On a certain day in November, Ji Feng finished interrogating a suspect and came out to see Teacher Jian sitting on his desk. He curiously asked, "Who's getting married?"
Oh, right, there was an invitation card on his desk. She had noticed it.
Lao Gao said, "No one's getting married."
"Huh?"
She glanced around, greatly puzzled. "Strangely, only Ji Feng has one. What, is it his ex-girlfriend getting married?"
Lao Gao jerked his chin: "He's back."
Ji Feng said, "It's a relative."
She immediately lost interest and changed the subject: "Where's the wedding candy?"
He handed her the candy box: "Here you go."
"I'll just have one piece."
She opened the box, found a fruit-flavored candy, and then pulled out a small piece of paper. "What's this, a fortune?"
She casually unfolded it.
After reading two lines, she kicked Ji Feng's leg: "It's for you."
"What is it?"
Ji Feng took it and frowned more and more as he read it. He then went straight out to make a phone call.
Lao Gao was baffled: "What's going on?"
Jian Jing shrugged: "Nothing. I'm heading back."
She patted her bottom and left.
Five minutes later, Ji Feng returned from his phone call to find his seat empty. Only the lingering scent of perfume in the air proved she had hurriedly been there.
He wasn't surprised. He handed the confession record he had forgotten earlier to Lao Gao: "Finished questioning."
Lao Gao: "Did they confess?"
He nodded.
Just another ordinary day.
Ten days later, Ji Feng took personal leave to attend his relative's wedding.
The night before leaving, Jian Jing specifically sent a message asking: [How's that relative of yours who thought her husband wanted to kill her and had to ask for your help?]
Ji Feng: [Still alive]
Jian Jing: [Why did she think her husband wanted to kill her?]
Ji Feng: [I'm planning to go two days early to check things out]
After a while, he asked, [Do you want to come?]
Jian Jing: [If you're not confident, I suppose I could grudgingly go take a look]
Ji Feng: [I suggested she use the wedding customs to temporarily live apart from her fiancé, but I can't stay with her. We may be step-siblings, but we're not blood-related after all]
Jian Jing: [Step-siblings? You have a sister?]
Ji Feng: [My mother's second husband's daughter. I met her at my mother's funeral, but we haven't been in contact for many years. The fact that she reached out to me proves things are really bad]
Jian Jing: [Buy me dinner and I'll help you]
On the other end of the connection, he couldn't help but smile.
Look at that, Teacher Jian was just like this - clearly dying of curiosity, but when it came to him, she had to make him beg.
Ji Feng promptly replied: [Two meals]
Jian Jing: [Deal]
--
Ji Feng's non-blood-related sister was named Yang Jie. When his mother married her father, Yang Jie's mother had already passed away for some years.
Although there was some confusion, Yang Jie was half a year older than Ji Feng and just starting university, so she didn't need to live with her stepmother, avoiding any conflicts between them.
When Ji Liming passed away, leaving behind two children, Yang's father had come to help a few times. Because of this kindness, Ji Feng kept it in his heart.
This time, when Yang Jie asked for his help, he agreed without hesitation.
During the few hours on the plane, Ji Feng briefed Jian Jing on the situation.
After graduating, Yang Jie started her own business and is now a well-known young entrepreneur. Through a friend's introduction, she met a second-generation rich man who was very down-to-earth and capable. After dating for a year and a half, they decided to get married.
But recently, she always felt something was off about him. He would look at her with strange gazes, bought high-value insurance policies for both of them, and she found strange white powder floating in their drinking glasses.
The scariest part was that she would wake up at night to find him staring at her, as if he might strangle her at any moment.
As the wedding day approached, when things seemed normal, her fiancé was considerate and caring, perfect in every way. But once signs of trouble appeared, she would get chills and wish to cancel the wedding.
This feeling was driving her crazy.
When she told her friends, they thought she had pre-wedding jitters. She didn't dare tell her aging father either. It wasn't until she was writing the wedding invitations that she suddenly remembered Ji Feng was a police officer and decided to ask him for help.
However, her fiancé somehow found out about this and specifically mentioned it.
She was scared and didn't dare to speak openly, so she could only secretly slip a note into the wedding candy she gave him.
When Ji Feng called her, her fiancé was right beside her.
But Ji Feng was an expert at this sort of thing.
He asked questions like "Is he next to you right now? If yes, say daytime, if no, say nighttime" to gradually piece together the situation.
"How interesting," Jian Jing said. "I'm getting a bit excited now."
Despite saying this, the long flight was still too tedious.
She put on her earphones to listen to music, but soon got bored again. She kicked his foot, "Wake up."
Ji Feng: "What is it?"
"I'm bored," she said. "Let's find something fun to do."
He sighed: "I didn't sleep last night. Can I just take a nap?"
She pouted but didn't force him: "Fine, go ahead and sleep then."
Ji Feng leaned back on the soft pillow and fell asleep within minutes. Because they were on a plane, his sleep was especially deep. He could barely open his eyes and took a long time to slowly regain consciousness.
The seat next to him was empty.
He turned his head to see Jian Jing playing cards with a few young men. They looked to be in their early twenties at most, probably college students, and well-off ones at that.
She kept winning, accumulating quite a pile of candy.
The guys were clearly just looking at her, not really focused on the game. No wonder they were losing.
Games aren't fun if you always lose, but they're not fun if you always win either.
Ji Feng glanced at the card game a few times, then raised his hand to ask a flight attendant for a bottle of water.
Jian Jing looked at him, then continued playing cards.
Ji Feng closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
The plane finally landed.
He asked, "How many rounds did you win?"
"I didn't count, but I never lost," she said.
"They let you win."
"Would they have won if they didn't let me?" Jian Jing asked, surprised. "By letting me win, they don't feel embarrassed about losing, and probably think they're being gentlemanly - otherwise how could the game have continued?"
Ji Feng: "...You have a point."
She: "You didn't think I couldn't tell they were letting me win, did you?"
Ji Feng: "No, how could you not know?"
Jian Jing: "Haha."
After disembarking, they checked into the wedding hotel. Ji Feng went to find Yang Jie and Yang's father, while Jian Jing wandered around to scout the situation.
The first day passed uneventfully.
Jian Jing met the bride, introducing herself as a friend and staying by her side. She also saw the fiancé but didn't notice anything unusual.
On the second day, guests began to arrive.
Ji Feng investigated the groom's background while Jian Jing extracted information from the bridesmaids.
On the third day, the day before the wedding, everyone was busy with preparations.
On the fourth day, at 4 AM, the groomsmen went to find the groom to prepare for the wedding ceremony, only to discover him dead in his suite.
The wedding murder case officially began.
The fifth day was spent investigating.
The sixth day was for questioning.
In the early hours of the seventh day, the case was solved.
Yang's father had been worried that his daughter was the murderer, but was greatly relieved to find out she had no direct connection to her fiancé's death. He relaxed completely and had a good night's sleep.
He woke up at noon, saw off the relatives and friends one by one, then insisted on having Ji Feng and Jian Jing stay for a meal.
Ji Feng: "I have to work tomorrow."
Jian Jing: "Are you going to keep taking unpaid leave?"
Ji Feng: "...It won't come to that."
He had accumulated enough vacation days over the years to have plenty left.
"We owe you both a great deal for this," the old man insisted. "At my age, who knows if I'll have another chance to see you again."
With things put that way, they had no choice but to stay one more day.
After the meal, Jian Jing said she wanted to take a walk on the beach. Yang Jie said she was going back to pack her luggage, leaving them some space.
Yang's father had been drinking and became increasingly talkative. He first expressed his regrets, saying he shouldn't have pushed his daughter to get married, or else she wouldn't have ended up with such a scumbag. But he also defended himself: "She's all about her career now and doesn't want a family, but what will she do when she's old?"
A father has a father's worries.
"When you're young you don't notice, but what about when you're older? Money can hire a caretaker, but a caretaker can't replace family," he said.
The alcohol took effect, and emotions and impulses occupied his mind as he rambled on, "When a person is near death, they don't think about anything else, they just want someone by their side."
He looked at Ji Feng and grinned: "In your mother's final days, all she could think about was you and your sister, but she didn't dare tell you. She was so happy when you came to see her."
Ji Feng smiled slightly.
"I know that deep down, she loved your father the most," Yang's father said with a smile. "If she didn't, how could she have married a police officer? It was hard, a woman raising two children alone, with a husband who was rarely home. How could it not be difficult?"
He said: "Don't blame her."
Ji Feng: "I understand."
Yang's father nodded and said, "You're a good kid. Your mother always praised your intelligence."
"Yang Jie is more accomplished than me."
Speaking of his daughter, Yang's father naturally felt proud. His relationship with his previous wife had been ordinary, and she had passed away early, but the child she left behind was precious as jade, and he had invested countless efforts in raising her.
But Yang's father admitted, "She's doing well in her career, but not so much in matters of the heart, ah."
He shook his head, not wanting to dwell on sad matters, and turned to ask him, "You and Miss Jian are..."
Ji Feng: "Friends."
Yang's father hesitated: "Do you... do you have any plans?"
Ji Feng completely understood his meaning and said naturally, "I don't plan to get married."
Yang's father tried to persuade him: "There's no need to be so absolute. You should have someone to keep you company, and when you're old, children can take care of you."
"Isn't there Yun Yun? I raised her when she was little, and when I'm no longer capable, it'll be her turn to take care of me."
Ji Feng joked, "Besides, who knows if I'll even live until retirement."
Yang's father fell silent and started drinking again.
After a moment, he said, "I think Miss Jian is quite nice."
Ji Feng laughed, nodding repeatedly: "Yes, of course she's nice. An author earning tens of millions a year, with suitors lining up daily – it would take more than a month to get through them all."
Yang's father fell silent.
Half an hour later, Ji Feng supported the drunken old man and helped him back to his hotel room to rest. He had planned to return to his room to wash up and sleep, but the hotel's constant air conditioning made the air feel stuffy.
He decided to go out for some fresh air.
On the rooftop pool, a snow-white figure was idly stargazing. Hearing footsteps, she turned and asked, "Are you done talking?"
Ji Feng sat down on a lounge chair, enjoying the evening breeze on his face: "Yes."
Jian Jing got out of the pool, water droplets falling crystalline to the ground: "You don't seem to be in a good mood?"
"Really?"
He raised an eyebrow.
"Yes."
Jian Jing put her hands behind her back, circled around him halfway, and suddenly raised her leg to kick at his shoulder.
Ji Feng had been wary since she started circling to his side, and his reaction was quick enough to catch her ankle precisely: "What are you doing?"
Jian Jing, with excellent balance, maintained her composure even with her ankle caught, acting casual: "Nothing much."
He slowly released his grip: "Don't try that again."
"What are you afraid of?"
She mocked, maintaining her momentum, using his shoulder as leverage to sit on the chair's backrest, looking down at him.
Ji Feng leaned back a few inches, keeping his distance from her legs.
"Don't be scared."
Teacher Jian smiled sweetly, "Before I kick you in, I'll definitely warn you first – watch out."
Before she finished speaking, his shoulder took another hit.
Ji Feng didn't know whether to laugh or cry, quickly restraining her: "Teacher Jian, can we find some other form of entertainment?"
"Sure."
Teacher Jian, generous as always, said, "As long as you answer one question for me."
Ji Feng suddenly felt uneasy: "What question?"
"Do you think," she leaned down, whispering near his ear, "I know your secret or not?"
