Reborn: The Return of the Villainous Mr. Liu

The next day, Shui was on her way to her office when her car stopped by a signal near Lin's cafe. She was looking over some files to study her next project for a company's marketing and advertising strategy when her gaze causally fell on his cafe. She looked back at her files but felt odd that the cafe wasn't open yet.

That's strange…

A few seconds later, Cai haggardly walked towards the cafe with an almost ghostly appearance. Tired lines were formed under his eyes and it looked as if he lost more than half of his weight overnight.

He looked at the cafe's locked shutter with reddened eyes and his pressed lips quivered hard as if he would burst into tears at any moment.

He felt a poke at his shoulder and looked back, making Shui gasp in surprise.

"Miss. Han…?"

She placed her hand on her chest, taken aback. "W-What happened to your face? Why…do you look like you just came out of a torture camp?"

Cai's eyes teared up and he sniffled.

"..."

"Seriously, what happened? Also, where is your brother?"

The tears rolled down his eyes in full swing as the dam of sorrow burst in his heart. Her jaw dropped, shocked.

The passersby stared at them oddly as if Shui was bullying an honest, hard-working man first thing in the morning.

Shui cleared her throat. "How about you open the cafe and we talk inside?"

He wiped his wet eyes. "Is there even a point of opening for business today?"

He murmured to himself but unlocked the shutter anyway. Stepping in, he switched on the lights and asked Shui to take a seat.

"Should I make you some coffee?" He asked with a teary face and shaking voice.

"Can you first tell me what happened? Why do you look like your world just ended?"

"O-of course it feels like my world has ended…! How can I be happy when Bro is in custody!" A fresh wave of tears fell from his eyes.

Shui's eyes widened. "Huh? What? Who is in custody?"

"Bro…"

"Hou Lin?" She was left speechless. "But why? Isn't he out on parole?"

Cai's nostrils flared. "It's all because of that hooligan of a drug dealer!"

Though the immense sorrow and injustice made it hard to decipher his story as he was all out of place, Shui still understood the gist of it.

"That bastard used Bro's kindness for his own filthy intentions! A-as if Bro has anything to do with drugs! But his parole officer refuses to believe us…! We didn't even know when that dealer hid his drugs in our washroom. Now he thinks that Bro is a link in this drug chain just because he walked into our cafe!"

Cai cried, trembling hard.

"What will happen now…? Bro is not involved in anything shady! He is just trying to live a simple and honest life and run our small cafe the best he can…But if his parole gets cancelled, then all his efforts will go down the drain. What is this nonsense anyway? Bro never even smoked a cigarette in his high school days. He was always far away from this addiction stuff. As if he will be involved with drugs!"

Shui's lips parted, stunned.

Why did Hou Lin have to get involved in something so messy?

Cai slightly gasped, struggling to breathe as he cried. "I spent the entire night looking for that man, but I couldn't. I didn't even find any clue about him to prove Bro innocent. I am so useless…"

No wonder he looks so haggard, she thought.

Shui pushed him to sit on a chair and said, "Okay. First, please calm down."

"How can I calm down? I don't know what to do anymore," he bit his lower lip. "Do you know how the customers looked at him when he was being taken away? It was so humiliating and incriminating. All of them left the cafe. Many didn't even paid the bill! They looked at my brother as if he was some shameful criminal!"

Cai cried another bout of tears and she released a sigh.

"Okay, I know the situation is a little difficult but we cannot sit still and do nothing, right?"

Cai looked up, staring at Shui with his blurry gaze. "We?"

Shui blinked. "Well, yes. I will help you."

"...Why? D-Don't you hate Bro? You don't have to get involved in this."

Shui paused and felt merit in his logic. For a man who only brought chaos in their life to support Yahui's revenge, she had no business in helping him out of this pinch.

"...Let's just say that I am returning the favor."

"Favor?" He blinked once.

She lightly pressed her lips. "Hou Lin told me what he saw and heard about Yuze interfering with Jin's business deal. It was…a hard thing to do, considering our past. Even more so when I already rebuked him so harshly at the exhibition. Yet he approached me again to tell me all about it because he cared for Jin. I know that it took him a lot of courage."

"You be-believe in Bro?" His voice quivered with hope.

She said after some thought, "I cannot let go of what happened, so I still have my reservations about Hou Lin. But as far as this case is concerned, yes, I believe in him. I don't think he is the one to get involved with drugs."

Cai nodded hard. "You have no idea! That parole officer doesn't understand anything! It feels like just yesterday when Bro had caught me smoking in middle school. He didn't scold or beat me but his gaze and silence that followed was terrifying…" he shuddered.

"Y-you really have no idea. Bro doesn't kid around when he goes all silent mode. I had kneeled before him the entire day for his apology until I could barely stand on my feet…It still took five whole days for his heart to yield. I never touched a cigarette again in my life."

Shui tried to imagine Lin as how his brother just described but somehow, she couldn't form an accurate picture of his fury. She left it at that and looked back at Cai.

"Anyway. You have a picture of that drug dealer?"