A Broken Mirror Never Mends - Chapter 22

Seeing President Shi return from the opposite side so quickly, Assistant Chen turned around from the driver’s seat. “Brother Shi, what did President Zhou say?”

“He didn’t agree.” Before leaning back against the seat, Shi Tian raised his hand and rubbed his brow. “I’ll think of another way. Let’s go back to the hotel first.”

On the way back to the city, the car radio was looping midnight heartbreak songs. A female voice with a gravelly tone sang softly:

“Don’t lie if you can’t call it love / Just a little bit of like / Don’t linger if you can’t call it hate / Don’t pretend to sigh—”

Shi Tian’s left eyelid couldn’t help but twitch. “…Xiao Chen, change it to something else.”

“Oh, okay!”

Assistant Chen switched the channel, and a loud DJ dance track suddenly filled the cabin. Turning the volume down slightly, he asked Shi Tian in the passenger seat while driving, “Brother Shi, have you heard? President Zhou and President Ji got into a fight at Wangyue Restaurant tonight.”

Shi Tian’s hand holding his phone stiffened slightly. “Tonight?”

Assistant Chen nodded. “Yeah, I heard it from those security guards in the parking lot. They said the reason President Ji’s car fell into the lake was because President Zhou was deliberately getting back at him. They also said the two of them had another argument later, and President Ji’s nose started bleeding.”

Shi Tian: “…”

After all these years, Ji Yuanlin  was still the one getting beaten up.

“Brother Shi, did they have some past grudge? How could they start fighting in public?”

Seeing Assistant Chen’s face full of gossip, Shi Tian yawned and curled up tiredly against the back of the seat. “Who knows? Maybe it’s for that little model again.”

Resting his head on his hands, he closed his eyes and sighed. “Xiao Chen, let me tell you, men—as a species—will do anything for the person they love.”

At midnight, the Audi cut through the night and slowly drove into the Marriott Hotel parking lot.

Shi Tian had already scouted a rental apartment in the city over the past few days, planning to move in once the lawsuit started. For now, he was still staying at the hotel.

The Marriott security guards were already familiar with him. Seeing the Audi’s license plate, they opened the barrier for them before Assistant Chen even had to swipe his card.

Having not slept well lately, Shi Tian was so sleepy his eyelids were fighting to stay open. Telling Assistant Chen to drive home and rest first, he turned around with bleary eyes and entered the hotel lobby through the side door.

For some reason, the lobby was empty tonight, and even the receptionist on duty was nowhere to be seen. He took a shortcut, walking directly toward a secluded freight elevator near the back door.

While waiting for the elevator, his ears perked up as he heard an unusual noise coming from behind a stone pillar.

Slap—

A sharp slapping sound rang out behind the pillar, sounding particularly abrupt in the empty lobby. Shi Tian turned his head, catching a glimpse of two figures standing there.

One of them looked quite young, twenty at most. He was wearing a loose, pure white bathrobe, kneeling barefoot on the cold marble floor. He was clutching his face tightly, his upper body convulsing and trembling from the pain.

Standing before him was a middle-aged man in a traditional Tang suit. The man’s face was hidden in the shadows cast by the pillar, making it impossible to see his features, but Shi Tian could still judge his age by the layers of fine wrinkles on his hands.

The middle-aged man’s voice was hoarse, like the buzzing of a broken bellows. “Those little schemes of yours might work on outsiders, but they won’t work on me. Understood?”

Reaching out to pull up the half of the bathrobe that had slipped from his shoulder, the boy looked up hurriedly. He grabbed the middle-aged man’s hand—the one that had just slapped him—and tried to kiss it with trembling lips, only to be heartlessly shaken off.

The boy’s eyes reddened, his voice carrying a hint of a plea. “Uncle Bai, give me a little more time…”

“I’ll give you two more months,” the middle-aged man said indifferently. “Or else, you deal with the consequences.”

With that, the middle-aged man waved his hand. Two hotel staff members waiting at the main entrance immediately stepped forward, hoisted the kneeling boy up, and led him toward the guest elevators at the other end of the corridor.

Shi Tian held his breath and looked closely. He realized that although the two were wearing hotel uniforms, they didn’t quite feel like waiters. To him, they looked more like security personnel deliberately dressed up for a special occasion.

Flanked by the two men, the boy bit his lip and shook his head desperately, his whole body shaking uncontrollably. “Uncle, I don’t want to… I don’t want to anymore—”

The elevator doors slowly opened, and the boy’s cry for help quickly disappeared inside.

Soon, the freight elevator arrived. Before stepping in, Shi Tian stood there for a moment with a frown. He took his phone out of his pocket and typed two words into the search bar.

There was no signal inside the elevator car. It wasn’t until the elevator reached his floor and the doors opened that the search results popped up.

Staring at the boy’s bright smile on the screen, Shi Tian shook his groggy head and suddenly felt wide awake.

The boy he had just met downstairs was none other than his husband’s affair partner—Cheng Xi.

The next morning, Shi Tian got up before seven o’clock.

He had an appointment with a fund manager at nine in the revolving restaurant on the top floor to discuss the post-lawsuit distribution of the couple’s financial products.

He did thirty minutes of cardio at the gym and then took a hot shower in his room. By the time he met the fund manager, the fatigue from the previous night was gone, and he had fully regained his usual composed manner.

He shook hands with the fund manager with a smile and exchanged pleasantries for a while. The two of them entered the elevator and pressed the button for the top floor.

The elevator stopped at the sixteenth floor, and a group of three people walked in. The man in the lead reached out to press the button, saw that the top floor was already selected, and turned to nod politely to Shi Tian and his companion.

Even with a mask on, Shi Tian recognized one of them by his hairstyle and the bruising on the side of his face.

He hadn’t expected to run into Cheng Xi in an elevator again.

Today, Cheng Xi was wearing an oversized high-collared white shirt with his hands tucked into the sleeves; it didn’t look like his own clothes. He kept his head down, following behind two well-dressed businessmen. His mental state seemed poor, and he visibly swayed as he walked.

Under the dim overhead lights, Shi Tian noticed a greenish-purple bruise on the back of Cheng Xi’s neck. Although it was deliberately hidden by his clothes, a careful look revealed traces of endured pain all over him.

The fund manager standing beside him clearly noticed something was wrong too; he lightly touched Shi Tian’s back and let out a soft cough.

The elevator continued upward, and the cabin was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

At that moment, Shi Tian suddenly realized that Cheng Xi seemed to have recognized him.

Staring at their reflections on the elevator doors, Cheng Xi’s expression shifted from shock to panic, and finally to a kind of hollow despair.

Shi Tian didn’t understand why Cheng Xi was looking at him like that, but he didn’t want to dwell on it.

The boy was covered in bruises and his body was swaying, looking like he might faint at any moment. Yet, he continued to hold himself up in front of the other two men, not daring to show any sign of weakness.

Anyone could see that something fishy was going on here.

But Shi Tian was no saint.

Helping others should depend on the situation; he wasn’t stupid. If it weren’t for this seemingly harmless boy, he wouldn’t be in his current predicament.

Seeing Shi Tian indifferently look away, Cheng Xi gripped the elevator handrail behind him so hard his knuckles turned white.

Just before the elevator reached the top floor and the doors opened, his throat tightened. He raised his hand and pointed at Shi Tian, saying in a hoarse, trembling voice, “…I, I know this Mr. Shi. He’s my friend.”

The two men with him looked at each other and then turned to look at Shi Tian.

Shi Tian: “…?”

Fifteen minutes later, in a hotel room.

Looking down at the slender figure curled up on the carpet, drenched in cold sweat, Shi Tian said calmly to Assistant Chen, who had just entered, “Call 110 (Police).”

After a pause, he added, “120 (Ambulance) works too.”

Hearing Shi Tian finally speak, Cheng Xi bit his lower lip and crawled a short distance with difficulty, grabbing the leg of Shi Tian’s suit trousers. “…Mr. Shi, I beg you, don’t call the police. I don’t need to go to the hospital.”

Looking at the boy prostrate before him, nearly exhausted, Shi Tian felt a sharp throbbing in his temples.

He turned to Assistant Chen. “Is he on drugs or something?”

Before Assistant Chen could speak, Cheng Xi looked up with bloodshot eyes and forced out a few words: “…I… I haven’t touched those things.”

Assistant Chen stepped forward to observe and then whispered back, “Brother Shi, it doesn’t look like drugs. He’s injured, and he’s just too weak after that…”

He thought about it and decided to swallow the words “having sex.”

As he spoke, Assistant Chen tried to read the expression on Shi Tian’s face, only to find it extremely complicated.

Then again, just now, when he received the call from President Shi saying he was being pestered by President Ji’s little lover and to come over immediately, he thought he was hearing a ghost story in broad daylight.

After sitting quietly in front of the sofa for a while, staring at the weak figure on the floor, Shi Tian finally couldn’t take it anymore.

“Move him to the bed,” Shi Tian stood up and spoke expressionlessly. “Give him some water so he doesn’t die.”

After drinking some water and lying in the soft bedding, Cheng Xi seemed to finally feel better. Before long, he fell into a heavy sleep against the pillow. Judging by the dark circles under his eyes, he probably hadn’t slept at all last night.

Leaving Assistant Chen to watch over him, Shi Tian prepared to find the hotel manager to resolve the matter. Just as he reached the door, he suddenly heard the person on the bed call out in a weak voice: “…A-Lin.”

Shi Tian’s footsteps came to an abrupt halt.

“A-Lin…”

The boy’s handsome face was covered in tears, his body curled into a ball under the quilt, trembling helplessly. “I’ll be good from now on, I’ll be obedient… please don’t leave me, okay?”

Reaching out a hand in his sleep, Cheng Xi seemed to be desperately searching for something by the bedside, his chest heaving violently, his whole body shaking uncontrollably. “You promised me… take me away with you!”

“A-Lin, so many people… it hurts so much, I’m so scared—”

Gripping the doorknob, Shi Tian looked up at the ceiling, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

As the crying on the bed subsided, Assistant Chen heard Shi Tian call him from behind. “Xiao Chen.”

“Brother Shi?”

Shi Tian asked in a very serious tone, “Do you think I look like a sucker?”

Assistant Chen was stunned. “…What’s wrong, Brother Shi?”

“Nothing.” He saw Shi Tian smile, his eyes reflecting the moonlight outside the window. “Sometimes I feel like I’m a total, absolute sucker.”

Whether it was an illusion or not, before he pushed the door open to leave, he seemed to see a hint of redness in the corners of Shi Tian’s eyes through the reflection in the glass.

Ji Yuanlin never expected that when he picked up a call from Cheng Xi, he would hear Shi Tian’s voice on the other end.

In a tone as casual as ever, Shi Tian told him what had happened, saying that Cheng Xi was currently lying in the hotel’s medical room and that he should come to pick him up.

“I didn’t intend to mind other people’s business, but since he chose to ask me for help, I’d be responsible if anything went wrong.”

“You are the emergency contact on his phone,” Shi Tian said frankly. “The doctor was going to call you, but I said I had your number, so I called you directly.”

The noise outside the window clashed with the calm male voice on the phone, making everything feel even more out of place. After a long silence at his desk, Ji Yuanlin finally spoke hoarsely, “Tian-Tian, I…”

Hearing Ji Yuanlin use his childhood nickname, Shi Tian didn’t respond.

Did he hate Ji Yuanlin?

Of course, he did. He hated him for destroying all the hard work he had put in for years, and he hated him for cheating behind his back and telling so many lies.

But besides hate, what else was there?

Precisely because it wasn’t just hate, he had stood motionless by the bed, listening to the boy call out “A-Lin” over three hundred times in his sleep, right in front of him.

This nickname that once belonged exclusively to them didn’t seem any different coming from someone else’s mouth now.

It was more lingering, more tender, and even more touching.

Holding the phone, he said to his husband in a cheerful tone, “I’ve made up my mind.”

“Ji Yuanlin, let’s get a divorce.”

After hanging up on Ji Yuanlin, Shi Tian picked up his suit jacket and stood up from the chair in front of the medical room. “Let’s go, Xiao Chen.”

Having listened to the entire conversation between President Shi and President Ji, Assistant Chen was truly worried about his boss’s current state. “President Shi, are you okay?”

Shi Tian glanced at him, took the car keys out of his pocket, and threw them to him. “What could be wrong with me?”

As a lifelong single person, emotional matters were indeed a blind spot for Assistant Chen, but he felt that President Shi wasn’t as nonchalant as he appeared on the surface.

Taking the car keys, Assistant Chen chose to keep his mouth shut and didn’t dare ask any more questions.

With such a sudden turn of events, the meeting with the fund manager had to be pushed to the next day. Standing outside the elevator, Shi Tian thought for a moment and waved the meal vouchers for the top-floor restaurant at Assistant Chen. “Let’s go. Let’s have a good meal today to celebrate me becoming single again.”

The two entered the elevator. Before the doors closed, Shi Tian heard his phone ring in his pocket.

He stepped back out of the elevator and found that his lawyer was calling.

As soon as he picked up, he heard his lawyer ask, “Mr. Shi, I’ve received a reply from an asset management company inquiring about the guarantor agreement with you. Are you free to come over this afternoon?”

Shi Tian looked surprised. “News already?”

Since last week, he had contacted several private institutions and individuals he had previously cooperated with for financing, asking if they could act as a debt guarantor.

He hadn’t had much hope, so he didn’t expect to get feedback in less than a week.

Looking around, he lowered his voice and asked, “…Which company is it? Do I know them?”

“You probably don’t. It’s a very low-profile private asset management institution,” the lawyer said. “The Qi Family Trust.”

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