Su Qing spent a hundred yuan to buy two sets of clothes, one adult and child, for himself and Tu Tutu to change into. Tu Tutu asked, "Uncle Annoying, what are we doing?"
Hearing this form of address, Su Qing frowned. He explained briefly where they were going, then half-crouched and said to Tu Tutu in deadly earnest: "Listen, let's talk something over. You act as my son from now on, change your name to Su Tutu. Tu Tutu sounds awful. It's like a tractor."
This hit Tu Tutu directly in his sore spot. The child's greatest defeat in life was his name. He had probably had many children in school give him nicknames. As soon as he heard this, his eyes reddened, his lips pursed, and tears trembled on the rims of his eyes.
He took a deep breath from the diaphragm and stood as though ready to howl. Su Qing softened at once. Trembling, he said, "Chief, I was wrong, spare this unworthy one's life. I won't dare to do it again. You aren't my son, you're my ancestor."
After a moment, he insolently added, "Though actually...my ancestors were also surnamed Su."
Tu Tutu: "Wah—"
So Su Qing shelled out three coins, made his way into a KFC, and bought an ice cream cone. In his poor and wretched situation, where each yuan had to be stretched to the limit, he regretted the expenditure so much that he looked constipated. Then he carried the little devil around on his shoulders for ages to cheer him up. Only then did the little chief finally agree not to take issue with him.
Tu Tutu knocked on Su Qing's head. "You can put me down."
Su Qing thought, The little devil's finally found his conscience. Then he heard him say, "There's not enough space, and it hurts my butt. I'm uncomfortable."
Su Qing's inner world was full of tears amid a raging storm.
Next, Tu Tutu raised the ice cream cone that he had licked all over and asked, "Do you want some?"
Before Su Qing could answer that he didn't, the little devil decided for himself to withdraw the ice cream. "Fine, I know you don't."
Su Qing: "..."
He felt that in the blink of an eye the little devil had taken liberties with him twice.
He looked up at the increasingly familiar scenery of the neighborhood. Three or four blocks from his house, he suddenly stopped and swatted Tu Tutu on the back of the head, saying, "We're going to see Grandpa. You have to be polite."
Tu Tutu was happily nibbling on his ice cream. He nodded deferentially.
Su Qing suddenly felt a little timid as he approached his old home. He couldn't resist saying, "If Grandpa asks how you're doing in school, you say you're doing all right. You hear me? You're not allowed to talk about testing last in your class."
Tu Tutu impatiently shook his hand off. "I know. Every time someone asked my mom, she would say, 'Tolerably well, he's just not very studious, but the teacher says he has a lot of potential.'"
Su Qing was silent for a moment. He raised his hand and smacked the top of his head. "You're also not allowed to keep imitating your mom."
Tu Tutu: "..."
Then he raised his head and rolled his eyes to look at Su Qing. He waved a hand and said, "There's no need for you to worry about that."
"Motherfaker... You're also not allowed to imitate me!"
Just then, a car came around the corner. Su Qing just glimpsed it out of the corner of his eye and subconsciously picked Tu Tutu up, dodging aside extremely fast. His vision was different from before. A single look, and he had seen that sitting in that car were Su Chengde and a young assistant from his company. The two of them were dressed very formally. It seemed that they had just finished work. The car stopped at the intersection up ahead.
Su Qing hid at the corner, turned carefully, and looked over.
The assistant probably lived here. Perhaps there had been a problem with his own means of transportation, so he had hitched a ride home with his boss. When he got out of the car, he thanked Su Chengde a little overcautiously.
Not all people dubbed "nouveau riche" had gold teeth and went around spitting all over the place, looking like rich landlords from the old society—he didn't know about other people, but Su Qing's father Su Chengde seemed very proper. There was in fact no ink in Su Chengde's belly; he had never done any studying. But a successful career had naturally given him a layer of gilding. His every move came with a kind of solidity that others didn't have...though half of his hair was already white, and he looked like an old man.
Su Qing thought, Why does my dad have so much more white hair than the last time I saw him? Then his vision blurred, and he felt an icy chill on his face. At some point, tears had begun to pour down his cheeks.
Su Chengde got out of the car and exchanged some small talk with the assistant. Then, like an affectionate elder, he patted the young man on the shoulder and returned to the car. Su Qing thought, his assistant's surname was Zhou. He was an outstanding student who had graduated from a famous school. He was young, and both his abilities and his learning were top notch. Before, when Su Chengde had brought up "look at that Xiao Zhou, he's hardly older than you, so on and so on," Su Qing had been annoyed. Father and son were always parting on bad terms because of this subject.
Right now, hiding at the corner, wearing the cheapest clothes he had ever worn in his life, with only a single hundred yuan bill and some change left in his pocket, his long-uncut hair covering half his face when he lowered his head...he thought that he was in no shape to be seen.
He suddenly picked up Tu Tutu and went in the opposite direction. He thought, if his dad didn't have a son like him...or if Assistant Zhou were his son, then the old man would have great success in this lifetime. This thought was like a wind sweeping through his heart, agitating everything that could be agitated. All the clear and hazy grievances of days on end instantly came surging up at once.
Tu Tutu looked at him quietly for a while. "Why are you crying? It's shameful."
Su Qing said, "Bullshit. I have an eye infection, the wind makes me tear up."
In that moment, Su Qing made a decision—he decided to leave B City, then come home when he had talent and means.
That very night, he used his remaining money to buy a train ticket to another city. Taking Tu Tutu, who could just scrape by without needing a ticket if he bent a little, he went to a strange place.
He had been confused, but when the little whelp lay sleeping on his shoulder, drooling and indistinctly saying "I want to eat another one...", the confusion dispersed.
Su Qing thought, first he had to find some work, raise this little whelp, think up some way to get him into school. He suddenly had so many things to do; where would he find the time to be confused?
He was a little tired. He got out a nutritional capsule and swallowed it. He leaned back in the hard seat and fell heavily asleep.
On the other end, Hu Bugui was in his office. Fang Xiu, who had been ordered to undertake a low-profile search for Su Qing, suddenly charged in looking grim. As soon as he opened the door, he asked, "Captain Hu, who knows about Su Qing?"
Hu Bugui could tell instantly from his tone that something was wrong. He frowned. "What's wrong?"
Fang Xiu lowered his voice and said, "I figured that he might go back home, so I took some people to stake out his house. We didn't see Su Qing, but we did see another group of people... Am I being oversensitive? Were they our people?"
Hu Bugui's expression became grave. "Did he return?"
Fang Xiu said, "I have people keeping an eye on his house. At present he hasn't been there yet."
Hu Bugui nodded, then said, "The people who know the whole story are limited to Professor Cheng and the people within the unit. I've also sent a report to General Xiong, and the higher authorities have been informed. Even the rescue workers sent from the treatment center that day have only a partial understanding. I've already strictly blocked access to the information. Reasonably speaking...there shouldn't be superfluous people in the know. Up to this point, matters concerning this mysterious 'Utopia' have been dealt with through me, and the higher authorities don't intend to change to someone else. I didn't send anyone else."
Fang Xiu asked, "Did Professor..."
"He knows the risks involved in this. He wouldn't speak out of turn." Hu Bugui paused, then added, "Anyway, I've sent people to keep an eye on him."
Fang Xiu looked at him in amazement. "Then it can only mean that we've had an internal..." He made a gesture and didn't continue.
There was no expression evident on Hu Bugui's face. He met Fang Xiu's eyes for a long moment, then quietly said, "Take precautions, but don't go suspecting things at random. The key task now is to find him. I said before to do as he wanted when you found him. That changes now—he must be made to understand the circumstances outside and brought back. We can't have another..."
Fang Xiu knew what he meant. "Yes, sir."
Then Fang Xiu turned to leave. When he reached the door and had a hand on the doorknob, he suddenly looked back. "Captain Hu, there's another situation, I don't know whether I ought to say..."
Hu Bugui sat at his desk, his eyes looking directly into Fang Xiu's. The look in his eyes was like the "jackal" of his nickname—cold, sharp, and unusually deep. In that instant, Fang Xiu knew that there was nothing he needed to say. He gave a salute, opened the door, and left.
Hu Bugui folded his hands together and propped his chin on them—there was another situation: that the "higher authorities" weren't clean. He remembered Xu Ruchong mentioning the blue seal base's blocker and felt that he had faintly touched an enormous web.
Chen Lin had mentioned that the blue seals' core concerned an energy source.
While half-sleeping, half-waking, Su Qing suddenly heard Hu Bugui's voice. Hu Bugui said, "Listen to me, don't go home anytime in the near future. There's a group from an unknown power keeping an eye on your house. Returning in haste will be dangerous."
Su Qing gave a start, all the sleepiness leaving his head. He instantly broke out in a cold sweat. He glanced over at the fellow passengers in his train compartment. It was the middle of the night. Most people were sleeping. Then he hesitantly reached up to fumble with his earring. He did indeed find a very covert little protuberance and pressed down. He quietly said, "You...say that again."
This was the first complete sentence he had said to Hu Bugui since waking up. Hu Bugui paused, then softened his voice a little. "Don't worry, we also have people there. Your family currently isn't in any danger. I think that you must be their only target. If you don't return, they'll naturally retreat over time."
"So my dad..."
"There will only be danger to your family if you return. If they find that your father has no relationship with you, they naturally won't take the risk of acting against him, you understand?"
Su Qing clenched his fist. Hu Bugui asked, "Where are you? I'll come to you."
Su Qing was silent.
After a long time, when Su Qing's answer didn't come, Hu Bugui quietly said, "Did you...leave the treatment center because of me?"
Su Qing thought that this Captain Hu must have misunderstood something, but he still didn't know what to say.
Hu Bugui said, "Come back. I'll stay away. You won't see me. Is that all right?"
Su Qing hesitated, then reached out to turn off the communicator's switch. Hu Bugui heard the faint noise vanish and knew that Su Qing wasn't planning to speak to him again. He sighed, closed his eyes, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and bent over. His posture looked huddled and a little pitiful.