Chapter Twenty-One: Different Paths

Before it even reached them, the girl had already rushed forward with impatient eagerness. Kang Ge hurriedly hit the brakes and stopped, lest she fling herself straight against the hood.

After parking, Kang Ge said to Yan Xue, "Today I'm going to teach you a lesson: having a younger sister at home is no different from having a little dog."

With that, he lowered the window. The moment it opened, the girl lunged straight to the side of the car, thrusting her head inside as she bounced in place and shouted, "Brother! Brother! How long has it been since I last saw you? Do you even remember that you have a sister!"

Kang Ge turned his head away from the window and picked at his ear. "Lu Xiaodong, when are you going to rein in that big mouth of yours? What good does it do you to make your brother deaf? Have you been short on pocket money lately, so now you're trying to pull a scam?"

"I wouldn't be that out of my mind! But... Brother, send me some money, will you?" The girl rested her chin in her hand and grinned at him.

"What a disgrace to the family. And you still have the nerve to ask your wage-earning brother for money!" Though he said that, his hand was already busy transferring money on his phone without the slightest hesitation. "Next time you run out, go ask your parents!"

"As if they're not your parents too!" The girl pouted. "I overspent this month. If I ask for any more, Mom's going to skin me alive! She always says, 'When your brother was your age, he was like this and like that.' I'm living under your shadow too, you know. You ought to give me some proper emotional compensation. Isn't that perfectly reasonable?"

"Enough. Are we talking outside the car or inside it? If we're talking outside, move out of the way. If we're getting in, make haste and sit in the back."

Only then did the girl step aside from the doorway, and Kang Ge motioned for Yan Xue to get out with him.

Yan Xue had already been a little stunned by the scene from the passenger seat. She was an only child, with no brothers or sisters, and among her cousins, the only one close to her age was Song Chen. The two of them had been locked in fierce battles since childhood; there was hardly any affection to speak of.

So when she saw Kang Ge's younger sister clinging to him affectionately and acting spoiled, and Kang Ge responding so naturally, the feeling was truly strange. She could not quite say whether it was envy or something else.

Once they were out of the car, the three of them stood by the roadside. Kang Ge gave his younger sister a careless pat on the shoulder. "Stop staring stupidly. Let me introduce you. This is my colleague, my partner, Yan Xue. Yan Xue, this is my sister, Lu Xiaodong."

"Your colleague, and your partner? Then she's a police detective too!" Lu Xiaodong's eyes flew wide in surprise. "Amazing, sis!"

Yan Xue smiled and waved back. She thought to herself that although this girl had a different surname from Kang Ge and did not look much like him at all, the moment she opened her mouth one could tell at once: these were absolutely siblings by blood.

"Sis, how do you take care of your skin? What skincare products do you use? Which brand? Recommend some to me!" Lu Xiaodong instantly lost all interest in her own brother. She shoved him aside and squeezed up next to Yan Xue, linking her arm through hers as she eagerly questioned her. "I heard my brother say before that your line of work means you're always out running around, wind and sun impossible to avoid. Wouldn't your skin turn dark and rough very easily? How do you maintain it? Teach me!"

Yan Xue felt that her judgment of people was still fairly accurate. She could see that every gesture Lu Xiaodong made carried a kind of natural ease, something that could never be imitated by deliberate affectation. Naturally, then, she was not annoying.

"What's the point of asking? Didn't you say you'd overspent your living allowance?" Yan Xue could not help teasing her.

"It's fine! My brother just transferred me money, didn't he? Maybe not enough to buy anything else, but a jar of cream is still within reach!"

"Quit prying. She's just naturally beautiful," Kang Ge said, fiddling with his phone as he spoke. "I should investigate whether there is any way to cancel a transfer, or maybe in the future I should just switch to twenty-four-hour settlement!"

"Don't, don't! Brother! My dearest brother, could you bear to watch your lovely sister starve to death?" Lu Xiaodong hurriedly tugged at Kang Ge in a spoiled tone. Though she knew perfectly well he would not really take the money back, she still put on a very proper act of pleading. Then she turned to Yan Xue and said, "Sis, let's add each other later, okay? We can discuss skincare privately!"

"All right, enough of that. Let's talk business. We came to see you today because we want to ask about someone." After joking with his sister, Kang Ge put away his casual manner and asked seriously, "Do you know Lin Zhen?"

"Lin Zhen? I do know a Lin Zhen. What about her? Did she get into trouble?" Lu Xiaodong answered without thinking.

The answer was obvious enough, but Kang Ge still felt some doubt. "How do you know her?"

"Oh, actually, I do know her, but only in the sense that I know what she looks like and what her name is, and she knows mine. That's all there is to it—nothing more!" Lu Xiaodong spread her hands. "My dad has a business partner named Wu. I don't know if you remember, but it's Old Wu's daughter, three years older than me. We used to play together, though we weren't really that close.

There were two or three times, I think, when she organized gatherings and Lin Zhen was among the people she invited, so we added each other as friends. But later I didn't really hang out with the Old Wu family's daughter anymore, and I didn't attend many of her parties or dinners, so I didn't run into Lin Zhen much after that either. She was five or six years older than me. Besides, we moved in different circles. There was no need to force ourselves together."

"Cut it out. I'm older than you by even more, and didn't you used to trail after me like a little tail, impossible to shake off?" Kang Ge clearly was not very convinced by that answer.

"Come on, how can that be the same? Who are you? Aren't you my brother? I was giving you face because of family ties and blood relations. Otherwise, at your age, I wouldn't even bother with you!" Lu Xiaodong showed no mercy in mocking her own elder brother.

"Fine. I should just take back that transfer from earlier. You ungrateful little white-eyed wolf!"

"Don't! Don't! Brother, I must have been speaking nonsense just now because I didn't have enough money for food and got so hungry that my blood pressure dropped and my brain stopped working! You absolutely must not cancel that transfer!" Yan Xue had already heard Kang Ge mention before that his sister was a full ten years younger than him, so now, hearing her refer to Kang Ge as "at your age," she could not help almost laughing.

"Actually, age is secondary. The reason I never really got along with Lin Zhen is mainly because we're just not the same kind of people at all! You know what I'm like. I just like buying pretty things and dressing up, that's about it. I don't like trouble, so I don't dare play too wildly outside, or else Mom would skin me alive!"

After joking with Kang Ge, Lu Xiaodong went on seriously, "Lin Zhen is not from my world. She likes wild, exciting things—whatever is thrilling, she wants to try it. If it doesn't feel dangerous enough, it's boring to her.

And it's not just the things she does for fun; even the places she goes, she likes to pick the kind of smoky, disorderly places I dislike. As for the people she associates with, aside from that girl from the Wu family, there was basically no overlap with my circle. I ran into them a few times, and the people around her... how should I put it... all seemed a bit mixed-up, not really presentable."

"On what basis do you judge whether you can get along with someone, or whether they're smoky and disorderly? Then look at her!" Kang Ge pointed at Yan Xue. "You've never met her either. Do you find her agreeable, and do you think you'd get along?"

"Of course! First of all, Sister Yan Xue is a female police officer from your public security bureau, so she's definitely not a bad person. If I deal with her, my parents certainly won't nag me. Second, as a person, I have no resistance to beautiful people and beautiful things, so of course she looks pleasing to me!"

"When did you last see Lin Zhen?" Yan Xue asked Lu Xiaodong. She did not know why Kang Ge had suddenly brought that up, but hearing Lu Xiaodong's answer, her face was almost burning red, so she hurriedly changed the subject.

Lu Xiaodong thought about it very considerately, her tone a little hesitant, as though she truly had no deep recollection of it. "It should have been about a month ago... I ran into her at the mall, and happened to see her arm in arm with a man, all sweet and affectionate. It was obvious they were a couple, and I had never seen that man before. So I secretly took a photo and later sent it to some of our other friends for them to take a look."

More than a month ago, Lu Xiaodong had caught Lin Zhen in intimate company with a man. Earlier, Li Jialong had also said that after he and Lin Zhen broke up, she went on to date someone else. Taken together, the two accounts basically confirmed the matter.

Then Lin Zhen's complete silence about it became all the more suspicious.

"The photo? Do you still have it? Show us too." When Kang Ge heard that his sister had unexpectedly witnessed and even photographed Lin Zhen's new boyfriend after Li Jialong, he immediately gestured for her to bring up the picture.

Although Lu Xiaodong was not very old, she had watched her brother as a policeman for many years and understood his line of work fairly well. She knew that if he had come to her about this today, then something serious must have happened. So even though she still did not fully understand the situation, she cooperated readily and quickly searched for the photo on her phone.

"Here. Look, it's this man. Doesn't he give you the impression of being one of those tough, streetwise types at a glance? Anyway, I don't like that sort of person. Call it prejudice if you want, I don't care. I just feel that someone like that doesn't look like anything good!" Lu Xiaodong handed over her phone, pouting in obvious disgust.