Chapter Eighty-Four: The Songbird Society Opens for Business

They say that the early bird gets the worm, but by the same logic, the early worm gets eaten by the bird. The same event can be understood very differently depending on who is looking at it.

To Old Man Song, Zhang Xiaoman had gone to Green Vine City to capture Hou San and Zhu Dachang. But after receiving Zhang Xiaoman’s text message, Han Yuan assumed that he had come for him.

He took out a lighter and set fire to the slip of paper in his hand. Only when the flame licked his fingertips did he toss it aside. Seated in a rattan chair on the rooftop, he gazed at the brilliant dawn glow on the horizon, raised his coffee, took a small sip, and gave a soft sigh. “How swiftly the world shifts.”

An old man in a white nightgown came strolling over and sat down across from him. He picked up a newspaper from the table and flipped through it idly, glancing at the scrap of paper reduced to ash on the ground. “That butler is really lazy to the bone. He can’t even be bothered to sweep up the ash on the floor. Looks like I can skip his bonus this month.”

“Don’t make things hard for him,” Han Yuan said with a wry smile, shaking his head. “He spent the whole night without sleep helping me find out about Qingxue. He finally lay down, and then you had him back up to make breakfast. If you dock his bonus too, next time I come to your house you won’t see a pleasant face from me. He’s already seventy or eighty and still serving as your butler. That alone is hard enough.”

“He helped you because of the friendship between you two,” the old man said, taking a bite of the sandwich on the table. “Serving me is his duty as a butler. I paid for it. One thing at a time. No conflict.” He pointed at the fried egg in the sandwich and pursed his lips. “Look at that egg, fried way too hard. Terrible. Must deduct his bonus!”

Han Yuan pushed a tiramisu toward him. “If your teeth are no good, eat something else. That sandwich was made for me by the butler. Have this instead. It’s soft and melts in your mouth.”

“Then perhaps I shouldn’t just dock his bonus. I should fire him outright,” the old man said, feigning anger. “He gets up in the morning and doesn’t even make food for me first, instead he fills the stomach of an outsider like you. Turning his elbow outward. Might as well have him serve as your butler instead.”

“You really do know how to joke. I don’t have any estate to manage, so what would I need a butler for?” Han Yuan set down his coffee cup and jerked his chin toward a young woman who had just come up to the rooftop. She was dressed in silk sleepwear, exquisitely delicate in features, slim and graceful in figure. “It’s so cold this morning. Isn’t she afraid of catching a chill in so little clothing? And you don’t even mind?”

“How could I mind?” The old man did not even turn his head, still absorbed in the newspaper. “It’s all because you’re here. That girl has been hopelessly taken with you since she was little. If I weren’t sitting here right now, she’d probably come up wearing nothing at all.” He gave Han Yuan a sidelong look. “Why not just take her in? That would save me the trouble of worrying every day that she’ll stir up some shameful scandal again.”

“No matter how you put it, she is your own granddaughter. How could you push her into a fire pit?” Han Yuan put his feet on the table, casually tugged up his trouser cuffs, and revealed the black electronic shackle on his ankle. “See this? I may have to go back someday. So don’t go playing matchmaker at random. Besides, I’m a full generation older than your granddaughter, and we already address each other as brothers. The ranks would be a mess.”

“What mess?” The old man snorted. “She calls me grandpa, I call you little brother, and the two of you can call each other husband and wife. Each side uses its own terms.”

Seeing the young woman looking at him with spring light in her eyes, Han Yuan snatched the newspaper from the old man’s hands and held it up to hide his face completely. In a muffled voice he said, “Forget it. The last man you tried to marry off to your granddaughter already has weeds three feet high on his grave. There’s too much intrigue and too many grudges in wealthy families. The wells in those mansions swallow people without spitting out the bones. I’d like to live a few more years.”

“My house doesn’t have a well...” The old man was about to continue when a doorbell suddenly rang from the manor gate below. He clicked his tongue. “The ones looking for you have arrived. I don’t much care to deal with those people. I’ll go back and catch a second sleep. When you leave, I won’t come out to see you off. Meetings and partings are always in such a hurry...” He rose, stretched, and walked toward the stairway. “This doorbell is far too loud. I’ll have the butler replace it with one that doesn’t ring.”

Han Yuan smiled, set down the newspaper in his hand, and stepped to the rooftop railing to look down toward the manor gate. The people outside were looking up at him as well, so he lifted a hand with easy grace in greeting.

There is a line of poetry that says, while you stand on the bridge admiring the scenery, the one admiring the scenery sees you from the tower. Such is the difference of perspective; thus what each person sees is not the same.

Lowering his arm, Shen Yixia looked around, his gaze settling on the two towering stone lions by the gate. He swallowed, envy shining in his eyes, and muttered, “Wasn’t it said that people only rent out their clothes to that clothing store because their wardrobe at home is too small? Then someone living in such a huge manor... would their wardrobe at home be small?”

Sun Tiantian tilted her head, took the lollipop from her mouth, and asked curiously, “What clothing store?”

Shen Yixia briefly recounted what had happened the night before, then sighed. “If I’d known, I should’ve come here with Brother Yuan. This is the kind of place where people actually live...” He rubbed the dark circles beneath his eyes. “The bed at that clothing store was too hard, and the room too cramped. It was so stifling, like being locked up. I couldn’t sleep all night.”

Zhang Yunxi gave Shen Yixia a cold look and said expressionlessly, “That room in the clothing store was prepared by my father for Han Yuan. It was meant to remind him that he was still a prisoner. Of course it felt exactly like a cell. You should have come with him in the first place.” She narrowed her eyes. “Now look at this. No one knows what he’s been doing all night.”

Shen Yixia coughed dryly. “I thought there should be a little more trust between people. Everyone has their privacy, don’t they? Just like how you disappeared for a while this morning, we didn’t ask where you went either.”

Sun Tiantian gave a cold laugh. “If you want to ask, just ask. Don’t be snide and sarcastic about it. I know about that, so you can drop the plural. It was only you... This morning Uncle Man called and told us to hang the Snow-Bringing Order at the gate of the Green Vine City branch of the First Sound Society. Yunxi was handling that earlier. Nothing there can’t be spoken of. As for you...” She stared at the dark circles under Shen Yixia’s eyes. “Was it really the hard bed that kept you awake?”

Shen Yixia raised four fingers. “I swear, if I’m lying about any of it, may I never marry in this lifetime...” He winked at Sun Tiantian. “Sweetie, if you don’t believe me, you can sleep with me at night from now on. Then you’ll know exactly what I was up to.”

Sun Tiantian brushed the loose hair beside her ear and curved her eyes into two crescent moons. She stroked the little green snake coiled around her wrist and said, “Sure. If you really can’t sleep, I can even have Little Green help you. I guarantee you’ll be asleep in one second.”

Feeling the little green snake’s icy gaze, Shen Yixia stiffened. He gave two awkward laughs and obediently shut his mouth.

At that moment, the gate slowly opened. A white-haired butler in a dark blue suit stood with his hands folded before him and gave the three of them a slight bow, his face arranged into a warm smile. “Welcome to the Chen Family Gardens. Young Master Han Yuan has been waiting for you. Please come inside.”

“So your master is surnamed Chen,” Zhang Yunxi said flatly. “The owner of Green Vine City’s largest publishing group is also surnamed Chen. Surely it isn’t the same man.”

The butler smiled. “I do not know about matters outside. I am only a butler, after all. A butler’s duty is naturally only to take care of the household. Have you three had breakfast yet? If not, I happened to make a few extra portions this morning. Young Master Han Yuan is also dining on the rooftop. You can eat and talk together.”

“That works out rather neatly,” Zhang Yunxi said as she followed the butler toward the house, her eyes taking in the purple, white, and yellow plants in the garden. “Then I’ll accept your kindness. Since you’ve already made it, it would be wasteful not to eat. Please bring me a coffee as well, no sugar.”

“Better to take it to go,” Han Yuan said, having somehow descended from the rooftop and now leaning in the villa doorway. “Time is tight. We need to head now to the community park behind Ziyan Primary School. Otherwise, if we linger over breakfast and go at a crawl, the person we came to ask will already be gone. Not only would it be a wasted trip, but some irritating pests would come nosing around again. After all, on someone else’s turf, things are never in our favor.”

“That makes sense,” Zhang Yunxi said, looking directly into Han Yuan’s eyes, her tone neither warm nor cold. “It really would be best to finish early and return to A City early. Once a person’s heart starts wandering, it isn’t easy to pull it back.”

Sun Tiantian dimples flashing, she smiled sweetly at the butler. “Please give me the same as hers, so you don’t have to make a separate one.”

The butler nodded with a smile and then turned to Shen Yixia. “And what would you like?”

Shen Yixia’s stomach gave a loud growl. He adopted an affected expression. “I’m not having any coffee. Do you have fried dough sticks? Give me one of those—thick and big, the kind that’s really substantial—and a cup of soy milk from the eighty-second year.”

“Yes. Help yourself.”

Zhang Xiaoman pointed to the bag behind the car seats and cast an irritated glance at Nie Yi and Li Jun, whose hair stood up like bird nests. “There are steamed buns, plain buns, and fried dough sticks. Eat slowly... don’t choke to death...”

Li Jun stuffed two soup dumplings into his mouth, chewed twice, and swallowed them whole. Looking pitiful, he said, “Uncle, I’d rather choke to death than starve to death. Since we parted from you yesterday until now, not a drop of water has passed our lips...”

Zhang Xiaoman rolled his eyes, then looked at Nie Yi, who was tearing at a bun skin and chewing slowly. Frowning, he asked, “Didn’t I tell you to look into that matter? Why did you come to Green Vine City?”

Nie Yi picked up a bottle of mineral water, twisted off the cap, took a small sip, and let out a breath of stale air before stammering, “We... found some... leads.”

“I’ll say it,” Li Jun cut in. “The clues pointed this way, so we rushed over yesterday afternoon. Who knew that once we got here, we found that person had already run back to A City. So we rushed back to A City overnight, only to learn after returning that he’d already come back to Green Vine City before dawn. We spent the whole night running back and forth without a single rest, and the taxi fares alone came to more than a thousand.”

After pondering for a moment, Zhang Xiaoman glared at Li Jun. “Stop talking so much nonsense. Get to the point!”

“The point?” Li Jun scratched his head and pretended to understand. “Oh, the point is that we found that person really does have some problems, but we lost him at the last moment. He’s very good at counter-surveillance...”

Zhang Xiaoman shook his head, his expression turning grim, and said three words. “Get to the point!”

Li Jun froze. After thinking it over and over, he still could not figure out what Zhang Xiaoman actually wanted to ask. “Uncle, that’s the whole story. The ‘point’ you mean... I really can’t think of it right away...”

Nie Yi pressed his lips together, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a handful of receipts. He winked at Zhang Xiaoman and said with unusual fluency, “Master, I’ve kept all the taxi receipts. Don’t worry.”

“Ah, damn it, that’s the real point. You brat really do have a quicker mind...” Zhang Xiaoman closed his eyes and nodded, then tossed two Bluetooth earpieces to Nie Yi and Li Jun. “Since you two are here, stay by my side for now. Say nothing, do nothing. Just watch carefully what I do next. How much you can learn depends on yourselves.”

Nie Yi’s eyes immediately lit up. “You plan to make your move in Green Vine City?”

Zhang Xiaoman yawned. “Not just me. First Sound Society too. It’s time we showed our faces.”

Li Jun’s pupils shook. “Aren’t there only Nie Yi and me in First Sound Society? There are others?”

“Who told you First Sound Society only has the two of you...” Zhang Xiaoman put on the Bluetooth earpiece, cleared his throat, glanced down at the time on his watch, took out a small chessboard, placed it on the seat tray, set down a few pieces, rolled down the car window, and fixed his gaze on the gate of the community park behind Ziyan Primary School. In a voice full and forceful, he declared, “At 9:18 a.m., First Sound Society is open for business!”