TLSMLMMM Chapter 33

At the Si family’s old residence, several people stood with their heads lowered, barely daring to look at Si Yunyi, whose expression was frosted with cold anger. Chu Junlie stood behind Si Yunyi, holding Liefeng’s leash, his face solemn.

“Please describe once again what happened before the old man went missing. This is crucial to finding him,” Officer Wu said gravely, notebook in hand, questioning the Si family’s eldest daughter-in-law.

“The old master hardly had any episodes today. He mostly kept looking out the window, then lay down to rest,” the sister-in-law said with her head lowered. “I thought Dad was in good condition today, so I… I relaxed my vigilance a bit. Just then, a friend called me on video. The phone volume was too loud, and I was afraid of disturbing Dad’s sleep, so I took the phone downstairs to the first floor to talk with my friend.”

“What time did your friend call, and how long did you talk?” Officer Wu recorded rapidly in his notebook.

Overcome with shame, the sister-in-law took out her phone and showed the officer the exact time.

“She had just picked up her child from school and gone home. We talked for a little over twenty minutes.”

“When did you discover the old master was missing?” Officer Wu noted the time shown on the phone.

“Right after I finished the video call and went back upstairs.” The sister-in-law could barely bring herself to recall the scene, tears streaming down her face.

“As soon as I went up, I saw Dad’s door ajar. My heart skipped a beat. I opened the door and saw that Dad wasn’t in the room.

“At first I thought Dad had gone to another room. I called the housekeeper and the servants, and we searched together for more than ten minutes.”

“And then?” Officer Wu’s expression grew heavier by the second.

“Then we began to suspect that Dad had gone out on his own. We checked the gate surveillance and discovered that Dad by himself had actually left more than twenty minutes earlier.”

The sister-in-law covered her face, sobbing. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Did anyone else in the villa see the old master leave? I saw security posted at your gate when I came in. Didn’t the guards notice him leaving?” Officer Wu shifted his questioning, looking at the others in the villa.

“It was time to prepare dinner, so most people had gone to the kitchen to help. After the old master fell ill, his temper became very volatile. We didn’t dare go upstairs lightly, if we were caught even once, we’d be scolded harshly,” the housekeeper stepped forward to speak on behalf of the servants, his expression troubled.

Officer Wu turned to the security guards.

“We work in pairs, rotating through three shifts,” the head of security stepped forward, looking remorseful. “According to regulations, every two hours one person goes on patrol while one stays on duty at the gate. The brother on the previous shift was in a hurry to pick up his child, and the brother on the next shift was late by a few minutes because of traffic.”

On ordinary days, no one paid attention to these gaps in coverage. When Old Master Si hadn’t been ill, he had always been lenient about such matters, everyone had families and children; being late once in a while was no big deal.

But now, it was precisely these gaps that had left everyone panicking.

“It has now been three hours and fifty-seven minutes since the old master went missing,” Officer Wu said after checking the time, then looked up at the people before him. “If you had reported it earlier, it might have been easier to find him.”

“We panicked too. The first thing we thought of was to search ourselves. After all, the old master is ill, and his legs aren’t as nimble as before. We thought we’d be able to find him,” the second brother argued, only to be glared at fiercely by the eldest brother.

“You’ve got the nerve to speak! We agreed to take turns looking after Dad. The moment your good-for-nothing buddies called, you ran off without a trace. Today was supposed to be your shift. Your sister-in-law only covered for you out of kindness!”

“Was I going out to have fun? I finally managed to find someone selling a top-grade wild ginseng, and the seller wanted to let it go. I wanted to buy it to prepare medicine for Dad—that’s why I went!” the second brother retorted, his face flushed with anger. “Ever since Dad got sick, I’ve barely gone to my own spots to play around. I told my sister-in-law we’d switch shifts afterward, and she agreed!”

“Enough, both of you,” Officer Wu said helplessly. “Finding the old master is the priority right now.”

The second brother lowered his voice but still shot a glare at the eldest brother. “Who knows who it was that got told yesterday by Dad that he was useless, a man in his forties throwing a tantrum…”

“Shut up!” The eldest brother, struck at a sore spot, lunged forward as if about to turn this into a display of ‘brotherly affection.’ Watching the people in front of him, Chu Junlie calmly bent down and unfastened the black leash from Liefeng’s body.

Before the two brothers could come to blows, snap—snap, each of them was struck once with a whip. Forgetting about fighting, and seeing another strike coming, they hurriedly raised their arms to protect themselves.

Chu Junlie watched as Si Yunyi’s long, fair fingers gripped the black dog leash. He folded it over several times, holding one end in his hand while pointing the other toward the two older brothers. His eyes were cold and heavy, his voice icy and sharp.

“Have you had enough?”

The eldest brother held his arms over his body, leaning back as he looked at his younger brother’s stern face, too intimidated to speak.

The second brother rubbed the spot where he had been struck. Seeing the leash pointed at him, he instinctively shrank his neck.

The room fell silent again. The eldest sister-in-law struggled to suppress her sobs. Looking at her intimidating, ice-cold brother-in-law, she wiped her face.

“Officer Wu.” Si Yunyi turned slightly, his expression clear and cold. “What do you need us to do now?”

Faced with the scene, Officer Wu froze for a moment before reacting.

“Right now, you need to split up. Leave two people at the villa, there’s still a chance the elderly man might return on his own.”

“Eldest sister-in-law, second sister-in-law—wait for Dad at the villa,” Si Yunyi said coldly, casting them a glance.

“Yes, yes,” the eldest sister-in-law replied, lowering her gaze and nodding repeatedly.

“There’s only one road in front of the villa. The rest of you need to split into two directions,” Officer Wu said seriously. “Find the nearest surveillance cameras and try to retrieve footage from the time the old man went missing, so we can determine which direction he went.”

“Eldest brother, second brother you take the left,” Si Yunyi said, then looked at Chu Junlie. “You and I will go right.”

Chu Junlie straightened up and nodded vigorously, like a pecking chick.

“Third sister, you’re in charge of the children tonight,” Si Yunyi said, looking at his siblings, his gaze icy.
“If Dad isn’t found tonight, no one is allowed to go home!”

Watching everyone nod in quick succession, Officer Wu suddenly felt that this family… might still have some hope after all.

As soon as Si Yunyi stepped outside, he handed the leash back to Chu Junlie. Chu Junlie looked at the black leash, his dark eyes shifting slightly, and accepted it with both hands.

“By the way,” Officer Wu said, looking at Liefeng, “has your dog been trained to track by scent? If so, he might be a huge help.”

Si Yunyi looked at Chu Junlie. Chu Junlie’s mind went blank for a moment as he lowered his head to look at Liefeng.

You can do this, right?
I must have trained you before I lost my memory, didn’t I?

Si Yunyi returned to the villa, took one of the old master’s garments, and let Liefeng sniff it.

Liefeng lowered his head and sniffed carefully. After lifting his head, he immediately ran in one direction. Chu Junlie grabbed the leash and followed closely behind.

Si Yunyi and Officer Wu followed. Liefeng walked while sniffing until he suddenly lay down at one spot, stuck out his tongue, and looked up at them.

Si Yunyi raised his head and saw that they were at a bus stop.

Old Master Si’s scent disappeared here.

“There’s a camera on that bus sign. I’ll go to the station’s monitoring room to retrieve the footage, it may take some time,” Officer Wu said, about to run off, when he noticed Si Yunyi staring at the bus stop sign as if he had realized something.

Si Yunyi hailed a taxi. The three people and one dog got in, and Si Yunyi gave the name of a middle school.

Chu Junlie’s eyes flickered. He remembered the school uniforms he had seen, two of them bore the name of that very middle school beneath the school emblem on the chest.

The taxi stopped at the school gate. At this hour, the students had long since been dismissed from evening study. The sky was dark, with only a single light glowing above the guard booth at the entrance. Under the dim light, an elderly man sat on a stone bollard by the gate, staring at the now-empty campus.

From a distance, Si Yunyi looked at the old man and stopped, not stepping forward.

Seeing this, Officer Wu went up to greet him.

“Sir, what are you doing here?”

Old Master Si sized Officer Wu up. “You’re a security guard at this school, aren’t you?”

Officer Wu glanced at his uniform and smiled wryly. “Yes, yes.”

“I’m waiting for my son.” Old Master Si looked back at the deserted campus. “My kid hasn’t finished evening study yet. Probably the teacher assigned too much homework and he didn’t finish. I’ll wait a bit longer.”

“The students have all gone home,” Officer Wu said gently. “You should go home too.”

“No.” Old Master Si shook his head. “I made my son angry. He didn’t eat a single bite at dinner.”

“How did you upset him?” Officer Wu squatted down, listening attentively.

“He used to get perfect scores in math, but this time he made mistakes he shouldn’t have. I scolded him, and he didn’t eat a bite before going back to school for evening study.

“Later, the nanny told me that Yunyi wasn’t feeling well on the day of the exam, he had a high fever. I was away on a business trip at the time. He didn’t want me to worry, so he didn’t tell me and forced himself to go to school.”

Old Master Si lowered his head and looked into his arms. Officer Wu followed his gaze, it was a few pieces of pastry.

“I brought him something to eat. He’s weak how could he hold up after skipping dinner?”

Officer Wu looked toward Si Yunyi. Si Yunyi turned away, took off his glasses in the darkness, paused for a moment, then turned back and strode toward the old man.

The old man looked at the man walking toward him somehow unfamiliar, yet strangely familiar.

“Dad, let’s go.” Si Yunyi took the pastries from the old man’s arms, just like that night more than ten years ago, and asked while looking into the bag, “Is there almond pastry?”

“Yes, of course!” Old Master Si came back to his senses and smiled at his now much taller son. “How could what you like not be there?”

“Let’s go home.” Si Yunyi held the old man’s aged hand. “I still need to do a few more sets of math problems tonight.”

“The way I treated you before—that was Dad’s fault. Yunyi, are you still angry with me?” the old man asked, looking into his son’s eyes.

“I’m not angry.” Si Yunyi shook his head slightly.

“The way I treated you before… Yunyi, are you still angry with Dad?” The old man seemed dazed and asked again.

“I’m not angry with you.” Si Yunyi turned his face slightly, his fingertip brushing the corner of his eye.

“Yunyi, are you still angry with Dad?” the old man asked incoherently as he stood up with Si Yunyi and followed him along the road home.

“I’ve never been angry with you. Never.”

“Now that the old man’s been found, I’m relieved,” Officer Wu said in a low voice, patting Chu Junlie on the shoulder. “I’ll head off—I’ve got things at home.”

“Thank you,” Chu Junlie said with a deep bow, sincerely grateful.

“It’s nothing. Young Master Si often helps us out too,” Officer Wu waved his hand. “I’m leaving.”

Holding Old Master Si’s hand, Si Yunyi turned around and saw Chu Junlie bowing respectfully to Officer Wu, solemn and earnest.

Si Yunyi waited in place with the old man until Chu Junlie came running back with Liefeng.

As soon as Chu Junlie looked up and saw Mr. Si waiting with the old master for him, he couldn’t hide his happiness and hurried over.

“Yunyi, who is this?” Old Master Si asked, looking at the man standing beside his son, confusion on his face.

“He’s my partner,” Si Yunyi replied, meeting Chu Junlie’s dark eyes.

When their eyes met, Si Yunyi’s eye corners still faintly red. Chu Junlie’s ears flushed instantly, his heart pounding wildly.