It was very awkward.

Just now, every word the two of them said—she had heard it all clearly. Some she could understand, some she couldn’t.

But she could roughly guess the meaning. Over the years, the relationship between Fang Yongnian and her father had been very poor. She knew something must have happened between them.

This matter was far more serious than she had imagined.

Fang Yongnian seemed to suspect that her father had something to do with that car accident years ago.

“Uncle Fang…” Lu Yixin pushed her bicycle and followed behind Fang Yongnian, lowering her head to look at her newly bought sneakers. “Are you investigating my dad?”

The ground was wet. Her new shoes were white, and a few specks of mud had splattered on them.

If she had known earlier, she wouldn’t have gone through all the trouble of changing into new shoes.

Fang Yongnian replied with something unrelated. “It’s late. You should go home.”

“Can people who aren’t police just casually investigate someone’s bank account?” Lu Yixin copied his way of answering with an unrelated question, keeping her head down as she looked at her shoes.

Fang Yongnian was wearing house slippers, gray ones. He seemed to always like gray things—of varying shades, deep and light—that made people feel inexplicably oppressed.

Maybe next time, she should buy a pair of gray shoes too, so she could secretly match with him like a couple.

Lu Yixin lowered her head absentmindedly, her mind filled with all sorts of messy, nonsensical thoughts. Until she saw that pair of gray house slippers in front of her come to a stop, the toes turning to face her directly.

She lifted her head.

In the night, Fang Yongnian was standing in front of her, frowning as he looked at her.

“Lu Yixin.” His voice was still the same, calm and without ripples. “These are matters for adults. They’re not things you should be worrying about.”

Lu Yixin met his gaze.

Fang Yongnian admitted that he felt somewhat uneasy.

He didn’t know how much of his conversation with Zheng Fei she had overheard, nor did he know how to explain any of it.

He was investigating her father. He was the twisted one—acting as her uncle on one side, while secretly investigating her father on the other.

Four years ago, in the hospital, when his prosthetic rubbed blisters into the stump of his leg, when painkillers were useless and he wanted nothing more than to smash his injured limb against the wall. What kept him going through all the rehabilitation was the vision of sending Lu Boyuan to prison.

He couldn’t let the members of the project team die in vain. He also couldn’t let himself become a disabled man for nothing.

That car accident had not been an accident.

Although the driver at fault had also died at the scene, the autopsy revealed an excessive amount of antihistamines—drugs that cause drowsiness—in his system. Yet, in the first statement, the driver’s wife had clearly said that her husband hadn’t taken any medication before he left.

However, in the second statement, this detail was changed. The wife said she had remembered it wrong.

The driver was a fellow townsman of Lu Boyuan’s and had been in frequent contact with him in the six months prior to the incident.

Within their project team, the only person who had any connection with that driver was Lu Boyuan.

In that project, the first person to withdraw quickly and directly transfer to another project team was also Lu Boyuan.

Over the past four years, Lu Boyuan’s career had been smooth sailing. One of the new drugs he participated in had passed approval, two projects had entered Phase III clinical trials, papers were being published one after another, and his reputation in the industry had steadily risen.

Lu Boyuan was the only one from that project who had risen rapidly through the ranks. Fang Yongnian could hardly find any reason not to suspect him.

But these words could not be said to Lu Yixin.

After all, that was her father.

He shifted his feet and, facing those clear black-and-white eyes, found himself at a loss for words.

“I asked my mom to make purple sweet potato buns.” Lu Yixin took a lunchbox out of her backpack. She had wandered around the neighborhood for too long earlier, and the buns had already gone cold.

“You can heat them up before eating. Just leave the box at the pharmacy, I can take it back when I come home from school.”

She looked completely unbothered, as if those two nearly sharp questions just now hadn’t come from her at all.

Fang Yongnian accepted the purple sweet potato buns.

Liu Miqing was a woman with a keen sense of life’s pleasures. Even an ordinary purple sweet potato bun, she had shaped into a rose. Soft and sweet, it was one of his favorite snacks.

But under such an atmosphere, he couldn’t bring himself to say thank you.

He even didn’t know how to act like the “uncle” he was so used to being.

Letting Lu Yixin hear those things, he seemed to have lost his qualification to be an uncle in an instant. After all, he was scheming in the shadows, calculating against her father.

“I was just curious. I thought ordinary people couldn’t randomly check other people’s bank accounts.” Lu Yixin scratched her head.

She was actually explaining herself.

Fang Yongnian frowned, unable for a moment to find words to describe what he was feeling.

“I’m going back first.” Lu Yixin got on her bicycle, rewrapped the scarf around her neck, covering most of her face.

But just as she pedaled past him, Fang Yongnian grabbed the handlebar of her bicycle.

“Come up with me first.” His face looked unpleasant, his brows furrowed tightly. “There are a few more lunchboxes at home, you need to take them back.”

The eyes exposed above her scarf looked straight at him.

Fang Yongnian coughed once and, giving up on saying anything more, took the backpack from her shoulders and walked straight into the stairwell.

He was, once again, finding something to fuss over.

In this situation, he couldn’t rest easy letting Lu Yixin just go back like this.

This girl had been acting strangely lately; she had overheard his conversation with Zheng Fei yet could still pretend nothing had happened. That, in turn, made it impossible for him to pretend nothing had happened either.

Even if he hated Lu Boyuan, Lu Yixin was innocent.

Lu Yixin was, after all, the little girl he had fed and raised with all sorts of snacks from the streets and alleys.

୨୧ ⏔⏔⏔⏔♡⏔⏔⏔⏔ ୨୧

Fang Yongnian’s home was still the same as ever.

The landlord’s simple furniture, two second-hand air conditioners he had installed himself, one high-end custom desktop, and a laptop he always kept by his side.

The living-room light was on, and there were two glasses of water on the table. Left from his earlier chat with Zheng Fei.

The ashtray was full of cigarette butts. Though the window was open, the room still smelled strongly of cheap factory cigarettes.

“The door stays open.” When Fang Yongnian came in and saw Lu Yixin covering her nose as she bent to change her shoes, he gave the habitual order.

After giving it, he regained a bit of his uncle-like demeanor and nodded toward the sofa. “Sit.”

He moved his leg toward the kitchen and took out the chocolate powder Lu Yixin had bought the last time she came over, making her a cup of hot cocoa.

The cup was also one she had bought herself—a yellow, round-bellied mug with two cartoon eyes painted on it. On the side, she had rather maliciously carved an unrecognizable pattern with a small knife—for identification.

Anyway, it was her exclusive mug. Although guests often came to his house, he had never once used this mug for anyone else.

He chose a hard wooden chair with a backrest, sat down, relaxed his waist, and shifted his overworked left leg.

Only after becoming disabled did he realize—after becoming disabled, it wasn’t the amputated right leg that often gave him trouble, but the intact left one.

Because everything that should have been done by both legs had been forced onto one, his left leg had been protesting all along.

Only after the body became incomplete could one understand that every limb had its own awareness. Favor one and neglect the other, and it would suffer endlessly.

Lu Yixin held the cup in her hands, sipping the steaming, sweet, and sticky hot cocoa in small mouthfuls while quietly observing Fang Yongnian’s expression.

She rather wanted to just go home like this.

She hadn’t finished processing what she’d heard earlier, and Fang Yongnian looked physically unwell.

He was even thinner, so thin his bones were visible.

“Your sweater is pilling again.” Lu Yixin licked the cocoa powder off her lips and picked the safest topic she could.

Fang Yongnian, who had been loosening his left leg, glanced at her.

“I’m investigating your father,” he decided to say truthfully.

Even he didn’t want to admit that when Lu Yixin tried to find random topics like this, it made him irritated.

There was no reason for an eighteen-year-old girl to be so nervous and uneasy.

Even if Lu Boyuan had done something that eventually sent him to prison, Lu Yixin would still be Lu Yixin.

He had even thought—if Lu Boyuan really went in and Liu Miqing found herself short on money—he could help support Lu Yixin. Raising her until she got married would be no problem.

“I know.” Lu Yixin muttered, “I’m not stupid.”

What he and Zheng Fei had said earlier had been clear enough. Especially Fang Yongnian’s words: “I don’t believe he’s clean.”

She took another sip of her hot cocoa.

She wasn’t stupid.

That was exactly why she had wanted to go home—to go home and digest those words, then think about what she should do next.

“This matter is quite complicated.” Fang Yongnian heard her muttering and tried to explain.

He had explained to her the impossibly complex process of pharmaceutical development before. He had explained middle and high school exercises with knowledge points that went all the way to the Pacific Ocean. He had even told her in full detail the pathological process of Alzheimer’s disease.

Now, he had to explain human nature.

Why he had to investigate her father. Why he could not stop suspecting him.

He felt a bit thirsty and wanted to get up to pour himself a glass of water.

But Lu Yixin reacted faster. She naturally took out his cup, naturally found where he kept his tea leaves, and brewed him a cup of tea.

When Fang Yongnian accepted the cup of tea, his resentment toward Lu Boyuan deepened once more. Why must something this painful fall upon him, a man who had nothing to do with it at all.

“I’m actually fine.” Lu Yixin dragged over a small stool, holding her yellow cup as she sat down at Fang Yongnian’s feet. She took a sip of the hot cocoa, then tilted her head up and muttered again, “I… wasn’t really that surprised.”

“You and my dad used to get along so well. My dad often praised you. Whenever we had dinner with my mom’s relatives, he couldn’t help but brag about having such an amazing junior.”

“For things to suddenly become like this between you two, something must’ve happened.”

“I’m just a little unhappy.”

“You told Uncle Zheng that you don’t believe my dad is clean…”

“Just that sentence, I’m really unhappy about it.”

“Actually, if you want to investigate, then investigate. Even if you told me not to tell my dad what I heard just now, I’d agree.”

“My dad has always been clean.”

“You won’t find anything. You said if he didn’t have a guilty conscience, he wouldn’t have investigated you.”

“But now you also don’t have a guilty conscience, so why are you investigating my dad?”

She tilted her head up like that, righteous and confident.

So open and straightforward it was shocking.

Once again, Fang Yongnian was at a loss for words.

“I just came to deliver the purple sweet potato buns.” Actually, I also wanted to see you.

Lu Yixin turned that thought over in her mind.

“I’ll go back first.” She finished the cocoa in her cup, stood up, and stuffed several of her family’s lunchboxes from the kitchen into her backpack.

“You’ve lost a lot of weight.” She slung the backpack over her shoulders, chattering as she put on her shoes. “If you get any thinner, I’ll call your brother.”

“I made sure to save his number last time.”

Standing by the open door, Lu Yixin held out her hand toward Fang Yongnian. “Do you have any trash you want me to take down?”

She stood there naturally, familiarly. Just like she did every time she came to his home.

Fang Yongnian felt that the string of words she had just spoken—those words that by logic had no standing but somehow made perfect sense—had almost convinced him.

If only the world were as simple as she thought.

If only she could stay that simple, forever.

___

Author’s note:

See? It’s sweet, right? The little girl—open, upright, and honest.

Fang Yongnian is actually very good to Lu Yixin, though for now, it’s still the kind of goodness that comes from being an elder.

As for why the misunderstanding lasted so many years, Lu Boyuan had long stopped investigating (which basically means he had accepted that it was Fang Yongnian’s doing). The accident Fang Yongnian went through was a major one; it took him two years just to adapt to his prosthesis and for his body to recover enough to handle it. Digging up something that happened two years ago is very difficult, which is why everything has dragged on for so long.

They won’t doubt each other for too long. They’re both good people, so the resolution will come quickly.