Sun Hao had a dream.
He dreamed that he was on a boat, with huge winds and waves tossing it back and forth.
His body rose and fell constantly with the boat.
A massive wave crashed over them, and he struggled to grab the mast and stand up.
But even standing, he was still swayed back and forth by the wind and waves.
When the waters finally calmed, he discovered there was someone else unconscious on the boat.
He just couldn't make out that person's face.
He seemed to know who it was, and he shouted the name with all his strength.
But the other person never responded.
"Sir, sir..."
A voice sounded beside his ear. He opened his eyes and realized he was still in the bar.
His head throbbed violently.
The aftereffects of white wine were really intense.
After the pain eased a little, he took a deep breath and realized the bar was very quiet.
The deafening metal music had long since disappeared.
Fernandez had just been woken by the bartender too, and his reaction upon getting up was much the same as Sun Hao's.
Seriously, both of them had gotten drunk the first time they drank.
And when he looked again, he found that the bar was already empty. The basement windows were open, and white light streamed in from outside.
He looked at the clock on the wall and realized it was already past six in the morning.
They had actually slept in the bar all night!
Still, this underground bar was pretty decent. They hadn't thrown them outside.
If they had, they probably would have been picked up like corpses.
After sitting for a while, the two gradually recovered and began recalling what had happened the day before.
Sun Hao's last memory was of himself holding Angela's hand.
Right, Angela. Where was she?
He scanned the bar again and found that only he and Fernandez were indeed left.
It looked like Angela and her female companion had already left.
He couldn't help knocking his head.
Fernandez had been pretty reliable. Yesterday, they had officially experienced a chance encounter at the bar.
It was just that they... hadn't lived up to expectations!
They had been on the verge of charging into battle, and Sun Hao's father could have smiled proudly, remarking that the gift he had kept for two years had finally found its use.
But damn it, they had actually fallen asleep!
And they had slept straight through until dawn!
They could only blame themselves for focusing entirely on training normally. They barely ever drank.
Getting drunk like this the first time they drank was no one's fault but their own.
"Gentlemen, you need to pay the overnight fee."
Seeing that they were mostly sober, the bartender reminded them.
Sun Hao nodded.
There was no such thing as a free lunch. This overnight fee was perfectly reasonable.
Sun Hao reached for his wallet to pay.
But after feeling around his pocket, he couldn't find it.
He stood up and searched his entire body, but it wasn't there.
"I'll pay."
Seeing Sun Hao's movements, Fernandez assumed that Sun Hao wanted him to treat.
And he really should have treated. Sun Hao had paid for him when they went to watch the World Cup final.
But when he checked his own pocket, he couldn't find his wallet either.
He stood up as well.
The two of them looked like the women on stage the night before, their hands moving back and forth over their bodies.
Then they lowered their heads and searched around the booth.
After even flipping over the sofa and finding nothing, they sat down and exchanged a glance before confirming one thing.
Their wallets, passports, and everything else had all been stolen.
"Wait a moment."
Sun Hao motioned for the bartender to leave first.
Once the bartender had gone, Sun Hao sat beside Fernandez.
"Do you think the name Angela sounded real?"
Sun Hao asked.
Fernandez thought about it and shook his head.
Angela. Very few people in Italy had that name.
It was more common in English-speaking countries, and translated, it meant angel.
It sounded nice, but it wasn't much different from a John Doe back home!
And that story.
The Gulf War could barely even be called a war. It had been a one-sided massacre.
He couldn't remember the exact numbers, but he had some impression.
More than a hundred thousand Iraqis had died, while the coalition forces had only lost two or three hundred people!
And Italy had only been a member nation. They had probably sent only a few hundred people. Deploying a battalion would have been enough, so why would they need to recruit new soldiers?
Not to mention that he had happened to run into her by such a coincidence.
Seriously, the holes in the story were everywhere!
Fernandez looked at Sun Hao again, and the two quickly understood.
They had... fallen into a trap.
The city was full of schemes!
Sun Hao suddenly felt deeply embarrassed.
Fernandez was one thing. He was still a kid, after all. But counting his previous life, Sun Hao was already thirty, and he had still fallen for it.
All he could say was... they had been too obsessed with chance encounters.
And they really couldn't drink. Alcohol made a person's ability to think drop off a cliff!
Where in the world could there be so many coincidences?
Well, reality had taught them a lesson.
"Neither of us is allowed to tell anyone about this after we get back."
Sun Hao held out his hand, then extended his pinky.
It would be far too embarrassing if anyone found out!
Fernandez nodded firmly.
He had always thought he understood women well, yet his very first campaign had ended in crushing defeat. He felt embarrassed too.
They hooked pinkies, sealing the agreement.
Heaven knew, earth knew, they knew. No third person would ever know.
But...
What were they supposed to do now?
They couldn't pay the bar's overnight fee. Would they be kept behind to wash dishes like in the movies?
Or would they be sold off somewhere in this foreign country to serve other people?
After all, both of them were pretty good-looking!
They just didn't know whether those European women liked fresh young meat like them.
"Let's call the police."
After thinking for a while, Sun Hao spoke.
Money was a minor issue. If necessary, they could just call home.
The problem now was their passports.
Without passports, they couldn't even leave Italy.
Compared to anything else, calling the police was the best way to solve the problem.
Fernandez nodded as well.
The two walked to the bar counter and told the bartender that their wallets had been stolen.
To their surprise, after hearing that, the bartender immediately went upstairs to find the owner.
Seeing that reaction, Sun Hao and Fernandez exchanged a look, their eyes filled with suspicion.
"Do you think this bar is in on it?"
It was a perfectly normal question.
Fernandez looked around, nodded, and suddenly had the urge to run away.
If they were accomplices, were they going to lock them up next?
That wasn't impossible!
Sun Hao realized it too.
Fortunately, the owner came down shortly afterward.
And he wasn't holding the imagined club or gun or anything like that.
"I know a police officer. They can help you deal with this problem. As for the overnight fee, you can pay it after this is settled."
The owner spoke directly.
Hearing that, Sun Hao felt that they had been a little paranoid just now.
A bar existed to make money, and stolen wallets certainly weren't a rare occurrence.
If they didn't have connections, people who lost their wallets would just call the police, and this underground bar would have shut down long ago.
People said China was a society built on connections, but where wasn't it? Wherever there were people, there were connections.
Sun Hao and Fernandez agreed. They had no other choice anyway.
After waiting for a while, a police car pulled up outside Alfred's Winery.
A huge Italian police officer drove them straight to the police station.
The officer was quite talkative, chatting with them as he drove.
Sun Hao learned that his name was Lartigue. He usually liked boxing, his favorite food was chicken breast, and his favorite actress was Monica Bellucci...
"You like Monica?"
Sun Hao instantly found a kindred spirit.
Although Monica had yet to appear in Malèna, she was already a well-known Italian actress.
"You like her too?"
Lartigue became even more enthusiastic about chatting.
Unlike the sweet young idols that tough guys in Sun Hao's era liked to watch.
The tough guys of this era loved sexy goddesses like her.
And after talking for a while, the conversation naturally turned to what had happened to them.
Sun Hao and Fernandez had agreed not to tell anyone about it, but the police were an exception.
After all, they were counting on him to solve the case and recover their belongings as soon as possible.
"Don't worry. There are surveillance cameras outside Alfred's Winery. I've already taken the recording. When the time comes, you only need to identify the person, and the case will be solved quickly."
Lartigue looked rough and burly, but he was very thorough.
"But you two really got the short end of the stick. If you had managed to make it to a hotel, losing those things would at least have been worth it."
Lartigue turned his head and laughed as he spoke.
Sun Hao immediately understood what he meant.
Losing money and passports was one thing, but if they had managed to get a few rounds in, at least it would have been worth the price.
But he immediately rejected Lartigue's statement.
That would have been paying for sex!
Was he that kind of person?
Did he need to be?
Life moved slowly in Italy, and the police had plenty of free time.
Lartigue had chatted with them for so long in the car because he was genuinely bored.
And even more amusingly, because people knew how the police operated, many didn't report things like lost belongings at all.
So the police privately kept in contact with the owners of many wineries and farms.
The road was a little long, and once the topic turned to paying for sex, Lartigue even complained to them about it.
Italy's romantic charm ranked first in Europe.
If one were to talk about all the things that happened in medieval courts, one could easily write several thick books.
Prostitution had not only been permitted in this country in the past, it had also been very popular.
It wasn't just princes and nobles. Even emperors visited prostitutes.
There was even a disease that had accompanied the country for centuries, known as the "Italian disease."
It wasn't until 1958, under the efforts of the female politician Lina Marlin, that laws were introduced to ban it.
But the reality was that this law had not produced any positive effects. Instead, it had only made this kind of behavior more rampant.
In the past, it might have only happened in certain specific places. Now it had directly spread to apartments, hotels, and even cars.
It was no exaggeration to say that there were at least seventy or eighty thousand people working in this trade in Italy.
With so many people, there was no way they could arrest them all.
The Italian government had chosen to play ostrich here, burying its head in the sand and pretending not to see.
The police below handled it the same way, turning a blind eye.
That was why Lartigue discussing this topic with them seemed perfectly normal.
And the looser and more indulgent things became, the more famous this industry in Italy grew. Many workers came from abroad, while the proportion of locals kept shrinking.
"You're lucky. You met a genuine Italian woman."
When Lartigue said that, Sun Hao and Fernandez both looked at him at the same time.
So you were the regular customer!
Lartigue coughed dryly for a while. It seemed he had let something slip.
They chatted along the way, and by the time they reached the police station, Lartigue sat down and began taking their statements.
Sure enough, what looked like casual chatting had let him figure out the whole story during the ride.
Lartigue was genuinely thorough.
Sun Hao and Fernandez sat there waiting for Lartigue to type, growing a little bored.
Their phones had been stolen too, so they could not even play Snake.
"Damn it! Let me go!"
Just as they were bored out of their minds, a string of curses came from the entrance.
"Behave yourself."
That was followed by a sharp rebuke.
Sun Hao turned toward the sound.
Someone was being escorted in by the police and was resisting.
"Wait here for me."
Seeing the situation, Lartigue got up and went over to help.
But Sun Hao froze at that moment.
Because he saw the person who had been arrested.
A straight nose, handsome features, a temperament sixty or seventy percent similar to Prigioni's, and... huh, why did he have a crew cut?
The moment Lartigue appeared, the arrested man immediately quieted down.
Only then did Sun Hao notice that there was also an arrested woman behind him. Judging by her looks, she was Southeast Asian.
"Manu?"
As they passed by him, Sun Hao could not help speaking up.
The arrested man instinctively turned his head at the sound.
But he quickly turned away again.
That movement immediately amused Sun Hao.
He even felt that he could completely stop caring about losing his passport.
Because the man in front of him was freaking Ginobili!
He knew Ginobili played basketball in Italy.
Last season, because the European Super League had been canceled, there had been no games between European countries, so he had not had a chance to run into Ginobili.
Who would have thought that he would come out on a trip and run into him, and at a police station no less!
Ginobili was taken straight into the interrogation room.
Sun Hao's eyes were full of curiosity.
He did not seem to have heard about Ginobili getting into this sort of trouble when he was in Europe.
But Sun Hao had been in America at the time, and information was relatively limited in this era, so it was normal that he had not heard about it.
Still, his curiosity had been completely piqued.
"You know him?"
Fernandez had never met Ginobili and found Sun Hao's reaction strange.
He had never heard Sun Hao mention knowing anyone in Italy before either.
"No. Maybe I mistook him for someone else."
Sun Hao waved his hand.
He was not certain that man was definitely Ginobili.
And even if he was, it was best if Fernandez did not remember him.
The fewer people who knew about this sort of thing, the better.
More than half an hour passed before the police finally came back.
"I told you two that you were lucky."
Lartigue sighed the moment he returned.
"What happened?"
Sun Hao knew he had to be talking about Ginobili.
"That guy hired a Filipino woman. They agreed on a price, but she suddenly wanted more money, so they started arguing. The woman called the police directly."
"What a mess. He did not get what he wanted, and now he still had to suffer for it."
The moment Sun Hao heard what the police officer said, he burst out laughing.
Ginobili was into that too?
Bah, what did he mean, too?
"But that guy is a celebrity in Zoccalabrì. He should not have much trouble settling something like this."
Lartigue was truly a chatterbox. Once there was a topic, his mouth never stopped.
Before long, Lartigue finished typing the statements and had them sign.
After that, he brought the two of them to the Video Room to watch the surveillance footage.
Although surveillance cameras in the 1990s were not as advanced as those from Sun Hao's era, they were already quite developed.
Even at night, they could more or less make out people's faces.
After watching for a while, they quickly found Angela and the person who had entered and left the bar with her.
The awkward part was that the two seemed to know there were cameras here. They wore hats and kept their heads lowered whenever they entered or left!
They were definitely habitual offenders!
After leaving the Video Room, even a tough guy like Lartigue could not help scratching his head.
They could not see their faces clearly, and they did not know their names. What he had thought would be a simple case now looked like it would drag on for a long time.
"This case will probably take a month or so."
He did not hide it from them.
Sun Hao felt he was still putting it optimistically.
In any case, it would take a long time.
As tourists, it was obviously unrealistic for Sun Hao and Fernandez to stay here waiting for the results.
Even renewing their visas would take half a month.
The fastest solution was to go to the Chinese embassy in Rome and apply for a travel document.
Under normal circumstances, it could be done in four working days. If the police station submitted an expedited request, it could be done in as little as two days.
Sun Hao suddenly felt a little grateful to Lartigue.
Could it be because Lartigue had been found out as an old customer and was afraid Sun Hao would tell people?
Just as he was thinking that, Ginobili came out.
Compared with the bedraggled state he had been in when he was first escorted inside, he looked much more relaxed now.
It seemed the matter had been resolved.
But when his eyes met Sun Hao's, his gaze clearly darted away.
He probably had not expected that in Sicily, at a police station, he would run into someone who knew him.
Sun Hao still could not help laughing.
This really was huge news.
Once they had finished handling everything and received the application materials from the police, they left.
They still had to go to the embassy themselves to apply for the travel documents.
Fernandez went to use the restroom, while Sun Hao waited for him outside.
"I'm not Manu. You got the wrong person."
But to his surprise, the moment he stepped out of the police station, a voice called out.
Sun Hao turned and looked. Was that not Ginobili?
He had actually been waiting for him outside!
Holding back his laughter, Sun Hao nodded to show that he understood.
Really, adults had needs. This sort of thing was normal.
Come to think of it, Ginobili was already 22 years old. Was it strange for him to have some needs?
"No, I'm not."
Ginobili repeated it to Sun Hao several times.
After saying it, he seemed to realize something was not quite right.
But in the end, he had no choice but to turn around and leave.
Watching his rapidly retreating back, Sun Hao nearly laughed himself breathless.
They said sleeping around damaged the kidneys, and kidney damage could lead to hair loss.
So... was this the real reason Ginobili went bald?
A while later, Fernandez came out.
Sun Hao suddenly remembered their earlier agreement and pulled Fernandez into his arms.
"Rudy, remember, we never entered a police station. We're in Venice right now, taking a boat around the canals."
But after saying that, Ginobili's words uncontrollably surfaced in his mind.
Why did it feel like he was not much better than Ginobili?
Because of the travel documents, Sun Hao and Fernandez stayed in Italy for two more days.
They took the chance to visit Venice, the "City of Water," which they had not yet seen.
The Doge's Palace, the Bridge of Sighs, St. Mark's Basilica, and a city with no cars, only boats—the "Pearl of the Adriatic" truly lived up to its name.
"Venice's tears~ are as fragile as glass~ when it comes to love, some understand how to turn away, while others are too absolute~"
Sun Hao did not forget to hum a familiar song while riding the boat.
This had been one of the most classic songs from his student days. The campus radio played it on repeat every day after school, and it was what had filled him with curiosity about Venice.
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