When the adults asked what was wrong, he lied and said Sheng Jingchu had messed up his Rubik’s cube.
Of course, the adults took his side, and his mother whispered to an aunt, "A child without parents lacks proper manners."
He wasn’t sure if Sheng Jingchu had heard, but he secretly watched him.
Sheng Jingchu’s face remained impassive as he returned the Rubik’s cube to its original scrambled state.
That encounter left a deep impression on Xu Chi, so much so that he always felt a sense of inferiority whenever he thought of Sheng Jingchu.
Later, when he heard that Sheng Jingchu had gone to study Go, Xu Chi felt a sense of relief. Their life paths would be different. He was smart, had a good family background, and his future was paved with gold by his family.
He should have known that someone like Sheng Jingchu would stand out no matter where he went. But what he hadn’t expected was just how far Sheng Jingchu would go—his achievements were astounding, and even abroad, Xu Chi often heard his name mentioned among the Chinese community.
"You know, I actually like Cheng Liao." Xu Chi told Sheng Jingchu as they stood in the hospital’s common area.
Sheng Jingchu didn’t react, only offering a calm "Hmm."
Xu Chi’s voice grew more agitated. "But my feelings don’t matter. My parents would never let me marry her."
"So?"
"So…"
The truth was, he didn’t know what came after "so."
Should he let go? Should he try to return to the way things were with Cheng Liao? He couldn’t bring himself to do that.
Should he fight against his family? He knew well the difference in social status between the two families. Even if he won that battle, it would be the beginning of Cheng Liao’s suffering.
"So you want to enjoy Cheng Liao’s affection while accepting your family’s arrangements?" Sheng Jingchu’s words were blunt. "What’s the point of telling me all this? Do you want me to relay it to Cheng Liao? Sorry, I can’t do that. If you have the courage to tell her yourself and let her choose again, then maybe I’d have a little bit of respect for you."
Xu Chi was infuriated. "What would you do if you were in my shoes? If your parents were still alive? I know the Sheng family was once well-known in Hangzhou’s business circles."
He felt justified in his anger—after all, Sheng Jingchu only had the freedom he did because he had no parents or family ties holding him back.
Sheng Jingchu smiled faintly. "If my parents were alive, if the Sheng family were still influential, I’d still be me. What would be different?"
When he had nothing, he still managed to achieve what he had today. Even if his parents were alive, even if they opposed him, he would still have the confidence to break away from his family.
Sheng Jingchu gave Xu Chi one last look. "Xu Chi, I’m not you, and thank goodness for that."
Returning to the inpatient department, Sheng Jingchu found Cheng Liao at the top of the stairs, anxiously looking around. When she saw him, she visibly relaxed.
"Are you hungry? Let’s get something to eat."
It seemed she had regained some of her energy. Though her eyes were still red, she was smiling, and the dimple on her left cheek stood out, like a White Rabbit milk candy wrapped in honey.
Sheng Jingchu asked her, "Do you know what you say to me most often?"
"What?"
She had said so much that she couldn’t remember what she said the most.
"It’s what you just said—'Are you hungry? Let’s get something to eat.'"
Cheng Liao rubbed her face. "Well, what can I say? I’m a foodie."
Actually, the conversations between two close people often revolve around the mundane details of daily life, never straying far from topics like food, clothing, and shelter.
She worried about whether he was eating well because, aside from cooking, there wasn’t much else she was particularly good at.
Sometimes, when she ate dinner early and found herself hungry late at night, she would send Sheng Jingchu a message, asking if he was hungry too.
She thought he wouldn’t reply since he always went to bed on time, but without fail, he would always respond immediately.
Later, during a chat with Xiao Qi, she found out that Sheng Jingchu had set his phone notifications to the loudest setting.
After that, she began to worry that he wasn’t sleeping well at night, so she held back from messaging him, but whenever she was hungry, she couldn’t help but worry that he might be too.
Eventually, she made a big pot of soup, divided it into portions, and froze them in his fridge, telling him to cook some noodles when he felt hungry.
When Cheng Liao was just a few months old, she had pneumonia once. Her mother, who had been working outside, felt hot when she came home and removed all of Cheng Liao’s clothes. What started as a cold turned into pneumonia.
Her mother had always felt guilty about this, blaming herself for using an adult’s sense of comfort to judge a child’s needs.
Cheng Liao had always thought her mother was a bit overly concerned.
But now, she suddenly understood her mother’s feelings back then. When you love someone, you can’t help but project your own feelings onto them. Just like when she was hungry, she worried that Sheng Jingchu was too.
They ordered two bowls of noodles at a nearby restaurant.
As soon as they sat down, Cheng Liao took a sip of the soup, smacking her lips and noting that it had a bit too much pepper.
Still, the hot soup warmed her up, and the tension she’d been holding since entering the hospital finally eased a little in the cool September evening.
The restaurant wasn’t busy, and the diners all seemed anxious—likely other relatives of patients.
“Do you know what I was thinking while I was at the hospital?” Cheng Liao asked, picking up some noodles. “When I was little, someone told my fortune and said my eight characters were bad, that I was destined to bring misfortune to my parents, and that I needed to be sent far away. My mom didn’t believe it, of course, but she passed away when I was still very young.”
Her mood darkened. “Later, I moved back with my dad to live with my grandmother, and the next year, my grandfather passed away. After that, people started talking about the bad luck of my eight characters again. Thankfully, my family’s health has been good since then. I don’t really believe in fate, but today, while I was waiting outside the operating room, I was really scared.
“In college, I took an elective course on astrology. When we were bored, we liked to read our star charts, but I never did it myself. However, there was something the professor said that stuck with me. She said she wasn’t teaching us astrology so we could avoid our fate but so we could face it with a more positive attitude.
“At the time, I wondered, is some part of life really predestined? If my mom had sent me away when I was little, would she still be alive today? If I hadn’t moved back to my grandmother’s house, would my grandfather still be alive? If I had been sent far away, would my dad not have had this accident today?”
Sheng Jingchu put down his chopsticks.
“After my parents passed away, I was taken in by various relatives. People said the same thing about me—that I had bad luck and that I had caused the death of my parents. My relatives didn’t believe it at first, but then they began to have doubts. Eventually, whenever anything went wrong in the household, they’d start blaming me. I moved from one house to another, and then another.
“Until I was six years old, and I met my teacher.
“He asked if I was willing to go with him. At that time, I knew nothing about Go, but I asked him one question. I said, ‘They all say I have bad luck. Aren’t you afraid?’
“My teacher hugged me and said, ‘Don’t blame others for your misfortunes. If you don’t have the resolve and courage to face your destiny, why bother living those extra years?’
He looked into Cheng Liao’s eyes.
“Liao Liao, when you reach a turning point in life, or face life-and-death moments, and there’s nothing you can do to change or control the situation, if fate only protects you up to a certain point, all you can do is rely on yourself. Fight a little more, struggle a little harder, ask for help if you need it, and if none of that works, then you must accept it, even if the process is full of pain. But as long as there’s still breath in you, you have to grit your teeth and keep going, because you never know when the person you love might leave, or when someone who loves you might arrive.”
He smiled. “You see, I waited twenty years, and here you are.”
Cheng Liao’s eyes became misty. She lowered her head and took a bite of her noodles, then stuck out her tongue. “Spicy, so spicy, I’m about to cry.”
Sheng Jingchu ruthlessly pointed out, “You’re eating beef noodles in brown sauce. There’s no chili in it.”
Cheng Liao laughed, a mix of exasperation and amusement. She stuck out her tongue. “You know, sometimes it’s better not to call out a harmless little lie.”
He told her, “You don’t need to hide your feelings in front of me.”
Cheng Liao pouted, “What’s left to hide? It’s practically written all over my face. No, I need to start practicing keeping my emotions in check.” She tried to put on a serious expression. “Tell me, what am I feeling right now?”
“I don’t know what you were feeling just now, but I know what you’re about to feel.” He reached out and wiped a bit of green onion from the corner of her mouth. “Embarrassed?”
Cheng Liao bit her lower lip and giggled. “Not embarrassed at all, just touched!”
When they returned to the hospital, her father had woken up.
Cheng Liao turned her head to wipe away her tears, and her father patted her hand. “Silly girl, what are you crying for?”
The traffic police took a brief statement from her father, but unfortunately, he couldn’t provide much information. The light had been in his eyes, and he hadn’t gotten a good look at the vehicle. All he remembered was that it might have been black.
One of the shorter officers kept glancing at Sheng Jingchu, then whispered something to his colleague.
After leaving the room, the shorter officer looked at Sheng Jingchu and asked, “Are you Mr. Sheng?”
Sheng Jingchu replied, “Yes, is there something you need?”
“Well,” the officer smiled, “Do you remember the bus theft case? It was a big deal within our system. The officer who handled it is a schoolmate of mine. I also watched that episode of ‘The Ultimate Challenge’ you were on. We were all really impressed with your observational skills. Our supervisor even said that if everyone had observation skills like yours, a lot of cases would be solved much faster. If it’s not too much trouble, could you come with us to the traffic department to see if you can help us gather any useful information?”
Cheng Liao was also curious, and since her father’s condition seemed stable, she accompanied Sheng Jingchu to the traffic department.
Despite this, she wasn’t very confident that Sheng Jingchu could really help. His memory was indeed excellent, but that relied on having seen or deliberately memorized something. He hadn’t seen the vehicle involved in the accident, so what clues could he possibly provide?
The officers showed Sheng Jingchu the clues they had gathered so far.
First, they let him see photos of the accident scene, and then they showed him footage from nearby stores’ security cameras. The quality of the civilian cameras was low, and all that could be seen was a black blur speeding by, merging onto the service road, with no way to discern the license plate or even the make of the car.
Sheng Jingchu borrowed some paper and a pen, watching the video on repeat while sketching out some details. After watching it a dozen times, he completed his drawing.
“The license plate has a reflective area, and I can only make out the letter H.”
Although the video of the hit-and-run was only a few seconds long, when broken down into individual frames, there were dozens of them.
Cheng Liao suddenly remembered a previous episode of “The Ultimate Challenge” where a contestant had to spot differences using video clips. Was this how Sheng Jingchu was analyzing the footage?
He explained to the officers, “Even though the video is short, each frame has unique noise patterns. By layering the noise from each frame, you can make out the outline of the letter H. Unfortunately, the strong reflection makes it impossible to determine the other characters clearly.
“Judging by the driver’s familiarity with the route, they’re likely a local, so the first character on the license plate is probably ‘Jiang’ for Jiangcheng. As for the headlight fragments, you professionals should be able to determine the make of the vehicle. Considering the black color and the ‘Jiang H’ license plate, this should narrow down the search.”
Everyone was skeptical, and Cheng Liao knew they hadn't fully accepted it yet.
It takes time for people to transition from disbelief to belief, a sort of mental buffer. After leaving the traffic department, the sky was already completely dark, and the night breeze was a bit chilly. Cheng Liao instinctively hunched her shoulders against the cold.
Sheng Jingchu took off his jacket and draped it over her.
Worried he might catch a cold, she gently pushed it away. “It’s fine, I’m not cold at all.”
He pulled the jacket tighter around her. “I’m warm.”
Cheng Liao took his hand and felt his palm.
He was lying about being warm; his hand was cool to the touch.
She teased him, “They say people who lie turn into dogs. What do pandas turn into when they lie?”
He shook his head.
“A bear, of course!”
Once inside the car, Cheng Liao, still shivering, sniffled and reached into the glove compartment for a tissue. To her surprise, she found several paper cranes neatly folded, each crease sharp and precise, with the beaks of the cranes all seemingly measured to the same length, lined up perfectly.
With such meticulous attention to detail, there was no doubt Sheng Jingchu had folded them.
She put the paper cranes back and teased him, “I didn’t know you had a hobby like this.”
Professional Go players face immense pressure. Cao Xihe relieves stress by playing mahjong, Kato Kiyomasa drinks, and Sheng Jingchu’s way of coping is by folding paper cranes.
Before competing in the Tianyuan Go Tournament at sixteen, he folded eight cranes.
Before the China-Japan-Korea Invitational at nineteen, he folded five.
In recent years, he had folded fewer, but after leaving the Cheng family and being stuck in traffic on the way to the hospital, unable to reach Cheng Liao by phone, he became agitated and anxious—emotions he rarely experienced.
To calm himself, he began folding paper cranes again.
He counted them—nine, even more than he had folded before the Tianyuan Go Tournament.
The traffic police quickly followed up on the Jiang H license plate lead and soon uncovered useful information.
The next morning, Cheng Liao received a call from the traffic department: “The case has been solved. We’ve apprehended the suspect.”
The following day, Cheng’s father underwent surgery on his leg, which was successful, though it would take a few months for him to fully recover.
This incident was a significant blow to Cheng’s father. As a chef unable to wield his ladle, the loneliness was almost unbearable.
He suddenly realized he was at an age where he should be passing on his skills, but his only daughter had no interest in continuing his work, and the young apprentices around him lacked the necessary talent.
He took to Weibo to post an ad seeking apprentices, and a few young men actually responded. His days became filled with the “auditions” and “eliminations,” which considerably lifted his spirits.
Unexpectedly, the news of Sheng Jingchu assisting the traffic department in solving the case spread, becoming more exaggerated with each retelling. The media eagerly reported it, almost elevating him to the status of a modern-day Sherlock Holmes.
Reading the articles, Cheng Liao couldn’t stop laughing. She nudged Sheng Jingchu, who was engrossed in studying a Go manual.
“Hey, Sherlock!”
Sheng Jingchu turned to her. “If I were Sherlock Holmes, I’d definitely pick you as my partner.”
Cheng Liao beamed with pride. “So, you admit I’m your Watson?”
He shook his head, then playfully imitated a dog barking, “Woof, woof—you’re the police dog.”
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