First-Class Lawyer

“Joe.” Yan Suizhi called out of the blue.

“Ah, sorry, Dean Yan. I was spacing out a bit just now. Yes?” Joe snapped out of his envy, asking. 

“Would you mind sending me a copy of Ms Eunice’s video diary?” Yan Suizhi asked.

As the miniature-version of Little Young Master Joe had yelled in the recording, the events held at the Manson Manor had an unspoken rule—no photography permitted.

Most of the attendees were slick and shrewd business tycoons who upheld the principle of ‘don’t make trouble for others and don’t let others make trouble for you’. Hence, they wouldn’t flout the rules without good cause to, as if they had nothing better to do. There were also some who were more particular about social etiquette and wouldn’t wildly go around taking photographs without making greetings.

Therefore, what Eunice possessed was one of its kind. 

Joe knew better than anyone how rare these videos were. Deeply sympathetic for how Yan Suizhi felt, he nodded with alacrity. “No problem, it’s just a copy. I’ll send it to you right now—”

“I suggest that you seek your sister’s opinion first. This is her diary, after all,” Yan Suizhi reminded him.

“Oh,” Joe mumbled. “True that. I’ll ask her. Though, I don’t think she will have a problem with it; she’s always been unbelievably brazen when it comes to stuff like this.”

As he spoke, his fingers swiftly sent a message over to Eunice.

As he waited for Eunice’s reply with his head lowered, he suddenly remembered, as an afterthought, that the gentle and attractive couple were similar to those others, who, having received Old Fox’s invitation, turned up at a gathering at the Manson Manor, and never appeared after that again.

He had thought that it was a shame for a time.

But the difference therein was that Eunice had told him about many of such, and with his own information sources since growing up, he investigated quite a few in passing.

But Eunice hadn’t mentioned much of Mr and Mrs L to him. He hadn’t looked into the situation surrounding them at all; it was only now that he found out their names. Perhaps, somewhere in his subconscious, he didn’t want to check, for he hoped that these two were living well in a place unknown to him. 

Joe looked at his smart device, wavering, before sending another message to Eunice.

-I just noticed that I accidentally skipped the tail-end of those videos. That married couple… they’ve passed away already, right? Do you know how it happened?

“Err… she might be in a meeting now, or is busy managing something else, and might not be able to respond immediately,” Joe explained.

He felt a trace of nervousness that he couldn’t quite place, and this apprehension only grew after finding out that that married couple was Yan Suizhi’s parents, afraid that their passing was, again, inextricably linked to Old Fox. 

Eunice’s reply came in relatively swiftly:

-Who are you giving the copy to? If they’re reliable, go ahead. But I’m very doubtful of your judgement.

Well, he couldn’t say that it was Yan Suizhi.

But Eunice wouldn’t recognise the name Ruan Ye, either. 

Joe didn’t hesitate to pin it all on his bestie.

-Gu. He wants a copy. So?

Pc jmaejilas, Xe Tjc’r cjwf kjr gjatfg tjcvs ab erf lc ufcfgji. Seclmf lwwfvljafis gfqilfv:

-Gu? Then what are you wasting your time asking me for, just give him a copy. 

Vbbc joafg, Seclmf rfca jcbatfg wfrrjuf:

-Yeah, they’ve passed on. From a gene surgery failure.

Ciwbra lwwfvljafis, Abf atbeuta bo atf wfvlmji mjrf atja Tjc Velhtl tjv tjcvifv.

-Fuck, the medical case we discussed all night… was also a gene surgery. They’re not linked, are they?! 

Ktlr alwf, Seclmf kjr ribkfg ab gfrqbcv.

Abf rajgfv ecyilcxlcuis ja atf mtja, offilcu rb abgc jcv ecfjrs obg atf olgra alwf lc tlr ilof. Qtlif tf tbqfv atja Seclmf mbeiv gfqis jr rbbc jr qbrrlyif, tf jirb tbqfv atja atf nfgvlma kbeiv mbwf j yla ijafg, ulnlcu tlw rqjmf ab ajxf j mbeqif wbgf ygfjatr.

But his conflicted emotions were of no import. Eunice’s message still came in the end, and it was a long one:

-It’s hard to say. Actually, this is one of the reasons that I wanted to reopen the medical case. I believe that there is some correlation between the two, but I don’t have concrete evidence. Actually, this married couple is rather special. They were the first guests to pass away. I actually looked into it a long time ago, mulling over it for a time. Before their deaths, dad didn’t behave abnormally. He didn’t make any suspicious phone calls or expose any abrupt fluctuations in temperament. Furthermore, the success rate of gene surgery at that time was indeed very low; it wouldn’t be surprising for someone to die from a complication during the surgery. I went through a lot of trouble to find out meagre results, so I didn’t put them on the ‘casualty list’ for now or touched on them much to you. 

This wasn’t promising for Joe.

Although Eunice had gone through the pains of writing such a long paragraph, all of his attention fixated on one sentence—I believe that there is some correlation between the two.

Joe unconsciously asked: [What correlation?]

[Eunice: Like the defendant in the medical case coincidentally also being involved in this couple’s gene surgery, etc… Just work your pea brain, you idiot, and tell me—if I can find a strong correlation, would I still be having you to ask a lawyer for me?] 

Joe, “…”

[Eunice: Go through the questions properly and in detail. Gu and his little intern are over there with you, right? All in all, they’re unrelated bystanders, so they would be able to regard this much more calmly than us. They might be able to find some connections that we missed.]

Joe, “…”

Unrelated bystanders… 

Not only was the ‘little intern’ not an unrelated bystander, but he might even be the victim’s family. Piss yourself yet?

Only god knew how numb Joe’s expression was when he saw this message.

Just like this, he couldn’t get the questions that he had stayed up the night to prepare out of his mouth anymore. If even Eunice could sense that there was some correlation between the two, how could Yan Suizhi be blind to it?

Under such circumstances, getting him to revisit the nitty-gritty of the case whilst finding evidence to prove Old Fox’s innocence or guilt… Joe seriously couldn’t do something so animalistic. 

“How is it going?” Yan Suizhi’s voice pulled Joe out of his thoughts.

Joe jerked his head up. “What? Oh. Yes. She said that it was fine. I’ll send it right over, Dean Yan.”

He hastily projected the interface. Without asking Yan Suizhi if he only wanted that section, he sent the whole set of videos over in one shot.

“Thank you.” Yan Suizhi received them. 

This thank you made Young Master Joe feel like he was sitting on pins and needles.

Yan Suizhi lightly closed the screen, and he ran a finger over the ring-shaped smart device, raising his gaze. “I have gotten a sense of what you and Ms Eunice are thinking. About that medical case—”

“Dean Yan.” Joe wrung his hands, interrupting, “I got some new ideas after talking about it with you from top to bottom just now. I… I’d like to go over the files again.”

“Hm?” Yan Suizhi looked at him, his gaze clear and quiet. “Didn’t you go through it for a long time last night?” 

Joe hardened his neck and coughed with his fist over his mouth, mumbling, “Haven’t gone through it enough.”

Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan exchanged looks.

“Then the questions that you’ve prepared?” Yan Suizhi asked.

Joe, “I’ll just ask them after I go through it again.” 

He rubbed his neck after saying this, glancing in the direction of the bedroom, then saying to Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan, “Huh, I didn’t realise that it’s already noon. Talking so much has made me hungry. Shall we have room service send lunch up?”

His skittish reaction was glaringly obvious to Yan Suizhi. His thoughts and concerns were, to Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan, practically splashed over his face.

Yan Suizhi was a bit touched, and also a bit amused.

He wanted to say, ‘Stop turning your gaze around. There aren’t many things in this room for you to divert the subject to.’ But before he could, Gu Yan spoke. “We’re going to the restaurant downstairs. What about you and Ke Jin?” 

With someone giving him an out, Young Master Joe quickly latched on to it, scuttling to freedom with a tumble. “We won’t be going down; he went back to sleep not long after waking up..”

Gu Yan was slightly surprised. “He’s asleep again?”

Ke Jin didn’t sleep well in the night and always tended to wake up very early, thereby implicating Joe’s biological clock to synchronise with his.

So days like today were seldom seen. 

“He went to bed very late last night,” Joe said. “He sat by the window without budging. Maybe it was because the weather was bad and it looked too overcast outside that he hadn’t realised the time.”

“Sat by the window without budging?” Yan Suizhi took notice to this sentence.

“I checked,” Joe caught onto what he was implying. “There was nothing outside. It was already deep in the night; most people in the opposite building would’ve been asleep by then. There wasn’t anyone or anything out of the ordinary. The only living things that moved outside were the birds, probably presaging the hurricane, flying in flocks across the sky.”

He’d paced around the window, peering out, but eventually decided that Ke Jin might only have felt restless from the unusual animal movement. He coaxed and comforted Ke Jin for a long while before the other shifted his gaze from the window, entering his own bedroom. 

Then, Joe sat in the armchair next to his bed for another long while before Ke Jin slowly relaxed.

“I waited for him to fall asleep before returning to my room,” Joe said. “He woke up once at seven in the morning, walking past my room to stand by the window for a while.”

There were no people, flocks of birds, or anything otherwise that would perturb anyone. So, Ke Jin only stood there for a short time before feeling drowsy again.

Yan Suizhi nodded. 

Joe’s stomach protested during this conversation. The young master rubbed his abdomen, looking like he’d heard the first musical note upon the creation of heaven and earth. He got up from the sofa, sighing with deep emotion. “I’m famished. I’m going to find something to munch on first.”

“Mn.” Gu Yan patted the back of Yan Suizhi’s hand. “We’ll head down after we change.”

Joe strutted to the refrigerator, and upon hearing this, went “ah” in realisation. “I was just thinking what about you looked off today. Aren’t you always in your dress shirts in the morning? Why did you wear the hotel’s bathrobes today?”

Gu Yan slid him a look without answering. 

He wasn’t wrong. They were wearing their shirts at first…

They had just become too unsightly to be worn.

Hearing this, Yan Suizhi took it in his stride, like a smooth scoundrel in a scholar’s robes, calmly sipping the last bit of milk in his glass.

Joe was oblivious to the subtle shift in the atmosphere, burying his head into the refrigerator, deep in search before saying, puzzled, “Huh?” 

Lawyer Gu changed the subject. “What are you looking for?”

Joe said, “Oh, it’s nothing. I just wanted to bring a snack for Ke Jin. I recall that there was a bowl of strawberries, but I can’t find it. Did you eat it?”

Smooth Scoundrel • Professor Yan calmly choked on his sip of milk.

“Dean Yan, are you alright?” Hearing him cough, Joe turned his head away from the refrigerator to show him concern. 

And so he saw Yan Suizhi, with a hand over his lips and his neck faintly flushed from his coughing, wave at him, then whip around to return to his room in haste.