CH 43

Outside the airport, a man in a black suit and with an extraordinarily straight bearing walked out with his suitcase. Pushing up his sunglasses, he looked at the number plate and got into the car.

Ou Renjin, sitting in the back seat, gave him a serious, cold look. The man took off his glasses, turned his head and took a deep breath.

“Don’t tell me yet, let’s talk about it after dinner.” Ou Renjin interrupted what the man was about to say and told Xiao Liu to drive. His face had an expression of suppressed calm.

He Yixin swallowed whatever he wanted to say until he sat in a restaurant in a private room booked by Ou Renjin and the food was also served. He watched Ou Renjin move his chopsticks a little, looking at him reluctantly. When Ou Renjin put down his chopsticks as if he had completed his task and looked straight at him, He Yixin opened his mouth cooperatively.

“She admitted it.” He Yixin put down the cup in his hand, “That doctor was not a doctor at the hospital, he was brought there by the people who bribed her. The medicine was also prepared by them, she was only responsible for bringing the doctor into the ward and then taking care of the surveillance.”

The atmosphere was a little oppressive. Ou Renjin did not speak.

“The people who bought her were very quick and gave her a large sum of money to send her abroad. She ran out of money halfway through, and asked for it twice, and they gave it again. Her appetite was quite big and she was quite loyal to the other side. I had to work very hard to get her to talk. The person who has been in contact with her is not apparently related to Ou Yiyun, but I turned around a few corners and found out that the man is indeed working for Ou Yiyun.”

He Yixin finished as calmly as he could, adding, “My methods were not too bright, so these things are not the evidence that can have legal effect.”

This was to say that it was absolutely impossible to submit evidence to the court to go through the legal procedures.

“Am I so naive in your opinion?” Ou Renjin raised his eyes to look at him. “What about the car accident, was it man-made, or was it an accident?”

“I’ve checked the car accident several times, no traces of man-made for now. But it happened too long ago before I started the investigation, it’s normal that I couldn’t find anything.”

Ou Renjin nodded and chuckled softly, “Fine, I’ll take it as they were improvising after seeing my parents admitted to the hospital after the car accident. That’s fine too, they are old after all, there will always be times when they need to be hospitalised. I’ll take my time and wait. I can always wait, right?”

He leaned back in his chair, his tone a little weird.

He Yixin looked at him and frowned.

“Don’t look at me with that look, you don’t have to worry, I’ll just give back exactly what they did to my parents, guaranteeing that it will be no more and no less. When the time comes, when they die, I’ll take the company for myself like a saviour and then pamper their children – pam! per!”

His expression was flat throughout, without gnashing of teeth and hatred. Instead, it seemed a little eerie.

He Yixin was silent for a while, then chuckled suddenly and changed the subject, “I saw your Weibo a while ago, why, this time the kid is quite to your liking? I also watched two episodes of that show he participated in on the plane. He’s quite handsome and has a good personality.”

“Good, yes, but a bit stupid.” Speaking of Ou Shaowen, Ou Renjin became a normal person again.

“So bring him along to have dinner with me one day?”

He Yixin, being one of the very few people Ou Renjin treated as a family member, said this actually with some kind of special message, but Ou Renjin still let it slide perfunctorily.

“Let’s talk about it later.” He stood up, “Where are you going to live this time? I will take you there.”

He Yixin and his parents had long settled abroad, and he came this time mainly because he wasn’t quite sure about Ou Renjin’s state after hearing the news and felt like he had to come and keep an eye on things for a while to feel at ease. Before getting out of the car, he suddenly remembered something and turned his head to ask, “Cousin, Dr. Chen said something very strange when he spoke to me on the phone earlier.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He said, ‘You’ll never guess the circumstances under which we found a successful heart match’, and then he stopped talking when I asked again, so you…”

Ou Renjin interrupted him, “He’s the one who got it wrong, there is no such thing.”

“Oh.” He Yixin gave him a bit of a strange look and didn’t say anything else.

After that, Ou Renjin was acting calm, not much different from before. But if Guan Qijun had been by his side, he would have noticed that his whole state was extremely wrong. Xiao Liu was careless and didn’t pay attention to it. He just felt that the boss has been a little bit less talkative and smiling recently. Occasionally, it felt weird when he looked at you blankly.

The third public performance of “Under The Lights” was over. Ou Shaowen’s fan offline voting was simply overwhelming, almost absolutely dominating the c-position for two songs during the song selection, and later, in a round of internal voting, they chose a song with a faster tempo and incendiary rhythm. As expected, the final result was amazing, with Ou Shaowen’s final two backflips and direct kneeling stunt immediately making the audience explode with cheers and screams. The stage cut of the entire song and his personal straight shot were on the top of the hit list for a long time before coming down.

With this kind of popularity, at the time of the final elimination, Ou Shaowen took first place as usual. As the show got to the later stage, the gap between him and the other contestants got wider and wider, with four or five contestants aiming for the second place, not even eyeing the c-position.

Ou Renjin finished watching the video and threw his phone to the side, his face not very pleasant to look at. The kid was so good at learning. When interviewed privately, he knew how to give a little treat to his fans; but he hadn’t called ever again.

Before, he was sweetly chasing the cameraman asking over and over again when he would be able to contact the outside world; but later, when the crew was filming the contestants talking to their families, he didn’t even call. Ou Renjin watched him stare at his phone screen for a long time in a daze, and the cameraman came over especially close to take a picture of the name on the screen. Then Ou Shaowen turned his head and said to the cameraman with an indescribably complicated look, “Can I not use this opportunity? I don’t know what to say.”

The clip managed to make it to the top of the news on the Internet, and fans, brainstorming and letting their imagination run wild, flooded Ou Renjin’s Weibo, scolding him under his last post.

“I’ve seen face-slapping before, but I’ve never seen it done so quickly.”

“Ou Renjin, don’t you even have a heart? Brother Shaowen is just too stupid and innocent to be cheated by a scum like you. Have you ever cherished his heart? Aren’t those people in the entertainment industry enough for you to play with that you drag him into your games?”

“Idiot, curse you a million times.”

“Did you see the look on his face? Can you understand how sad he is because of you?”

“The thought of Wenwen having been with you makes me feel sick for him.”

“If you have some basic morals as a human being, don’t think about doing anything tricky in the finals. Wenwen is fighting so hard, I’m not asking you to help him, just don’t hold him back.”

“Do you see what you’ve turned him into? You’ve turned him into a man who will always be looked down upon, will always be inundated with the worst speculations, will be suspected of being able to trade sex for power. No matter how hard he works, he will be considered someone who has a golden master and therefore gets everything easily. Let him terminate his contract with Qimeng, please.”

Ou Renjin wasn’t in too good a mood at the moment, so he didn’t have the heart to enjoy the drama of these fans moved by their own imagination and crying to the heavens. He clicked on “post” and started typing.

Ou Renjin: There will always be fans who can count their IQ on ten fingers, who think they are the saviours. When they see their “brother” touch his chest, they can make up a scene where he was stabbed by an assassin last night and went on stage with a sword wound in his chest. Under the pretext of “speaking up and fighting for him”, they behave like rabid dogs, venting their frustration on the Internet, so high and mighty, while not even stopping a shoplifter in real life. Go ahead and jerk off. Scram!

After typing the exclamation mark, he held back countless more direct and sharp insults and sent the post. Xiao Liu seemed to have read his Weibo and was quite cautious when he came over to confirm his schedule for tomorrow, glancing at his face several times in the process and opening his mouth twice before finally going out quietly.

Interrupted by business affairs, Ou Renjin was finally able to put his phone away calmly, put on his coat and walk out. As he got into the car, he looked at the time and took two pills. Almost egregiously, he began to think: when the show was over, when Ou Shaowen became an overnight sensation enjoying countless cheers and love of millions, when he was not short of money and popularity, and when he, Ou Renjin, was dying and in need of that heart of his, would he still nod and agree without hesitation as before?

This act that had touched and shaken him to the core, was it because Ou Shaowen didn’t understand anything and was eager to repay everyone who had been kind to him, or was it because he truly loved him so he was willing to give his life for him? Or was it because he was the world’s best liar and actor who saw Ou Renjin’s hypocrisy and malice and set his own trap, also appreciating the drama while watching him being moved to tears?

At this thought, he finally sobered up, leaned back in the seat, rubbed the bridge of his nose and laughed softly to himself.

Obviously he was so bad that he thought so badly of others as well. He was so used to seeing the vile and sinister side of human nature that deep down he always had some kind of doubts popping up every now and then like a knife stabbing in the back about such a crystal clear person.

Xiao Liu took a glance at the rear view mirror; perhaps because Ou Renjin’s face had finally eased up a bit, he spoke up, “President Ou, the programme team of ‘Under the Lights’ has sent an invitation to the finals, are you planning to go?”

When Ou Renjin raised his eyes, Xiao Liu began to explain impatiently, “You’re not the only one invited either, the heads of companies of most of the top twenty contestants have been invited, so… Are you going?” 

He was silent for a moment and replied, “Yes, why not.”

…..

The cheers outside were deafening as everyone stood backstage waiting for their turn to go on stage. Song Yijiu bumped Ou Shaowen’s shoulder, “Have you thought about what to say in your acceptance speech after taking first place?”

“Nothing special, it should be similar to the previous times.” Ou Shaowen took a deep breath, rarely nervous.

“I’ve heard that President Ou will be coming. You usually look like a little wife while holding his pictures, so don’t get so excited that you cry when you see him later.” After three months of collective life baptism, Song Yijiu had become a lot more slick.

Ou Shaowen didn’t believe him. “He won’t come, he said he couldn’t come to such a messy event.”