Su Ma said: “Quick — call Manman’s superintendent! Tell him you can’t be playing favorites, that since she joined the unit she never expected an easy ride, that young people need to be put through their paces — and get him to assign Manman to overtime immediately! Checking for drunk drivers, night-shift rotations, whatever it takes. It has to be something she genuinely can’t get out of, something mandatory!”

Su Ba was utterly baffled. “You’re the one who told them no overtime, and now you’re the one demanding overtime — what’s going on with you?”

Su Ma snapped back irritably: “Working overtime on the job is at least contributing something — it beats going off to play nursemaid for someone!”

“What does that even have to do with anything?” Su Ba was completely lost. “What nursemaid? What ‘taking care of someone’? There’s no way Manman would do something like that.”

“Ha!” Su Ma gave a cold laugh. “Oh, it’s entirely possible. That temperament of hers — sharp tongue, soft heart through and through. A few coaxing words from someone and she’d happily go along with anything! Alright, stop asking so many questions — just call him!”

“Really?” Su Ba looked thoroughly unconvinced. “Shouldn’t we at least talk to Manman first? You said yourself she’s been taking care of a friend who was hurt…”

“What friend deserves to have her waiting on them hand and foot? Are they missing their hands and feet, or can’t they afford a caretaker?” Su Ma fired off her objections in rapid succession. “She’s always complained that being a traffic officer is too easy, hasn’t she? Always dead set on getting into criminal investigation? Let her feel a little pressure now! It’s the perfect chance to make her realize what she’s in for and have second thoughts!”

Su Ba had no recourse. He lay back on the hospital bed, sighing mournfully: “Fine, fine, I’ll make the call — just keep it down, I have a bad heart…”

And so, without the slightest inkling, Su Man’s parents arranged overtime duty on her behalf.

When the notification arrived, she was dumbfounded for quite some time.

She hadn’t been assigned to check for drunk drivers in a very long time.

It had only happened a handful of times in her very first month on the job. Each time she’d come home in the early hours of one or two in the morning, which had worried her parents greatly. At the time she’d thought this was actually good news — maybe if her parents felt sorry enough for her, they’d let her quit traffic duty altogether. But by the second month, the number of night shifts she was assigned had dropped by nearly half.

Later on, after she met Lu Yuwen, she’d often spend evenings going out with him. At first she’d been worried that if a night shift came up, she’d have to skip seeing Lu Yuwen.

But.

As it turned out.

She had never once been assigned a night shift!

She had no idea how the rotation worked, but on the very third day of her going to keep Li Li company — overtime landed on her.

That said, drunk-driving checks typically ran from ten at night until the early hours of the next morning — that was the window with the highest rate of catch, when violators had usually been drinking steadily across multiple occasions, their blood alcohol levels climbing, making it peak time for drunk-driving incidents.

If it started at ten, she could still go over to Li Li’s for a while first.

Su Man carefully read through the assignment details she’d received.

— District MH, Qixin Road. 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM.

Su Man: “Huh?”

Qixin Road in District MH was one of the city’s key anti-drunk-driving enforcement zones. Being sent over to assist there wasn’t a problem in itself, but the timing happened to clash directly with her plans to visit Li Li.

Between the two, work obviously came first.

Su Man took her lunch break to send Li Li a message, letting him know she had overtime tonight and wouldn’t be coming by.

At that moment, Li Li was lounging in the apartment, listlessly playing video games to pass the time.

He wasn’t a gamer by nature. The boredom of being cooped up here day after day had driven him to drag out the gaming console. He’d originally planned to drag out the fake-injury act for a few more days, to continue making slow, steady progress on mending things between himself and Su Man — but now, on day three, he was already nearly at his limit.

Yesterday he’d even worked up a sweat playing a motion-control game. Wiping his face had smudged his makeup, and he’d had to call the makeup artist back for touch-ups. Looking back on it, the whole thing was simply beyond words.

Li Li played on, quietly thinking to himself: at most… two more days, and not a single day more!

People travel for three or four days — that’s about right to come home.

—