Chapter Ninety-One: The Haunted House, Part Twenty-Four

“Me?” Rongrong pointed at herself in utter bewilderment. “This is our first time meeting!”

Her mind was in complete disarray. After a long moment, she finally forced out three words. “I didn’t.”

Her face had gone red with anxiety. She looked helplessly toward Su Man. “I really didn’t. Believe me! This is the first time I’ve ever seen her!”

This was not an easy situation to defuse. From Rongrong’s expression alone, Su Man actually believed it was indeed her first time meeting Madam Jinghua, but a woman in such a confused state was not easy to reason with.

Still, considering Rongrong’s identity as a reporter, and the resurrection card Su Man still held, she spoke up anyway. “Madam Jinghua, this is Miss Rongrong, the reporter. Please calm down first.”

She did not directly say that Jinghua had mistaken Rongrong for someone else. After all, without truly witnessing or experiencing it, it was not wise to take sides recklessly.

“Reporter...” The word seemed to clear Madam Jinghua’s mind slightly. The madness on her face froze. Her scrutinizing gaze fell on Rongrong, and then she shook her head. “No, you are not him. You are a woman. He was a man...”

She murmured to herself, as though sinking into old memories. “And you are younger than he was...”

“Who is he?” Rongrong, unable to ignore her instincts as a reporter despite her earlier fear, asked the question. Then she took a recording device from her pocket. “Madam, would you mind if I record this?”

Jinghua did not look at her. She still seemed trapped in her own world, yet as if she had heard the question, she began answering on her own.

Rongrong hesitated over whether to start recording, and glanced at Su Man. Su Man gave her an affirmative look.

“He was a young police officer.”

Madam Jinghua spoke in a low murmur. “Back then, something happened at home. A diamond necklace went missing, and Qian Yuan suspected Aiji had stolen it. He insisted on calling the police, determined to humiliate me... Later, a young police officer came to handle the case. That was when Aiji had the accident... The fire, Aiji was cut by a little devil and stuffed into the cabinet... and then there was fire...”

Her speech began to break apart.

“At that time the fire had not even started yet. It was Darling Princess who first noticed something was wrong. It was only a dog; it could not put out a fire. So it went to the officer who was nearby, inspecting the area, and asked for help. But that officer thought it was causing trouble and kicked Darling Princess away...”

“He also kicked away Aiji’s chance to live!”

“This was something he admitted himself! He even came to apologize afterward. But what use is an apology? What good can it do? My child was already dead!”

Madam Jinghua’s emotions flared up again. Su Man quickly changed the subject to interrupt her. “Madam Jinghua, did that officer really look very much like Miss Rongrong?”

Because of the question, Jinghua’s emotions steadied a little. She looked at Rongrong again and nodded. “Too much. He looked far too much like her.”

Her memory grew muddled once more. “Why did you kick Darling Princess away back then? Why did you not save my child? She was right beside you. Did you not smell the burning?”

“You did it on purpose, didn’t you?” Her eyes were unfocused, as if she were already seeing the person from those years through Rongrong.

Rongrong did not answer. Her face, however, had turned deathly pale.

She did not even notice that her own hands were shaking. She lowered her gaze and forced her voice to remain steady. “Madam, do you still remember the officer’s name?”

Seeing her reaction, Su Man suddenly had a guess in her heart.

“His name?” Madam Jinghua repeated slowly. “What was it... It seems his surname was Hu. Everyone called him Officer Hu.”

Rongrong’s hands trembled even harder. “Hu Nian? Officer Hu?”

That name was like a switch. The moment Madam Jinghua heard it, she nodded at once. “Yes, that was it. Hu Nian. Hu Nian. I was wrong. It was him, that young police officer. If only he had seen it when the fire had just started, Aiji could have been saved...”

After speaking, she lamented to herself again. “Why did I have to quarrel with Qian Yuan and lock myself in my room back then?”

She kept muttering under her breath, her gaze once again drifting apart. She looked dangerously unsteady.

Su Man motioned to Rongrong, and the two of them went outside.

Seeing Rongrong still absent-minded, Su Man did not beat around the bush. She asked directly, “You are Hu Nian’s daughter?”

Rongrong managed to pull herself together enough to look at her. After a long silence, she nodded. “He is my father... He...”

She stammered for a long time without getting the words out. In the end, she forced out a few strained syllables like she was constipated. “My father is not a bad person.”

Su Man did not comment on that and asked instead, “Hu Chai is your... brother?”

Rongrong nodded again, her face even paler. She did not even dare to ask how Su Man knew about the two of them.

But Su Man took the initiative to explain. “I’m sorry. I did not know your relationship to them before, so I left them out when I told you what was going on. Your father and your brother are both here.”

Rongrong’s eyes turned red in an instant. “I thought the Hu Chai in the team just happened to have the same name...”

“And they...” Her voice broke. Her throat felt so tight she could barely speak. She had not seen them until now, but in her heart she already knew the answer. Still, before she had something certain, she did not want to believe it.

“Dead.”

Those two brief words from Su Man nearly made Rongrong faint.

Su Man caught her.

“I did not expect you to be Hu Nian’s daughter. If you want to back out and no longer report on what is happening here, I would not blame you.”

Su Man could understand that much.

Rongrong said nothing. After two seconds of silence, she suddenly threw herself into Su Man’s arms and cried. Her sobs were wrenching and heartbreaking. In the vast space, only the sound of her crying remained.

After she had cried herself out, she gradually calmed down. Her whole demeanor seemed to regain clarity, and she asked Su Man for the cause of her father and brother’s deaths.

Su Man told her the truth, though not quite the whole truth. She said only, “Your father died protecting your brother, and your brother... he walked straight to his own death.”

She also told Rongrong the truth that Hu Chai was Qian Ji.

After hearing all this, Rongrong was silent for a long time. Then she pulled a tired smile that looked stiff and worn. “So that’s how it was. I thought as much...”

Her feelings now were a tangled mess. “Do you want to hear why I came here?”

In truth, she had not expected Su Man to answer. She only wanted someone to talk to.

“I came here for my father.”

As she spoke, her eyes reddened again. “When I was little, there was one time after a mission when my dad came home, and he seemed like a completely different person. He could not eat or sleep, and he kept saying he had done something wrong, that he owed that family an apology.”

From Rongrong’s mouth, Su Man heard the story from another angle.

At the time, Hu Nian had not stood by and watched someone die without helping. He had been unwell on assignment, suffering from a severe cold, so his sense of smell was truly impaired. He had not smelled the burning at all. And back then, Qian Yuan and Jinghua had really been fighting fiercely over that diamond necklace. He had only wanted to solve the case quickly so the two of them could make up and return to how they had been before. So when Darling Princess bit his trouser leg, he thought it was only playing and, in his foul mood, kicked it away.