The Early Spring - Chapter 60

Chapter 60 - I'll Blind Your Dog Eyes! 

By Monday, Shang Zhitao's face had not yet fully de-swollen, and the corner of her mouth was still split. Downstairs, she ran into Lumi, who was unusually early. Lumi pinched Shang Zhitao's cheek and asked, "Who the fuck hit you?"

Shang Zhitao let out a hiss and broke free from her grasp. "Got into a brawl with an agency."

"A shady agency?" Lumi pulled off her cap. "I'm telling you! Which one? Say it! If I don't smash their shop to pieces, you can call me a nobody!" Lumi was instantly set off.

"Don't, don't, it's not that serious. We didn't get the worst of it either." Shang Zhitao hadn't expected Lumi to react this way, and she instantly regretted blurting out the truth.

"You didn't get the worst of it and you're beaten up like this?!" Lumi was furious. She ranted all the way from the elevator lobby to their workstations. Shang Zhitao panicked and clapped a hand over her mouth. "Ancestor, ancestor! Teacher, teacher! Please calm down!"

Shang Zhitao hadn't gotten a headache from the fight, but trying to calm Lumi down was giving her one. Even as she tried to placate her, Lumi couldn't keep a lid on it anymore. She called her motorcycle-riding, dreadlocked, tattooed muscle boyfriend: "Listen to me, one of my girls got hit, and you need to get to the bottom of this for me. Who hit her? That damn shady agency over on the North Fifth Ring Road, go ask right now! Bullying people right up to the grandmother's doorstep—if grandmother doesn't dig their graves, she hasn't lived!"

Hearing that Lumi was going to pick a fight, Shang Zhitao was so scared her legs went weak. She whispered to Lumi, "It's all in the past now, we didn't lose out, we called the police, the police closed their doors, took us for a checkup, and we got our money back... Didn't we win?"

"What do you mean, it's in the past? You don't know these shady agencies; they're rotten to the core! You think moving away settles it? They'll turn around and secretly jam your keyholes with glue! Even the police uncle can't do much about their petty little tricks, you know? Can you just let them off without utterly crushing them once and for all?"

"Oh. When we reported it and opened a case, the police uncle said if anything happens, we should just look for them."

"The police uncle is the police uncle, and grandmother is grandmother!"

Shang Zhitao secretly asked Yao Bei if things were really as Lumi described, and Yao Bei said yes. You think getting into a single fight is the end of it? The trouble afterwards is endless!

"Then should we move further away?"

"Move where? Unless the few of you completely stop living together."

"Oh."

Shang Zhitao now had something heavy on her mind.

When she went to the pantry to fetch some water, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror—she looked genuinely battered, and it still hurt a bit. As she rubbed her face and stepped out of the pantry, she ran into Luan Nian, who had just finished a management meeting. His brow furrowed, his gaze landing on the corner of her mouth and her swollen cheek as he asked her, "Did you get beaten up?"

It was easy to see he was extremely displeased.

Colleagues were walking past, and since Lumi had been shouting all morning, everyone already knew about Shang Zhitao's run-in with the shady agency. Now that Luan Nian asked, their interest was piqued anew, and they slowed their pace to wait for Shang Zhitao's answer, wanting to see how the boss would handle an employee being bullied.

"I took a fall."

Shang Zhitao didn't want Luan Nian to know she had gotten into a fight with the agency; for some reason, she felt she could never bring herself to tell him about it.

Yet starting tomorrow, she wouldn't even have a place to live. They had spent two days looking for apartments without finding anything suitable. In the end, they decided Sun Yu would sleep at the company and Sun Yuanxu would crash at a classmate's place, while Shang Zhitao claimed she was going on a business trip and could put her luggage in storage somewhere until she got back.

She figured if worse came to worst, she'd stay in a hotel for a bit; an apartment could always be found sooner or later.

Luan Nian didn't press further. He swept another glance across her face and turned away, only to text her once he got back to his office: "What's going on?"

"I really just took a fall."

"Why don't you take another fall right now and show me how you manage to fall directly on the corner of your mouth. How are you so talented? Do you fall face-first every time?"

Shang Zhitao stubbornly refused to talk. Life was already messy and fragmented enough; she didn't want to explain herself all over again. Luan Nian had simply happened to overhear colleagues discussing Shang Zhitao's encounter with the shady agency when he passed by the pantry that afternoon.

The company pantry was truly a magical place. Sometimes, when Luan Nian deliberately went there to get water, he would always catch a bit of gossip. It wasn't that he liked eavesdropping, but managing a company required finding ways to overhear the occasional truth, and the pantry was the ideal spot.

Many stories fermented right there in the pantry before spreading outward.

He had pretended to go for water and overheard everyone talking about Shang Zhitao and the shady agency. Since complaining about colleagues and company matters didn't require avoiding the boss, they had just greeted Luan Nian and kept right on talking.

When Luan Nian heard that the shady agency had surrounded Shang Zhitao and beat her up, he turned right around and left.

He was furious enough to explode.

Did Shang Zhitao have no brain at all? If she had no brain, didn't her roommates either? A few of them went alone to confront a shady agency—did they fucking think they were Zhao Zilong charging in and out of enemy lines to show off? Fuck!

"Get your ass over here!"

"?" Shang Zhitao sent back a question mark. He had never summoned her alone to his office like this, and judging by the harsh tone, could it be that the efficiency-boosting project's test model had failed its review?

Suspicious, Shang Zhitao stood at his office door and knocked, hearing his impatient voice snap, "Come in!"

Shang Zhitao walked in and heard him add: "Shut the door!"

"Oh."

After closing the door, she stood by the entrance and saw that Luan Nian's expression looked as unpleasant as if he had swallowed shit.

"What's the name of that agency?" Luan Nian asked her directly.

"Huh?"

"Huh what huh? What's its name?"

"It's all resolved." Shang Zhitao was a bit baffled as to how Luan Nian found out, not knowing he had the habit of listening to gossip in the pantry.

"What's the name?" Luan Nian asked again.

Shang Zhitao still refused to speak; she didn't want to blow things out of proportion. Luan Nian stared at her for a long time before saying, "It's the one on the left side of your residential complex, right?"

...

Shang Zhitao didn't need to answer. It was written all over her face, and Luan Nian read it instantly.

"Get out." Luan Nian couldn't be bothered to talk to her anymore. The moment she stepped out, he called a friend of his: "I passed by a place yesterday and noticed their fire safety was terrible. I think there are potential hazards that need to be checked out."

"Address? I don't have the exact address, I'll take you there myself."

"Who should I list as the whistleblower? Put me down."

Luan Nian put on his overcoat, went out, and met up with his friend in the fire department. That friend said, "Hang on a second, this crosses districts. I've contacted the local guys. How'd you suddenly think of reporting them?"

"They're storefronts at the base of a residential complex, and I'm worried about fire hazards. When I passed by yesterday, I saw them playing cards, smoking, and cooking inside, and God knows where they got those gas cylinders." Luan Nian remembered that agency; not a single person inside looked like a decent human being. He had caught a glimpse of it when he first dropped Shang Zhitao off at home.

His friend glanced at him, likely figuring out what was going on, and let out a couple of chuckles. "Well, since someone reported it, we have to handle it. But code violations like fire hazards usually just mean a shutdown for a month or two for rectification."

"That's enough."

Would a shady agency's account books withstand an audit? Shut them down first, then report them to the tax bureau. He would solve it step by step; Luan Nian had plenty of patience. He was genuinely locking horns with them now. Sitting inside a car waiting, they didn't end up waiting for anyone else, but instead spotted Lumi wearing a mink fur coat, carrying a stick, and followed by a few people.

"Is this the place?" Luan Nian heard Lumi ask the dreadlocked guy beside her.

"Yeah. I checked."

"Knock on the door." Lumi, who grew up in the hutongs, had put on a great act back at the office, but now all that underworld swagger was out in full force.

Seeing her like that, Luan Nian couldn't help but be amused, hearing his friend beside him remark, "Whose toes did this shady company step on? You're here to report them, and that group down there is about to smash the shop."

Luan Nian didn't answer her, dialing Shang Zhitao's number instead: "Call your brainless mentor back right now! If she doesn't go back, you'll be visiting her down at the precinct tomorrow!"

Hearing this, Shang Zhitao was terrified out of her wits. Lumi had suddenly changed clothes that afternoon and said she was going out to handle something—was this what she meant? She called Lumi: "Can you accompany me to the police station?"

"What are we going to the police station for?"

"The police uncle wants me to go give a statement."

"Alright then."

Luan Nian watched as Lumi told the guy next to her, "I'm heading to the police station. Nobody's here today; we'll deal with these punks when someone shows up."

What kind of friends did Shang Zhitao make? Luan Nian cursed them as idiots in his heart, watched them leave, and then the fire inspectors arrived alongside the police, who also called the manager over: "Open the door."

When the fire safety inspection began, Luan Nian tried to follow them inside, but his friend stopped him. "Is that a good idea? What if you get retaliated against?"

Luan Nian said nothing and followed them in anyway.

Taking a brief moment away, the agency manager approached Luan Nian, offered him a cigarette, and smiled ingratiatingly. "Wanna step outside and chat for a bit?"

Luan Nian took the cigarette, followed him out, and watched as the manager scratched two claw marks on the back of his hand. "What happened to your hand?"

"Ah, some tenants came making a fuss a couple of days ago, and a scuffle broke out."

"What tenants?"

"Two guys, two girls. Two of our fellows didn't know any better and ended up hitting one of the girls in the face. The police have been lecturing us about it for the last two days—I mean, no matter how much tenants kick up a fuss, we're supposed to just swallow it, right? We're not even a shady agency, why'd they have to hit someone?" The manager started complaining pitifully. "To be fair, today's tenants have zero civility either. They couldn't stand waiting a bit longer to pay their electricity bill and came ready to smash the shop. What kind of people are these!"

He sighed again. "Actually, it's not easy for us being stuck between tenants and landlords, taking flak from both sides. We know our shop's fire safety doesn't meet code, but that's a corporate issue. If this branch closes, we'll all be left eating dirt. Won't you show some kindness and withdraw the report? Anything else we can easily fix."

"We're all out here hustling in the streets, how about we make friends?"

Luan Nian said nothing, smoking that cigarette in silence. Once it was finished, he took a couple of steps to toss the butt into a trash can, walked back over to the manager, and delivered a sudden, sharp punch straight to his face—precise, steady, and ruthless. The manager was completely dazed, pointing at him and yelling, "Why are you hitting people?"

Luan Nian didn't say a word. He grabbed the man by the collar with one hand, pulled back his other fist, and struck him squarely on the left cheek. Veins bulged on his neck; the veneer of refined scum he usually wore was completely torn away, revealing raw aggression and violence. Several people quickly swarmed over to pull them apart and break up the fight. Two guys grabbed Luan Nian's coat, so he turned around, shrugged the coat off completely, and delivered a flying kick straight into someone's chest.

He locked onto a single target and went exclusively for the guy's left cheek. Even when others hit him back, he didn't care—he just kept pounding that left cheek, as if the left side of those people's faces had deeply offended him. After fighting ruthlessly in silence for over three minutes, the people inside finally noticed, running out while shouting, "What are you doing! What are you doing!"

Luan Nian landed one more punch on the manager before stopping. He pointed at the manager and shouted, "He threatened me, said if I reported them again he'd kill me!"

They were all street operators, but while those shady agents operated domestically, Luan Nian had operated in New York; the tactics were universally applicable, and who didn't know how to play dirty? He played it way more skillfully than any of them. Naturally, the police believed him—his timeline and logic were seamless, and no normal person would dare pick a fight with a group of thugs all by themselves.

Luan Nian rolled up his sleeve to show the police: "I'm filing a report, these people are basically a criminal syndicate, you have to lock them up!"

Acting just like a ruffian himself, if not for the ruthless edge in his punches that still carried the corporate aura of crushing all opposition, nobody would have dared believe this was Luan Nian.

Even he couldn't believe it himself.

Luan Nian was genuinely furious. He was mad that an idiot like Shang Zhitao could encounter such a huge ordeal and not tell him, letting herself get beaten up by others! He had the urge to wipe those people off the face of the earth, and his anger hadn't faded even after finishing his statement at the precinct. He drove down to the company building and called Shang Zhitao: "Get down here."

"Oh."

Shang Zhitao checked the time. What time was it already? What on earth had he been doing all afternoon?

Sensing Luan Nian's bad mood, she dawdled as she got into his car and didn't dare utter another word when she saw his face cast in iron-cold gloom.

"Do you not have my number?"

"So you don't need to tell each other anything except when you're sleeping together or working?"

"You'd rather let others beat you up than tell me, is that it?"

"Do you have a fucking brain at all?!!"

"Is your brain just for show?"

"I'm talking to you! Are you mute?"