#hania posts

***

Fei Du's twenty-second birthday was a real disaster.

First, he was in a car accident and suffered a bone fracture; running back and forth to the hospital wore him out until nightfall. Just when he finally managed to sit down and had barely taken a couple of bites of cake, something happened to Chenchen.

The following year, when he turned twenty-three, that July was still not any better.

For one thing, he was swamped with work. After all, catching the bad guys wasn’t the end of it; there were still long trials and investigations ahead. Unresolved injustices had to be laid bare once more to be cleared, and the cries of the bereaved had to be recorded anew. He had to attend countless funerals, cooperate with countless investigations, and make arrangements for countless people.

By summer, Fei Du’s gunshot wound had healed, but his ankle had developed a “weather forecast” function—it would flare up whenever it was cloudy or raining. And for some reason, this summer brought an unusually heavy amount of rain. It drizzled and drizzled without end, as if the entire city were in mourning.

Mourning… was more agonizing than revenge.

Fei Du hadn't been able to handle the strain well lately. He’d only just been in the ICU once last year, and at the beginning of the year, he’d suffered serious injuries at the hands of Fan Siyuan. No matter how young he was, he couldn’t withstand such repeated physical tolls. In June, he’d been battling a heat-induced cold for over a month. He’d have recurring low-grade fevers at night, but the doctors couldn’t pinpoint the cause. They simply told him his immunity was low and advised him to eat well and get plenty of rest—advice the doctors themselves couldn’t follow. So Fei Du just listened and let it go, not taking it to heart. When others asked, he’d say, “I’m fine.”

It wasn’t that he was putting on a brave face; he genuinely believed it wasn’t a big deal.

Physiologically speaking, “pain” wasn't an illness; one could even say that “pain” didn't exist. It was merely a rudimentary signaling mechanism within the body, one that frequently sounded false alarms for no apparent reason, like a malfunctioning smoke detector.

Fei Du was skilled at managing pain. If his leg kept him awake at night, he would calmly visualize the pain dissolving into his bloodstream and spreading throughout his body. With the area of pain expanded, the pressure naturally lessened. After a summer of practice, he was already able to control his breathing and heart rate within thirty seconds. And according to his experience, even if one failed to fall asleep, simply closing one’s eyes and resting in this calm state could still yield decent results—the next morning, he would still be full of energy.

As for the other minor symptoms, since the doctor had said they were nothing to worry about, then they were nothing to worry about. He treated them like nearsightedness—though, come to think of it, nearsightedness was actually far more serious—and eventually got used to them.

Cats were also good at enduring pain; even an exception as vocal as Luo Yiguo would only curl up and bear it when feeling unwell, occasionally scratching things but otherwise finding a quiet corner to hide in. But the litterbox attendant always managed to spot something amiss right away—whether it was a can of food left half-full or a trash can that was still intact.

*

Luo Wenzhou was completely distracted while eating lunch in the office cafeteria. Tao Ran walked by and casually asked him, “What’s for lunch today?”

For a moment, Luo Wenzhou's mind went completely blank. Fortunately, Tao Ran was just making small talk and didn’t expect an answer; he simply went to look at the menu himself.

“What’s wrong with you?” Tao Ran sat down, polished off half a bowl of rice in two bites, and noticed Luo Wenzhou was still picking at his food, eating only sporadically. “You’re not even eating with enthusiasm. Is something wrong with your head?"

Luo Wenzhou sighed. “It's Fei Du, that wretch. He keeps saying everything’s fine.”

Tao Ran was completely baffled. “What’s wrong with him?”

He’d seen him yesterday; he seemed perfectly fine, looking smooth as silk, in good spirits, and even telling him to pass on a few messages to Chang Ning.

“That bastard is a master at putting on a show," Luo Wenzhou said. "Do you really think you can tell if he’s okay or not?”

That remark seemed to take a dig at both of them, but luckily Tao Ran had a good temperament and didn’t take it personally, and only asked, “So what’s the deal?”

Luo Wenzhou continued to sigh. “He’s still not over his cold.”

Tao Ran opened his mouth to speak, but his manners stopped him. He thought to himself: Are you out of your mind? Even the Iron Fan Princess got an upset stomach after accidentally swallowing Sun Wukong. Humans eat all kinds of grains—how could they not have a few minor ailments? Fei Du is such a strapping young man; he’s not some frail old person or invalid. What harm could a little headache or fever do to him?

Luo Wenzhou remained deeply worried, muttering to himself: “His cold hasn’t cleared up, but I didn’t hear him coughing last night.” …Which suggested he might not have been asleep at all. "The candy box on the coffee table used to need restocking every week or two, but this one was bought last month, and when I checked yesterday, it was still more than half full."

Just as Tao Ran was about to say, Doesn’t that mean his lifestyle has improved?, a message popped up on his phone. He picked it up to glance at it and suddenly lost all interest in small talk.

Luo Wenzhou snapped back to attention. “What’s wrong? Who is it?”

“A colleague from a police station in one of our subordinate districts. We connected when I was investigating the Su family case and went to interview the victims’ families.” Tao Ran sighed. “He just told me that the mother of one of the victims died. The preliminary judgment is suicide.”

“Suicide?” Luo Wenzhou frowned. “Fei Du's foundation should have a mutual aid group. Let me check.”

The foundation belonged to Fei Du, but recalling the nearly untouched candy box at home, Captain Luo's heart, fully concentrated on Fei Du, immediately sank. He didn’t want to disturb him and messaged Zhou Huaijin instead.

The reply came quickly and was terse, simply stating, I see, so Luo Wenzhou decided to call Zhou Huaijin, who could only tell him, “Our people are on the case, seeing what they could do to help. It’s a shame, but this isn’t the first time this has happened.”

In fact, many people cannot hold on after finally getting a resolution. Once the dust settles and there are no lingering attachments tying you to the past, there’s no future either. Luo Wenzhou understood this truth and sighed.

Zhou Huaijin sighed as well. “You see, when something happens, everyone advises you to ‘look ahead’. Who doesn’t know they should look ahead? But it’s actually a paradox. If you tell someone who has severed all ties with the past to look ahead, what on earth can they possibly see?”

“What about you?” Luo Wenzhou asked.

“I’m doing just fine, thank you,” Zhou Huaijin replied calmly. “I plan to find something bigger to do, or convert to a deity greater than myself, hide away, and survive by ‘borrowing the tiger’s power,’ until all of that becomes a thing of the past.”

The two fell silent for a moment. Perhaps finding the atmosphere too heavy, Zhou Huaijin deliberately lightened his tone: “Oh, right. It’s President Fei’s birthday next week, and everyone wants to throw him a proper celebration—what’s he been missing lately? Captain Luo, give us some ideas.”

Luo Wenzhou replied with a straight face: “The gift definitely has to be something others don’t have. Things like a thermos, thermal underwear, a tennis racket, or running shoes would be great.”

Mr. Zhou, ever the gentleman, listened to Luo Wenzhou’s ill-intentioned “breakup package” suggestion, then politely and tactfully told him to go cool off somewhere before hanging up the phone.

*

Fei Du celebrated his birthday at the office at noon. Even for a smooth operator like him, it was a bit much to handle. After all, his company was in a unique situation right now—organizing events was no longer purely a matter of business etiquette; it had become mixed with many people offering genuine support, which was troublesome, and heartfelt occasions were even more exhausting.

No wonder people used to say that those "neither too old nor too young" didn't celebrate their birthdays. The social obligations required to make ends meet were already a hassle enough; celebrating a birthday was practically asking for trouble.

After a long, tiring day, by the time he got home, even with the long days of late July the twilight had already prompted the streetlights to come on. With his superb driving skills, Fei Du squeezed the car right into the corner parking space that Luo Wenzhou had painstakingly managed to rent. He sat alone in the car for five minutes to collect his thoughts, hoping Lao Luo wouldn’t come up with any more hassle to put him through and that he would just cook him a bowl of noodles for dinner.

The sound of him coming in startled Luo Wenzhou in the kitchen and he raised his head. “Come in, come in. I talked to Zhou Huaijin—the crew didn't let you drink, did they?”

"Not a single drop, Mr Policeman," Fei Du replied. "You guys are always patrolling under the bridge nearby anyway, so I wouldn't dare."

“You drove back on your own?”

Luo Wenzhou was stumped for a moment—although he’d managed to rent a parking spot, the space was rather narrow and a bit short, making it difficult to park. On top of that, Lu Jia and his crew were always trying to hitch a ride with him, often acting as his driver under the pretext of “taking care of the injured.” Because of that, Fei Du hadn't been driving himself to and from work much lately.

But then Luo Wenzhou quickly caught on and chuckled, “You’re just looking for some peace and quiet, aren't you?”

Fei Du took off his watch and tossed it onto the shoe rack, then shrugged. “That's what you get for being too popular.”

"Brat," Luo Wenzhou muttered, returning to the kitchen. “The cake’s in the fridge. Cut yourself a slice, but don’t eat too much… You can't even eat that? Save it for breakfast tomorrow, I’ll just make you a bowl of noodle soup tonight. Hmm… We’ll still need eggs with that, maybe I'll add a little less noodles?”

Fei Du picked up Luo Yiguo’s pot and weighed it in his hands, then respectfully put it back in its place. He washed his hands, poured some cat food, and muttered something casually.

He felt a bit off. Before he’d even stepped inside their house, his head had already been buzzing with all sorts of emotions—he’d only hoped Luo Wenzhou would whip up a bowl of noodles for him. And Lao Luo seemed to have read his mind, granting his wish exactly as he’d wanted… yet he still felt a vague sense of disappointment. It was like he'd stepped into thin air and then stumbled.

Fortunately, Fei Du was overly mature; even after missing a step, he regained his footing immediately and quickly composed himself, recovering from his momentary "unreasonable outburst". He strolled into the kitchen, asking, “Shixiong, could you crack the eggs into a heart shape?”

Luo Wenzhou, who had just cracked the eggs straight into the soup pot, went speechless.

Watching Luo Wenzhou—who was muttering “No way, get lost” under his breath, while still fetching a frying pan and an egg mold—Fei Du’s ankle, which had twisted slightly from that earlier “misstep,” had fully healed.

“The gift’s in the study. Get it yourself. Get out, don’t mess around in the kitchen.”

Fei Du lazily retreated. “Thermos or a tennis racket and running shoes?”

“Can't Zhou Huaijin keep his mouth shut? Why didn’t you guess thermal underwear?”

“...I really wouldn't want to see that.”

Then he found a square, flat box in the study. Judging by the packaging, he could rule out the thermos, racket, and running shoes—it really looked a lot like the one thing he least wanted to face.

Fei Du chuckled at first, but as he began to unwrap it, he let out an undignified yelp.

“Lao Luo, I like you this much, and this is how you treat me?”

“Huh? The stove is too loud, I can’t hear you!”

But inside the cardboard box wasn’t a set of thermal underwear that would make anyone break out in a sweat at a single glance, but rather a rather elegant… photo album?

Fei Du flipped open the first page and froze. He saw a group photo from kindergarten, with a familiar-looking little boy standing in the corner of the last row, staring blankly at the camera...

When was this taken?

Fei Du couldn’t remember; he didn’t even have a copy of this photo himself.

Next to the group photo was a card with neat but unfamiliar handwriting:

Hi Dudu, Happy Birthday (I know your real name isn’t that silly, but I didn't know how to read when I was little, so this is what I remember you being called).

I'm the handsome little guy in the second-to-last row of the photo, the one crying with snot bubbles. The reason I cried so much is because Tata (the best-looking little foreigner in the last row) gave you the lollipop she always gave me. That was the first time in my life I tasted the bitterness of heartbreak, and it left me with an ugly photo. Thank you, brother. Although you only came for less than a week, you left me with a lifelong scar. I'll remember you forever.

It was signed "Jianjian, the second most handsome boy in the Squirrel Class at Jinbeibei Kindergarten."

“Jianjian,” “Tata,” “Squirrel Class”—Fei Du had absolutely no recollection of any of that. He only vaguely remembered that when he was little, while Fei Chengyu was away, his mother had tried to enroll him in an international kindergarten near their home… back when she was still occasionally able to go out on her own.

Unfortunately, he didn't enjoy the carefree childhood at the kindergarten. Like a wolf cub that had wandered into a sheepfold right under the shepherd's nose, he felt out of place. He looked down on his simple-minded classmates and, like Su Luozhan, harboured a condescending malice towards them… though, many years later, he realized that perhaps it was merely a twisted form of jealousy.

Later, when Fei Chengyu returned and found out what had happened, he rushed to "rescue" him, taking him away from that place "reeking of milk and full of idiots". That experience was unremarkable; Fei Du thought he didn’t remember a single classmate or teacher. But the moment he saw the card, a faint memory suddenly surfaced: a summer afternoon, sitting alone in the shade of a tree. He knew a few children were staring at him, but he didn’t care and didn’t want to acknowledge them.

Suddenly, a mixed-race little girl walked over, silently shoved a lollipop into his hand, and ran off. For the rest of the afternoon, children kept running up to him, inexplicably shoving bits of junk into his hands: handkerchiefs, old scraps of paper, hair ties, small stones… The background noise was a confusing wail—that “Jianjian” kid seemed to have quite a large lung capacity.

The second page had a photo of Fei Du as a Young Pioneer representative from when he first started elementary school. The card was written by the girl in the first row behind him. Again, it was a photo he didn't own himself, and he didn't recognize the classmates either—it seemed that the ones behind him weren't from his class.

A girl from the next class wrote on her card that she grew up with her grandparents, and children raised by grandparents are prone to forgetting things. She often got points deducted by the gatekeepers for forgetting her red scarf.

“Every time I forgot my red scarf, I hoped you’d be on duty at the door, because if I begged you before the other monitors noticed, I could always get a spare one. We all called you ‘The Good Gatekeeper’ behind your back. Every time the gatekeepers changed, everyone secretly approached people from your class, begging them to vote for you."

Fei Du fell silent. No wonder he was so distant from his classmates when he was younger, yet somehow managed to be elected as a duty student for six years.

“P.S., here’s a secret,” the last line on the card read, “Tong Lin and Li Zhao from your class both liked you. Zhou Kai liked Tong Lin and was always looking for a reason to pick on you, but since you’d once given him a red scarf, he felt too embarrassed to act on it. He spent the whole time agonizing over it until graduation.”

Flipping through the album, there were photos of him setting up a microphone at the school radio station during a sport event, promotional photos taken by teachers during his work-study program, and a side profile shot taken by someone else during graduation... The range of people who wrote the cards was incredibly vast, including classmates he barely remembered or didn't know at all, the owner of the educational supply store, Luo Wenzhou's colleagues from the bureau, the security guard of Tao Ran's apartment complex, the waiter at the restaurant he frequented during his middle school years…

These people all remembered him in different ways. In their minds, sometimes he was an "annoyingly good student, very pretentious," sometimes a "cool and aloof heartthrob from the next class." He was the "annoying kid everyone admired," causing his classmates to get a beating from their parents, and the supermarket owner even nicknamed him "Little Rooster candy terminator." The waiter still remembered him too, saying he "never wanted scallions, so he always added extra cilantro; and his parents must have been very irresponsible."

Suddenly, Fei Du felt a strange sensation, as if his twenty years of loneliness and fragility had been stuffed into a kaleidoscope. Countless people came and went, their lives intersecting with his, each leaving behind a shadow. Now, those shadows had become postcards, mailed back to him in his twenty-third year. They fell upon him like goose feathers, each one seeming like an invitation to a reunion in this world.

His whole being swelled up, puffy as a down jacket.

There were too many photos; Fei Du couldn't finish looking at them. He slammed the album shut, strode out of the study, and wondered where Luo Wenzhou had found all these pictures and people. Did he have to conduct a door-to-door investigation, questioning everyone individually? How could he have possibly gathered so many people who still remembered him after all these years?

“Hurry up and eat your birthday noodles,” Luo Wenzhou said, setting the table with his back to Fei Du, seemingly oblivious to everything that just happened. “You asked for the eggs, so you have to finish it all—you hear me, brat? Look at them. That's some serious frying skills right there.”

Having said that, he snapped a photo, incredibly proud of himself, and posted it in a private group chat with his friends.

Both of their phones vibrated at the same time.

Tao Ran sent a picture of instant noodles with a message, A bowl of noodles for you. Chang Ning posted a shot of Chenchen making a heart shape with her hands and a text, A heart for you. Lang Qiao followed with a photo of a slice of cake and the caption, Some cake for you.

Then Tao Ran, whose emotional intelligence had recently improved through Fei Du's training, immediately retracted his message and posted Noodles for you again, joining the chain only after the ladies.

It was just Xiao Haiyang, slow to react and oblivious to the atmosphere, that took a long time to type, only to send a pseudo-human message: President Fei, the bright moon rises over the sea and we share this moment though far apart. Happy birthday.

Luo Wenzhou glanced at the crescent moon just peeking over the horizon and said, “Do those two lines go together, Four Eyes? Are we celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival early here? Alright then, you’re on duty when it actually comes.”

Xiao Haiyang went silent.

The group chat immediately erupted with laughter at the expense of that poor soul. Fei Du, adorned with countless threads of worldly life, hadn't even had a chance to speak before Luo Wenzhou had him pinned to the table, making him stare at the perfectly shaped fried egg in the soup bowl. The steam from the hot noodle soup made him break out in a sweat even in the height of summer, and the lingering chill deep in his bones quietly vanished.