[曦澄 | XiCheng][MDZS Modern AU]: All The Things I Never Told You [~PART 1~]

〽️👁‍🗨 Chapter 133: Ghosts And Shadows. [!TW!]

Note:

Sources:

https://twitter.com/PoemHeaven/status/1571272832394354688

 https://twitter.com/headBONDmeLWJ/status/1561201816423235584

*
Still unsure whether this chapter needs a TRIGGER WARNING. Hmm.
I am putting one for the cyber-bullies on Wattpad.

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[the 1st of January]

Wen Ning was desperate. This was definitely more than he could handle!

First, it was Jiang Cheng who suddenly disappeared. He watched him go to the back of the premises, and he  –  a little surprised  –  watched the police captain follow him hurriedly, ignoring all the exclamations of his colleagues.

He didn't think too much of it, too busy to think actually, but now Bobby was gone too, and he was lost. The drunk men were calling after him for re-fills, or new beers, or more champagne, and he was running, rushing all over, trying to ignore their jokes and jeers. One man could not handle that much, moreover  -   he could never handle so many drunk men!

Desperate, he tried to follow everyone else too, and beg them to get back to work  –  now was definitely not the time to take a break! And if they suddenly did  take a break  –  they should have at least told him about it!

Pouting a little, but mostly sad about it, he went to the back of the bar, carefully, as it was almost completely dark here. There was a single red bulb at in the very end of what felt like a long dark tunnel, so he kept to the left wall, groping his way ahead. It was a good thing that he moved quietly, because he could hear whispers and faint laughter in the very end of that tunnel, which he thought was very strange.

Was something secret going on? Something he was not supposed to know about?

He knew that his dad had pulled some strings for him to get this job. He was personal friends with the owner of the bar, and A-Ning suspected the two knew each other from their days in the mob. Yes, of course he knew about it... although all his family were trying their best to keep him in the dark about it all the time. He wasn't a kid any more!

He had wanted, he had craved to study Psychology after college. It was an amazing subject; it fascinated him. His father had joked about him working in a bar: after all, what better slice of society's vice one could get, to observe and to study, than the regular customers in a pub, who would treat their favorite bartender as they would a shrink?

It was a rhetorical question, really, and once he showed his enthusiasm about this jest idea  –  his well-meaning dad just picked up the phone, and  –  voila!  -   he was now working the night shifts here, devoting his days to lectures at the Uni, and reading Freud and Jung on his weekends.

He liked Mister Bobby  –  he had shown him the ropes, and Mister Jiang was kind to him too; he looked like someone who cared,  but also kept his distance, so he was more curious about studying him,  really. He had sulked because his mom and dad had dragged him to the Swiss Alps for the winter holidays, almost against his will, and he survived  Christmas, but the New Year's thing got just far too cloying and pink and sentimental, mostly because of his sister and his mom, so he kind of escaped  and came back to New York in a hurry, impatient for the rare opportunity to be observing policemen  tonight.

Now he was advancing very slowly and carefully, trying to keep quiet, and hear better, discern some words maybe? He moved only inside the shadows for some reason, or some instinct, and this was actually quite fortunate, because now he gasped very softly  –  he noticed Mister Bobby, hiding in the shadows too  –  but only pressed against the wall on the other side of the corridor, pressed against the door of a small closet where the brooms and cleaning liquids were being kept.