A Guest In A Ghost House

I was equally terrified—of Sister Hua"s cries of delight, insisting that we should repeat this feast tomorrow. I quietly begged the boss to close earlier tomorrow, promising that I would pay him for the favor. Unfortunately for me—and for the boss too judging by his expression—he said that he would be open all night tomorrow. I felt the need to cry again.

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When I returned home, I found my mom still awake. I felt guilty. I had sent her text messages while I was gone, but obviously, a text message doesn"t do much to soothe a worried mother"s heart.

Seeing me come through the door, Witch Yan smiled and said, "You see. Nothing to worry about. This boy is tough."

Mom looked embarra.s.sed and smiled at Witch Yan. She then immediately asked me whether I wanted to eat something. I didn"t want to admit that I had spent all my money to eat barbecue, so I just said that I wasn"t hungry. Then I went to my room to rest at my mom"s insistence.

I didn"t wake up until noon the next day, but after I was awake I immediately got to work. I reached out to a former colleague of Wu Jian"s to ask for his help investigating Wu Jian"s and Huang Xiaolong"s relations.h.i.+p history. This colleague, Li Lei, had once been under Wu Jian"s leaders.h.i.+p. We"d had a few meals together, and were quite familiar with each other. I doubted Wu Jian had said anything to him, but he seemed like the kind of man who would be willing to help me. Besides, he didn"t seem to think my request was strange at all; instead, he simply promised to try to find the information as soon as possible.

I thanked him profusely, then considered what to do while I waited for his response. I decided to play the good soon for a few days. I"d get off work on time and return home immediately afterward. However, I was trying to impress Sister Hua, and she seemed to have other plans.

We went to the boss"s night market stall almost every night. Luckily for me, the group refused to let me pay again. I wasn"t sure where the money was coming from, but I didn"t dare ask in case the bill became my responsibility again. The ghosts" appet.i.te would financially ruin me.

By now, the boss was familiar with us. He no longer left the stall open to the public after 3 o"clock; it had become a ghost canteen.

Life was pleasant. Save for Lulu"s cold expression every time I went to the Ghost House, I enjoyed everything about my daily life immensely. Unfortunately, after just a few days, Li Lei contacted me to share the information he had found.

Li Lei had found information on both Wu Jian"s and Huang Xiaolong"s love history. Wu Jian"s was simple; he had had two girlfriends, and they were both still alive. It seemed that the "former lover" wasn"t his. Still, he had been the first to disappear, so I still intended to keep him in mind.

Huang Xiaolong"s history, on the other hand, was shocking. Unlike Wu Jian"s history, which was three sheets thick, Huang Xiaolong"s was as thick as half of the Xinhua dictionary. I looked at Li Lei in surprise.

Li Lei cleared his throat and said, "These are the people confirmed to have had a relations.h.i.+p with him. As for the s.e.xual encounters, I"ve put them directly on a flash drive. I can go get that if you need it."

I quickly shook my head. Is Huang Xiaolong a man? This is the file of a…stallion! I didn"t know why I suddenly wanted to cry again.

It seemed like focusing on Wu Jian first was the right choice. Otherwise, I might die before I found a lead in Huang Xiaolong"s file. Opening his file to several random pages and seeing picture after picture of gorgeous women confirmed my decision. Too overwhelming!

Li Lei had to get back to business, so he excused himself and left in a hurry.

I turned to Wu Jian"s information and calmed down slightly. There were only two photos among the three pages of information. The rest was all text.

The first page described Wu Jian"s experience starting from middle school. It was very simple. He became a soldier when he was in senior high school. The history skipped forward three years to when he took the college entrance examination. He then entered the police academy, and afterward became Interpol. He didn"t have any girlfriends during these periods. No wonder we got along well.

The second page held a picture of a beautiful girl. She was stunning, in fact. Wu Jian"s so common. How did he get a girlfriend this beautiful?

I studied the page carefully.

The girl"s name was Hu Hong, and they were introduced by a relative of Wu Jian"s. A blind date. The two spent a period of time together, and then they broke up. Nothing really stood out about their relations.h.i.+p. What was depressing was that Wu Jian had proposed the breakup. The reason wasn"t listed.

Later, the girl met another man through a blind date. That was the man she was currently dating. I read the page over and over again for a long time. She was really beautiful.

I reluctantly turned to the last page of information.

The lady"s name was Ni Min. She was Wu Jian"s current girlfriend. She was not very beautiful, although that could be because I"d just been staring at Hu Hong. However, she had the purity of "the girl next door". She had been a high school cla.s.smate of Wu Jian"s. They had reunited at a cla.s.s reunion and then started dating. It was a.s.sumed to be a progression of feelings they"d held during school.

From a superficial perspective, the relations.h.i.+p between the two was very good. After Wu Jian disappeared, Ni Min had gone to the police station nearly every day to look for him, which she was doing up to the present. It seemed that they were truly in love. Clearly, she wasn"t the "former lover".

I looked at the stack of Huang Xiaolong"s data and sighed. Is the former lover in here?

I started with the first page. His history also began in middle school. In junior high school, he had had seven girlfriends (Seven?!), and made bad grades. He joined the army, and then his history also skipped forward three years. He came back, had over 20 girlfriends. Joined his family company, dated a lot more girls. In just two years, he had had more than 50 girlfriends. At the time of his disappearance, he was dating eight girls at the same time.

I took a long breath. I intended to take a closer looked at Wu Jian"s file. Huang Xiaolong"s file would make half of the world"s men shed tears.

I carefully read Wu Jian"s file again, and suddenly found something I"d missed before. While he had attended the police academy, he had had a very good friend who died in a s.h.i.+pwreck while on a trip. That friend had been a woman.

More importantly, there was a strange sentence included beneath that information: "Spending every day together like two best friends."

Best friends. Then they must have had a good relations.h.i.+p. Perhaps my heart was dark or my inexperience was influencing my thoughts, but I did not believe that men and women could have a pure relations.h.i.+p if they spent every day together. This must have been a s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p.

Perhaps this was who I was looking for. Unfortunately, there was no more information about her in the file. However, since she was Wu Jian"s police school cla.s.smate, I figured it would be easy to get more information on her.

I made a phone call to Li Lei and asked him to research this person in detail. Unfortunately, we didn"t even have a name to go off of.