Jiaming naturally kept the business of Heidi and her mother hidden from Lingjing and Shasha. After that he bought groceries every noon and every evening and carried them over—it felt rather like he was secretly keeping two mistresses on the side.
Afraid that if Marilyn's cold dragged on it would turn into pneumonia or something of the sort, Jiaming looked through some medical texts and spent his days stewing fritillaria porridge, garlic porridge, chuanbei-pear pig-lung soup and the like for her to eat.
A few days later the fever finally began to recede, and only then did Jiaming set his mind at ease.
The only thing was that giving this lush-figured beauty a shot in the rump every day meant he had seen and handled the whole of it; each time he watched her pull on those practically skintight pants and top, tracing out the pretty curve of her rear, something always stirred strangely in Jiaming's heart—while on the surface, of course, he acted as though nothing were the matter.
The time he spent there each day was short, but little Heidi was a terribly clingy child, forever at Jiaming's side and forever making him play with her.
After a few days Jiaming learned that the girl was crazy about Chinese kung fu; seeing how formidable he was at such a young age, she had taken him for one of those legendary masters of the martial world. Her mother more than likely harbored the same notion.
Jiaming could only smile a helpless, bitter smile—what the two of them pictured was the kind of kung fu that flies through the heavens and burrows through the earth, almighty in all things, and when had he ever learned anything like that?
So it went for four or five days, and Marilyn's illness finally subsided. Jiaming was relieved. On Saturday and Sunday he went off with Lingjing and Shasha to the secret little home the three of them shared and played for two days; when he came over at noon on Monday and pushed the door open, a small figure flung itself onto him with a wail and promptly dissolved into sobs.
The one who ran up and threw her arms around him was of course little Heidi. Had he not already recognized who she was, anyone charging at him so recklessly would have been cut down by pure reflex. Even so, the girl's exaggerated behavior gave Jiaming a start; before he could pry the octopus-like child off his body, his right hand had already whisked a dagger from its sheath.
He glanced warily into the room, and just then Marilyn emerged from the inner room. She must have only just bathed: her half-wet golden hair hung about her in loose, languid strands, and through the open collar of her shirt showed a great expanse of fair, alluring flesh, the crimson tips at the peaks of her breasts plainly visible. She wasn't wearing a bra underneath... The thought drifted through Jiaming's mind. Only once he had confirmed it was safe did he put the dagger away and let out his breath.
Marilyn, for her part, had been stunned by the killing intent that flashed from Jiaming in that instant.
She had just come out of the bath, not yet properly dressed; hearing someone open the door and knowing it was Jiaming, she had walked out with a smile still on her face—and then she glimpsed the look on his face, and that smile froze stiff in midair.
She had not done much evil, had never killed anyone, but she had grown up in a Mafia family and her father was a don, so she had naturally seen her share of killers, mercenaries and desperadoes. Never had she seen such cold, intimidating killing intent.
She had assumed the boy was extraordinary because he really had learned some kind of Chinese kung fu, but now she understood: no one who had not struggled between life and death countless times could possibly possess such an aura.
And a person who had that kind of aura could do anything at all.
Yet once those shoulders slumped in helpless resignation, he was once again a fourteen-year-old boy who looked harmless to man and beast.
"What's wrong, Heidi? Crying so hard—did somebody bully you?"
The girl had her legs wrapped around his waist and her arms clamped around his neck, sobbing too hard to breathe—and squeezing him too hard to breathe as well. Jiaming patted her shoulder and shut the door with his free hand. At his question, the girl balled up her little fists and hammered his back a few times.
"It's you, it's you—you're a big meanie..."
"Uh..."
"Serves you right." The blonde beauty had recovered her smile by now. "Who told you to disappear for two days without even a word in between? Look at the state Heidi's cried herself into these past two days."
That said, she turned and went back into the bedroom, shutting the door to change. Jiaming turned the girl's face up; on that tear-soaked little face, the two eyes that had once been so bright and lively were swollen up like walnuts. Then came two more thumps on his back. "You're a big meanie."
"All right, it's my fault, I'm a big meanie, and Heidi is a sensible girl, so will she forgive her big brother? Crying like this, our little beauty won't be pretty anymore."
He gathered the girl into his arms and sat down on the sofa, but she still would not let go—arms around his neck, legs clamped tight around him. Had the two of them been a few years older, it would have looked exactly like one of the standard sex positions... uh, that of course is not what the protagonist was thinking, just your author's pure and innocent imagination...
"You're a big meanie, a big meanie... waaah... I thought big brother wasn't going to bother with us anymore..." the girl sobbed, and Jiaming took another few painless little punches to the back. Helpless, he said gently, "How could I? Big brother still wants to teach Heidi qi gong. These two days were my fault—forgive me, all right?"
The moment the words "qi gong" left his mouth, the girl lit up all over as if she were glowing. Choking back tears, she said, "R-really?"
"Of course it's real. But qi gong is very hard to learn—you mustn't complain that it's boring or bitter." He fetched some tissues and carefully wiped her face until the little face was back to its porcelain smoothness, and only then, satisfied, did he stop. "Now that's pretty. What kind of look is that, all snot and tears?" The red swelling around her eyes, though, would not wipe away so quickly.
"Heidi... Heidi isn't afraid of bitter..." The girl's tears turned to a smile—though stopping the crying all at once was still a struggle; she sniffled and scrubbed at her tears with her sleeve for all she was worth while trying to put on her prettiest smiling face. The sight was enough to melt anyone's heart.
Jiaming was moved by that expression too, and smiled. Then he had the girl sit cross-legged on the sofa. Chinese kung fu was not as magical as it looked on television, but much of qi gong was genuinely good for settling the mind and focusing the spirit, and with long practice it lent some resistance to small ailments and pains. Once he had taught her the basic method, he watched her sit cross-legged with her eyes squeezed shut, not daring to move a muscle, and could not help laughing.
By now Marilyn had come out of the room. Jiaming regarded her as a mature woman he might take to bed as an equal; she plainly regarded him as nothing but a child, and looking at the two of them on the sofa, her face was all a mother's tenderness. That look of inequality made Jiaming feel he had just been humiliated.
"You two really are like true brother and sister. If only I had a child like you..."
"If I'm not guessing wrong, the next line is going to have me taking good care of Heidi after you kick the bucket, isn't it?"
The words made the little girl sitting in meditation flinch. Jiaming rubbed her shoulder to reassure her. Marilyn's eyes, meanwhile, had visibly turned flustered. "I... I..."
"I don't care what you're planning to do. What I mean is, the two of you stay here until your family comes to collect you, and then nobody has any trouble. If that doesn't convince you, go ahead and think about what will become of Heidi. Besides, I'm just a kid—don't imagine I'm omnipotent!"
He finished coldly, and their eyes met in the air and clashed, tangling.
Women are for the most part unreasonable creatures—Jiaming had known that saying for a long time. Judging by her words and behavior over these past days, Marilyn had seemed all along to be angling to entrust her child to him. Jiaming had done everything in his power to inoculate her against the idea, and yet, sure enough, it had all happened anyway.
It was the evening of a Thursday; the setting sun had dyed the streets and buildings of Jianghai City a lovely orange-red. Not long after school let out, students were walking home in twos and threes, and Jiaming, Lingjing and Shasha were naturally among them. When he spotted the little girl on the far side of the road, crying and peering anxiously about, Jiaming understood in an instant that something was badly wrong.
Heidi did not know exactly where his school was, but she had a rough idea of the roads he might take home. For her to be waiting here for him now, Marilyn must have gone out and never come back—only then would she have risked coming out to look for him.
Almost at the same moment Jiaming saw Heidi, sharp-eyed Shasha spotted her too, and tugging at her two companions, she said, "Look, it's that mixed-race girl we saw that day—the one we gave clothes to, right? Why is she all alone? Did she get separated from her mom?"
"Let's go over and ask her, before some bad person carries her off." Jiaming was quick to follow her lead, and the three of them headed across—just as the girl spotted Jiaming too. Delight flashed in her eyes, and she was about to wave when a yellow minivan abruptly pulled up beside her and blocked the view from both sides.
This is bad...
Before Lingjing and Shasha could react, Jiaming had already shot out like an arrow. Bracing one hand, he vaulted nimbly over the meter-high pedestrian railing; as he was about to dash forward, a horn blared out of nowhere and he threw himself backward—a sedan hurtled past, almost grazing his body.
The minivan pulled away.
This stretch of road was a no-stopping zone. The driver of the sedan who had nearly killed Jiaming did not stop either; he only stuck his head out and shouted a curse back over his shoulder. The two girls, only just recovered from the fright, trotted over and pounded on him over the railing for all they were worth.
"What are you doing, putting on an acrobatics show..."
"Think that was impressive..."
"Do you even know you almost got yourself killed just now..."
Shasha was red in the face with fury, and Lingjing, remembering the scene a moment before, already had tears in her eyes. Jiaming stared across the road—the little girl was nowhere to be seen. "That minivan just abducted the little girl."
"Ah..." A beat later the two girls stopped hitting and scolding, and staring at the far side of the road, they said in one voice, "Call the police, quick."
Calling the police was naturally no route one could rely on. By the time it grew dark, Jiaming had everything in the apartment sorted out, and there he also found the note Marilyn had left behind. The gist of it was that she was going to look for Tang Jingyao, that she hoped Jiaming would take good care of Heidi for her, and that he should not let himself be dragged any further into this business, and so on and so forth.
"Big tits and no brains, that woman..."
What he muttered under his breath came out in a slightly hoarse voice like a middle-aged man's. Jiaming was now dressed in a suit with a bow tie, soft-soled leather shoes on his feet, and his whole face had changed beyond recognition—he looked like one of those middle-aged dwarfs from a sideshow troupe. Taking his own height into account, this was one of the identities he had prepared for himself before he truly came of age.
A rather comical dwarf assassin.
He was an assassin, and he firmly believed that attack was the best form of defense. So even before Marilyn's condition had improved, he had already assembled his intelligence and worked out the steps he would need to take in an emergency.
"First operation, rookie." One hand pressed over his heart, the other flat against a dressing mirror half a man tall, the hand of flesh and the hand of illusion meeting on the glass.
"Go get 'em!"