Chapter 75 – Decision
TL: Milaryn
Edit: IlkonEbi
“Hey, little fellow. Got any money?”
Sitting next to Jiaming, the red-haired man friendly patted Jiaming on the shoulder, while the yellow-haired man kicked the bicycle lightly, “Nice bike you have there…”
Jiaming briefly looked at them, but only smiled indifferently and did not respond. Seeing that he had remained silent, the green-haired man rudely pushed him, “Hey, we’re talking to you!”
“I’m thinking about a problem right now.”
“You…” The green-haired man looked like the explosive type. When he heard Jiaming respond nonsensically, he was about to reach over and shove him again, but before he could, Jiaming had already calmly taken a hold of his wrists. Shortly after, the man’s face distorted into an extremely pained expression as his body twisted in response, “You… Ah, argh…”
“What are you doing!” Seeing his companion in such a state, the red-haired man on the other side shouted, but he did not even have time to react before his arm was gripped tightly as well. In pain, he could no longer sit on the railing — his body fell to the ground, while his arm was still in Jiaming’s grasp. The yellow-haired man by the bicycle knew the situation had taken a turn for the worse. Looking at Jiaming’s indifferent smile, he did not know whether to retreat or to help them, when Jiaming suddenly spoke up, “If I move my hands again, both their hands would be broken… Do you all have a family?”
“Y-y-y-yes… yes!” The two of them trembled in pain, clenching their teeth.
“That is a concern. Since there are people worried about you, why would you put yourself in danger? Right?”
“Y-y-y-yes… we agree! We… we’re sorry…” The two of them nodded frantically in agreement. After all, even fools could see the difference in strength between them.
“But… wouldn’t that just allow people to bully the weak? Bullying weak people doesn’t seem to have any glory at all. What do you think?”
“We… we…” The two originally had been listening but hearing him suddenly address them, they momentarily did not know how to answer. They could only say, “We don’t dare to…”
Studying the two of them, Jiaming sighed before letting go of them, “Just leave.” Seeing the traffic light trio scamper away frightenedly, he suddenly felt somewhat foolish.
Once an assassin had concerns, they would not be able to continue being just purely an assassin. He understood that point, and now that the situation had come to the point where Minamoto Hajime was here, his previous choice would have been to naturally avoid him. However, when he had raised that gun at that time, he had been prepared to kill someone. There had been a 70% chance he would have been able to kill them, but then he subconsciously dodged instead; it had been a huge mental blow to Jiaming. This type of trauma was quite difficult to erase.
The simple, ordinary, unconstrained life he had dreamed of, was not what the current situation was. Even though ordinary people usually had areas where they restrained themselves, he found his current self quite vexing.
As he pondered over these things, Lingjing came out into the back alley with her small handbag, “Hey, did you wait long?”
“Hmm, not that long. Why are you so late today?”
Jiaming jumped off the railing and steadied his bike as Lingjing sat on the back. She smiled, “Something happened just now. Manager Zhang gave me a reward for doing so well at work. You want to guess what it is?”
“… A rose?” Jiaming teased, “You’ve only worked there for a few days, how can you get a reward already? That manager obviously wants to impress you.”
“That’s not possible, don’t speak nonsense,” Lingjing smiled, “Though, I do find it strange. Did you know that he actually gave me a ticket to the Dream Star cruise. It just so happens that I have five tickets in my purse too. Though I did perform quite well these few days, and everyone’s been praising me…”
“Wow, our family’s Lingjing is so popular… But you know, even though you’re doing well at work, it doesn’t mean he should be rewarding you with a cruise ticket.” Jiaming shrugged, “A ticket is at least a couple thousand, and ordinary people can’t casually buy it…”
Lingjing smiled adorably, “Are you jealous?”
“Someone’s chasing after my beautiful Lingjing, isn’t it normal to get jealous?” Jiaming smirked.
“Ok, ok, I know. I’m not that oblivious. You know the Manager is the young master of one of those large families. It’s said that his father has a successful business, but because he had just graduated, he’s just playing around at this restaurant. It’s also rumored that he likes the mature, sexy, large-chest type of girls, so I’m really not his type.” She tried to reassure him as she looked back at the restaurant, frowning slightly, “If it turns out he really is interested in me, I’ll resign, ok?”
Morning, the next day at Sacred Heart Institute.
After National Day, large-scale basketball games were to be held at school. Thus, the school’s basketball courts have always been occupied recently. Wearing her usual spinster outfit, Yahan sat on the bleachers by one of the basketball courts. She watched the players run back and forth as a warmup, while stuffing bread into her mouth as she ate breakfast on the side. After a moment, Jiaming appeared at the stadium and approached her.
The stern-looking female teacher arched an eyebrow at him, and Jiaming smirked at her when he saw her, “I haven’t seen you for two days and you’ve changed a lot. Have you finally completed your training from the Nine Yin Manual[1]? Your aura is quite scary.”
Hearing his antagonizing voice, Yahan fiercely bit into her toast and frowned, “I’m hungry; I have no time to joke around with you.”
“Huh, is it because I said I wasn’t going, which gave you a shock? Hmm… have you been secretly crushing on me?”
Hearing him say these things, Yahan briefly lost control and snorted, “Get lost! Don’t make me laugh when we’re outside. Aren’t you returning the cruise tickets to me? I have to think about who to give them to now…” She pushed back her glasses and glanced around to make sure no one had seen her lose her composure, then returned back to her stern-looking expression.
“Ah, actually, the truth is… I’m still thinking about it…” Jiaming said indifferently as he sat down next to her. Yahan’s expression did not change when she heard that, but her heart felt a sudden shock. After spending a whole night just to calm her emotions down, they started to surge up again at his words.
“Ah then… when you said you couldn’t… why was that?” Her tone unconsciously softened as she asked him and Jiaming only smiled calmly, “Eh, I encountered some trouble, but I am trying to think of a better solution… Hmm, it’s just some silly things related to life…”
“Has the little boy finally encountered a love-related problem?” Yahan laughed, “You should ask me. I can help you with that because another girl would understand a girl’s mind.”
While they were talking, a ball rebounded heavily from the basketball court and flew towards them. Jiaming caught it and then smirked, “It is actually because of you. Isn’t that poor Xu Mo chasing after you? He has definitely gotten his own cruise ticket; if you’re going as well, wouldn’t that be deceiving him? Don’t forget, you’re my family’s bride-to-be. Even though that Xu Mo knows your identity, he still wants to chase after you — so shameless.”
From the basketball court, someone shouted, “Fellow student, could you please return the ball?” Yahan tried really hard to hold in her amusement as she pointed at the basketball in Jiaming’s hands, “Go die already, what are you saying? Didn’t you hear that they want the ball back?”
Looking down at the basketball, Jiaming took a deep breath, and as if suddenly making a decision, he bounced the ball once and jumped up from where he was sitting.
It was a somewhat strange shooting posture, but soon after, in front of everyone, the basketball flew gracefully over a distance of more than ten meters, then entered the hoop at a very tricky angle. In a split second, all the people on the basketball court, Yahan included, were dumbstruck. This was the first time he had ever revealed the tip of his iceberg in front of other people.
“Actually, Lingjing and Shasha both really want to go, so… I’ve decided, we’ll go this once…”
[1] Nine Yin Manual, is a fictional martial arts manual in Jin Yong’s Condor Trilogy – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiuyin_Zhenjing for more info.