"Where could he be?" Wu Chengli muttered to himself, his fingers drumming a restless rhythm on the steering wheel. He'd been circling the block for what felt like hours. Suddenly, his eyes snapped to a familiar figure walking down the station steps. "There he is!" Chengli breathed, a flash of genuine relief crossing his face.
As Qixian, walking back to the clinic his thoughts was filled with, 'from the Zhou? It's not my mother, she hated me but she doesn't have the guts to kill me, but my father? No it's not him...is it Jin Rou? It must be him.' Qixian froze mid-step, his eyes narrowing as the view of his car parking near the clinic pulled him out of his thoughts. 'Why is my car parked here?' he wondered, his body tensing with suspicion. He approached the vehicle with a predatory caution, his hand hovering near his pocket as he reached the driver's side.
The window slid down with a smooth hum, revealing a face that made Qixian's shoulders drop—not in relaxation, but in exasperation.
"Hello, Young Master," Chengli said, offering a composed, professional smile.
"Chengli? What on earth are you doing here?" Qixian's brows knit together in a sharp scowl. "I told you to move on. Find a different job, a different life. And why are you behind the wheel of my car?"
"You should be grateful I managed to get the engine running again after that wreck," Chengli countered, his tone completely unfazed by his boss's temper. He jerked his head toward the passenger seat. "Get in. I have information that's far too sensitive for the open street."
The moment Qixian slid into the leather interior, the atmosphere thickened with business. Before the door had even fully latched, Chengli was already thrusting a thick folder of documents into his hands.
"What is all this?" Qixian asked, his voice heavy with disbelief as he took in the sheer volume of the documents. "I didn't ask for a novel?" Qixian asked a rhetorical question.
Chengli hesitated, his grip tightening on the steering wheel. "Remember that DNA test you commissioned? The one comparing your father and the eldest young master? I… I took the liberty of reading the results."
Qixian froze, the folder crinkling in his grip. "You read them?" he repeated, his voice dropping to a dangerous, icy whisper.
"I'm sorry, Young Master," Chengli muttered, shrinking back into the driver's seat. He looked like he wanted to vanish into the upholstery, his face a mask of deep, mounting regret. "I shouldn't have looked. I know it wasn't my place."
"You're damn right it wasn't," Qixian snapped. He held Chengli in a suffocating glare for a long, silent moment, letting the weight of the betrayal hang in the air.
Finally, he turned his focus back to the files, his fingers flipped the papers to the final page.
"Can you find me a job instead of digging into this?" Qixian asked, his eyes fixed on the pages, refusing to look up. "What exactly triggered this investigation anyway?"
"You aren't fired at the hospital you're working for so why look for a job? Besides I wanted to bring you back where you belong—to the Zhou family," Chengli said, his voice earnest. "You're the true heir, young master. You should be—"
"I don't want to work under the Zhou company. And to tell you, they never even treat me like one of them?" Qixian cut him off, his tone sharp and biting. "I lived my life feeling like I'm the imposter and not Jin Rou. So tell me… why did you even bother?"
"I knew you'd feel that way," Chengli insisted, leaning forward. "But look at the files. There must be evidence in there—a reason why your father was so easily misled into doubting you."
Qixian didn't respond. He had stopped listening, his mind tuning out Chengli's voice as he zeroed in on a specific paragraph as if Chengli didn't exist from the moment he tried to convince Qixian. "Something's off here," he muttered to himself, his finger tracing a line of data with clinical precision.
"What's off?" Chengli asked, his own curiosity piqued by Qixian's sudden shift in energy.
"My father do have a reason" Qixian said.
Chengli leaned in, "I knew it was in those files but I never really knew...any other reason beside your father disowning you just because of the DNA test results..."
"You are right, my father never believed me because he had already seen a DNA test," Qixian said, his voice flat and analytical. "A test between my mother and Jin Rou."
"Wait you mean," Chengli breathed, his mind racing to keep up. "Your father felt like you were spitting on the madam? By bringing him a test that proved Jin Rou wasn't his son, but was proven on the past that Jin Rou is madam's son... you were essentially accusing her of having an affair. You weren't just attacking your older brother, but you were also disrespecting the woman he love most." his eyes widening as the pieces began to click. Chengli sat back, utterly floored by the realization. "That's why he disowned you so ruthlessly? Because he thought you were dragging the madam's name through the mud?"
Qixian let out a dry, mocking huff. "I've already moved on to a second theory, and you're just now figuring out the first one? I solved that puzzle ten minutes ago just by looking at the timestamps." He shot Chengli a playful, superior look. "And here I thought you were the one who dug up this information."
"You're cruel, mocking a friend like that," Chengli said, rolling his eyes in mock offense. "Fine then, what's the 'grand new theory,' Young Master? If you're truly that much of a—"
"What if Jin Rou was actually Aunt Xiqi's son?" Qixian cut him off again, his voice sharp and clinical. "That's my new theory."
'Does this Young Master just genuinely enjoy cutting people off mid-sentence?' Chengli wondered, stifling a sigh. He waited a beat to ensure Qixian was finished before asking, "And how exactly did you arrive at that conclusion?"
"Think about it. Aunt Xiqi was the one who 'found' Jin Rou," Qixian began, his gaze boring into the weathered document. "The date on this report… the day they ran that DNA test twenty years ago was the very same day she died. The official story is that she was a hero who died saving my mother and Jin Rou from the fire."
Chengli watched him, a heavy silence settling between them. He noticed that Qixian no longer referred to Jin Rou as 'Brother'—he used the name like a foreign object, stripped of all familial warmth. 'He's lost every shred of respect for him,' Chengli thought.
He wasn't sure if he should be proud of Qixian's brilliant, ruthless mind, or saddened by the sharper edges of his personality. But then, Chengli thought, his heart twinging with sympathy, 'It was never his fault. He was forged in a world that never gave him the chance to be soft. I can't blame him.'
"Why are you making that face?" Qixian asked, his eyes narrowing as he caught Chengli's expression. "You look like you just lost a puppy."
"I was just thinking," Chengli replied, shaking off the fog of his thoughts with a quick jerk of his head. "Please, continue. What were you saying, Young Master?"
"Aunt Xiqi was the one who handled the DNA test. She was the one who personally handed the results to my mother," Qixian said, his voice dropping into a low, calculating hum. "So, what if my theory is right? But that leads to a bigger question: why did they kill her? Aunt Xiqi supposedly died in that fire—but a fire doesn't just start itself. It was deliberate."
"That makes sense," Chengli commented, his brow furrowing in concentration. "But it makes everything a hell of a lot more complicated. If the fire was arson, then this wasn't just a tragedy—it was a clean-up job."
"Why kill Aunt Xiqi? That's the main question." Qixian murmured, his voice dropping to a low, analytical hum as he reached the final page. "If it wasn't about the DNA or finding Jin Rou… then there's a bigger piece of the puzzle. What if the fire wasn't meant for her? What if they mistook her for my mother? They were identical twins, after all. It would have been an easy mistake to make."
Chengli leaned in, his expression grave. "It's a relief you and your twin doesn't have identical faces like them, It would be a disaster if I have to identify and differentiate who my real boss is."
"Yeah it would've been especially with a brain like that." Qixian grinned in a mocking way.
"I shouldn't have said anything." Chengli regretted. " By the way should I keep digging? I can look into the arson reports from twenty years ago."
"No," Qixian said, his voice sharp and final. "It's too dangerous. You have a daughter to think about, Chengli. I won't have their blood on my hands."
"Then what's your plan?" Chengli asked, his grip tightening on the steering wheel.
"I'm going to uncover the truth and hand it to my father. I won't let him be played for a fool anymore," Qixian replied, leaning back into the leather seat with a weary exhale. "He's still my father, even if it's only by blood. And for Haoran's sake… I have to at least try to be the kind of person worth staying around."
A soft, relieved smile tugged at Chengli's lips. "Your twin brother really has a remarkable impact on your personality, doesn't he?"
Qixian's eyes snapped open, sharpening into literal daggers as he fixed Chengli with a lethal look. "Are you implying my personality was a problem before?"
"Ah! Right! I completely forgot!" Chengli suddenly exclaimed, slapping his forehead. "My older sister needs me for her shopping trip today—I'm on bag-carrying duty. I'll just grab a cab from the corner."
He began gathering his things, humming a jaunty, carefree tune as if he weren't about to abandon his boss. "I'll just leave the keys here. My Young Master will be pleased to find his car is running perfectly again!"
He stepped out of the vehicle, still humming, completely oblivious—or perhaps just ignoring—the fact that Qixian was sitting in the back seat, burning a hole through his skull with a murderous glare.