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“Stop him or report him, it’s that simple.”

Jiang Chijing tossed and turned the whole of last night, his mind in a mess. While he believed that to err was to be human thus it wasn’t as if he couldn’t drop the ball, at the same time, he also felt that this was a matter of adhering to his principles; he couldn’t allow any mistakes here.

In the end, when he asked Zheng Mingyi in the morning, sporting two dark eye-circles, this fellow breezily gave him this suggestion, like Jiang Chijing’s dilemma last night was a joke.

“How can stopping him be that simple?” Jiang Chijing frowned.

“Then are you going to report him?”

As Zheng Mingyi spoke, he wrote ‘stop [阻]’ and ‘report [告]’ on a blank piece of paper, also circling each of the two words.

“I’m not reporting.” Jiang Chijing took the pen from Zheng Mingyi and added a stroke to the misspelled ‘stop’.

Unless as a last resort, Jiang Chijing didn’t want to report Xu Sheng.

This was a rather strange frame of mind. It wasn’t that he couldn’t distinguish between right and wrong, but due to Xu Sheng honestly divulging even his criminal plans after breaking out to him, Jiang Chijing felt that turning him in would be a betrayal of Xu Sheng’s trust.

An inmate’s trust certainly wasn’t anything valuable. But Xu Sheng was a man of strong emotion and principles. Jiang Chijing really didn’t want to stab him in the back like this.

“Then you have two choices now.”

Zheng Mingyi took the pen back from Jiang Chijing, then drew two arrows splitting away from ‘stop’, writing ‘block [拦]’ at the end of one and ‘money [钱]’ at the end of the other.

Block was a simple word, and it wasn’t misspelled. But what surprised Jiang Chijing was that the word money was written rather neatly. From the looks of it, it was this guy’s fate to deal with money.

“The first is to block him from getting out, the second is to give him money to resolve the problem,” Zheng Mingyi said.

“How can I give him the money.” Jiang Chijing took the pen from Zheng Mingyi again, feeling complicated as he drew a cross next to the ‘money’ option. “It’s not a small amount; I’m not a philanthropist.”

Helping was charity, not duty. Further, there weren’t strong emotional ties between him and Xu Sheng to start with. To go this length to help him, regardless of whether it was charity or duty, was plain stupidity.

“Have you considered looking for channels to fundraise?” Zheng Mingyi asked.

“It’s not possible to amass a sum this large with the limited time we have,” Jiang Chijing said. “The old madam probably doesn’t have much longer if Xu Sheng’s in such a hurry to get out.”

It might have been possible if it was a figure in the hundred thousands. But unless a miracle happened, it was impossible to resolve so easily the medical expenses required for the old madam’s surgery.

“Speaking of which,” Jiang Chijing suddenly looked straight at Zheng Mingyi. “Can your stocks make quick cash?”

“Do you mean to trade stocks to cover the medical bills?” Zheng Mingyi asked, amused. “Sure, Officer Jiang, if you give me a $50 million capital, I guarantee you I’ll do it.”

“It needs that much?” Jiang Chijing hadn’t dabbled in stocks for long and didn’t have any concrete knowledge.

“It’s already optimistic for a stock to rise by 5% in a day. Besides, stocks don’t go up every day.” Teacher Zheng came online. “I mentioned it to you before; which two types of people have the greatest profits in stocks?”

And now, Jiang Chijing was even getting quizzed in a normal chat; he answered, “People who have passed away or forgotten their account passwords.”

“Yes. Holding steady is the best way to earn money,” Teacher Zheng said. “Short-term trading has high risks. To match the prospective return, a larger capital is required.”

Jiang Chijing rephrased Zheng Mingyi’s words into something more digestible for the masses—it wasn’t reliable to count on stocks to resolve this.

Moreover, Jiang Chijing couldn’t whisk out $50 million off the bat as well. While his family was well-off, they weren’t rolling in cash. If he could casually pull out $50 million, helping Xu Sheng out would be a piece of cake.

All in all, it was still a money problem. In life, most frustrations were money-related. It wasn’t easy to get past this hurdle.

“So we can’t go down this option,” Jiang Chijing.

“Then you only have one choice left.” Zheng Mingyi tapped on one of the options written on the paper with his index finger. “Block him.”

“I tried it yesterday.” This was what gave Jiang Chijing the biggest headache. “I couldn’t dissuade him of it at all.”

Not only was he unable to convince him, he almost got convinced himself. If a person couldn’t even stand his own ground, then it would be impossible to convince anyone otherwise.

“Why do you need to dissuade him?” Zheng Mingyi tilted his head. “You can just block him.”

“How?” Jiang Chijing started minutely.

“When he’s escaping.” Zheng Mingyi took the pen from Jiang Chijing’s hand again and sketched some lines on the paper. “Find an opportunity to block him.”

Jiang Chijing got off the clock on the dot every day. He never stayed in the prison past sunset before. He had turned over solutions for a long time last night without considering directly interfering with Xu Sheng’s actions, also because his mind was limited to his eight-to-five work hours.

“The prison’s cargo vehicle exit is here.” Zheng Mingyi pointed to a horizontal line with the pen tip. “The trucks that come in here will drive through this route to the back door of Block A.” The tip drew a winding line on the paper, with an arrowhead at the end pointing towards the square that was the cell block. “En route, this is the only place with a blindspot in the cameras.”

Zheng Mingyi circled an area on the paper between the showers and the cell blocks, which was exactly at a section of the road that couldn’t be captured by the surveillance on either side.

“If you block Xu Sheng here, you can keep from alerting other guards. But this wouldn’t rule out the possibility of Xu Sheng attacking you if the situation turns desperate.”

“If he attacks me, I won’t shield him anymore,” Jiang Chijing said. “I’ll use the walkie-talkie to inform the patrol team of the escape attempt and the prison will go into lockdown. It’d be impossible for him to escape, then.”

“There, look.” Zheng Mingyi unhurriedly set down the pen. “The initiative is entirely in your hands.”

“But I end work at five, I can’t camp prison every day.”

“Someone should be responsible for liaising with the vendors for the supplies,” Zheng Mingyi said. “You’re a prison officer, it shouldn’t be difficult for you to look into it.”

Hearing this, Jiang Chijing dived into deep thought. Indeed, it was as Zheng Mingyi had said; all he had to do was to find out the delivery timing of the paint to be able to resolve this discreetly.

“Why do I feel like…” Jiang Chijing slowly lifted his gaze, looking at Zheng Mingyi suspiciously. “This suddenly became much simpler?”

Zheng Mingyi pointed with his chin towards the paper on the table. “Use mind maps wisely.”

What Zheng Mingyi had just guided Jiang Chijing through was a simple mind map. From picking between stopping and reporting, to giving money or blocking, then again from persuasion or interference.

After settling on interference, consider the specific method of it.

Of course, even so, it wasn’t a perfect solution. Jiang Chijing breathed out deeply, saying, “The old madam’s medical bills are still an issue. It’s like a ticking time bomb; we can’t tell what Xu Sheng will do.”

“That’s fair.” Zheng Mingyi nodded. “But the most pressing thing now is to stop him from escaping prison.”

He had to admit, Zheng Mingyi’s thought processes were much clearer than his. A complicated affair was broken down into simple steps. Once crystallising the ideas and tackling them one by one, the difficulty was greatly reduced.

Jiang Chijing looked at the sheet of paper again. Zheng Mingyi’s handwriting wasn’t much to speak of, but the schematic diagram he drew was quite faithful. Even Jiang Chijing had never noticed that this was the overall layout of Southside Prison.

Perhaps that’s the difference between people.

At the thought of this, Jiang Chijing inexplicably felt a little grudging to let it go. He said, “You should really practise your handwriting.”

This might be a tad overboard for someone with dyslexia. But Jiang Chijing had absolute confidence in this area. He also wanted to…

Show off his strengths in front of Zheng Mingyi.

“Is my handwriting ugly?” Zheng Mingyi picked up the pen and write his name stroke by stroke on the paper. “It looks passable, no?”

“Look at the ‘Ming [明] you wrote.” Jiang Chijing took the pen from Zheng Mingyi’s hand and deftly wrote ‘Zheng Mingyi’. “This is how the hook [亅] should look like.”

Zheng Mingyi stared at the words Jiang Chijing’s wrote for a while, then smiled. “Your handwriting does look better.”

He took the pen back and rewrote his name, but it was still loopy and lopsided.

“Don’t space your strokes so far apart.” Jiang Chijing couldn’t be bothered to keep passing the pen back and forth, so he held the back of Zheng Mingyi’s hand, helping him to write his name. [郑明弈].

“The vertical stroke on this ear radical [阝] needs to be longer. And the two dots on the ‘yi [弈]’ would look better if they are symmetrical.”

When writing, Jiang Chijing suddenly found that Zheng Mingyi’s hand wasn’t putting in any effort at all, entirely relying on him pulling Zheng Mingyi to write. He lifted his gaze and looked at the person beside him, then found that Zheng Mingyi was spacing at while staring at him.

“What, don’t you want to learn anymore?” Jiang Chijing asked.

“That’s not it.” Zheng Mingyi suddenly set down the pen in his hand, flipping his palm over to hold Jiang Chijing’s hand. “Your hand feels really cold.”

On this blazing hot day, a cool contact was comfortable to the touch. Jiang Chijing blanked for a moment before realising that Zheng Mingyi was using him to beat the heat.

Zheng Mingyi’s palm was hot as a soldering iron, causing the base of Jiang Chijing’s ears to turn heated and his heart to feel parched. He unconsciously tried to draw his hand away, but Zheng Mingyi was holding tightly onto him, also using his fingertips to weave between his fingers, locking their hands together.

“Shouldn’t you go out more often?” Zheng Mingyi stared at Jiang Chijing’s fingers and said, “You’re ridiculously fair.”

“It has nothing to do with you.” Vaguely feeling that his brain was on the verge of an uncontrollable spiral again, he moved his wrist, but was still unable to extricate his hand from Zheng Mingyi’s.

“When I get out, come over for a barbecue at my house?  How does that sound?” Zheng Mingyi said. “My front lawn’s quite suitable to hold a barbecue.”

When Jiang Chijing heard Zheng Mingyi’s invitation, his brows unwittingly furrowed, his mind almost combusting on the spot.

Does this guy know what he’s saying?

He roared in his heart, I’m a voyeur! How can you invite a voyeur into your home? Do you know how stimulating this is for a voyeur? It already took all of me to stop myself from sneaking a shot of you in an apron; what would you do if I stole your underwear when at your house?

Even if it was a stormy sea in his heart, Jiang Chijing’s expression was unchanging. He dunked cold water on the idea, saying, “When you get out, check the dismal state of your burnt-down house before talking to me about hosting barbecues.”

“Is it that bad?” Zheng Mingyi said as it was only natural, “Then I’ll stay in your house first.”

“Mine?” Jiang Chijing’s eyes instantly widened. If him going to Zheng Mingyi’s house was stimulating, then Zheng Mingyi coming over to his house was gripping.

There was a 1.8-metre queen size bed at his house. In general, a bed like this would be placed in the middle of the room due to its spaciousness. If it were placed by the wall, it would be harder to get to the side nearer the wall.

But the bed at Jiang Chijing’s house had been moved next to the window. There was only one reason for this strange arrangement—to ease his spying on Zheng Mingyi.

“No way,” Jiang Chijing immediately rejected. “I only have one bedroom.”

Zheng Mingyi knew this, naturally. Their houses were both two-storied compact apartments with the same architectural layout.

“I can sleep on your sofa,” Zheng Mingyi said.

“Sofa?”

Wasn’t that the same as Zheng Mingyi sleeping under him every night? How would he be able to fall asleep, then?!

“No means no.” Jiang Chijing averted his gaze. He looked at the hands that were still joined together, frowning. “What are you still holding onto me for?”

Didn’t he realise that oatmeal couldn’t be soaked in milk for too long?

Zheng Mingyi looked at their interlaced fingers, and he slowly relaxed his grip, no longer locking in Jiang Chijing’s hand.

His palm abruptly cooled as chilly air blew over, which, at least, dissipated the agitation in his heart.

Translated on ninetysevenkoi.wordpress

> Oatmeal [燕麦] refers to ZMY’s skin tone, which has been described as wheatish, pale golden [麦] before, whereas JCJ’s has previously been described as milk.

Translated on ninetysevenkoi.wordpress

***

Please do not repost or retranslate.

Half an hour passed in the blink of an eye. When Zheng Mingyi left for the afternoon, he took away the paper on which Jiang Chijing wrote his name, saying that he’d go back and practice.

It wasn’t easy to improve handwriting overnight, especially in view of Zheng Mingyi’s dyslexia. Jiang Chijing didn’t take it too seriously; he had more concerning matters to attend to now anyway.

“Furniture?” The colleague in charge of procurement told Jiang Chijing, “The renovating cell block doesn’t need to buy new furniture.”

Jiang Chijing couldn’t go waltzing up to the admin branch on the third floor to ask about the delivery timing for the paint. As such, the excuse he used to open the conversation was that he had a relative who ran a furniture line and wanted to see if there were any opportunities to be made here.

“I see.” Jiang Chijing nodded, then he said conversationally, “Actually, I also have a relative who does wholesale paint, but I heard that our prison already has a supplier, right?”

“Yeah, the wholesaler has already been settled,” his colleague said. “They’re right about to send their second batch over.”

Jiang Chijing didn’t expect the key information to come so quickly. His gaze immediately sharpened. He affected nonchalance, asking, “Are they waiting for the renovations at the cell block to be done before sending it over?”

“Not at all,” his colleague said. “It was supposed to be delivered last night.”

Last night?

Jiang Chijing almost broke out in cold sweat.

“But the deliverymen went to make other deliveries in the day and got delayed on the road. As they were unable to make it in time for the evening, they changed the timing.”

Delivering goods was different from express deliveries. There would often be unforeseen accidents, and having a few days of delay was a frequently seen occurrence.

“But is it possible that the delay will hinder the progress of the renovations?” Jiang Chijing continued to probe. By these words, he was hinting that he could ask his relatives if the wholesaler was unreliable. Naturally, he didn’t have any such relatives, but this was just to connect the logic so that their conversation wouldn’t appear too sudden.

“That’s unlikely.” His colleague waved, clueless as he dumped a bombshell on Jiang Chijing. “It’ll be delivered tonight.”

“Tonight?!”