Restricted Area

At Guan Wei’s suggestion, Jiang Chijing followed him to take a look at Zheng Mingyi’s house.

From the second that he stepped past the threshold, Jiang Chijing was utterly incapable of quietening his mind.

For a voyeur, the house of the person they secretly watched had an existence that was practically on the status of a ‘sacred ground’. Even the air here was more precious than the air on Mount Everest.

Subconsciously, excitement surged through Jiang Chijing’s heart, but this excitement was quickly extinguished, for the owner of this house was now a convict, stepping down from the ‘sacred altar’.

He shifted from excitement to a more complicated mood, and when he saw the complete disorder the house was in, his mood once more shifted from complicated to emotional.

The small objects that he was used to seeing through a monocular were now strewn across the ground. God knows how much Jiang Chijing wanted to return them to their original positions.

 “It is a little suspicious that the house has been ransacked to this state.”

The two men came out of the house and took off the shoe covers on their feet. Guan Wei offered him a cigarette, but Jiang Chijing had already brushed his teeth and so he flapped a hand, declining it.

“Didn’t Zheng Mingyi say that he was holding onto evidence?” Jiang Chijing said. “If that’s true, then could the guy earlier be searching for it?”

“That’s not impossible.” Nodding, Guan Wei blew out a puff of smoke. “But if the evidence really exists, where do you think he’ll hide them?”

There was absolutely no way for him to have brought it into prison.

Every convict would be checked before entering prison, and not even a needle would be allowed in, let alone a card or suchlike.

“Maybe with his friends, I don’t know.”

Jiang Chijing understood Zheng Mingyi’s lifestyle habits but not his interpersonal relations.

For example, he knew that Zheng Mingyi liked to sit on the left side of the sofa to watch television, but he didn’t know how he would be if he had a friend over, because no one had ever come to Zheng Mingyi’s house as a guest.

“Let’s leave it at that for today. Tomorrow I’ll ask my buds from the crime scene investigation unit to come over and take a look,” Guan Wei said.

“Can’t you formally file the case for investigation?” Jiang Chijing could hear the underlying meaning behind Guan Wei’s words.

“You know how it is, the HX Management case has been decided. The chances of reversing the outcome is very slim,” Guan Wei said.

Jiang Chijing nodded thoughtfully. He had worked in the courthouse before and knew that it wasn’t that easy to overturn a case. Even if Zheng Mingyi was telling the truth, if the evidence in his hands wasn’t decisive enough, they wouldn’t be able to do anything to reopen the case.

Furthermore, he still didn’t trust the authorities and wouldn’t be willing to hand over the evidence he had.

Of course, the precondition for the above was that Zheng Mingyi was telling the truth.

If he was lying—that he didn’t even have any evidence of his boss committing the offence in the first place—rather than saying that he did not trust the authorities or that he wasn’t willing to hand it over, it would be better to say that he had nothing with him and was unable to hand anything over.

And here, Jiang Chijing abruptly realised a problem. What on earth was he worrying about this for?

He was only a prison officer, what damn business was it of his to poke his nose in?

Translated by luckykoi, please read this from ninetysevenkoi.wordpress

***

Translated by luckykoi, please do not repost or retranslate.

Despite that being the case, Jiang Chijing still tossed and turned in bed that night because of the situation involving Zheng Mingyi, only just barely managing to fall asleep late into the night.

The next morning, in a rare instance of oversleeping, he hastily spread strawberry jam on the bread and drove madly the rest of the way to the prison with it jammed in his mouth.

When he was done delivering the mail, he was finally able to relax from the panicked morning. But just as Jiang Chijing was dozing off in his seat, Luo Hai suddenly appeared at the library door, knocking the wood as he said, “Do me a favour.”

“What?” Jiang Chijing raised his head in bafflement.

As soon as the words left his mouth, a figure in a prison uniform appeared behind Luo Hai. If Jiang Chijing’s memory wasn’t failing him, this man should still be in confinement with two other people.

“I need him to take a psych eval.” Luo Hai pointed at Zheng Mingyi with his thumb. “But someone at the sewing factory sewed their finger. I have to go over and deal with it for a bit and really don’t have the time now to conduct it for him.”

For some inmates who potentially had mental disorders, the prison would preemptively conduct psychological assessments to prevent serious violent and bloody incidents in the future.

The sorry state that Zheng Mingyi beat Old Nine into yesterday prompted the prison to look into his mental condition and risk level.

“Can’t you print out the questions and get him to fill it out and hand it to you?” Jiang Chijing said with slight grudging in his tone, reluctant to needlessly give himself more work.

“Not possible.” Luo Hai wriggled his finger helplessly. “He has dyslexia.”

“Dys…lexia?” Bemused, Jiang Chijing swept a glance at Zheng Mingyi, who was standing bored on one side, then said to Luo Hai, “You mean you want me to read to him?”

“That’s right, so long as you understand.” With that, Luo Hai turned over and stuffed the tablet into Zheng Mingyi’s hand before saying to Jiang Chijing, “I still have to deal with that injured guy. I’ll leave him to you, then.”

“Hey, wait!”

Jiang Chijing lifted his chin to call Luo Hai back, but the man disappeared in a flash at the door, whereas Zheng Mingyi had already walked over with the tablet, handcuffs still on his wrists.

“Where should I put this?” Zheng Mingyi asked.

Exasperated, Jiang Chijing took the tablet from Zheng Mingyi’s hands, using his chin to point towards the nearest table to his office desk. He said, “Take a seat there.”

Zheng Mingyi quickly went over and sat down, looking fixedly at Jiang Chijing, but his gaze didn’t hold the same provocation as it had before, like he was simply waiting for Jiang Chijing to speak.

“You can’t recognise words?” Jiang Chijing asked.

Come to think of it, this was the first time that he was speaking to Zheng Mingyi alone. What he hadn’t dared to do in the past was now something trivial and mundane.

“I can,” Zheng Minyi said. “I only have dyslexia.”

Dyslexia could be classified into two categories; the first was dyslexia as a result of low intellect, while the other was conversely dyslexia as a result of extremely high IQ.

Many geniuses in history were considered as ‘weak students’ in their childhood, but later studies showed that these people were all typical cases of dyslexia.

Jiang Chijing asked this question just to confirm which Zheng Mingyi fell into. After all, he was still brooding over the words that Zheng Mingyi said to him at the door of the recreation room yesterday.

“Can’t you even read the question?” Jiang Chijing opened the psychological assessment on the screen and continued to ask.

“One or two lines is fine, but no more than that,” Zheng Minyi said. “If you got me to do it myself, I might take all day.”

“The test when entering prison, too?” Jiang Chijing asked again.  “You were too lazy to read the questions.”

“It wasn’t that I was too lazy to read them,” Zheng Mingyi said. “It’s the style that made it difficult for me.”

The test questions were written by Jiang Chijing. The questions weren’t difficult, but the options were indeed a little convoluted. For example: What are the value orientations that form the bedrock of society?

A: Freedom, balance, justice, rule by law
[自由、平衡、公正、法治]

B: Freedom, equality, fairness, rule by law
[自由、平等、公平、法治]

C: Freedom, equality, justice, rule by law
[自由、平等、公正、法治]

D: Freedom, equality, justice, self-rule
[自由、平等、公正、自治]

When considering it from this angle, it did seem a little difficult for people with dyslexia. But Jiang Chijing was more concerned about another issue. Judging from Zheng Mingyi’s mannerisms, his dyslexia appeared to fall into the second category.

In other words, he had not discovered the flaws in abnormalities in Jiang Chijing’s behaviour yesterday in the recreation room by accident.

Jiang Chijing abruptly felt quite fidgety. He irritably said, “You really should practise your handwriting.”

“My handwriting?” Zheng Mingyi arched an eyebrow, as if not expecting that Jiang Chijing would care about this. However, his answer still leapt as far off tangent as ever. “You have nice handwriting.”

Of course it did.

Getting praised out of the blue suddenly tangled Jiang Chijing’s brain into a knot; he didn’t know how he should answer.

He simply stopped dwelling on this, shifting his gaze to the questions in the tablet in his hand and beginning to read them aloud to Zheng Mingyi.

“Would people be more likely to describe you as (A) passionate and sensitive, (B) logical and clear?”

“No one has described me,” said Zheng Mingyi. “I consider myself to be B.”

The guy actually took each word rigorously.

Jiang Chijing raised his gaze to glance at Zheng Mingyi. He selected the option on the tablet and continued, “Which option is more appealing to you? (A) Going with your lover to a crowded place with many social activities. (B) Staying at home with your lover and doing something more special, such as watching an interesting movie and enjoying your favourite food.”

“I don’t have a lover,” Zheng Mingyi said.

“Hy-po-the-ti-cal.” Jiang Chijing restrained the vein that faintly bulged on his forehead. “Hypothetically, if you have a lover, which would you do with them?”

Zheng Mingyi shifted his gaze away, considering it for two seconds. Then he looked back at Jiang Chijing and said, “I’m fine with both, it mainly depends on what the other party wants to do.”

“……” Losing his patience, Jiang Chijing put the tablet down on the table. “Are you playing with me?”

“You’re the one who asked me what I want to do with my lover.” Zheng Mingyi shrugged, as if not understanding Jiang Chijing’s anger.

“A or B.” Jiang Chijing tempered himself and picked up the tablet again. “Aside from that, I don’t want to hear any other nonsense.”

“Okay,” Zheng Mingyi acquiesced, but he immediately said after, “Are you this fierce to all inmates?”

“You’re actually aware that you’re an inmate?”

“B, then.”

“What?”

The sudden emergence of an alphabet caught Jiang Chijing off guard.

“I said, B. Stay at home with my lover.”

It was a simple question, yet they went one whole round before getting to the answer. Jiang Chijing felt like there was a damned cat’s tail constantly swishing at him, neither too lightly nor too roughly, driving him to the brink of madness.

Fortunately, Zheng Mingyi stopped jerking him around after that, giving proper answers to the questions that Jiang Chijing asked.

“Do you prefer (A) a deployed, rhythmic job, (B) a flexible, looser job?”

“A.”

“Do you enjoy having a wide interpersonal circle? (A) Yes, (B) No.”

“B.”

“Compared to cats, you like dogs better. (A) Yes, (B) No.”

“B.”

After about ten minutes, someone knocked on the door again. Luo Hai walked into the library while wiping the water from his hands with toilet paper, asking Jiang Chijing, “How’s it going?”

Jiang Chijing looked at the remaining progress bar and said, “We’re only halfway through.”

Luo Hai reached out a hand towards Jiang Chijing. “Leave the rest to me, then.”

“All right.”

With that, Jiang Chijing passed the tablet to Luo Hai. But Zheng Mingyi, who was seated across from them, suddenly spoke, “I hope that Officer Jiang will read it to me.”

“Huh?” Luo Hai gave a start. “Why?”

“His voice is more pleasant than yours.”

Jiang Chijing, “……” Can you not give me more work?