"Mr Manson, Mr Manson?"
The officer in charge of the questioning called him twice in a row, and the one taking care of the recording spoke sharply. "Mr Manson, would you please cooperate with us and put down the glass for a moment?"
With the sharpness of his tone, it was as if he was saying 'if you don't put that glass down, I'm going to swing the bottle at your head!' Of course, it only projected such an image; no one would talk to the young master of a conglomerate in such a tone outside of extenuating circumstances.
Even if there was a good chance that this young master wouldn't be the successor to the empire.
George Manson snapped back to attention. He jiggled the empty wine glass in his hand.
The officer stared at his fingers, frowning slightly. For some reason, the young master's hand that was holding onto the glass was trembling.
George Manson put the glass down and rubbed his fingers together. Finally, he uttered his first sentence since entering the room, "Stop looking already. Drinking too much would cause my fingers to go a little wonky."
Despite the alcohol bottles littered across the floor, he still didn't look drunk. His speech wasn't overly loud. Neither was he lacking in logic, nor inexplicably excited and dizzy. It was clear that this young master had probably been brought up bathed in wine. To him, this quantity was nothing.
"Are you sure that you're doing okay?" the police stared at his fingers, frowning, "If need be, we can get a doctor—"
"It's fine," George Manson cut in. "Hurry up and ask whatever it is you have to ask. I want to go to sleep after this is done."
"Okay then." The officer nodded. This wasn't their first time encountering people uncooperative with their investigation. Regardless, duty called, so they put up with it.
He glanced at the list of questions that Chief Kane had highlighted for them and picked a few simple ones to get the ball rolling, allowing George Manson to step into the rhythm of the questioning before moving on to the main event—the dive.
"Jason Charles' diving suit was later confirmed to have been worn by Mr Zhao Zemu," the officer said, "did any of you notice it before the dive?"
George Manson, "No. It wasn't just me, I think none of us did. We were preoccupied with putting on our own diving suits to hurry into the water and have a blast. We put on whatever we picked up. No one expected that they would wear the wrong ones."
"Is there any disagreement between Mr Jason Charles and Mr Zhao Zemu?"
George Manson said, "I don't know. But Jason Charles is a rather... unconventional lawyer. He rarely shows a pushy side, he's one of those who can get along with anyone. It wouldn't be easy for him to get into conflict with anyone. Besides, their paths don't cross often."
"Then what about between Mr Ke Jin and Mr Jason Charles?"
George Manson looked at the officers somewhat speechlessly. "Are you trying to use a normal person's thought process to explain the behavior of a... patient?"
"Right."
The officer mumbled to himself for a moment before finally tackling the elephant in the room. "After the incident, your reactions and mood started to turn quite erratic."
George Manson's gaze slid down, moving his fingers slightly. "Have I been erratic?"
"Yes. Although you've been cooperative in answering our questions, your emotions have been a bit..." the officer weighed his words, "you seem a bit lackluster. Why's that?"
At this, George Manson went silent for a long time.
Just when the officer thought that he was going to obstinately stay silent to the end, he wearily loosened his tongue. "It isn't much, really. It's just that I had been in a diving accident before. The sea snakes coming first for me today reminded me of that experience."
"What type of accident?" the officer prompted.
Imperceptibly, George Manson's teeth clenched and, just as quickly, unclenched.
What type of accident was it? It was already an incident of many years ago.
He didn't think that he had a bad memory, but when he thought back on it now, it was hard to pinpoint exactly how many years it had been.
He couldn't even remember the details of the accident. Only vague fragments, as if the memories were deliberately eluding him, not letting him catch hold of them. Or perhaps, somewhere in his subconscious, he preferred to forget that incident.
It should have been at a holiday resort on De Carma. He was still studying back then. Was it in middle school? In any case, he was still quite young.
In spite of his young age, he was already a veteran diver at that time. Owing to his conceit, he hated having someone tag along on his dives, believing that only novices needed that. So, when he went into the water, he ordered others to stay away from him, even getting his bodyguards' to block the instructor for him.
In the end, those bodyguards did leave him be, letting him dive alone.
At that time, he was even proud that his words carried enough authority for people to comply.
Now, in retrospect, he really was a complete idiot.
George Manson kept silent, then said to the officers after a while, "A simple mistake. I forgot to check my diving gear. The regulator was a little old and the O-ring was so deformed that something went wrong with the sealing."
He couldn't recall concrete details of that day. He only recalled that he had dived really deep before discovering that the bite of his regulator was leaking. Gas was pouring uncontrollably into his mouth and nasal passages.
The officer, "I'm sorry. Were you later saved by the instructor?"
George Manson shook his head, "No."
He couldn't get it under control, and he couldn't save himself. As he struggled in the sea, he then realized that he wasn't accompanied by a buddy or an instructor. He was at a depth that only veteran divers would enter, where normal people could never get to.
In other words, no amount of struggling would have helped...
The officer's finger on the recording device twitched. "Huh? Then..."
George Manson's finger stroked the rim of the wine glass. He slowly said, "A stranger saved me."
The man had fished him out of the deep abyss and even seemed to have adjusted his regulator for him. But at that time, he was completely stricken by terror. He clutched a death's grip on the other like he was his only lifeline, probably giving the man a first-hand taste of being on the brink of drowning.
"In the confusion, I didn't even get a good look at him. I only remember that the fingers, grabbing onto me, were fair..." George Manson looked transfixed in the memory. "Very fair. It should have been a young man. His fingers were long and slender, yet they were strong. And he was very calm."
He paused for a moment before repeating, almost dazedly. "Very, very calm."
Later, he tried looking into it. The diving gear in that resort bay was compartmentalized, and he would randomly take any of the four sets of gear from the VIP 6 locker when he went diving. Coincidentally, the person who saved him was also using gear from the VIP 6 locker. His regulator had been tampered with as well—likewise, a deformed O-ring causing the same sealing problem.
That was to say, the other man had probably run into the same problem underwater, and had difficulty breathing due to air leaking from the mouthpiece. Yet, the other was evidently much more composed than him. Not only was he able to deal with the unexpected problem, but he had also saved him, bringing them both back to shore.
Hearing this, the officer praised, "You met a good man."
George Manson didn't immediately reply. After a while, he nodded. "Yeah. A good man."
It was just that this good Samaritan was a little unique.
At that time, George Manson was only in his teens, thus had limited power to find out the identity of his savior.
But even many years later, when he finally was able to pour more resources to look into it, he was never able to find any usable information. He once suspected that either the trail had gone stale, or someone was intentionally keeping him in the dark.
Ultimately, his attitude and mood towards this changed with the passage of time, and he left it without conclusion.
"Was it just a normal accident, then?" the officer asked.
Quite the opposite, in fact. It wasn't any sort of coincidence at all. Half a year after that incident, he inadvertently discovered that the person who had tampered with his diving equipment in the first place was very likely to be one of his own brothers.
All the equipment in the VIP 6 locker had been tampered with. Taking any random set could have led to an accident.
And his savior had been implicated by him.
Learning this had plunged George Manson into the depths of decadence for some time. He was afraid of his own shadow and unable to trust anyone. He began to fool around with bad company like Glenn, doing all kinds of stupid things and saying all kinds of shit. He surrounded himself with debauchery and spent three hundred days a year drunk like his life was no longer his, willfully playing with fire and flirting with death.
Some people would stay away from diving after such an experience, but he didn't. Like greeting an inevitability, he grew all the more obsessed with the feeling of near-death from diving in the deep.
Everyone said that he was quite out of his mind during those years.
Before, he still had a few he could consider friends, such as Joe, Zhao Zemu, and a few other course mates from outside this circle.
But after that, his real friends slowly drifted to become superficial friends, leaving only mutually beneficial relationships and false pretenses.
When people talked about them now, they only remembered them as being fake friends. No longer did anyone remember the rashness and impulsiveness of youth when they were willing to risk it all for each other.
"Mr Manson?" The officer was a little put out that the subject of their questioning was prone to spacing out and difficult to call to attention.
"Sorry, I instinctively started thinking who my savior could have been." After saying this, George Manson answered the officer's earlier question. "You're asking if it's an ordinary accident? Yeah, of course. It was my own negligence."
The officer, "You still haven't found out who your savior is until now?"
George Manson nodded. "Yeah. Somehow, even though I don't have any specific impression of him, I'm always convinced that he's young. After all, having access to the equipment from the VIP 6 locker must mean that he is also from a rich family, or maybe a promising young man? But other than that, I've got nothing."
Meanwhile, the police were also asking Yan Suizhi related questions in a room on the third floor of a villa near the lamp pine forest.
"Your diving skills are good, but you sat on the beach the whole afternoon without going down to dive. You also said that you haven't been diving for many years, why is that?"
"No money," Yan Suizhi said with exceptional candour.
The officer, "..."
To further play into his persona, he waved the smart device on his finger and added with a helpless smile, "I'm a broke student. I used to have a safety net in the past, but it's gone now."
The officer recalled the information from his asset card and was deeply sympathetic.
This intern wasn't on their priority list for questioning, either. After all, he was brought in at the last minute and had minimal interaction with the people here; they were both strangers to each other. Even if the change of Jason Charle's diving suit turned out to be deliberate, it wouldn't have anything that could be linked with him.
When it boiled down to it, there wasn't any motive to be found.
As the officer flipped through Chief Kane's list of questions, Yan Suizhi's gaze flitted past the balcony to the beach.
By the main gates to the villa compound at the end of the beach, a few maintenance staff were crouched on a low hill, busy with trying to fix the detection gates. Yan Suizhi looked in their direction, slightly distracted.
In actuality, his thoughts had been adrift throughout the questioning, merely that the officers were unable to tell.
He replayed the scene of him passing through the detection gate in his mind, wiggling out several suspicious points like mud dredged up when pulling out a carrot, each linking to the next. Details that he had once heedlessly skipped past eventually wove into several threads of logic...
Each thread had its own possibility to hold ground, so he had to sieve through them.
After the officer finished going through the list, he looked up and smiled at him, saying, "Great. Mr Ruan Ye, we don't have any other questions. Thank you for your cooperation."
Yan Suizhi stood up and walked them out.
The police questioning of everyone present lasted about two hours, the shortest being Yan Suizhi and the longest being Ke Jin.
By the time Chief Kane was finally ready to leave with a photon computer full of the questioning records, the sky had already darkened. It was long past dinner hour.
"We'll need to consolidate everyone's records in order to determine the nature of this incident." Kane said, "Until the results of the profiling are out, I will have a small team guarding the villa compound. There may also be some access restrictions today and tomorrow, but I promise that I'll offer everyone an answer by tomorrow afternoon at the latest."
Several of the guests, whose time had been held up, sighed in relief upon hearing that it could be resolved by tomorrow.
As for Glenn, that idiot childhood friend of Joe's who thought his genes were worth gold, vowed, "From past experience, anything that the police can determine the nature of within a day or two can't be anything serious. This means that today's questioning held no surprises. Trust me, I'm hundred-percent sure that this incident was just an accident. The police must think so too."
And this pampered playboy's addiction to gambling reared its head after a couple days of restraint. He swaggered around the hall, asking people to place bets, but was politely turned down by the majority. His lips twisted, mumbling, "Damned boring tightwads. Now that Manson is down, there's not a single fun person to be around."
"Fucking hell, I can feel drunk just by sharing the same air as him." Joe winked at Gu Yan and Yan Suizhi, then asked the kitchen to serve the prepared meal. In order to accommodate the police efforts, he didn't let them serve strong liquor, only a few bottles of dessert wine to prevent people from getting overly intoxicated.
Everyone had been through a lot today, and each seemed slightly out of sorts. The meal was exceptionally quiet. Whenever anyone talked, their voices would be hushed.
As Joe put the last strip of chicken breast in his mouth, he jabbed Gu Yan next to him with his elbow.
"Hm?" Gu Yan made a low sound of inquiry, for him to quickly get out with whatever it was.
"Why do I feel like your intern keeps looking at you?" Joe furtively whispered, "What did you do? Or does he want to do something with you?"
Gu Yan choked on his steak, frowning and drinking some wine. "Do you know why you failed the psychology minor exam thrice in a row?"
Joe massaged his chest as if he had been knifed, grumbling, "But he did glance over many times. And you're never someone who meddles in someone else's affairs, yet you've already minded him a good many times today. It's all just really fishy to me."
Gu Yan didn't answer. His slender fingers held the glass stem, his expression mild as he swirled the pale amber wine at the bottom of the glass. His lowered gaze was cast upon the wine.
After another moment, he then finished the last sip. He replied in a low voice, "Is that so?"
He didn't immediately verify for himself what Joe said, but unhurriedly finished his dinner and wiped the corners of his mouth. Only then did he, under the cover of the scintillating lights of the dining room, gaze towards Yan Suizhi across the table, faintly averting his gaze before Yan Suizhi looked up.
Somehow, Joe felt that something about this atmosphere seemed off.
He couldn't quite put his finger to exactly how so. Either way, he felt inexplicably nervous sitting between them.
As dinner was late, the guests returned to their respective villas even later in the night. Flecks of lampfly embers were already dancing around the lamp pine forest.
Yan Suizhi hung his coat in the wardrobe in his room. Wearing a simple attire of shirt and long pants, leaned against the doorframe to the balcony with his arms folded. There were two white lights shining from a corner of the beach, and the maintenance staff were still wrangling with the detection gates.
From afar, those two starlike specks of light reflected a luminous sheen in his dark eyes.
He watched them for a while, then looked away and turned around, going to knock on Gu Yan's door opposite.
Hardly any time after, the door opened. Gu Yan pressed a hand against the doorframe, his gaze surveying him once. Without asking the reason for which he came, he nodded and said mildly, "Come in."
It was already some time since their return, yet his shirt wasn't even unbuttoned. He didn't seem to be resting, more as though he was turning over something in his mind.
Yan Suizhi immediately caught sight of the lamp pine forest outside his balcony. His brows raised. "As expected, the view is better on your side."
"Did you come here to borrow the balcony for the view?" Gu Yan, who had poured a glass of water, lifted his gaze towards him.
"Pretty much." Yan Suizhi paused before adding, "And to discuss something with you, in passing."
A smart device buzzed at the tail-end of his words. Gu Yan, holding two glasses of water, didn't have any hands free to get an earpiece, so he tapped his little finger against the glass to let the call through.
As the call successfully connected, a hologram automatically popped up and the other party's communication number was displayed on the screen. A voice rang out in the room—
"Gu? Are you busy? I noticed that you didn't reply to me all day. I just want to ask, was the program I gave you to interfere with the detection gate any help with the case?"
The other party spoke too fast for anyone to cover up. He was invigorated, and the words were pronounced with extraordinary clarity. It was impossible to mishear him even if anyone wanted to.
At this, while passing the glass to Yan Suizhi, Gu Yan's hand slipped. The glass leisurely cruised to the ground.
With a crash, cold water splashed all over the floor.