My childhood friend is in her mature, sophisticated form again today. - Chapter 19

“Come in.”

She pushed open the door. Cheng Ran sat at her workbench, her hair more disheveled than yesterday, and the dark circles under her eyes more pronounced. But her eyes were clear—the kind of clear-headedness that comes from staying up all night, a clarity that makes one’s consciousness unusually sharp.

“You didn’t sleep all night,” Lin Jiqiu said.

“She’s asleep.”

“How long did you sleep?”

Cheng Ran did not answer.

Lin Jiqiu walked over and stood next to him, looking at the screen. Dozens of open windows were spread out on the desktop—spreadsheets, documents, email screenshots, and some architecture diagrams that she didn’t quite understand.

“What did you find?”

Cheng Ran rubbed his eyes, his voice a little hoarse. “The organizational structure of the Mirror Society.”

Lin Jiqiu’s body tensed up slightly.

“They’re not like a traditional company, they’re more like a… network.” Cheng Ran pulled up a diagram, which was densely marked with nodes and connections. “Each node is an independent institution—a training institution, a technology company, a consulting firm, a foundation. On the surface, they have no connection, different registered locations, different legal representatives, and different business scopes. But funds, personnel, and information flow between these nodes.”

“What about the core?”

“The core is here.” Cheng Ran zoomed in on a node in the image. “This node has no name, only a code name—’Mirror’.”

Lin Jiqiu stared at the circle marked in red on the screen. “A mirror?”

“Yes. All the funds end up here. All the important decisions seem to originate from here as well.” Cheng Ran pulled out several email screenshots. “Look at the wording of these emails—’Mirror requirements,’ ‘Execute according to mirror standards,’ ‘Mirror has been approved.’ The sender and recipient are different accounts, but the word ‘Mirror’ appears repeatedly.”

“Can you find the exact location of the ‘mirror’?”

“No. The email’s IP address went through multiple redirects, and the final destination was overseas. I tried to trace it, but it stopped at the third level.”

“The same method used by stargazers?”

“Same.”

Lin Jiqiu was silent for a few seconds. “So the Mirror Society and the Stargazers might be two branches under the same ‘mirror’?”

“Uncertain. But very likely.”

She leaned against the edge of the table, arms crossed. “What about Rusty Bones?”

“Rustbones doesn’t appear in these data right now.” Cheng Ran pulled up another document. “But Mingyuan Consulting’s client list includes a security company. The company’s registration information is fake, but its services include ‘personnel protection’ and ‘risk assessment’—which sounds like things Rustbones would do.”

“There is no direct evidence.”

“No.”

Lin Jiqiu straightened up and walked to the window. It was just dawn; the flower shop across the street hadn’t opened yet, and the café staff were moving tables and chairs. Everything seemed normal. But beneath the surface, these nodes were flowing, operating, weaving a web she hadn’t yet seen in its entirety.

“What about Fang Xu?”

“I’ve investigated Fang Xu’s funding chain a bit deeper.” Cheng Ran pulled up a bank statement. “The money in his wife’s account ultimately came from a sub-account of Mirror Technology. This sub-account also transferred money to three other personal accounts—all of which were related to Xingyuan Technology.”

“So, the core team of Xingyuan Technology might all be taking money from Jinghui?”

“It’s not a possibility. It’s a certainty.”

Lin Jiqiu turned around. “It’s time to close the net with Mr. Zhou.”

“How do you plan to tell him?”

“To be honest,” Lin Jiqiu said, “his technical director was bribed by a foreign organization. His competitor was the organization’s front man. He didn’t have many options—to call the police or to handle it himself.”

“If we call the police, Fang Xu will go to jail. But the police may not be able to find out that much about the relationship between Xingyuan Technology and Jinghui.”

“So Mr. Zhou needs to decide what he wants. Does he want Fang Xu to pay the price, or does he want the whole chain to be exposed?”

Cheng Ran remained silent.

Lin Jiqiu walked to the door and stopped.

“Go and get some sleep. I’ll go see Mr. Zhou this afternoon.”

“good.”

Lin Jiqiu walked out and closed the door.

She stood in the corridor, raising her left hand to look at the “yin” on her wristband. The sphere remained quietly in its groove, without vibrating. But after a few seconds, it vibrated slightly.

Cheng Ran is still awake.

She smiled slightly and went downstairs.

At 2 p.m., Lin Jiqiu arranged to meet Mr. Zhou at their usual spot.

She arrived early, chose a corner seat, and ordered an Americano. When Mr. Zhou arrived, he wasn’t carrying a briefcase, and his complexion was worse than last time.

“Any results?” He sat down without ordering coffee.

“Yes.” Lin Jiqiu pushed the phone over, displaying a summary of evidence compiled by Cheng Ran. “Fang Xu—your technical director—received three transfers from overseas through his wife’s account over the past six months. The total amount was 1.2 million. The source of the transfers was a company called ‘Mirror Technology.’ This company is also funding Xingyuan Technology.”

Mr. Zhou’s fingers tightened slightly on the table.

“Fang Xu leaked your core design documents to Xingyuan. Xingyuan’s technical team then made secondary developments based on yours and released the product ahead of time.” Lin Jiqiu’s tone was calm. “These email screenshots you are seeing are communication records between Fang Xu and a mid-level manager at Xingyuan.”

Mr. Zhou didn’t speak. He looked at the screenshots on his phone screen, flipping through them one by one.

“What do you plan to do?” Lin Jiqiu asked.

Mr. Zhou remained silent for a long time. “Is this evidence sufficient for the police to file a case?”

“It’s enough to prove Fang Xu’s innocence. But whether it’s enough to track down Xingyuan Technology and Jingmian Technology is hard to say. Their financial chains are encrypted with multiple layers, and the police may not be able to investigate that deeply.”

What’s your suggestion?

Lin Jiqiu picked up his coffee and took a sip. “It depends on what you want. If you want Fang Xu to pay the price, calling the police is enough. If you want to trace it back to the source—to the organization that bought Fang Xu’s money and funded Xingyuan—that will take more time.”

“how long?”

“uncertain.”

Mr. Zhou lowered his head, his hands crossed on the table, his knuckles turning white.

“Fang Xu started the business with me.”

“I know.”

“When the company was just starting out, the two of us squeezed into a rented room to write code. Back then…”

He didn’t continue.

Lin Jiqiu did not urge him.

After a while, Mr. Zhou looked up. “Call the police.”

“Sure?”

“Confirmed.” His voice was a little hoarse. “Regardless of who the source is, what Fang Xu did is a fact. He violated the confidentiality agreement and betrayed the company. There’s no room for hesitation about that.”

Lin Jiqiu nodded. “Then I’ll organize all the evidence and send it to you. You can hand it over to the police.”

“cost–“

“We’ll talk after we finish.”

Mr. Zhou looked at her, his lips moved as if he wanted to say something, but in the end he just nodded, stood up, turned and left.

Lin Jiqiu watched his retreating figure. He walked very fast, as if he were fleeing.

She finished her coffee and sent Cheng Ran a message.

Mr. Zhou chose to report the incident to the police. The evidence was compiled and sent to him.

The reply came quickly.

【good.】

She posted another message.

What will happen to Fang Xu?

Cheng Ran replied after a few seconds. [Minimum three years. If the amount is deemed exceptionally large, it could be five years or more.]

Lin Jiqiu stared at the line of text on the screen and remained silent for a long time.

One million two hundred thousand. Five years of freedom.

It’s not worth it.

She put away her phone and walked out of the coffee shop.

When I returned to the office, Ayou was wiping the counter.

“Boss, Brother Cheng just came downstairs.”

“He’s come down?”

“Yeah. He ate a bowl of noodles and then went upstairs again.” Ah You paused. “He looked so tired.”

“He stayed up all night.”

“I know. I told him to go to sleep, and he said, ‘Soon.’”

Lin Jiqiu didn’t say anything and went upstairs.

The studio door was open. Cheng Ran leaned back in his chair, his eyes closed. The computer screen was off. He was asleep—not a peaceful sleep, but a brief rest after being extremely tired, his brow still slightly furrowed.

Lin Jiqiu went in, took a coat from the clothes rack, and gently covered him with it.

Cheng Ran’s eyelids twitched, but he didn’t wake up.

She stood at the door for a few seconds, then turned and went out, gently closing the door behind her.

Go downstairs.

“He’s asleep,” Lin Jiqiu said to Ayou.

“You let him sleep?”

He collapsed from exhaustion.

Ah You chuckled. “So you’re saying you let him sleep there.”

Lin Jiqiu did not refute.

As night fell, the lights in the office went out one by one.

A-Zuo went upstairs. A-You turned off the kitchen light. A-Hua curled up on the sofa, A-Mo squatted on the windowsill, and A-Ju appeared out of nowhere and lay down next to A-Hua.

Lin Jiqiu sat on the sofa, scrolling through photos on her phone. Photos of contracts, cardboard boxes, screenshots of the internal system backend. The Mirror Association’s logo—a two-way mirror pattern, with an exquisite border and symmetrical lines.

A person is looking at themselves in the mirror, and the person in the mirror is also looking at them.

Who is real? Who is the mirror image?

She didn’t know.

The “yin” mark on my wrist vibrated.

Lin Jiqiu raised his wrist and looked at the dark gray sphere. It was still vibrating—not a rapid vibration, but a gentle, continuous one, as if it were speaking.

“Cheng Ran?”

There was no answer. He was asleep.

The sphere continues to vibrate.

Lin Jiqiu took it off his wristband and held it in his hand. He felt its temperature—slightly warmer than body temperature.

She closed her eyes.

A thought suddenly flashed through her mind. It wasn’t something she was thinking herself, it was… something else. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. It was as if someone had gently tapped the edge of her consciousness.

She opened her eyes and looked at the round ball in her palm.

“It’s you?”

The sphere vibrated.

Lin Jiqiu stared at it for several seconds.

“Can you… send me something?”

The sphere vibrated.

“It’s not about passing something. It’s… a feeling?”

The sphere vibrated again.

Lin Jiqiu took a deep breath.

Does Cheng Ran know?

The sphere did not vibrate.

She waited a few seconds. Still nothing.

“He doesn’t know,” she said softly.

The ball lay quietly in her palm, motionless.

Lin Jiqiu fastened it back onto the wristband and stood up.

She walked to the top of the stairs to the second floor and looked at the door of Cheng Ran’s studio. It was closed, and no light came through the crack in the door.

He is sleeping.

She stood there for a few seconds, then turned and went upstairs to her room.

Lying in bed, she stared at the ceiling.

The ball on my wrist stopped vibrating.

But she knew it was listening.