Chapter 45

Qiao Huan... saw me?

Was he simply stopping me from stealing the phone? Or... no, Qiao Huan's eyes looked like they were saying, "You're no good at this."

Could he know everything?

The questions that sprang up one after another in Zhuo Yang's mind made a trace of wariness flash through his eyes as he looked at Qiao Huan, but he quickly turned that doubt into scrutiny.

He chose to trust Qiao Huan, and his own instincts.

Qiao Huan raised an eyebrow, his expression growing even subtler when Zhuo Yang withdrew his hand.

This time, he said nothing else. Instead, when Zhuo Yang looked at him, he called softly again, "Brother Zhuo."

"Come with me."

Zhuo Yang knew that, whatever the reason the other man had interrupted him, he couldn't continue what he had come to do today.

He followed Qiao Huan, easily avoiding the cameras scattered throughout the house.

Once they were standing in the garden, Qiao Huan was just about to speak when he glanced at something atop the garden wall. He lifted his chin, signaling Zhuo Yang to follow him somewhere else.

Something's not right...

The doubt in Zhuo Yang's heart deepened.

Qiao Huan had just been looking at a hidden camera facing the living room, one that hadn't been mentioned in the script. It was also disguised with leaves, flowers, and dirt.

Apparently, the camera had only recently been placed there, after relations between Fan Hui and her son had improved, to capture some footage of the family reconciling.

The camera was well disguised; Zhuo Yang didn't question the crew's professionalism in the slightest.

And yet Qiao Huan had spotted this newly placed camera so effortlessly.

Such powerful counter-surveillance skills...

Could that also be a required course for debuting? To guard against paparazzi in the future?

Repairing the roof before it rains. Yeah, that must be it.

Night descended.

Qiao Huan and Zhuo Yang were now standing in a blind spot out of the cameras' view.

Zhuo Yang instinctively began avoiding the other man's eyes. A rare look of hesitation flickered across his face.

Looking at Qiao Huan, whose eyes were still clear and bright, Zhuo Yang truly didn't know how to begin.

He had carried out so many missions and had never felt guilty or regretful in the middle of one. Only this time, when he'd been caught red-handed right under Qiao Huan's nose, couldn't Zhuo Yang stand tall and speak.

On official grounds, this matter wasn't his to handle; on a personal level, he understood perfectly well that he had nearly violated someone else's privacy on a momentary impulse.

"What did you want to talk about?" Zhuo Yang's usually deep, powerful voice now sounded weak.

He wasn't good at lying, especially to someone he rather admired.

The gaze that seemed to have already seen through him made him feel as if thorns were pricking his back, leaving him thoroughly uncomfortable.

Qiao Huan watched Zhuo Yang's face perform the seventy-two transformations like a Sichuan opera face-changing act: one moment his brows were knotted in anguish, and the next he was so regretful and dejected he looked ready to dig a hole and bury himself in it. Qiao Huan couldn't help letting out a quiet laugh.

"Brother Zhuo, actually, I..."

"Whoa!" Constantine, who seemed to be looking for the two of them, came charging around the corner, only to trip over a rock.

"Careful." Qiao Huan's hand instinctively landed on Constantine's shoulder, and his expression froze for an instant.

"This brother and I have something to discuss. Can you wait for me a little while?" Qiao Huan crouched down, as if talking to someone his own age.

Constantine blinked. He didn't seem to want to leave, but in the end he obediently went back.

As soon as Constantine had rounded the corner, Qiao Huan put on the calm expression Zhuo Yang knew so well, as if nothing could stir a ripple. His eyes, even deeper in the night, fixed on Zhuo Yang.

Zhuo Yang knew Qiao Huan had extremely quick reflexes, but what concerned him more now was the hand Qiao Huan had instinctively placed over the center of the boy's back as he stepped forward to meet him and soften the impact.

The movement was all too familiar to Zhuo Yang, who had repeated it countless times on the battlefield.

In his experience, it was the best position for protecting the vital organs of someone shorter than himself from splash damage. And even he couldn't find a flaw in Qiao Huan's execution.

"Could it be?" A spark of inspiration flashed through his mind.

Before, Zhuo Yang had thought that although he wouldn't dare claim to have seen completely through Qiao Huan, their time together these past few days had given him some understanding of the young man before him. But now, Zhuo Yang realized he had been utterly mistaken.

As Qiao Huan raised his eyelids slightly and looked at him, seemingly waiting for him to speak, Zhuo Yang belatedly read a great deal in his body language that he had never noticed before!

Although Qiao Huan was always leaning lazily against a wall, whenever he rested his hands across his chest, one was always higher than the other, leaving both arms free to move to either side.

Even his back wasn't pressed flat against the wall but curved slightly, his supple waist muscles ensuring that he could strike back powerfully at any attack from either side or the front at any time.

This kind of body language was an extraordinarily deceptive technique that idols who spent every day in their comfort zones preparing to debut could never master.

But if he wasn't a trainee, who could he be?

Zhuo Yang was startled by the thought that surfaced in his mind. Yet when he looked again at the utterly unruffled Qiao Huan beside him, he felt that it actually made some sense.

"Could you be... a bodyguard for young children?!" Zhuo Yang's brow twitched, shock bursting in his eyes.

Qiao Huan: ...

I'm speechless. What on earth is this old six thinking?!

Still, since Zhuo Yang could pick up on so many details, Qiao Huan once again confirmed the other man's identity in his mind.

"I'm here to investigate a sex-for-money case. You've probably heard that a trainee at Star Radiance Company attempted suicide some time ago." Qiao Huan answered the question in Zhuo Yang's eyes before he could ask it. His credentials arrived on his wristwatch at just the right moment, breaking the somewhat tense atmosphere.

He wasn't afraid of his identity being leaked to people who shouldn't know it. He had always chosen to trust the information his dad sent him implicitly.

And with Zhuo Yang, honesty was the only way to get him to lower his guard and continue cooperating.

Zhuo Yang: !!!

A-Huan is even more amazing than I thought!!!

A-Huan leaping across the canyon, laying plans to take down two groups of other contestants, choreographing the Yingge Dance performance, saving the children at the welfare home in the rain... all those details replayed before Zhuo Yang one by one.

I should have realized it sooner! Only someone from the authorities could have that bearing and ability!

Seeing Zhuo Yang's mouth hanging open in an O and his eyes as wide as bronze bells, Qiao Huan snapped his fingers.

"Stunned silly?"

Only then did Zhuo Yang come back to his senses.

Luckily, A-Huan doesn't know I once wanted to recruit him as an informant. That would be so embarrassing!

After that, just as Qiao Huan had expected, Zhuo Yang laid out his thoughts without holding anything back—

"I... sigh, I came here for my old captain. His only daughter died at the company for no apparent reason. Father and daughter didn't even get to see each other one last time before her body was sent off for cremation."

"The old captain was devastated. His hair turned white overnight. Luckily, the other children are filial, so he didn't go to extremes."

Zhuo Yang let out a long sigh.

Qiao Huan's breath caught when he heard this. He hadn't expected the waters at this entertainment company to run so deep.

First, it had coerced and tricked its artists into attending drinking parties for certain transactions. Then there were unexplained transactions on its books totaling more than a million. And now, another life was involved...

Thinking of it all, even though Qiao Huan had prepared himself to expose this quagmire to the light of day, his heart grew heavier still.

"...I put effort into investigating a lot of things, and even pulled some strings to get an autopsy report signed by a forensic pathologist. But no matter which angle I investigated from, there wasn't the slightest problem with the report," Zhuo Yang continued.

"By the time I heard about it, the old captain's daughter was already dead, and her body had long since been cremated. It's too late to start with the body now."

He wasn't very good at hiding his emotions.

Although he wasn't afraid of the loneliness that came with keeping secrets, it didn't feel good to hide something from someone he regarded as a brother.

When Zhuo Yang finished, Qiao Huan also fell into thought.

Qiao Tang had just sent over all the information he had gathered, and it was indeed more or less consistent with what Zhuo Yang had said.

But if that young woman had really died suddenly from overwork, the company could have paid whatever compensation it owed and offered whatever comfort was needed. Although the matter would indeed have affected the company's image, it wouldn't have been entirely beyond repair.

After all, everyone knew that urban white-collar jobs weren't easy these days. If they had handled it well, they might even have helped the company weather a public relations crisis. Their rush to dispose of the body looked more like an attempt to cover something up that only made it more conspicuous...

Qiao Huan could feel himself drawing ever closer to the surging undercurrent, like a fish unable to escape the pull of a whirlpool. Although things were growing more dangerous, the closer he got to the turbulent waters, the closer he was to the truth.

Qiao Huan finally left his precious wall and stretched lazily.

Looks like... retiring as soon as I graduate really won't be easy.

"What about you? Why did you come here undercover?" Having spoken his mind and completely relaxed, Zhuo Yang asked curiously.

"To graduate, of course." Qiao Huan shrugged, clearly rather resigned.

"Mainly because, at our branch, I'm the one who looks most like he could be a trainee."

Zhuo Yang nodded in complete agreement. If Qiao Huan weren't so exceptionally good-looking, he wouldn't have believed that Qiao Huan was set on debuting...

"Right!" Zhuo Yang suddenly remembered something else.

"Is that kid Ye Yiwei one of your targets? You approached him because he's close to Tao Zhenting, didn't you?"

In the company dorm.

"You're fucking undercover too?!" Two startled cries were trapped behind the door.

Zhuo Yang and Ye Yiwei stared at each other in disbelief, each holding the other's electronic credentials, which they had verified through their own superiors.

Qiao Huan looked at their eyes, which were practically spitting fire, and brought out some popcorn.

Happiness. Happiness was tonight's buffing.

The calm, unruffled mask on Ye Yiwei's face nearly cracked at that moment.

Ever since entering the field, no one had escaped his exceptional powers of observation, yet this man who looked like he belonged in action-hero roles had gone undercover right under his nose without his noticing!

Ye Yiwei turned his head to rearrange his expression and thought, He must be a serious actor.

The shock on Zhuo Yang's face likewise hadn't had time to fade.

To Zhuo Yang, Ye Yiwei's undercover identity was very, especially, super hard to believe.

Zhuo Yang looked at Qiao Huan. "You're kidding me, right? How could he possibly be one?!"

Qiao Huan stuffed his mouth full of popcorn and leaned against the bed rail. "Try him yourself."

"How?" the two asked in unison for the first and only time.

Three minutes later.

The first Martial Arts Tournament between Ye Yiwei and Zhuo Yang officially began.

One minute later.

The Martial Arts Tournament came to a close.

Having finally exchanged blows to verify their identities, the two tilted their heads back and sighed. "He fucking really is."

Qiao Huan watched the two panting men and smiled discreetly.

People said the best way for men to strengthen a friendship was to have a fight.

Especially one this exciting, where they stopped before causing real harm.

Then all three of them realized something even more absurd—

It was already absurd enough for undercover agents from two different forces to infiltrate one company, but unexpectedly, a third hand had reached in as well.

Dorm 404 was terrifying indeed: out of four people, three were undercover agents.

Did odds like that really exist?

After a long moment, Qiao Huan looked at the empty bed with a hint of pity in his eyes.

"I just hope what we're doing now won't drag him into it."

Zhuo Yang slowly turned to follow Qiao Huan's gaze. "Xiao Bai clearly isn't as physically fit as the rest of us, but he's never held us back."

A solemn look finally appeared on Ye Yiwei's usually distant face. "He's always quiet, but from City Escape and the recordings afterward, you can tell he must really need to prove himself."

"Even if this company collapses someday, we have to secure a better path for him," Zhuo Yang said solemnly. "There happens to be a new show being recorded, so whatever it takes, we have to help him."

A blazing fighting spirit ignited in the hearts of all three.

They had to make him into a clean-cut, high-quality idol, completely different from all those other boy groups!

If there was anything better than fighting for bringing people closer, it was fighting side by side!

Achoo!

Bai Jike had just received a message from his contact and hadn't even opened the email when he let out a mighty sneeze.

Bai Jike looked utterly confused. Did I catch a chill when I snuck out to run data last night?

Back in the dorm, the three accepted the facts and finally calmed down.

"Drinking parties... logistics coordinator... enormous income..." While Bai Jike was still out, Qiao Huan and the others wrote the clues they had gathered so far and the names of the key figures on an erasable blackboard.

As he stared at the names of those who had no apparent social connections so far, Qiao Huan kept going over the keywords from the cases aloud, his brows drawing tighter and tighter.

"Brother Zhuo, I have a vague feeling that what happened to the victim of those drinking parties... may be closely connected to what you're investigating," Qiao Huan said.

"They got into trouble around the same time... could there have been some connection between the two of them? Some overlap?!" Zhuo Yang hurriedly asked.

"We can't rule that out. But Luo Mi always lived in the dorm arranged by the company, while the old captain's daughter rented a place outside. If the two of them knew each other, it was most likely through work."

"That still covers far too much."

"If only we could pull up the company's internal surveillance footage." Zhuo Yang rubbed the space between his brows, but felt a headache coming on. Sending him up mountains and across rivers was no problem, but asking him to figure out surveillance systems and computers was far too much.

Hearing this, Qiao Huan instinctively looked toward Bai Jike's bed, but quickly withdrew his gaze. He hadn't told the other two about Bai Jike's abilities. Enough people had already been dragged into this; he'd better think of another way himself.

Zhuo Yang pulled up a photo on his computer. "I got a copy of Yuan Yuan's file."

"She didn't just work at Star Radiance Company. Before joining it, she was also in charge of production coordination at Fan Hui's company..."

"Her again..." Ye Yiwei stared at the familiar name on the screen.

"We should find a chance to ask Fan Hui tomorrow." Qiao Huan's tone was unusually serious.

He looked at the photo on the screen, where the young woman was smiling brightly, and pressed his lips into a line.

Their lives should never have been like this.

Perhaps because Zhuo Yang and Qiao Huan had made Fan Hui realize that she needed to face her relationship with her child, she didn't hesitate much when she heard they had a request and readily agreed.

As a result, the questioning the next day went even more smoothly than they had imagined.

"Do you mean Yuan Yuan? I do remember that girl a little. She joined my company right after graduation, and she always had the most clever ideas at our team-building events."

"That key... I did overstep somewhat back then. I had a subordinate help me order that safe, but she had nothing to do with what happened with Constantine."

As Fan Hui spoke, she smiled at a group photo displayed on the cabinet. She looked younger and more full of life in it.

"That young woman was cheerful, and her coworkers all thought well of her. But later she chose to change jobs, and we didn't really keep in touch."

"I never thought... that the next time I heard her name, she would already be gone."

The Fan Hui sitting before them now was gentle and composed, seemingly a completely different person from the woman who had gone mad in front of them that day.

As she looked out the window, she too seemed to be recalling those days of striving for what she believed in.

Back then, their company hadn't been big, but it had been wonderful enough.

"Then... do you know why he chose the other company when he changed jobs?"

Fan Hui shook her head, looking rather troubled. The matter did not seem to have left much of an impression on her.

"She was good at her job, dependable, and hardworking. My company was on the rise at the time, as everyone could see. When she wanted to leave, HR also suggested some measures to give her a raise."

"But that girl was especially determined. She wouldn't listen to anyone who tried to persuade her. In the end, she didn't even collect her last month's wages and hurriedly quit before the middle of the month. As for the reason... she never told me directly."

"Thank you for sharing this information with us. Sorry to trouble you again, but could you give us the contact information for some of his coworkers at the time?"

Qiao Huan knew that was all the information they could dig up from Fan Hui. After all, expecting a company boss to remember the details of every employee was a tale out of the Arabian Nights.

"No problem. This is our company's original contact list, though quite a few people in it have changed careers. Her department head's surname was Zhang. This is the one..."

"She was doing well at this company, so why would she suddenly switch jobs?" Zhuo Yang's eyes were full of confusion. Even though they had known each other for years, he still couldn't work out the logic behind Yuan Yuan's actions.

Though the old captain's income wasn't much, it was more than enough to support him, and her job with Fan Hui was also enough to cover her living expenses.

By contrast, not only was the pay at Star Radiance lower than it was here, but the competition was also far fiercer. Why had this girl decisively chosen to join another company just as her career was on the rise...

"I asked my informant to investigate whether she might have been coerced before changing jobs. But after ruling out everyone in her social circle one by one... we found that she didn't have a single acquaintance at either Star Radiance or Fan Hui's company."

"She wasn't the kind of girl who'd let herself be mistreated." Zhuo Yang smiled and shook his head. "Her... the old captain would have to burn incense in thanks if she didn't go around bullying other people."

A trace of nostalgia passed through Zhuo Yang's eyes, but a greater bitterness surged up and covered everything.

"Other than money and work, what could make a girl who was clearheaded and rational enough so resolutely abandon the foundation she'd built... Could it have been because she fell for someone here?"

Perhaps the question weighed too heavily on Qiao Huan, for Qiao Huan actually voiced the thought that had been kept inside.

By then, the two had finished their day's work and arrived outside the Star Radiance Company building. They looked up at the enormous, shining sign overhead, yet could not imagine how many people's lives and dignity had been used to build the splendor behind it.

Suddenly, a weight settled on Qiao Huan's shoulder.

"Help me... find that person." Zhuo Yang's eyes were bloodshot.

"I will."

Ye Yiwei answered earnestly in Qiao Huan's place.