Yu Chongyi had originally planned to go home to fetch something, and hadn’t expected to run into Hongdou coming out. He stopped at once, looking her up and down; seeing his sister in such a hurry, he knew she was likely about to be late, and frowned. “Why are you only coming down now?”
Reminded by this, Yu Hongdou had no more time to chat with her brother. Wheeling out her bicycle, she said, “Brother, I’m off. Oh, and when are you coming home tonight? Mom wants us to send things over to Uncle’s.”
Yu Chongyi hesitated slightly, then handed Hongdou the osmanthus candy he’d just bought on the way, taking hold of the handlebars instead. “You’re always so reckless, aren’t you afraid of an accident on the road? I have a little time today—let me take you to school.”
Yu Hongdou was overjoyed. She quickly tucked away the candy and hopped onto the back seat. “All right!”
Mrs. Peng, sitting on a stool at the shop entrance feeding the two children breakfast, watched this scene with heartfelt admiration. “It’s rare to see such harmonious siblings, truly enviable. Not like these two little ones of ours, bickering from morning till night, driving a person to distraction.” As she spoke, she playfully poked her elder son A’Yuan’s plump cheek, drawing a string of childish, discontented mutterings from him.
Tailor Peng came out from inside carrying a soft measuring tape, smiling in agreement. “That’s all thanks to how well Mr. and Mrs. Yu have raised them.”
He was just past thirty, with a pair of long, narrow, squinting eyes, wearing what looked like a smile even when he wasn’t smiling—only rather too dark-skinned and short, especially standing beside his plump, fair, tall wife, at least half a head shorter than her.
Hongdou always thought this couple looked like a white rice ball and a Western sesame candy bar side by side. She smiled and said, “Mr. Peng, Mrs. Peng, you flatter us. A’Yuan and A’Bao are still so young—once they grow up, naturally they’ll learn brotherly affection too.”
Mrs. Peng clicked her tongue. “Still, it’s best to go to school and get an education—look at Miss Yu, the way she talks, so refined and fresh with every phrase. If our A’Yuan and A’Bao can achieve even half of what you two siblings have, that would be wonderful.”
Yu Chongyi had been listening with a smile as Mrs. Peng praised his sister, but when the praise turned to him, he grew a bit embarrassed. Once Hongdou was seated, he called out, “Off we go,” and pedaled hard—the bicycle shot forward like an arrow.
Hongdou’s family lane wasn’t far from St. John’s University; the route only required going around one street and past a garden, taking no more than fifteen minutes altogether.
As the two siblings sped along in the autumn sun, Hongdou pressed a hand to her wind-tossed hair and asked her brother, “Brother, do you remember that business with Tailor Peng’s newspaper? Was that Wang Meiping ever found?”
Yu Chongyi paused a moment before recalling who his sister meant, then answered offhandedly, “Oh, her. No, not found.”
“Was she kidnapped by the swindler gangs?” Yu Hongdou pressed on curiously. “Didn’t those people ever demand ransom from her family?”
Yu Chongyi asked in surprise, “Who told you she was kidnapped?”
Hongdou shrugged. “I guessed. A perfectly ordinary, living person just vanishing like that so strangely—there should be some explanation.”
Yu Chongyi knew his sister had always liked picking up news stories like this, so seeing her holding forth wasn’t surprising. He answered seriously, “These past few months we’ve caught quite a few members of these swindler gangs. Asking around carefully, not one of them had any news of Wang Meiping. If the bandits had originally kidnapped her for money, she was just a country girl traveling alone—whatever valuables she was carrying would have been limited at best—and in these past months, her family has never once received a ransom call from kidnappers.”
As for the possibility of being sold for sex work, he and his colleagues had combed through nearly every brothel—legal and illegal—in Shanghai these past months, and still hadn’t found anyone resembling Wang Meiping among the trafficked “new merchandise.”
In truth, Shanghai lost count of how many people went missing in a given year—how could they possibly go to such great lengths for every single one? The reason they’d spent so much effort on this Wang Meiping case was because Wang Meiping had an uncle of some minor renown.
This man was named Zhou Tongqiang, a moderately well-known scholar in Shanghai. Though his family circumstances were humble, his character was unyielding; every essay he wrote sharply criticized current affairs and pointedly judged prominent officials, each argument scathing without exception.
The higher-ups at the police station, apparently wary of Zhou Tongqiang’s influence in Shanghai, had specifically instructed that the investigation be handled thoroughly.
And yet after months of searching, they’d combed through every shelter, dance hall, and mission hospital in the foreign concessions, even the mortuaries on the outskirts, and still turned up nothing.
Afraid his sister would keep pressing, he felt a twinge of guilt. “Not being found doesn’t mean she’s gone for good. Women from old-fashioned households like Wang Meiping’s have a few cases every year of leaving home—maybe in pursuit of free love, running off with someone, that sort of thing happens too.”
Though she could hear the evasiveness in her brother’s words, Hongdou admitted this wasn’t impossible.
“What about that big star Chen Baidie?” Hongdou thought a moment and asked again. “You’ve all been so busy these past few days—is it because you’re searching for her?”
Yu Chongyi sighed. “That’s right.”
Chen Baidie was at the height of her fame, with many notable figures connected to her; her disappearance had thrown the entire police department into an uproar. Just last night, for instance, he’d been ordered to search an apartment under Chen Baidie’s name in the French Concession, working until deep into the night before things settled down.
“So do you have any leads?”
“None.” In the blink of an eye they’d arrived at the gates of St. John’s University. Yu Chongyi braked. “Here we are, hop off.”
Hongdou got down from the back seat and looked up at her brother’s face. For some reason, she felt he seemed rather dispirited today.
Yu Chongyi turned to meet his sister’s scrutinizing gaze, hesitated a moment, then suddenly said, “Hongdou, what would you think if Brother changed jobs?”
Hongdou was startled. Change jobs? Out of nowhere, what brought this on?
Yu Chongyi seemed to have a thousand thoughts tangled together and didn’t know where to begin. After a long silence, he finally reached out and patted the top of his sister’s head, saying with a wry smile, “Never mind, go on to class first. We’ll talk about it later.”
Hongdou could only say, “All right.”
Holding her school bag, she walked a short distance, then turned back and grinned mischievously at her brother. “Brother, don’t tell me you’ve got a girlfriend? Even if you have to hide it from Mom, you’d better not hide it from me!”
Yu Chongyi paid this no mind at all, pedaling off with a flourish, only calling back from a distance, “Go home early with your classmates after class. I’ll come get you if I have time.”
Hongdou walked on, quietly speculating to herself.
When their father was alive, he’d run a fur trading business, spending years away from home to build up the family fortune. Her brother had been a careless child back then, like an empty-headed radish, thinking of nothing but play, never able to settle down to study. Though he’d gone out a few times with their father to learn the trade, he’d picked up not a shred of business sense.
After their father died of lung disease, her brother became the only man left in the family. As if overnight, he grew up considerably, learning to care for the household and to be considerate of their mother.
At the time, the situation in Beiping had been unfavorable, and word of trouble had reached Shanghai too, tense as well. Fearing war, their mother had simply closed the fur shop and gradually sold off the property their father had left behind, converting part of it into cash and part into gold bars, living frugally to carefully manage the household of three.
Later, when the political situation calmed somewhat, her brother, unable to gain admission to university, had been unwilling to simply idle at home. He’d gone to pay respects to a friend of their late father’s, requesting a letter of introduction, and went off to police academy to study.
At that time, the Shanghai police department’s recruitment of officers hadn’t yet developed into a strict, formal system. After graduating, her brother had smoothly entered a precinct under the police department’s jurisdiction in the International Settlement, becoming a police officer.
But nowadays, the police had a poor reputation—corruption riddled the ranks from top to bottom, with few officials free of it. Caught up in that environment, her brother could only blend in, keeping his true feelings to himself.
Take that Wang Meiping case, for instance—her brother had specifically sought out missing-person notices printed by different newspapers to study, which showed how much effort he’d put into trying to solve the case. But a single tree does not make a forest; what use was it for him alone to try so hard?
He’d always had an upright, straightforward temperament by nature, too. In the long run, he was bound to grow discontented and unfulfilled.
But if her brother stopped being a policeman, what line of work would he pursue instead?
On the way, Hongdou ran into her classmates Gu Yun and Xiao Xichun. They exchanged a knowing glance and hurried together toward the classroom.
The classroom was packed to capacity—a sea of heads at first glance. Evidently the students all feared the reputation of “Old Master Yan” too much to dare skip class casually.
Old Master Yan was a professor in the Chinese Literature department, gifted with an astonishing memory. From the very first class, he had quietly memorized every student’s face against the roll book.
After that, he never took roll call in class—he only needed to glance across the room to know which student was absent. Miss one class, and your grade for the course was void; the same applied to being late twice.
He also required that all assignments be written in careful, formal brush calligraphy; anyone who turned in sloppy, perfunctory work three times cumulatively would immediately be stripped of the right to sit for the final exam.
Year after year, he remained utterly unyielding—even the university president pleading on a student’s behalf did no good.
Hongdou had just sat down in the back row of the classroom when she noticed some unfamiliar faces in the room. With the new semester beginning, most were likely students who had transferred in from other departments as electives.
She noticed a female classmate sitting in the middle of the third row, delicately beautiful and gentle in bearing, her clothes exquisitely tailored. She couldn’t help glancing over a few more times.
“That’s He Mengmei’s fourth daughter,” Gu Yun whispered. She had a small, round face, with round lenses perched on it; by her own account, because her father was a newspaper publisher, she’d had plenty of books to read since childhood, and years of reading had finally left her nearsighted.
Hongdou was startled—what a coincidence this was. Just yesterday she’d seen the brother, and today she saw the sister.
“And this semester we’re getting a new music teacher, who has a close relationship with the fourth Miss He, and who is also a famous beauty here in Shanghai—guess who it could be?” Gu Yun had a wide network of information, and every Monday brought fresh news.
If not for yesterday’s old gossip, Hongdou might never have guessed the answer—but at this moment, something clicked in her mind, and she actually had an inkling. Just as she was about to speak, a white-haired, bushy-bearded old man strode briskly in—it was Old Master Yan himself.
He wore a rumpled blue silk cotton gown today, his head a mess of unruly silver hair, the button at his collar forgotten again—yet none of this diminished his authority in the slightest. The moment he reached the podium, he tossed down a thick stack of assignments onto the desk and bellowed with heartfelt anguish: “Half of you failed the last assignment! You dare to slack off on your teacher, but know this—by the time you realize the need to apply yourselves, you’ll only be lamenting how the years have slipped away. Pity this old man, still forced to keep pressing you for a few more years! Today’s assignment—all of you, take it home and rewrite it!”
This sudden roar instantly dropped the classroom’s atmosphere to freezing point.
A girl in the front row seemed especially timid; startled, she trembled uncontrollably, and before long, her body swayed and she slumped down limply, provoking a chorus of gasps.
Hongdou quickly looked down—it was that Miss He.
Someone cried out urgently, “Classmate He has what Western medicine calls ‘low blood sugar’! Does anyone have sugar? Quick, give it to Classmate He!”
The classroom stirred into commotion at once. Old Master Yan, never expecting his own shout to have felled a student, though he tried hard to maintain his composure, couldn’t help but call out too in his secret alarm, “Does anyone have sugar?”
Yu Hongdou remembered the osmanthus candy her brother had given her on the way, and quickly took it out, rising and heading toward the fourth Miss He. “I have sugar.”
As she walked, an untimely thought suddenly popped into her head: no wonder that He Yunqin had been able to pull candy out so readily for the Peng boy yesterday—could it be he always kept it on hand for his sister?
Just as Hongdou reached the third row, a group of people happened to be passing by outside. Among them, a young lady wearing a pearl-gauze grey qipao happened to glance inside and was struck with alarm. “Fourth Sister!”
She hurried over, and as she walked, took something resembling a chocolate from a small pouch at her wrist. But before she could reach the front, Hongdou had already popped the osmanthus candy into Miss He’s mouth.
Miss He soon revived leisurely, and seeing the young lady, said softly, “Sister-in-law.”
Author’s Note: He Yunqin: “Does anyone have sugar?”
Hongdou: “I have sugar. Want some? Too bad, not sharing.”
Author: Hehehe.
In the last chapter, the second He son wasn’t looking at Hongdou—he doesn’t know her yet.
There’s a red envelope in this chapter, mwah.