Li Li, absorbed in his video game, didn’t notice his phone had received a new message.

He kept playing, immersed in *The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild* with no way out, and before he knew it, it was nine o’clock in the evening. His stomach growling with hunger reminded him that the hour was getting late.

And yet Su Man still hadn’t come!

Li Li frowned, grabbed his phone and glanced at it — and only then did he see the message Su Man had sent earlier.

“What’s this…” he grumbled. “You go off to work overtime and leave me sitting here stewing.”

These kinds of deployment assignments were typically continuous — if Su Man was covering a particular stretch of road, she usually wouldn’t just do it for one or two days; a week was the minimum. This week it might be one road, next week another. So if she was on duty today, odds were she’d be on duty tomorrow too.

Li Li decided it wasn’t worth sticking it out, thought it over, and packed up his things to go home.

— As for the plan to patch things up, he’d have to think of another approach.

……

Li Li arrived home around ten o’clock at night. Both neighboring villas were lit up brightly. His father was just backing the car out of the garage, while his mother stood anxiously outside with Su Ma.

Li Li walked into the yard curiously and looked the three of them over. “What’s going on? What happened?”

Li Li’s mother replied with a face full of worry: “Manman has had an incident — she’s at the hospital. We’re heading over there now.”

She then continued trying to reassure Su Ma beside her: “Don’t worry too much. Manman always knows when to hold back. We’ll go over there and talk things through properly. Worst comes to worst, we pay some compensation — it’ll be fine.”

Su Ma’s eyes were red. “Money is the least of it. I’m terrified she’ll end up with a criminal record. She still wants to become an investigator — if something like that goes on her record, what’s she going to do with her future?”

“That won’t happen, that won’t happen!” Li Li’s mother shook her head quickly. “Don’t frighten yourself before we know anything. Let’s go to the hospital first and see what the situation is.”

The two women might bicker and try to one-up each other in ordinary times, but when either family ran into real trouble, they became completely united.

Li Li, having heard all of this, let out a huge sigh of relief and couldn’t help saying out loud: “You scared me to death — I thought something had happened to Su Man. So she’s the one who put someone in the hospital. I knew it. Who on earth could send her to the hospital? Completely impossible!”

Li Li’s father stretched a hand out through the car window and beckoned. “You’re coming too. Let’s go quickly — Manman must be beside herself right now.”

The three of them said nothing more and piled into the car, driving straight to the hospital.

Over the phone they’d only known that Su Man had put someone in the hospital. Once they arrived, the full picture gradually became clear:

While conducting drunk-driving checks, Su Man had noticed a car parked on the roadside with a couple inside arguing. A woman got out of the car, and the man then chased after her and started hitting her. Su Man, on duty at the time, couldn’t stand by and stepped in to intervene. But the man wouldn’t stop. Not only did he curse violently, he also struck out at Su Man. As the two struggled, the man fell, and as bad luck would have it, he struck his head on a brick at the roadside and lost consciousness.

He’d been sent to the hospital, but was still unconscious. The brain was the most delicate organ in the human body — whether it was a head injury or an intracranial injury, no one could say for certain. All they could do was wait outside for news.

If the injury turned out to be serious, Su Man would certainly be held responsible. A charge of accidental assault seemed all but unavoidable.

For now, everything hinged on how severe the injury actually was.

Su Man stood in the corridor with a wooden expression, a female colleague at her side. A little further away, a young woman sat in a row of chairs, weeping and wailing.

That was the injured man’s girlfriend.

She was terrified that her boyfriend had been beaten to death by Su Man.

—

*[Mini Theatre — two years later:]*

*Lu Yuwen accompanies Su Man to the hospital.*

*Su Man holds a sheaf of test results and cheerfully hands them to Lu Yuwen, saying: “Confirmed — it’s pregnancy! I knew it — there’s no way I’d just get sick out of nowhere. Suddenly starting to throw up had to be some other reason~”*

*Lu Yuwen smiled.*

*Su Man also smiled: “You’re this happy about becoming a dad?”*

*”Yes, very happy,” he said with a nod, then added, “It also brings to mind something from a while back — I seem to recall someone once said that no one could ever put her in the hospital.”*

*Su Man: “…”*

—