Reborn: The Return of the Villainous Mr. Liu-Chapter 1263: Sense and coherence

"Miss. Huang. Miss. Huang!"

"Yes!" Chunhua jolted upright.

"You looked like you weren’t paying attention in class," the professor frowned. "Where are you lost?"

She stiffened, but quickly bowed. "I am sorry, Professor! It won’t happen again..."

After the class ended, her classmate and friend hopped on her back. "What’s the matter with you, Chunhua? It’s the first time I have seen you dozing off in the class. The sincere and studious student wasn’t paying attention in class~"

She coughed. "That’s not it..."

Suddenly, she bumped into a group and a girl clicked her tongue. "Are you blind?"

"I am sorry."

"Heh. I know it’s all an act anyway. You think you can act arrogant because you hang around with Liu Hai, don’t you? You think you could hide your relationship?"

"..I wasn’t hiding-"

"But the days of your arrogance are numbered. Because your boyfriend is going to jail," she sneered.

She stood blank as if the whole world just crashed upon her shoulders.

The next moment Chunhua ran. She ran as if her life depended on it.

’The police are here to investigate Liu Jinhai’s accident. And do you know who is their prime suspect?’

She reached the professors’ office in a rush, chest heaving back and forth with breathlessness. Taking a peek inside, Guiren was already facing the officers as the latter seemed to grill him with some hard questions. She couldn’t hear what transpired, but tension in the atmosphere certainly was evident.

"Miss. Huang," one of the professors called her out, and her back immediately straightened. "What are you doing here?"

"I-I..."

She couldn’t lie. She thought it would be easier to cook an imaginary excuse, but it wasn’t. Lying wasn’t her best forte.

"I was just..."

"It’s fine. Good thing that she came here herself," the lead investigator said, "We were about to summon you anyway."

Summon me?

Hesitant and uncertain, she stepped in a further private office where the questioning was being held. Guiren ever-so-faintly glanced at her side and retracted his gaze the next moment.

"Please sit," the officer pointed to the chair beside Guiren.

"What is happening here...?"

He smiled. "Don’t stress, Miss. Huang. We don’t bite. We are just here to ask some friendly questions."

Chunhua highly doubted that as she took her seat. "What kind of questions?"

The lead officer bore his gaze at her. "I suppose you must have heard of the Liu family’s eldest son’s death."

"...Yes."

"Your family was also at the funeral, weren’t you? May I ask what’s your relationship with the Liu family?"

She glanced at Guiren once, who continued to harbor an impassive countenance. Barely any emotion flickered across his eyes. Her heart raced for no particular reason.

"...There were marriage talks between our families before. For Liu Jinhai and me. We met once. My father and his father have some business relationship too."

"I see. I assume the marriage talks didn’t go so well."

"We had different expectations from our partner."

His brow slightly arched. "Apologies if this may sound rude, but expectations or love?"

"So-Sorry?"

"It’s very clear that his younger brother, Liu Hai, used to pursue you, correct? He would often come to the college premises to meet you. Many of your fellow classmates have seen him."

"That..."

"Are you disagreeing with that?"

She slightly pursed her lips. "No."

"Thank you. This makes it certain that he was interested in you. Were you interested in him?"

"No..."

He smiled again. "I guess I should rephrase my question. Are you interested in him now?"

Her heartbeats pounded as if they were on fire. Since Hai and Chunhua got together, they had been trying to keep their relationship under wraps, solely to prevent her parents getting a whiff about it.

"...Yes."

"Is it still just interest or are you two together?"

Her hands clasped under the desk. "Yes, we are together."

He blinked. "Though I heard some rumors about you two, I didn’t expect you to outrightly come forth with it. Miss. Huang, since this has established beyond a reasonable doubt that Liu Hai was interested in you, you would assume that the marriage talks between you and Liu Jinhai would have upset him a lot, don’t you think?"

An inkling of a bad foreboding stirred somewhere in her heart. "...We weren’t together then."

"But he still chased after you, didn’t he? He was always clear about his interest in you."

"I am sorry but where are you going with this?"

The officer stared at her for a long, hard moment. Then said, "Miss. Huang, we are just considering all the possibilities behind Liu Jinhai’s death..including murder."

She froze, as if her head was suddenly frowned into a pool of ice-cold water. "Murder...?"

Then it came to her.

"Are you...suspecting Liu Hai?"

A beat of silence hung.

"Like I said, we are considering all the possibilities and angles. All the wealth and business would be easily inherited by Liu Hai now. In addition to it, the threat of his brother’s relationship with you might have made his heart quite sour against him."

’Why should I waste time talking about unimportant people who don’t matter?’

She didn’t know why those words echoed in her mind at this moment like an annoying siren.

"...Hai has lost his brother," she trembled, "How could you think he would mu-murder him in cold blood?"

"Inheritance and love are not good enough motivations for you, Miss. Huang?"

"Hai wouldn’t kill someone."

"Are you aware that he has been mingling with underworld people? He has been looking to gain his influence in that space? Miss. Huang must be aware what kind of people operate in the underworld, don’t you?"

She clenched a fistful of her dress. "Just because he is associated with certain people doesn’t link him to anything, certainly not murder."

"Indeed. So let me ask you this," he leaned forward, palms crossed. "I understand you had witnessed the accident when it happened. Did you see Liu Hai present at the scene that evening?"

It came to her with no ease. The flash of a certain memory. Hai seated on a bench near the crepe shop, arms folded to his chest, eyes locked onto the street ahead, watching the flow of cars passing by with an expression she had never seen before and a strange glint in his eyes she didn’t recognize.

She wasn’t sure how thoughts formed in someone’s mind. Science actively explored how the brain functioned to bring two or more thoughts together and fit a coherent sequence that made sense.

Sense. Yes, now it made sense.

The very first time when she saw Hai in front of that crepe shop with a semi-circle of three tough looking men surrounding him and talking to him. Hai waving his arm towards the end of the street as if explaining something to them.

Explaining? Or was it giving instructions?

The same end of the street from where the truck had come wobbling down the road that evening and crashed upon Liu Jinhai’s car.

Liu Hai was there, watching everything in silence. Then she turned, and he wasn’t there anymore.

"Miss. Huang. Did you see Liu Hai present at or near the scene of the accident anywhere?"

The question the officer repeated for the second time stirred Chunhua out of those coherent thoughts that now made sense to her. A sense that chilled her down to her very bones. She wasn’t quite certain about what she was thinking right now, but she answered,

"No. No, I didn’t. I didn’t see Hai anywhere near the accident that evening."