Hearing Milu’s voice, Wei Lai suddenly felt his temper rise.

Many people had said he had a good disposition. Ai Lin had been drawn to his smile and easy manner from the beginning — she’d been beaten by her stepfather as a child and had been through several terrible relationships after that, and she’d decided the most appealing quality a man could have was the ability not to lose his temper.

Ai Lin didn’t understand. He wasn’t someone who didn’t lose his temper.

Everyone needs an outlet. It was just that showing anger either turned inward and did damage to himself, or turned outward and created enemies — and could easily catch innocent people in the crossfire. He preferred to find a reliable, contained way to vent.

He and Milu and Ke Ke Shu had built something stable enough for that: a self-contained loop that could absorb it all.

Because they knew each other, the chemistry was right, and they all understood what the other was.

Occasionally he would get a call from Milu unleashing a volley of curses — about Yi Fu not doing housework, about some idiot trying to shake him down — a stream of new and strange vocabulary, relentless. He would just murmur “mm” and “ah” at intervals, tilting his head now and then as if he could physically pour the filth out of his ear.

Ke Ke Shu, too — when he was in the middle of a complete meltdown, venting at full blast, she might suddenly break in with: “Wei, do you think the woman on the cover of this month’s issue — the one with the chest — is she natural or not?”

…

He had accumulated a great deal of fire over the course of this day: from having a gun pressed to his head, to the speedboat explosion, to being boiled and baked in the sea. The moment the call connected, all of it erupted, and even though he knew perfectly well it wasn’t Hu Sha’s fault, he dragged him into it anyway.

— Does he believe it if I say I’ll slice out his gums and make a proper dried shark’s jaw of them?

Milu moved from initial bewilderment to meek acquiescence, answering “yes” and “understood” throughout, but he didn’t miss any of the key information, and tried his best to smooth things over:

— “Wei, you know Hu Sha couldn’t have done this. Not unless he’s done with this life…”

— “Where are you now? Give me a rough position.”

— “I’ll call the Saudis. Stay there — I’ll call back as soon as I can…”

By the time he hung up, Wei Lai had gradually settled. He checked the time: the storm of venting had lasted less than five minutes.

He smiled.

He’d been keeping half a thought on Cen Jin. When he pushed open the door to find her, she was leaning against the entrance to the crowded office, watching something with amusement.

The denim-coloured men’s shirt suited her unexpectedly well — sleeves rolled up high, the hem falling just above her knees. Her long legs were crossed casually, one foot lightly tapping the ground, the strap of her plain black sandal swaying as if it might slip off at any moment.

Wei Lai stood and watched her for a while.

He had sometimes wondered why she struck him as a young girl. She was young, certainly, but she was far from a naive and innocent young woman.

Now he was beginning to understand.

Since they had been traveling together, the expressions that occasionally crossed her face were ones he felt that the Cen Jin of their first meeting should never have had.

That Cen Jin had been a painting in stark black and white — deep pupils that could hold a whole world inside them, not something you could get close to or touch.

Wei Lai lit a cigarette, letting the smoke loosen the nerves that had been wound tight all day. He waited for the call, and watched her at the same time.

She came over.

Wei Lai said: “What’s so entertaining?”

Cen Jin laughed and said: “That police officer.”

This village had only come under police coverage this year — the government had assigned it to this officer’s jurisdiction.

This civil servant lived in the city. He worked one day a week, the round trip taking four hours. He typically arrived at noon, handled official business from the afternoon through evening, and left the following morning.

Every time he arrived, the village celebrated as if it were a holiday. All the grievances that had accumulated over a week burst into the open at once.

— Your goat ate my house. Her son beat my son. A man hit a woman. A son cursed his father. You promised me something and didn’t give it. The pot you borrowed hasn’t come back. You broke my things and want to pretend it didn’t happen…

Several hundred households, dozens of disputes per day at minimum. Before the officer, everyone sorted things out themselves — pushing, kicking, whatever it took. Now that there was a police officer, everyone had suddenly become proud and civilized: “Do you dare come face the police with me? He’s on duty next week.”

“I’ll go if you’ll go.”

So every week on that one day, a long queue formed at the office door, everyone waiting for the officer to pronounce judgment. No one was asking for compensation. They just wanted to hear one word from his mouth: “You were right. The other person was wrong.”

Just that one sentence, and they walked away refreshed.

“The two of us ‘being robbed’ is the biggest case he’s encountered here. I think the proper procedure is a mystery to him — he was very nervous, said he’d go back to report to his superiors tomorrow, and also said he would see to it that the foreign guests were properly taken care of on behalf of the government.”

“We can stay here tonight. He’s given us his quarters, and the village’s water tanks are kept filled by the villagers — we can use them too…”

The phone rang.

Wei Lai crushed the cigarette end: “Stay and enjoy the show. I need to take this call.”

Milu’s first words when he picked up: “It really has nothing to do with Hu Sha — his men were ambushed at the port.”

The original plan had been to stay away from the busy port and go directly to the fishing village to collect them once the position was confirmed. But the two pirates had been cooped up on the boat for too long and wanted to stop at the port for a little fun. They figured they were dressed as fishermen, so there was no reason to raise suspicion.

They hadn’t expected to be watched and taken down, losing the speedboat in the process — a speedboat being no small asset for pirates. The two of them panicked, and after dragging their feet for a long time, finally reported the news back to Hu Sha in terror. Apparently they were still at the port, too afraid to flee but too afraid to go back.

“I got through to Hu Sha, and I gave him your current position. Hu Sha already put his second speedboat in the water overnight. He’s sending four men this time.”

“Overnight?”

Milu hurried to explain: “Not like that — no need to rush. Rest as long as you need, leave whenever you’re ready. Those men are being sent by Hu Sha to protect Miss Cen. He says he absolutely cannot let something like this happen again.”

Wei Lai felt something unexpectedly warm in his chest: evidently, Hu Sha genuinely respected Cen Jin. The debt of a life saved — it wasn’t just words.

“Are the people he’s sending reliable this time? Could there be a mole among them?”

“Unlikely. Somali pirates are very closed off. Usually everyone on a boat is from the same hometown or people they know intimately. An outsider would have a hard time getting in.”

Wei Lai went quiet for a moment.

Then he said: “Milu, someone genuinely wants to kill her.”

Milu found the remark oddly phrased: “Of course — if there wasn’t someone trying to kill her, what would you be needed for? The Saudis could have just put her on a plane to Mogadishu and hired a few cheap mercenaries to guard her locally. Why would they use someone like you?”

“Didn’t you say so yourself — danger proves your value. If everything were smooth sailing, the clients would probably be muttering to themselves that there was never any need for a bodyguard in the first place.”

Then Milu’s curiosity got the better of him: “What’s their approach — can you tell? Could it be people Cen Jin has crossed before? The mafia, that kind of thing?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re far too amateurish.”

If they were killers hired by any real organization, they’d at least have to be competent with guns and hand-to-hand. Those two today — what were they even? He’d subdued them in the blink of an eye.

He felt a headache forming.

It made no sense. To get inside the Saudis’ room and steal their itinerary, and then take down pirates — across that kind of geographic range, no one or two people could manage it; it had to be an organization of some kind.

But how could an operation that tight produce two such hopelessly incompetent people?

Milu said: “Think back — was there anything suspicious? I can help you look into it.”

Suspicious…

Wei Lai’s brow furrowed.

When he had been dealing with AK, he had pushed open his outer jacket and pulled the gun from his back holster. At that moment…

“One of them had a tattoo on the small of his back — round, with something inside that looked like…”

It was gone. He’d been moving too fast. Just a flash.

Milu doubted it would help even if he remembered: “A tattoo — how would I track something like that? I can’t go around lifting people’s shirts… Wei, get some rest. You’ve had a brutal day. Anything else?”

Wei Lai didn’t hang up. He hesitated a moment, then asked quietly: “What about her?”

“What about who?”

“Me and her — the contract runs until the end of the negotiation. Now that I know someone wants to kill her… after that, what happens to her?”

“That’s not your concern. She saved Hu Sha’s life — Hu Sha will arrange people to send her off.”

Wei Lai said: “Hu Sha can swagger all he likes at sea. Outside Somalia, he’s nothing.”

Milu caught on: “So what are you saying?”

“The boat might be safe for now. But once the negotiation is over and she steps off it, she could be in immediate danger. Am I supposed to just walk away?”

Milu made a clicking sound: “You’re actually saying this. Remarkable. Bodyguard and client — nothing but a paper contract between them. The contract ends at noon, I wouldn’t stay past 12:05. Whose words were those again, hmm?”

Wei Lai said nothing.

“I don’t know what happened between you two along the way to get you here. All I know is the contract ends when it ends. After that, no one has hired you. If you don’t feel easy about it, have her hire you to continue. Otherwise what’s your reason for staying by her side?”

Wei Lai suddenly snapped: “I’ll have her hire me — enough of your fussing.”

He hung up.

He stood there in irritation. Turned around — and found she was right there in the doorway.

Wei Lai smiled. “Eavesdropping on a phone call?”

“The door was half-open. You didn’t say I couldn’t listen. I happened to come over — how can you call that eavesdropping?”

Wei Lai sat on the desk. “You heard all of it?”

Cen Jin walked in. “I heard all of it.”

Good. Saves him having to repeat himself.

He said: “You’ll need to hire me for the rest of the journey.”

Cen Jin smiled. After a moment, she looked into his eyes and slowly shook her head.

Wei Lai kept his expression even: “Why not?”

Cen Jin thought for a moment. “No money.”

Lying through her teeth again.

“Cen Jin, first — I know the Saudis paid you five hundred thousand. Second — life is the soil, wealth is the tree. Trees only grow if there’s soil. What good is all that money if you’re dead?”

Cen Jin said: “I mean it.”

She sat in the chair across the desk with complete indifference, tilting her head back to look at him: “I have no money. I spend freely, and I have a lot of debt. The five hundred thousand — the day after I received it, it was already gone.”

Wei Lai held her gaze: “That’s all? That’s the only reason?”

Cen Jin said: “Yes… I really have no money.”

Wei Lai gave a cold laugh and shot to his feet. The motion was abrupt enough that the desk skidded behind him, its legs scraping against the floor with a harsh grating sound.

Cen Jin didn’t move.

After a moment, he came back. He slammed the door shut with a bang and strode over, tossing something onto the desk.

It was the small notebook, and a pen.

Wei Lai said: “No money is fine. I’ll let you run a tab — write me an IOU. I’ll consider you paid.”

He pushed the notebook and pen toward her.

Cen Jin bit her lip, faintly at a loss: “Today you saw for yourself — this isn’t a game. It’s genuinely dangerous…”

Wei Lai cut her off: “Since when do I need you to teach me what danger is? I do this for a living — I go from one danger to the next. Write it down. I have no interest in protecting you for free. Stop wasting the time I could be earning.”

Cen Jin opened the notebook. There was writing on the first page.

— Ladybug Life Observation Diary.

Wei Lai said: “Turn the page. Write on the second sheet.”

Cen Jin’s temper flared. She slapped the pen onto the desk: “I won’t write it. I don’t want to owe anyone money, and I don’t want to hire a bodyguard.”

She half-rose from the chair, and Wei Lai pressed a hand down onto her shoulder and pushed her firmly back into it.

He was smiling.

He said: “Do you think you have any say in this?”

“In the sea — you were the one who didn’t want to live. Did you forget? I just happened to pick you up for my own amusement. I decide what you write and how much you owe. I’m the one calling the shots.”

Cen Jin set her jaw. After a moment she scraped the chair back and flipped the notebook to the second page: “What do I write?”

“Write that you owe me money, date it today, spell out the amount — my standard fee per trip, the same rate for the second half, clearly stated, and indicate it was your own initiative to take on this debt.”

Cen Jin held her temper and bent her head to write, refusing to look at him again.

Wei Lai smiled. She looked like a schoolchild being made to write lines as punishment.

He leaned down to read over her shoulder, picking at everything deliberately.

“Do you actually know how to write an IOU? What about the format — do you leave a margin at the top? Your handwriting is terrible, and you’re not even embarrassed to say you studied Chinese? And this character — your last stroke always turns into a flourish, so it looks like a different character altogether. Can you read?”

Cen Jin’s patience snapped. She shoved the notebook aside and looked up at him: “Can you just stop—”

Wei Lai swooped an arm around her waist, lifted her up, and kissed her.

I know what you were going to say: can you just for once keep quiet.

He could.