Restricted Area

Despite Jiang Chijing eventually calling the patrol team over, they couldn’t do anything about Old Nine.

A guard told Old Nine to leave if he wasn’t going to read. In the end, all of them immediately went to grab a book from the shelves, and that guard couldn’t say anything else.

The patrol team stayed guarding the library for about ten minutes. Old Nine’s group didn’t act up either, randomly flipping through the books, dawdling. Ultimately, the captain of the patrol team could only notify Jiang Chijing that they were leaving, bringing his team out of the library.

Once the patrol team was gone, Old Nine’s group started to rock their chairs again, annoying Jiang Chijing so much that his almost blew his top.

After barely making it to two o’clock, Old Nine’s men finally left. But on Tuesday, the same thing happened again. Old Nine brought his lackeys back to the library, giving Jiang Chijing hell.

“I really can’t hit them?”

Zheng Mingyi appeared to have reached the end of his patience. If Jiang Chijing hadn’t warned him not to resolve his problems with violence, he might already have knocked Old Nine to his grave.

To be honest, Jiang Chijing was also at the end of his rope. He really wanted to hit Old Nine as well, but he didn’t have any justifiable reason to do so. As a prison officer, he couldn’t resort to his fists just because an inmate had upset him.

Old Nine was likely counting on this, which was why he could come to Jiang Chijing’s turf and challenge him this flagrantly.

“No, you can’t,” Jiang Chijing said. “We’ll see how long they can keep this up.”

Jiang Chijing knew that Old Nine was waiting for him to lower his head in submission. Him going up to ask “When will you be leaving” was nothing short of a show of weakness. Retaining the initiative, Old Nine definitely wouldn’t take it lying down. It was probable that he would return “We’ll leave if you beg us to leave.”

No matter what, it was impossible for Jiang Chijing to lower his head.

Translated on ninetysevenkoi.wordpress

Wednesday arrived. There was a bit more mail to deliver than usual.

An inmate’s daughter had been admitted to university, an inmate’s wife had written him a farewell letter… Actually, there were only ten or so inmates who regularly received and sent letters out. One among them only sent letters, never receiving a reply. Jiang Chijing decided to have a good chat with him today.

“Thank you, sorry for the trouble, Officer Jiang.”

In Block A, Xu Sheng passed a letter from inside a cell, thanking Jiang Chijing as he always did.

Usually, Jiang Chijing would leave after taking the letter without speaking to him as he didn’t want Princess to give him trouble.

But it was different today. He glanced at the address after taking the letter from Xu Sheng. It carried the same address as it always did. He weighed it in his hand, saying absently, “Your letter might take a long while to be sent this time.”

“A long while?” Xu Sheng had already walked further into the cell. Hearing Jiang Chijing, he came back to the window. “Why?”

“Why.” Jiang Chijing flatly repeated, looking at the letter in his hand. He asked, “Don’t you know what Old Nine is doing?”

Jiang Chijing didn’t point it out directly, but it wasn’t hard to connect the dots. Since Old Nine was giving him hell, then he was returning it in kind to Old Nine’s boss.

While it was inadvisable to provoke Xu Sheng, nor would Jiang Chijing take the initiative to provoke trouble, if the need really arose, he wouldn’t shy away from it.

He had to check the contents of inmates’ letters every day and therefore knew many inmates’ private affairs, including Xu Sheng’s.

“As long as Old Nine doesn’t go too far, I don’t care what he does,” Xu Sheng said.

Compared to oppressing inmates, leading a group of people to relax in the library couldn’t quite count as stepping past the line. In view of how Xu Sheng didn’t even intervene back when Zheng Mingyi had beat Old Nine into a sorry state, Jiang Chijing knew that Xu Sheng wouldn’t intervene in this either.

“Then I don’t care about your letter as well.” Jiang Chijing lifted his gaze, looking impassively at Xu Sheng.

“Officer Jiang, I know you’re a good man.” Xu Sheng looked fixedly into Jiang Chijing’s eyes. “You won’t do this.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Xu Sheng.” Jiang Chijing calmly spoke, “For the likes of you, I’m capable of anything. Don’t think that I’m some kind of saint.”

Xu Sheng looked at Jiang Chijing without a word, obviously weighing the pros and cons in his mind. After a time, he breathed out, letting up. “All right. I’ll have a chat with Old Nine.”

Having received the answer he wanted, Jiang Chijing didn’t dally, taking the letter and leaving the cell block.

Translated on ninetysevenkoi.wordpress

***

Please do not repost or retranslate.

Sure enough, Old Nine didn’t come back to the library in the afternoon.

Other inmates likely weren’t made aware of this yet and still didn’t dare to come in to read. As such, only Zheng Mingyi came into the library at noon.

As for Yu Guang, Jiang Chijing had already notified Luo Hai, getting him to manage his kid and stop him from butting in, so Yu Guang didn’t appear at this time as well.

“Sit outside today.” Seeing that Zheng Mingyi was walking over, Jiang Chijing lifted his chin, gesturing towards the table seating.

Zheng Mingyi, opening the partition of the work area, paused when he heard this.

“Old Nine won’t be coming,” Jiang Chijing explained.

“Why?” Zheng Mingyi went on to open the partition and sat next to Jiang Chijing.

He had told him to sit outside but this guy still ended up sitting inside. All of a sudden, Jiang Chijing discovered that Zheng Mingyi’s so-called ‘listening to him’ was more aptly termed Schrödinger’s obedience.

“I talked to Xu Sheng,” Jiang Chijing said. “He agreed to help me take care of Old Nine.”

“Xu Sheng?” A hint of surprise entered Zheng Mingyi’s expression. “I went to the warden. Are you sure it’s because of Xu Sheng?”

This time, it was Jiang Chijing’s turn to be surprised. “You went to the warden?”

“Yeah.” Zheng Mingyi said, “You said I can’t use force, so I could only think of other ways.”

“What did the warden tell you?” Jiang Chijing asked.

“He said that he would increase their workload,” Zheng Mingyi said.

Doing this was tantamount to abusing power to making life difficult for those in Old Nine’s group. After a time, they would find themselves targeted by everyone and then discover that Jiang Chijing was the cause.

In other words, they came to the library in provocation, assuming that they had the upper hand, when they were in actuality increasing their workload for themselves. Anyone with brains would know that this was an extremely dumb move on their part.

Swaggering with pride whilst getting screwed on the sly; they were virtually getting more than they bargained for.

For Jiang Chijing, this might only put him in a bad mood. But for Old Nine and his lackeys, they were getting an actual burden. With this result, Jiang Chijing no longer needed to feel annoyed; he could even draw back and spectate as Old Nine’s group got served their just desserts.

Either way, no matter how anyone looked at it, Jiang Chijing was the one who won this stand-off.

“Then it can’t be the warden,” said Jiang Chijing. “The results wouldn’t be so quick if it was.”

Having their workload increased for less than a day wasn’t enough for Old Nine’s group discover that they were getting power-played.

It was apparent that Zheng Mingyi agreed with Jiang Chijing’s words. He stopped considering the possibility of it being the work of the warden and asked Jiang Chijing instead, “Why would Xu Sheng help you?”

This was a bit of a long story.

Jiang Chijing drank some water and chose the easiest entry point to begin. He said in a measured tone, “My work requires me to check inmates’ letters. Xu Sheng would write a letter to an elderly couple every week.”

“An elderly couple?” Zheng Mingyi asked. “His parents?”

“No.” Jiang Chijing said. “The parents of the person he killed.”

Astonishment coloured Zheng Mingyi’s expression. He clearly didn’t expect this of Xu Sheng.

“The contents of his letters are the normal, everyday variety. From his tone, he appears to be very familiar with that elderly couple, but they have never written back to him. I was curious why he persisted, so I went to read up on his case.”

As Jiang Chijing used to work in the courthouses before, it wasn’t a challenge for him to dig up more information about a case like this.

“The guy he killed is called Ah Wei.” Jiang Chijing continued. “He was a close friend of Xu Sheng, practically brothers, and was also a suspect in a serial torture and murder case.

“Wait.” Zheng Mingyi interrupted Jiang Chijing. “You’re saying that the person he killed was a suspect?”

“That’s right.” Jiang Chijing said, “At that time, there were several random torture and murder cases in the city. As the police were unable to find a pattern nor motive, they didn’t have anything to go on. Then, a woman went missing and the city deployed the police force to do a full-scale search. It was at this time that the murder of Ah Wei took place. The woman was successfully rescued from an abandoned factory and since then, no similar cases of torture and murder have occurred.”

“You mentioned that the police didn’t have anything to go on,” Zheng Mingyi said as he turned it over, “which means that the police only listed Ah Wei as a suspect after his death?”

“Yes. He slipped completely under their radar at first.” Jiang Chijing said, “But later investigations showed that he was associated to a few past cases. However, upon his death, this became an unsolved case.”

“In that case, Xu Sheng’s motive for killing Ah Wei…” Zheng Mingyi likely shared Jiang Chijing’s opinion.

“He claimed that it was a money dispute and refused to elaborate any further.”

“So what did the police conclude?”

“The official verdict was intentional homicide.” Jiang Chijing paused. “But guess what the police privately thought?”

“That there was a hidden agenda behind it,” Zheng Mingyi said. “Xu Sheng refused to reveal his motive to protect his brother’s reputation.”

“Mm. Murderer or not, there should at least be a bit of brotherly sentiment between them,” Jiang Chijing said. “But Xu Sheng refused to say anything, so no one knows the specifics of what happened.”

Zheng Mingyi lowered his gaze contemplatively, as though recalling the brief interactions he had with Xu Sheng.

Previously, Zheng Mingyi had claimed that Xu Sheng didn’t go all-out when hitting him. At that time, Jiang Chijing felt that Xu Sheng should be a person who knew how far to go and when to stop.

“So why did he help you?” Zheng Mingyi looked at Jiang Chijing and asked, “Did you reason it with him?”

“No.” Jiang Chijing shook his head. “I threatened that I wouldn’t deliver his letter, which, to him, should be a rather serious matter.”

“This threat actually worked on him?” Zheng Mingyi’s brows creased. He was obviously unable to wrap his mind around it. “This doesn’t seem like the style of a prison top-dog.”

At the start, Jiang Chijing also had this doubt. But when he gave it more thought, he felt that it was still worth a try.

“Human nature is complicated, I guess.” Jiang Chijing said, “If I threatened him over something bad, he might not agree. But Old Nine was the one who started it this time. I feel that Xu Sheng has a clear sense of what’s right and what’s wrong.”

“So, what you mean to say is,” Zheng Mingyi said, “He probably knows that you wouldn’t threaten him over something bad.”

“Yeah,” Jiang Chijing said.

It was also for this reason that his conversation with Xu Sheng could end so quickly.

“Impressive, Officer Jiang,” Zheng Mingyi took a step back and switched to his usual cadence, “I can’t analyse people to the same depth.”

Although Jiang Chijing couldn’t win Zheng Mingyi in IQ games, when it came to reading people, he considered himself to be a head above the rest.

“You probably classify Xu Sheng as a good person if that’s so,” Zheng Mingyi spoke again.

“There’s no single standard for good or bad,” Jiang Chijing said. “However, I have always believed that there is no absolute evil in the world.”

This was a point of view that Jiang Chijing had never disclosed to anyone, for he wasn’t used to baring his heart in front of others. But it was different when it came to Zheng Mingyi. Perhaps he could say it so naturally because he felt as though he had long been stripped down to his underwear, also that he didn’t mind revealing this anyway.

“From what you’re telling me, Xu Sheng sounds like quite the complicated guy.” Zheng Mingyi lowered his gaze in thought for a moment before looking at Jiang Chijing again. “I’ve decided to tell you something, then.”

“What?” Jiang Chijing asked.

“Xu Sheng plans to break out of prison.”