Chapter 45: Why are you here?
Luo ZhouZhou wrapped his arms around Chu Feng’s neck, stood on tiptoe to find his lips, eagerly asked for a kiss, so was picked up off the ground, and kissed again.
……
It took a long time for the lingering, fierce kiss to end.
Chu Feng reached up to wipe the liquid off Luo ZhouZhou's lips and gave him two more light pecks.
"Is that enough?" He asked in a soft voice.
Luo ZhouZhou opened his glistening eyes, and softly answered, "Again—"
"We can't." Chu Feng pressed his forehead against his, and laughed breathlessly, "If we do it again, something will happen." He said and then lowered Luo ZhouZhou to the ground, pressing his head against his chest, bending his head down and burying his face in the top of his hair.
Luo ZhouZhou heard Chu Feng's heart beating so hard that it shook his eardrums.
He lifted his hand to feel the position of his heart, but Chu Feng reached out and held it in his hand, saying, "Don't move.”
Luo ZhouZhou stopped moving, his nose filled with a reassuring smell, and closed his eyes comfortably as he was held tightly.
Until his heartbeat slowly subsided, Chu Feng whispered, "Come on, let's go back, the party isn't over yet."
"I can't walk anymore." Luo ZhouZhou grabbed him playfully by the waist.
Chu Feng let go of his arm, turned around and crouched down, and Luo ZhouZhou quickly got on his back. At the sound of insects chirping, Chu Feng carried him on his back and slowly walked toward the banquet hall.
As he approached the villa, he stopped and said, "Go in first, I'll watch you from here."
Luo ZhouZhou obediently slid off his back and reluctantly asked, "Can we still stay together tonight?"
Chu Feng thought about it and replied, "Probably not, but I'll pick you up from work on the weekend, okay?"
Luo ZhouZhou turned to him, rested his forehead on his chest, and sulkily said, "Then you'll have to send me more terminal messages."
"Got it." Chu Feng touched his head and softly urged, "Go."
The smile on Chu Feng's face disappeared as he watched Luo ZhouZhou's back disappear in front of the courtyard gate. He turned the lighter in his hand and stood silently in the darkness.
After a few more minutes, he walked to the front door. As soon as he entered the gate, he was greeted by an attendant who respectfully said, "General Chu, the President is looking for you."
"Oh? Is he in the banquet hall now?" Chu Feng asked the question as he walked across the courtyard.
The attendant followed and answered, "The President was not feeling well and is now in the second floor lounge."
"I see," Chu Feng said, walking quickly towards the banquet hall.
No one was dancing in the banquet hall now, and most of the people had wine glasses and were gathering in groups to talk. The young people were gathered around the swimming pool in the corner of the courtyard, running around and playing.
When they saw Chu Feng, a few of them were about to come up to him with their glasses to exchange pleasantries, but before they could approach, he was striding up the stairs.
As Chu Feng swiftly made his way up the stairs, and Willson, who was watching him from the second floor railing, lazily said, "Where did General go? If His Excellency Calgar didn't find you in the next minute, he was going to use his soldiers to look for you."
Chu Feng didn't even look at him as if he hadn't heard him, and walked straight to the largest door in the hallway. Knock, knock, knock. He knocked on the heavy door.
After a few seconds of pause, without hearing any response from inside, he reached out, turned the knob, and walked straight in. The room was large and luxurious, and all the furniture and decorations gave off the extravagant air of imperial royalty. Facing the swimming pool was a large window, where a mahogany chair was placed, and someone was sitting in it with his back to the door.
"Your Excellency, I heard you were looking for me," Chu Feng said, walking to the center of the room.
After a moment, the man in the wooden chair said, "Yes, you know how I dread these occasions, the noise gives me a headache. I came up here to rest for a while, and I wanted to chat with you, but couldn't find you."
"I was also distracted by the noise just now, so I just went out for a casual walk," Chu Feng replied.
The mahogany chair slightly rattled, and the man in the chair stood up and turned around. Calgar had changed into a comfortable robe and was holding a glass of red wine in his hand. He walked over to the sofa behind the small round table and sat down, pointing to the opposite side and saying, "Sit down."
Chu Feng nodded his head slightly and walked to the edge of the couch to sit down as he was told.
"Having a good time tonight? Have you found a partner you like?" Calgar casually asked.
Chu Feng thought for a moment and replied, "It's not really a matter of whether I like them or not, it’s just dancing." And then added, "Moreover, this is also the completion of the task arranged by Your Excellency."
Hearing this, Calgar laughed, stretched out his finger and said, "You, is it still a chore for you to do the opening dance?"
Chu Feng also laughed and said, "I understand the President's good intentions."
"But it doesn't seem like the one you wanted to invite was the Qin family lady." Calgar took a sip from his glass of red wine and nonchalantly said.
Chu Feng helplessly replied, "I was afraid that I would be rejected if I invited someone else in front of the public. If I invited Miss Qin, you might even be a little more confident."
"Is that so?" Calgar twirled the glass of red wine in his hand and said, "A moment ago, when you were not here, a waiter was looking for you. Said you arranged for him to push a float full of roses to the little garden in the back after the first dance. He pushed the cart, but no one was in the garden, and he didn't know what to do."
Chu Feng slapped his forehead and said in annoyance, "I was so bored just now that I just wanted to go out for a quick walk, so I forgot about it."
"Oh? So what were you planning to do with the float? You didn't invite anyone else to dance, so you're not going to give those flowers to Miss Qin, are you?" Calgar asked with interest.
Chu Feng shrugged his shoulders and responded, "It was a subordinate's idea to prepare flowers in advance and take them to a small garden if you meet someone you like at the ball. When the flowers are delivered, they will be sure to impress anyone."
Nodding approvingly, Calgar asked again as if suddenly remembering something, "I was supposed to travel, so I left the party to you. But canceling my trip at the last minute and bringing Willson here didn't disrupt any of your arrangements, did it?"
"It was indeed disrupted," Chu Feng said with a sigh, "I had prepared all the Cuyi wine, but when I heard that you had suddenly arrived, I had to send someone to pick up Noon's wine."
"You ah." Calgar laughed and didn’t ask anymore questions. He put down his wine glass, stood up, walked behind Chu Feng, patted him on the shoulder and said, "Chu Feng, I've called you here, but I also want to talk to you about something else."
Chu Feng tried to stand up, but Calgar pushed him down again and said, "Just sit down, you don't have to stand up."
"I know that since the accident, you've been trying to find the cause all the time, but you've been working yourself too much." Calgar sighed. “When I was the honorary principal of your group of cadets, I was also always concerned about you, and I can name every one of those twenty-eight cadets. Rodney, Joyce, Chen Yang, Gu Shuming… and the one who was your best friend, who you were inseparable with, Wang Jun, right? Wang Jun."
Chu Feng sat on the couch, his spine crumbling tight as he heard Calgar pronounce those names.
"After the accident, you came to me and said you would give me your life and loyalty in exchange for enough authority to investigate. I agreed, and brought you with me, promoting you to your current position. But you must understand that I am not exchanging your loyalty and life. For one thing, I appreciate your ability, and the ruthlessness in you. Secondly, it is also because I have feelings for those kids. Since you said that the cause of their deaths was strange, whether it is true or not, I am willing to support your investigations."
Chu Feng quickly jumped to his feet, and exclaimed, "His Excellency Calgar's kindness in promoting Chu Feng will be remembered and will never be forgotten for even a moment."
Calgar tsked and said, "Why so serious? I'm just chatting with you, sit down." When Chu Feng sat down again, he added, "I understand your loyalty, but you also need to curb your temper and have a better relationship with Willson."
"Yes," Chu Feng whispered back.
"You were at odds with Willson for the past two years. He doesn't know himself, but I know everything." Calgar patted his shoulder meaningfully.
A loud cheer came from the window, it was the men and women by the pool playing some kind of game.
Calgar went to the window, watched for a while, then turned to Chu Feng and smiled, "Come on, you go play too, don't be so dead-eyed all day, I remember you're only twenty-seven, right? Isn’t your birthday on August 23rd?"
"Your Excellency actually still remembers my birthday," Chu Feng said with a flourish.
Calgar looked at his expression, waved his hand in satisfaction, and said, "Go! Go play."
"As you wish." Chu Feng bowed, then left the room with a smile on his face.
Willson was leaning against the wall of the hallway smoking a cigarette, and saw Chu Feng come out of the room, and hate flashed in his eyes. Chu Feng whistled and walked proudly past him into the bathroom.
Closing and locking the door, Chu Feng’s face instantly tensed. He turned on the faucet, splashed a few handfuls of water on his face, and then looked up at himself in the mirror.
After about a minute, he straightened up and leaned against the wall, his fingers in his pants pocket, fondling the lighter while he was quietly thinking.
At that moment, a call came from the window, "Zhou Zhou, come sit here, it’s very quiet here."
Chu Feng opened his eyes slightly as he recognized the voice; it was one of Luo ZhouZhou's colleagues at the institute, the one who was caught with him stealing blood at the police station, Lin Fan.
He slowly walked to the window and opened it halfway. On the lawn downstairs, Luo ZhouZhou was sitting on a bench, smiling and chatting with Lin Fan beside him.
Perhaps he was talking about something happy, and he was smiling so much that his two little tiger teeth were showing.
Chu Feng watched quietly, his face gradually softening.
After a while, Luo ZhouZhou raised his hand to look at his terminal, said a few words to Lin Fan, and hurriedly walked to the entrance of the banquet hall.
Chu Feng didn’t close the bathroom window until he was gone.
Luo ZhouZhou looked around the banquet room, found Luo Pei's location, walked over, and said, "General, I’m back.”
Luo Pei was whispering to some fellow officers, and when he heard that, he said to him, "Don't go out again anymore. It's too dark outside. Just go wait on the couch next to us until we go home."
"Then I'll wait for you on the sofa." Luo ZhouZhou said, heading for the corner.
All the colleagues laughed, and one of them enviously said, "General Luo, your son is so well-behaved, unlike the one in my family."
Luo Pei laughed and waved his hand, "He is so spoiled and unruly that he doesn't even call me father, just calls me General.” But his words carried a hidden smugness.
Another person added: "That’s what I call a father-son bond. My son sees me as an enemy, even if he calls me "Sir"."
Luo Pei laughed along with them.
Luo ZhouZhou sat down on the sofa and looked around, hoping to see Chu Feng again, but after searching, he found no one.
As he was turning his eyes in a bored manner, he noticed that a waiter was saying something to Luo Pei, and after listening, Luo Pei handed him the wine glass in his hand and headed to the door.
After a while, Linda greeted some of the noblewomen around her and came over to Luo ZhouZhou, asking, "Where's daddy, baby? It's getting late, we should be heading home."
"He just went out for something and hasn't come back yet. Why don’t I go out and look for him?" Luo ZhouZhou replied. He wanted to go out and look around, maybe he could meet Chu Feng.
Linda thought about it and said, "Then you go, but come back if you can’t find him."
Luo ZhouZhou agreed, and darted out of the banquet hall. He searched around the courtyard, the lawn, the swimming pool, and the garden, and found no one.
Not to mention Chu Feng, he couldn’t even find a shadow of Luo Pei.
Strange, where did he go?, Luo ZhouZhou muttered in confusion. As he followed the stone path all the way to the back, the sounds of laughter and joking became quieter and quieter. Before he knew it, he found himself in a garden, where flowers of all colors were in full bloom under the streetlights. He stood still and looked around, and found that there was a small path in the garden stretching out into the distance, with someone’s figure at the end.
Was Luo Pei there?
Luo ZhouZhou wandered forward with suspicion, ready to take a look, and if he was wrong, he would turn around and leave. Thick vines entwined around an arched iron frame, forming a natural passage. Luo ZhouZhou ran his fingers over the vines, slowly moving closer and closer, vaguely hearing the sound of a conversation.
"…It is true that the cipher box passed through my hands back then, but I swear I didn’t touch the motive agent…" The speaker's voice was lowered, but it was full of suppressed anger.
Luo ZhouZhou's footsteps stopped abruptly, and he realized that it was Luo Pei's voice. Luo ZhouZhou wondered who Luo Pei was arguing with here, and took a few quiet steps.
"Several soldiers I sent to deliver the medicine were killed, and the cipher box was taken from the car. If he had changed the medicine halfway, who could say for sure? Why do you keep chasing after me?" Luo Pei's voice sounded like he was yelling with gritted teeth.
"General Luo, you always avoided me at the military headquarters, and even when I found you, you excused yourself by saying that it was inconvenient to talk at the military headquarters. There's no listening device here, so won’t you just tell me a little about it?" The man with him spoke, and his voice was low, but it was tinged with an incredibly cold layer of ice. "Twenty-eight lives, twenty-eight of my fellow comrades died for no apparent reason, and the only clue is the drug that passed through your hands. How do you think I can let you go?"
Luo ZhouZhou could tell the moment he opened his mouth that the speaker was angry, and the person who spoke was Chu Feng! But why was Chu Feng arguing with Luo Pei here?
Luo ZhouZhou opened his mouth in surprise and didn't move.
"That medicine was given to me by Qi Fen from the institute, why don't you ask Qi Fen for clarification?" Luo Pei said impatiently.
Chu Feng scoffed and said, "General Luo, Qi Fen is just a researcher trying to save his beloved, and he has always been against the military ministry taking Benzedrine injection to soldiers."
"But didn't you guys sign an agreement that you are willing—!”
Crack.
Luo ZhouZhou didn't notice the crunching sound of a broken dead branch being stepped on under his feet, and Luo Pei’s words came to an abrupt halt.
"Who’s there?" He shouted sternly.
Before Luo ZhouZhou had time to reply, he felt a blur before his eyes, and a black shadow was already in front of him.
Chu Feng was about to strangle the person in front of him, but his hand that he reached out, froze in mid-air.
"Zhou Zhou, why are you here?" He had a rare look of dismay on his face.