncle knew his niece too well.
Her version of "quick" meant agonizingly slow.
With none of the officers free to entertain him, Fangfang wandered off to find Weng Zhaolin.
"Ah John!" Little Sheng Fang propped himself against the doorframe, tilting his head with a grin. "I’m back again."
Weng Zhaolin shot him a sidelong glance.
"Are we going to eat later?" Fangfang asked in his sweetest voice. "Our usual spot?"
Weng Zhaolin flashed back to the scene at the diner two days prior.
He’d hauled six takeout boxes upstairs—all paid for out of his own pocket.
"No," Weng Zhaolin replied without looking up.
"But you’ll starve!"
"Then I’ll starve."
"See?" Fangfang stepped inside. "Being stubborn again."
With that, he plucked the plumpest, most fragrant egg waffle from the bag, stood on tiptoe, and held it out.
The warm treat nearly brushed Weng Zhaolin’s nose.
Caught off guard, Weng Zhaolin paused.
The child’s eyes sparkled like stars, brimming with unspoken charm.
His resolve softened. He leaned down and snatched the waffle with his teeth, savoring the sweetness.
No one had fed him like this since he was a kid. The gesture struck him as oddly touching.
Out in the hallway, officers bustled back and forth.
Sheng Fang’s gaze caught a familiar figure passing by.
"Qing-er!" His little voice rang out bright and clear. "When the case wraps up, can we go to a real zoo?"
Weng Zhaolin, still chewing: ?
Real. Zoo.
Every syllable sounded like an insult.
