“Send me the video.”
After saying this, Xie Yunli hung up the phone.
Liang Zeqi saw him finish the call and came over again, wanting to put his arm around his shoulder: “I’m telling you, really not interested? That fitness beauty has been glancing over here several times now. I guarantee if you just give her one look, she’ll definitely come over to play pool with us…”
Before he could finish, Liang Zeqi suddenly sensed something was wrong, because there wasn’t a trace of joking or agreement on Xie Yunli’s face.
Xie Yunli directly reached out and removed his hand from his shoulder, looking at him with somewhat cold eyes: “Liang Zeqi, I’m warning you once, and only once.”
“The things I’m interested in aren’t in that area. If you really want to help me relax, fine – introduce me to more projects and clients.”
He handed his pool cue to a nearby server and said casually: “I have a wife, a family. I need to support my family and my company. I don’t have time to play these games with you.”
“…Bro, I was wrong.”
Liang Zeqi raised his hands: “I promise I’ll never joke with you about this kind of thing again.”
Seeing Xie Yunli putting away his cue to leave, Liang Zeqi hurried to make amends: “How about sometime… I invite sister-in-law out for dinner? If she needs treatment, I can ask people to introduce some authoritative psychologists, see if we can get her to interact more with society, meet more friends. Maybe it would help…”
Xie Yunli interrupted him: “No need. You don’t have to worry about these things.”
Liang Zeqi scratched his head. Xie Yunli was clearly genuinely impatient now.
He was truly puzzled why Xie Yunli guarded this meaningless marriage so stubbornly. Maybe… maybe that girl didn’t even understand the meaning of marriage?
He really didn’t understand the autism community. Wasn’t it said that they all had some developmental issues with intelligence? Not to mention emotional intelligence – after all, they had social difficulties.
But he wasn’t Xie Yunli. Whether as a business partner or brother, he felt he should respect him.
He just still felt it was somewhat regrettable, not knowing why Xie Yunli so carefully protected that emotionless wife of his, maintaining this marriage that existed in name only.
Xie Yunli hurried back to his hotel room. Zhou Wei had already sent the video.
The nearly three-minute video was from a short video platform. The blogger was a college student whose theme was spending weekends volunteering at a small animal rescue station in the suburbs, bathing rescued cats and dogs and cleaning up.
Xie Yunli had owned a dog when he was little. He had a vivid memory of that dog always liking to stick close to him, but that was a very long time ago.
The video opened with a rescued stray dog. Though pixelated, you could still see it was covered in blood, severely abused – not only had two teeth been forcibly pulled out, but iron nails had been stuck into its body. It lay there barely alive.
These college students had learned about this rescue station through this dog, then went together.
This rescue station housed no fewer than a hundred stray dogs. After the video blogger introduced the environment, he began talking with the station’s director.
Xie Yunli watched for nearly two minutes without seeing the Aunt Zhu that Zhou Wei mentioned.
Until he heard the blogger say that one of the workers at the rescue station was an autistic patient – his nerves suddenly jumped.
The director was talking about a tall, sturdy boy named Xiao Zhi, clearly a more severe case on the autism spectrum who had great difficulty communicating with people but was very close to the small animals.
The camera panned, and Xie Yunli finally saw two people surrounded by a group of stray dogs – one was Aunt Zhu, the other wearing a hat, dressed very conservatively in a shirt, long pants and jacket, not revealing anything from head to toe, even her face unclear.
But he still recognized her at a glance.
That person was Wen Ran.
Only Wen Ran could make Aunt Zhu protect her so carefully, and only Wen Ran had that quality that could be recognized at a glance even standing in a noisy crowd.
There was another thing – he recognized the shoes she was wearing.
In the last minute, their figures appeared in several shots, but what surprised him most was seeing Wen Ran standing together with another girl.
They weren’t standing very close – there was even a distance of one or two people between them – but it definitely exceeded the distance Wen Ran could manage with strangers.
Xie Yunli frowned and rewound the video, pausing it.
He didn’t recognize this girl.
He knew Wen Ran had some former classmates, but as far as he knew she never contacted those people, and in the more than two years since she’d moved into the villa, she had never stepped outside the house.
Of course, she was free – no one restricted her to staying home, and no one forbade her from going out.
It’s just… he didn’t know she had gone to such a distant place, and recently at that.
How did she get there?
Was someone leading her, or did she want to go herself?
She shouldn’t be able to tolerate long car rides – such a distance, how did she endure it?
Why didn’t Aunt Zhu tell him?
Did she think it wasn’t necessary, or did Wen Ran not let her tell him?
One question led to another, and the more he thought, the more questions arose.
Xie Yunli pinched between his eyebrows, stayed quiet for a while, then clicked to watch the video again.
So she was willing to go out and willing to talk to strangers.
He thought again of that dreamlike basement.
His wife seemed to have many things he didn’t understand about her.
Early the next morning, Xie Yunli had a server wake up Liang Zeqi, who was still sound asleep in bed, and they took a car to the airport together.
“I didn’t book a ticket, big brother.”
Liang Zeqi looked exhausted.
Xie Yunli wore sunglasses and spoke without emotion: “I had someone book one for you.”
“I wanted to take this opportunity to play for a few more days. There are many places I haven’t been.”
Liang Zeqi complained: “I’m not like you – out on business for two days and already worrying about a pile of company matters.”
Xie Yunli said: “This afternoon I have an appointment with General Manager Xu from Kangmeng. You’ll come with me.”
Liang Zeqi yawned: “Fine, after the meeting find me a nearby hotel. I didn’t tell them I was coming back today.”
Halfway through his yawn, seeing Xie Yunli remove his sunglasses, he noticed the dark circles under his eyes. The rest of his yawn got stuck: “…You didn’t sleep last night?”
Whether on business trips or not, it was normal for Xie Yunli to work late, but he would also let his body rest to optimal condition.
Liang Zeqi had never seen him stay up all night to the point where his eyes looked this dim and weary.
As if he’d done something else last night that was too energy-consuming…
“You couldn’t have really gone to find that beauty after I left…”
Before he could finish, Xie Yunli shot him a look and Liang Zeqi immediately shut up.
“I’m not as shameless as you think.”
Xie Yunli said coldly: “And not as idle as you imagine.”
With that, he opened his phone and began handling messages from the company group. Liang Zeqi carefully exhaled and didn’t dare speak again until they reached the airport.
…
For several days in a row, Aunt Zhu felt Wen Ran was acting strangely.
Because besides her usual painting, Wen Ran would often zone out, sometimes for an hour at a time.
Although this wasn’t unusual for her, there were some other strange things.
For example, she had taken out that castle puzzle Xie Yunli had given her before, which she had already completed long ago. Such a large puzzle, she actually took it apart piece by piece, spending several hours dismantling it completely.
Then, piece by piece, she slowly began putting it back together.
Aunt Zhu watched her while preparing vegetables. Watching and watching, she felt like she was losing patience, yet Wen Ran continued putting pieces together there.
Aunt Zhu originally wanted to ask if she was tired, but seeing her focused expression, she could tell she didn’t want to talk.
When Wen Ran was concentrating on doing one thing, she would unconsciously block out any sounds from the outside world. Even Aunt Zhu couldn’t disturb her.
One puzzle, back and forth – taken apart and put back together, completed then dismantled, for three consecutive days, once each day, three times total.
This repetitive behavior, not saying a word during it, and zoning out far more than before – this was repetitive behavior that had never appeared before.
Aunt Zhu was getting worried.
Although after Wen Ran’s mother passed away, her psychological state had once become problematic, at least she had gradually returned to normal life, and these past two years had been relatively stable without any particularly abnormal behaviors.
But Wen Ran’s condition these past few days really made Aunt Zhu feel something was abnormal. She couldn’t help but worry, wondering if she should consult a psychologist, and she needed to tell Xie Yunli about this.
After all, this situation was truly abnormal and should be mentioned to him.
By the fourth day, Aunt Zhu still couldn’t hold back and carefully asked Wen Ran: “Ran Ran, are you going to play with the puzzle again today?”