The corridor leading out of the restroom was very long, with a row of chairs lined up against the wall.

Because the weather was bad, there weren’t many people in the station.

Often, police officers’ family members would pick up their children from school and let them wait here until their parents got off work.

When Chi Qing walked out, there was a girl sitting outside. With practiced movements, she took out stationery and an exercise book from her small backpack, sitting on the bench with her legs dangling, not touching the ground.

Judging by her age, she should still be in elementary school.

As Chi Qing passed by the girl, his hand—which hadn’t had time to put its glove back on yet—was gently tugged by someone. “…Big Brother.”

The little girl’s hand was plump and soft, and her voice was milky and childish. Even the distorted voice that appeared in his ears became cute: [I don’t know how to do this question. Daddy just taught me yesterday. If I ask him again, he’ll definitely think I’m very stupid QAQ.]

“Could you…”

Before the girl could finish, Chi Qing stared at those two plump fingers, then looked at the hesitant and embarrassed little girl, and said mercilessly, “You are very stupid.”

The girl’s milky voice choked. Suffering a massive blow in an instant, she completely forgot to wonder how this big brother knew what she wanted to say.

She was actually a little afraid of this big brother and was just about to let go, when she saw him sit down beside her and pull the exercise book from her hands.

“Which question don’t you know?”

Girl: “The blank ones.”

Chi Qing: “You left a lot of questions blank.”

Girl: “…”

Chi Qing: “If I teach you, can you guarantee you won’t forget by tomorrow? I don’t want to waste time doing useless work like your dad.”

Girl: “……”

Chi Qing: “It seems you can’t.”

Chi Qing spoke bluntly, cutting straight to the point, but he still went over the blank arithmetic questions with her once, even though toward the end, the girl’s mind wasn’t on the problems at all.

“Big Brother, how did you know that I grabbed you because I wanted you to explain the questions to me?”

The girl’s eyes were huge, looking pure and innocent, carrying confusion. “I hadn’t even finished speaking just now.”

Chi Qing capped his pen. “I heard it. You said it in your heart.”

The girl blinked her eyes. “Like mind-reading?”

“Sort of.”

“As long as you touch someone, you can hear it?”

“Pretty much.”

The girl swung the ponytail behind her head and said enviously, “If I had mind-reading too, I would be able to know where Daddy hid my candy jar. I searched secretly for two days and still couldn’t find it.”

Chi Qing handed the exercise book back to her, speaking words beyond the girl’s scope of understanding: “Kid, in the adult world, you can’t find the candy jar.”

The girl clearly didn’t understand. “Why? Do you guys not like eating candy?”

Chi Qing didn’t answer her. He put his gloves back on. Before walking into the office, he raised a finger to his lower lip. Against the black glove, his lip color appeared exceptionally intense, but the words that came out were cold: “What I told you today is a secret.”

Girl: “Then why did you tell me?”

Chi Qing pushed open the door: “Because you’re too young, even if you tell anyone, no one will believe you.”

Girl: “…”

---

In the office, the wood carving dispute had finally come to an end.

“I won’t pursue this matter any further.” Hearing that it was his son Xiaokang who stole the item, Granny Wang couldn’t bear to hold a child’s mistake against him, only saying, “Go back and educate your child properly. Tell him not to just take other people’s things because he wants to play…”

By the time Chi Qing washed his hands and came back, both parties had already reached a settlement on the matter.

The man in the work jacket nodded repeatedly, following behind the granny as they walked out. “I will definitely educate him properly.”

Halfway out, Granny Wang stopped in her tracks again. Wanting to turn back, she said nervously, “Comrade police officers, there have been many disappearance cases in our residential area recently. I want to seek your help.”

Ji Mingrui was no longer the simple mediator who had been fooled by this granny on the phone with phrases like “ancestral treasure of immeasurable value” and had rushed over in a hurry. “Could you be a bit more specific?”

“It’s the stray cats in our residential area—”

“…” As expected.

“They haven’t eaten the cat food I prepared for them these past few days. This has never happened before.”

Granny Wang also kept a cat herself, so she had a softer heart and often prepared some cat food for the stray cats that sneaked into her yard.

“Granny,” Ji Mingrui said, “This can’t be defined as a disappearance case. We also have no way of deploying police forces to catch cats in a residential area. Stray cats don’t have fixed homes. They… uh, they might have gone somewhere else, and maybe they’ll come back soon.”

After sending the granny off, Ji Mingrui saw Chi Qing return and served him a cup of tea like a filial younger brother respecting his big bro: “Want some water? Are you thirsty? Look at you, you came just to come, yet you still helped me mediate along the way.”

Chi Qing took the water cup. “I didn’t want to meddle originally.”

Ji Mingrui: “Then why did you?”

Chi Qing: “Your efficiency was too slow. I was afraid that if I kept waiting, we could just go straight to eating tomorrow’s breakfast.”

After speaking, he added another sentence: “Can you get off work now? When are we eating?”

…

So you only sat up from the sofa because you were hungry.

Ji Mingrui glanced at the torrential rain outside the window that showed no signs of stopping, then checked the time. Finally, he looked around at his beat cop colleagues who had stayed with him to work overtime until this hour. “At this time, there probably aren’t many restaurants still open. There’s an open-air food stall nearby that tastes pretty good and stays open until 2 AM.”

The rain seemed to have lightened up a bit. Although the food stall was still open, there weren’t many customers. A price list with yellow characters on a red background hung on the wall. The smell of cooking oil and smoke wafted straight out from the back kitchen, accompanied by the clatter of pots and pans.

A full eight people sat at their table. The boss added two extra stools, allowing them to squeeze together at one table with much difficulty.

Ji Mingrui rubbed his nose and explained, “Well, it’s so late, so it’s better if everyone gathers together for a meal. Everyone has worked hard.” Ji Mingrui slapped his head again, “Ah, forgot to introduce you guys. We all graduated in the same batch and just took up our posts this year.”

He made brief introductions, starting with the female officer sitting across from Chi Qing, Su Xiaolan. The latter smiled heartily: “Originally, it was just the two of you making plans for dinner. We feel really bad for intruding with so many people, sorry for troubling you.”

Although Chi Qing didn’t speak, Su Xiaolan clearly read a sentence off his face: It is quite troublesome.

…

After washing his tableware, Chi Qing glanced at the gloves on his hands. Just in case he accidentally touched someone at the dining table while eating, these gloves couldn’t be taken off.

Su Xiaolan waited and waited, but didn’t see him take off his gloves. Finally unable to hold back, she asked, “Do you… wear them while eating too?”

Chi Qing: “I pay more attention to hygiene.”

Su Xiaolan: “…”

“Don’t mind him,” Ji Mingrui was very used to it, taking the lead to pick up a chopstick-full of food. “He’s just like that. His germaphobia has reached the point where he isn’t even willing to touch the dust in the air. In the past, people gave him the nickname ‘Chi Don’t-Touch’.”

“Don’t touch?”

“Yeah, doesn’t let anyone touch him.”

Chi Qing warned: “Why do you talk so much while eating.”

Ji Mingrui: “…”

Outside, the sound of the rain pattered on.

In between eating, Su Xiaolan thought of something else: “Mr. Chi must be very busy with work usually.”

In her understanding, if you wanted to gather with friends for a meal, you definitely had to pick a day with good weather in advance. Choosing such an unlucky day with continuous torrential rain meant he must have been too busy with work to have any other choice.

When picking up food, Chi Qing avoided the spots that had been touched by others. After eating a few bites, he picked up his water cup and took a slow sip. Looking out the window, his tone was somewhat relaxed: “Not considered busy.”

When he set down the water cup, he offered another comment: “The weather today is pretty good.”

“?”

Ji Mingrui explained on behalf of this brother of his whose temper and disposition were entirely different from ordinary people: “He likes rainy days.”

The main purpose of the two making plans for this dinner was actually to celebrate him successfully entering the police station. However, Ji Mingrui had already been at his post for almost two months before this dinner finally happened.

Ji Mingrui recalled the bumpy journey of making these dinner plans. First, Chi Qing stated, “Got it, I’ll pick a good day and let you know.” He waited and waited. It wasn’t until the weather forecast showed consecutive torrential rain for the next two days that he received Chi Qing’s notification: The weather the day after tomorrow is pretty good. What time do you get off work?

Ji Mingrui: …Did you check the weather forecast?

Chi Qing: What kind of nonsense question are you asking.

In a normal person’s cognitive understanding, “pretty good weather” was definitely a sunny day with gentle breezes and clear skies.

But Ji Mingrui’s adaptability was excellent. Mainly because this person, Chi Qing, was different from normal people in every single aspect. This little quirk was no longer surprising.

Someone next to them chuckled to ease the atmosphere: “This preference is quite special.”

After easing the atmosphere, that male officer wanted to check the time. He patted his pocket, only to find it empty: “Eh, my phone…”

“What’s wrong, lost your phone?”

His action caused a small commotion. Everyone shifted their positions and plates, wanting to see if it had been left on the table.

Chi Qing’s gaze was still on the rain outside the window, seeming to admire the rain. As he slowly withdrew his gaze, he said casually, “Since walking through the door, your phone has only been taken out twice. The first time was right when you entered, and the second time was five minutes ago, when you took your phone to the restroom.”

The table fell completely silent. As the man’s voice dropped, everyone else’s movements of shifting positions uniformly halted.

The male officer smacked his head: “I remember now, the restroom.”

This was a very small interlude.

Su Xiaolan sensed that this colleague’s friend wasn’t quite right.

He was far too perceptive, although this might not have been his original intention, because he spoke about these things as casually as he talked about the weather outside the window. She then recalled what happened an hour ago. Chi Qing had merely walked through the door, yet he noticed the shoes of the man in the work jacket.

Sitting in the corner with his back against the wall, Chi Qing noticed her gaze and looked back at her. The air conditioning was on in the stall, so he had already taken off his coat, wearing only a simply tailored dark sweater underneath. The hair over his forehead was a bit long, gloomily covering his eyes a fraction, but she could still catch a glimpse of the color of his pupils—his pupils were almost the exact same color as his hair, so deep they seemed bottomless.

Perhaps because he had just drank hot water, his lip color was even redder. The intense black formed a startling contrast with this lip color.

Su Xiaolan recalled Ji Mingrui’s introductory words for this friend: …He went to a film academy, completely unrelated.

At the time, it had gone in one ear and out the other. She was busy with other things and hadn’t listened very carefully.

Now thinking back…

Film academy? Then what exactly does he do?

Moreover, Su Xiaolan couldn’t help but feel that he looked somewhat familiar, but this thought was like an intangible thread she couldn’t quite grasp.

This meal didn’t last very long, and Chi Qing didn’t speak much. Most of the time, he just maintained that slightly gloomy demeanor, sitting there watching the rain.

When they finished eating, he and Ji Mingrui bid farewell to everyone together. Carrying the transparent umbrella he had brought when he arrived, he pushed the door open and went out.

Ji Mingrui followed behind him: “I’ll escort this young master back… you guys head back early too, there’s still work to do tomorrow.”

After the two left, the male officer who had gone to the restroom to find his phone earlier also packed up his things, getting ready to hurry home. Before leaving, he casually remarked, “Just now, when that Mr. Chi was walking over from afar outside the police station, I took a glance. At first sight, I thought some big celebrity had come to our station for business—”

The male officer had only made a casual remark, but Su Xiaolan fiercely grasped onto that thread.

Su Xiaolan had a very good memory. Occasionally, in her free time, she would watch TV programs with her family. Out of occupational habit, she would sometimes take a few extra glances at supporting characters who only appeared once or twice in a drama… She seemed to have seen Chi Qing on TV before.

But clearly, he was quite a far distance away from the title of “big celebrity.”

This name had almost zero presence in the entertainment industry. No one had heard of him; not only had no one heard of him, but he was also hardly ever seen on major TV stations or in small entertainment magazines. Just like the tens of thousands of artists who failed to make a name for themselves in the industry and whose names couldn’t be called out by anyone walking on the street.

It was precisely because of this that he could sit and eat in an open-air food stall full of people coming and going without being recognized by anyone.

Carrying this vague impression, Su Xiaolan glanced outside the stall. She saw Chi Qing standing on the side of the road holding an umbrella, waiting for Ji Mingrui to drive over. His knuckles rested on the silver umbrella handle separated by the black fabric, making those gloves look cold and abrupt.

Then he walked further down the road, and was soon swallowed up by the pouring rain into the vast night.