act40side

You won't take any of my suggestions! I guess we're just going to let this restaurant fail then!

Good grief, with a boss like you, I've got to start making new career plans.

Okay, okay. If it's just another three thousand we need, I'll start making extra deliveries each day through the end of the month.

Have you no ambition? As a chef, don't you want your restaurant to do well? I'm not even sure why you opened it in the first place.

People need to eat, which means there has to be someone to cook for them. As long as we have customers who want to eat my food, this restaurant will do just fine.

More importantly, I promised I'd wait for a certain customer, and that one still haven't shown. I can't close the shop yet.

What customer? Who do you need to wait for?

It's just not time yet. A great stew demands patience. You have to add in the ingredients at just the right time.

There's no need to rush.

What's with this thing? I can't get any channels. I want to watch the news!

Hey. You're back.

Indeed.

What have you learned?

I brought some food for you. I found a new restaurant today. The kitchen stinks to high heaven, but the cooking is pretty solid.

Oh, right, there's one other thing. Today I found these snacks that my dad once sent me a long time ago.

Who gave you permission to leave you room as you please?

Wha?

Seriously? I've been living off takeout for three days straight. I just wanted to go out and grab a bite to eat—is that not allowed?

How many times have I told you? Your identity and status are extremely important; your current situation is dreadfully tenuous. Are you taking this seriously or not?

Lin Qingyan! Are you off your rocker? We already established the three rules. No one said I was confined to my room!

I had a good life back at Rhodes Island. Then you showed up and told me my father's death was suspicious, without giving any details.

I came all the way here to Baizao, the place where my dad used to live, and you still haven't told me anything! You've made me stay in this room, day after day, and now you have the gall to yell at me?

I... that is—

Forgive me. I should not have scolded you. The current situation is not as I had anticipated.

What 'situation'? Is there anything I can do to help?

I don't know. A lot of unexpected things happened in Baizao before we arrived.

If you would aid me, then simply do what you can to avoid danger, understood?

As for your father, I just happened to be handed that case a few years ago.

The case was originally being handled by my predecessor, someone I trusted deeply. Your father seemed to have been spending a lot of time pursuing a certain 'truth' in the last few years of his life.

His death was suspicious. Every clue we've found hints that there were larger forces at work there. How large? We don't know for certain, nor can we even hope to guess.

But your mere existence is the most important piece of evidence we have.

Blaze, I vow to you I will find the truth, and once I do, I will tell you everything.

However, until I do, I simply need you to trust me. I need you to cooperate with me.

By the way, what were you saying about your father just now?

I said I found these snacks that he used to send to me a long time ago.

And?

They don't taste the same as they used to. Maybe it's just because I'm remembering wrong.

The Yanese have a saying for this, right? 'The situation remains the same, yet the people have changed.'

No. That's not right. The situation has also changed.

Well then, a more apt saying would be, 'Times change, and with them, change all things.'

Too much time has passed. It will be very hard for us to find any clues left from back then.

But these are in fact one of the few things I've found in Baizao that relates to my father.

When I lived with my mother in Victoria, my dad would send them to me from time to time.

I figured that by the time I got my disease under control and figured out what I really believed in, my dad would be back in Victoria, waiting for me to come home. Naive.

Everyone longs for that sort of 'happy ending'.

And yet, by the time I found a place that could treat my Oripathy and finished some of the things I had to do with the bunny's crew... my dad... was gone.

Before you came and found me, I always thought my dad's death was an accident. I was sad, but there was nothing I could do about it.

But if you're telling me my father was murdered.... then that's an entirely different story.

I need to learn the truth. I owe that to my father... and myself.

In all truth, I know very little about what happened to your father. Many of the old archives have been lost, and very little information can be extracted from what remains.

Just from looking at the case files he left behind, we can see that your father worked as a ceremonial officer in the Ministry of Rites for over ten years but never got promoted. It seems he was not well-suited to serve in public office.

However, to stay in a position like that for over a decade... he must have been a good person.

Good people... good people also die.

She walks over to the window, closes her eyes, and rubs her temples.

The faraway city lights are shimmering in the twilight. The years of wandering are long over.

People today are moving from one stage of life to the next, as the city guides them and runs right behind them.

Many boundaries are blurred, many high walls become thoroughfares, many hurried footsteps pass over the paving stones. Not everyone is qualified to etch their name into the annals of history.