Thriller Night Talk

Translator-Rhapsodite

Editor-simpforlife, Proofreader-Ghostie

“Thanks for tonight.”

Bei Quan came out of the studio, reached out and patted Wei Fuyuan on the shoulder, “You can go back and rest.”

“That’s it?”

Wei Fuyuan was a little stunned, “Our program——I mean, the [Thriller Night Talk], is it simply about letting someone call in and listen to them make up a story?”

He thought, wasn’t it too easy to run this program?

There was no need to find materials or resources for it. There wasn’t even a need for an assistant at all!

Bei Quan was relatively tall, standing at 182 centimeters, but even then, he was five centimeters shorter than Wei Fuyuan, who was even taller. It was an amusing experience to have to look up at the opposite party.

He scanned Wei Fuyuan’s face with his chestnut coloured pupils, his expression serious.

Wei Fuyuan felt inexplicably guilty.

——No, Did I say anything wrong?

Bei Quan, “Do you think that person just made up a story?”

Wei Fuyuan almost asked——‘What else could it be?’ Fortunately, his inadequate EQ made him hold back his remark out of respect for his boss, and stopped his mouth before he blurted out something inappropriate, which made him feel very tactful.

“In my opinion, it should be a well concocted urban legend.”

Bei Quan smiled nonchalantly.

“All right.”

He walked up to Wei Fuyuan and smoothly adjusted the other’s collar.

“Get a good night’s sleep. We will have to go out tomorrow.”

Young Master Wei stared at Bei Quan’s back and gave a dazed “um”, feeling even more confused.

It was close to one o’clock in the morning when Wei Fuyuan finally finished freshening up.

Before returning to the storage room turned bedroom, he went downstairs with a cup and planned to get water from the kitchen on the first floor.

Young Master Wei was too lazy to turn on the lights, so he made his way downstairs in the dark with only the dim lighting of a small night light next to the corridor.

When he reached the top of the stairs, he suddenly heard someone talking.

He quickly turned back and hid his tall figure behind the handrail of the stairs.

“…I think you are really stupid!” said a young female voice.

Wei Fuyuan cautiously poked out half of his head from behind the rails, looking for the source of the sound.

Sure enough, two figures were standing in front of the kitchen, one tall and one short; Bei Quan and Zhu Ling.

It was suspicious for a man and a woman to be meeting alone in the middle of the night.

——Young Master Wei felt a little sour in his heart.

He clearly remembered that there was no spare room for Zhu Ling, but the girl had not left and it was quite late into the night. Was she going to sleep in Bei Quan’s room?

“Really?” Bei Quan replied with a smile, “In my opinion, Xiao Wei is very capable.”

Surprised to find that they were discussing about him, Wei Fuyuan immediately pricked up his ears.

“That’s it!” Zhu Ling was stunned and immediately retorted back, “What can he do as a layman? Haven’t you thought about the fact that he’ll freeze on the spot when he meets a Hui Gui?”

Wei Fuyuan was so angry that he almost couldn’t help rushing up, grabbing Zhu Ling’s collar and yelling. “No matter who this ‘Hui’ was, why would I become paralyzed when I see a woman?!”

“No?”

Bei Quan laughed, “I think his psychological quality is very good, and his skills should be good too.”

Hearing Bei Quan compliment him, Wei Fuyuan felt a little comforted.

“And, you know…”

Bei Quan continued to persuade Zhu Ling.

“I picked him because he was able to find this place.”

He placed an emphasis on the word ‘find’.

“Is this not fate?”

Wei Fuyuan felt guilty.

He didn’t come to Sāntúchuān specifically to apply for the job at that time. He just happened to get lost and found this part-time job by accident.

“But he’s just an assistant! This kind of job should not require an assistant in the first place!”

Zhu Ling’s voice raised a little, “I think we should send him away now——it’s just a question of four weeks. Next month, your new partner will be here.”

Bei Quan said with a smile, “Be that as it may, don’t I still have you?”

The light was too dim, and there was some distance from the stairs to the kitchen. Wei Fuyuan couldn’t see Bei Quan’s expression clearly, but his tone seemed to be cheerful.

“This time I’m confident that it will go well.” He said with a smile, “But I will have to trouble you to collect information.”

Zhu Ling scoffed. Wei Fuyuan wasn’t sure whether Bei Quan had convinced Zhu Ling. However, she did not continue to pester Bei Quan about kicking Wei Fuyuan out.

“When have I not collected information anyway?” The girl threw a rhetorical question and left the kitchen to enter Bei Quan’s study.

Wei Fuyuan: “???”

Just now, the conversation between the two was so informative that the Young Master Wei’s brain was nearly out of order.

——This was supposed to be just a bad broadcasting company. Did they also have to work as a part-time detective?

——Is that woman named ‘Hui’ difficult to deal with? Why did they both behave as though they were about to confront a mortal enemy?

——And was he just the spare wheel tool man before Bei Quan’s new partner came? Does that mean he would be fired in a month?

The haughty Young Master Wei couldn’t face the notion that he wouldn’t be able to keep his first job through the three-month internship.

Because he was so angry and confused, he didn’t notice how strange it was that Zhu Ling seemed to plan to spend the night in a study that only had a desk.

However, at this time, Wei Fuyuan couldn’t think about it anymore.

Bei Quan came out of the kitchen with half a bag of bread in his hand and headed straight to the stairs.

——Don’t let the boss find out I’m eavesdropping!

Wei Fuyuan quickly lowered his body, ran up the stairs lightly and got into his storage room.

—————————

On Friday, April 23, Wei Fuyuan arrived at school at ten o’clock. Attended the last two classes of the day. Then, he went to the canteen for a brisk lunch and hurried back to the Sāntúchuān broadcasting company.

As he walked into the dilapidated red brick building, the first person he saw was the fat baby Tian Jia Xin, who was only three years old.

And such a small baby, who was no more than 10 cm taller than the dining table, sat in front of the tea table making Kung Fu tea with a set of the purple sand tea set.

“Ah, Xiao Wei, you’re here?”

Baby Tian Jia Xin didn’t think there was something wrong with calling a 1.87-meter-old adult man ‘Xiao Wei’ at his age.

As he talked, he held a kettle in his hand, calmly and skillfully making a water bath for the tea set.

“Bei Quan and Zhu Ling are both sitting in the study, you can go inside and join them.”

Wei Fuyuan nodded in a daze, then turned and entered the study.

Bei Quan sat behind the desk, and Zhu Ling stood beside Bei Quan, leaning towards him and saying something.

Young Master Wei frowned, and the thought of ‘They shouldn’t be a couple, flashed in his heart.

Indeed, if he hadn’t been with them for a whole week and suddenly saw the young man and woman in Sāntúchuān with the baby Tian Jia Xin, anyone would have thought they were a family of three.

“Ah, Xiao Wei, you’re here.”

Hearing the sound of the door opening, Bei Quan raised his head and said with a smile, “Come on, you can sit next to me.”

He pointed to the other chair.

Zhu Ling didn’t say anything, just glared at Wei Fuyuan and left the study.

Young Master Wei was pleased with the obstructive woman’s departure.

After Zhu Ling went out, he moved the chair and sat down beside Bei Quan. ｂ𝚎𝚍𝚗𝚘𝚟𝚎ｌ.ｎｅｔ

“What are you doing?” Wei Fuyuan asked casually.

Wei Fuyuan looked at the large pile of newspapers on the table, and asked,

“How can I help you?”

“Here, look at these first.”

With a smile, Bei Quan spread out several newspapers and placed them in front of Wei Fuyuan.

Wei Fuyuan: “?”

He picked up the topmost newspaper and surveyed its headline and time.

This was a daily newspaper that was issued locally. Given the current dwindling condition of the print media, only two or three major newspaper companies could continue the business.

As for the date of publication in the newspaper, it was January 31, a little over two and a half months ago.

Glancing further below, Wei Fuyuan saw a square column marked in red ink.

“… Last night, an intoxicated man broke into a construction site… Was killed after being struck by falling steel bars and died?”

He quickly read through the content inside the red mark, and then looked at Bei Quan blankly.

“Now, look at this.”

Bei Quan immediately handed him another page.

Wei Fuyuan took it and found that it was a printed police report in white on a blue background.

It was also dated January 31st, recounting the accident in which the man was killed by building materials after breaking into the construction site by mistake.

However, this police information circular was more detailed than the content in the newspaper. Wei Fuyuan swiftly read it in a glance.

It turned out that it was a middle-aged man named Wu Mouping. After getting drunk, he went into a construction site where the work had stopped for the day, climbed up a pile of building materials without permission and accidently fell off, and in the end, was crushed by dozens of tons of steel bars and died on the spot.

It was a story that people still talked about.

“This is the first one.” Bei Quan smiled and wrote a line on a blank piece of paper: On January 30th, Wu Mouping, male, 48 years old, cause of death: crushed by heavy objects.

Wei Fuyuan noticed that Bei Quan used a very beautiful golden pen. His handwriting was extremely elegant and well-defined, looking much better than his own cursive handwriting.

“Now let’s look at the second one.” As he said this, Bei Quan handed another newspaper clipping to Wei Fuyuan.

The date this time was February 10th, which seemed to be the day before Chinese New Year’s Eve.

But the printed content was far from good news.

According to the report, the night before, on February 9th, a 34-year-old man surnamed Liu went out late at night in the suburbs. While passing by a certain intersection, he accidentally fell into a sewer and was scalded to death by the sizzling hot water flowing through the sewer.

“Ah, yes!”

Wei Fuyuan patted his forehead.

He didn’t think of it much when he read the first article, but being scalded to death by boiling water was so memorable that he remembered the bizarre story told over the hotline.

“Isn’t this the accident Mr. A mentioned? It turned out to be true!”

After carefully reading the report, Young Master Wei realized that the accident was even stranger than he had imagined it to be.

According to images taken by the anti-theft cameras installed in nearby shops, when the now deceased surnamed Liu passed the road in the middle of the night, something slipped from his body and fell into the sewer.

The dropped object appeared to be very important to Liu. After clutching around the cover of the sewer for a long time without any success, he went as far as removing the sewer cover with his own hands, then lay on the edge of the hole, and leant forward to reach the object.

That is when he lost his balance and plunged headfirst into the sewer, boiling himself alive.

Author’s Note-

The author has something to say: Don’t hate Zhu Ling! She’s a person with a sharp mouth but a soft heart. She’s worried and concerned that ordinary people will unnecessarily be involved~

And she has no affair with Bei Quan. She’s not even human~