It was just past ten at night in Zuimo Court, at the residence of the Yan siblings.
Yan Ziruo paced back and forth a few times in the living room. Glancing at the phone on the coffee table and seeing it was still silent, her brow furrowed once more.
Seeing her like this, Yan Feifan put down the latest medical journal he was holding and tried to console her. "Sis, don’t be so anxious. Maybe Uncle is in the middle of a shift change, or taking a shower, or something."
"The moment he sees your message, he’ll definitely call us back right away."
After a brief pause, Yan Feifan reminded her, "Sis, when he calls, try not to fly off the handle. Get a clear picture of the situation calmly before you say anything."
Yan Ziruo shot him a glare. "What makes you think I’m..."
Just then, the phone rang.
Yan Ziruo snatched the phone, answered, and put it on speaker.
"Uncle, didn’t you swear up and down that you’d cut off all contact with your old scumbag friends?"
"So why did you have Mrs. Xia go looking for that guy Rong Bin?"
As Yan Ziruo spoke, her voice rose to a roar. "Uncle, are you getting that itch again? Thinking of falling back into your old habits, is that it?"
"If that’s the case, you might as well stay at sea for the rest of your life and never come back!"
Sitting next to Yan Feifan, also holding a medical journal, Yu Suye was seeing Yan Ziruo red-faced and furious, veins popping on her neck, for the very first time. She quickly nudged Yan Feifan.
Yan Feifan immediately chimed in, "Sis, Sis, calm down, calm down! Let’s get the story first, then you can decide whether to be angry."
He then spoke into the phone. "Uncle, hurry up and explain. What’s really going on?"
"Uncle, don’t say I didn’t warn you. My sister is really angry right now. Very angry."
"You’d better think carefully about what you say."
After a moment of silence, their uncle’s voice came through the phone.
"What’s with Xia? I specifically told her..."
"Get to the point! Don’t change the subject!" Yan Ziruo roared again.
"Okay, okay, I’ll talk, I’ll talk!"
Their uncle’s voice slowly filled the living room.
"Ziruo, Feifan, believe it or not, ever since I went to sea, I really haven’t had any contact with any of them."
"But now I’m about to come back to Binhai."
"I was just thinking, Binhai is a big city, but sooner or later, I’m bound to run into one of them."
"I figured I’d find out what they’ve been up to so I can stay as far away from them as possible and avoid any contact."
"I was doing it to keep my promise to you, Ziruo, wasn’t I?"
"Ruoruo, I’ve kept that promise in my heart all this time..."
Yan Ziruo shouted, exasperated, "Uncle, stop with the useless excuses. I’m asking you, why did you have Mrs. Xia go looking for Rong Bin?"
"And another thing, he used to be a perfectly normal person. How did he end up becoming intellectually disabled?"
After a long silence, their uncle’s voice came through the phone again, much lower this time.
"Ruoruo, Feifan, back when we used to hang out, all we did was eat, drink, and have some fun. It wasn’t anything too excessive."
Hearing this, Yan Feifan grimaced.
’Not too excessive?’
’They’d open several bottles of expensive foreign liquor in one night at a bar, blowing tens or even hundreds of thousands of yuan. And he calls that ’not too excessive’?’
"We only got into gambling later because a few bad people with ulterior motives dragged us into it."
Yan Ziruo couldn’t help but reply contemptuously, "Don’t pin the blame on others. Flies don’t bite a seamless egg."
"You should do some more self-reflection."
Their uncle let out a long sigh over the phone and said, as if to himself, "I’ve been at sea these past few years, and it’s calmed me down."
"I’ve been through a lot, heard a lot of things from other people, and now that I’ve had time to think things over calmly, I finally understand..."
"We were set up by those people. They treated us like fat pigs to be slaughtered."
"It’s just... too late for regrets."
The uncle voiced his deep remorse, then continued, "Back then, the family sold all the houses they got from the demolition compensation to pay off the gambling debts."
"Rong Bin’s family wasn’t as well-off."
"I contacted some other people a couple of days ago and found out that Rong Bin has been paying off his debt all these years."
"All the money he earned from work went to those guys."
"I heard from them that one night, two years ago, Rong Bin suddenly jumped from the roof of a four-story building."
"They saved him, but he suffered a head injury and became intellectually disabled."
"Everyone said he didn’t want to live anymore, that it was a suicide. That was the police’s official conclusion, too."
"But I don’t really believe it."