At Secretary Jian's reply, Zhong Liguang, Vice Mayor of Capital City, felt his head reel. What followed was such bitter regret that he wanted to slap himself twice.
Without that call, it would only have been seven days of administrative detention.
After the call, the detention period had become fifteen days!
Why on earth had he gone and made that damned call?
Jian Wanyan had gone straight into doubling mode. And from the look of things, if Zhong Liguang failed to take the hint and kept pleading, that double might turn into a super-double...
"Secretary Jian, well, your son-in-law said seven days!" Zhong Liguang reminded him cautiously, his voice filled with bitterness and helplessness.
"Did he? That's all right. I believe he'll take my advice on this matter," Jian Wanyan said calmly.
Some people simply refused to give up until they hit a dead end.
It wasn't that he hadn't given the Xue family a chance. If they had shown enough remorse and sincerity right from the start and apologized to his daughter, he certainly still wouldn't have let the boy go...
"Secretary Jian, could we perhaps keep it at seven days? Once that little bastard gets out, I'll make sure he bows to your daughter and apologizes." Zhong Liguang was practically groveling.
At first, he had thought seven days of detention was unacceptable. But now that it had risen to fifteen days, he felt he would be lucky just to keep it at seven!
Zhong Liguang's thinking was a classic example of the roof-removal effect: if someone wanted to put a skylight in a house, he would object. But if they proposed tearing off the whole roof instead, he would suddenly think a skylight was a much better idea.
"Discuss it with Zhou Yi!" Jian Wanyan handed the decision