Chapter 49 Changing Strategy

After eating at a roadside food stall, Wu Zhenri took Hu Mimi to check into the Sakura Hotel in the city. It was already nine o'clock in the evening.

Shortly after the bellhop took the key upstairs to open their room, a young woman who seemed half-concealed by the mottled neon lights at the hotel entrance walked in. She wore a mesh-like black veil, making her look like a celebrity posing for the camera, though her outfit was nothing more than a cheap imitation.

She walked straight to the front desk. Sensing something unusual about her attire, the receptionist on duty earnestly asked if she was looking for a room to stay in. She shook her head and simply said she was looking for someone.

When the receptionist asked who she was looking for, she countered with a question instead: "Is there a male guest named Wu Zhenri staying at your hotel? He's an acquaintance of mine, and I have some business with him."

The receptionist opened the guest registration log and indeed found the name Wu Zhenri, registered half an hour prior. He had checked into Room 204, a double room with a higher rate, costing twice as much as a standard room.

Remembering that the guest named Wu Zhenri was accompanied by a woman, the receptionist grew cautious and said tactfully, "You can't see him right now; the guest is resting. If it's urgent, I can call Room 204 and get his permission first before you go up."

The young woman waved her hands quickly and said, "I won't disturb him now. I'll come early tomorrow morning so as not to interrupt his rest." With those words, she turned and walked out through the hotel doors.

Watching her figure disappear into the hazy night outside, the receptionist felt a lingering sense of mystery and regret for having shown her the guest registry, secretly fearing it might cause trouble.

As the saying goes, speak of the devil. Half an hour later, trouble arrived right on cue.

Police officers from the Sakura Garden Police Substation, who rarely conducted routine inspections at this hour, arrived to check the rooms, heading straight for Room 204.

At that moment, the door was pounded heavily, and the guest inside shouted, "Who is it?"

A police officer winked at an accompanying bellhop, signaling her to answer. How could the bellhop dare to disobey? With a knowing look, she knocked on the door again and said softly, "Open the door, please! Someone is here to see..."

The door swung open, revealing a young man clad only in boxer shorts. Too embarrassed to look, the bellhop stepped back behind the police officer.

Seeing the police, the young man felt a slight chill in his heart, but figuring he hadn't done anything wrong—after all, what was wrong with checking into a hotel with his own sweetheart?—he subconsciously told himself not to be afraid. Staring at the stern-faced police officers who had already pushed their way into the room, he demanded, "What's going on?"

"Room check," the officer replied as he stepped inside.

He walked further into the room and stopped in front of a sofa strewn with cluttered clothes and a brassiere, wrinkling his nose as if warding off a stench. Indeed, the room carried an odor unmistakably familiar to adults, one that was rather nauseating.

Perhaps noticing the smell as well, the bellhop immediately rushed to open the window.

The police officer scanned the room with a stern, vigilant gaze, then pointed at the young woman lying on the bed and asked the young man, "Who is she to you?"

"My girlfriend," the young man answered composedly.

The young woman immediately sat up from the bed, pulled a floral-patterned blanket that had been covering her upper body down over her legs, and looked at the police officer, saying, "We're just friends."

"I wasn't asking you," the police officer said, slapping the sofa with a grave expression. The young woman did not dare talk back.

After lecturing them on relevant laws and policies, the officer demanded, "Do you two realize that cohabitating in a hotel without being married and without a marriage certificate is illegal?"

The young woman interjected, "Officer, it was entirely consensual."

"Consent doesn't make it legal. Murder and arson are consensual too—does that make them okay? You people are ruining the moral fabric of society..." The more the officer spoke, the more agitated and severe he became.

Finally, he commanded in an authoritative tone, "Hand over your ID cards, get dressed, and come with us to the police station."

Both of them grew nervous, yet they had no choice but to obey.

The young man had his ID card, but the young woman had left hers behind. The officer immediately turned to the bellhop standing nearby and scolded, "How could you let this woman check in without an ID card?"

With a forced smile, the bellhop replied, "We will definitely be more strict with our checks from now on."

"Don't let it happen again, or you'll be fined." Taking the ID card handed over by the young man, the officer examined the photo, name, sex, date of birth, and address.

"Oh! Your name is Wu Zhenri, and you're from the south!" The officer turned to the young woman, who was hurriedly getting dressed and looking anxious, and asked, "Where are you from? What is your name?"

"I'm a local, my name is Hu Mimi," Hu Mimi replied in the local dialect.

Brought into the Sakura Garden Police Substation, Hu Mimi found herself seated in an interrogation room. The officer sitting behind the desk wore a stern expression and ordered both Hu Mimi and Wu Zhenri, who stood beside her, to kneel.

Terrified, Hu Mimi immediately dropped to her knees.

Wu Zhenri hesitated. He believed he hadn't committed murder or arson; he had merely cohabitated with his girlfriend during the passionate height of their romance—what wrong had he done? Hu Mimi would marry him sooner or later, and she would end up his wife anyway. Was there any need to make such a fuss and drag them in like criminals? It was completely making a mountain out of a molehill.

He also thought about how in the open cities of the south, such a matter was considered trivial, and the police rarely bothered with it, already overwhelmed by serious security and criminal cases.

Yet in this northern city, even cohabitating with a girlfriend was treated as a major offense and resulted in an interrogation at a police station—it was truly incomprehensible.

Instead of seeing the wholesome social atmosphere of this northern city as vastly superior to the south, Wu Zhenri viewed it as backward and closed-minded, feeling that such "pure social morals" were restricting his freedom. He remained entirely oblivious to the fact that the freedom he sought bordered on licentiousness.

Driven by this mindset, he mustered the courage to ask, "Do I really have to kneel?"

The officer slammed a heavy hand down on the table with a loud crack and barked, "Are you trying to resist?"

At this, Hu Mimi, who was already kneeling with her head bowed in silence, shuddered violently, frightened to the point that she hardly dared to breathe loudly through her nose.

Raising her head slightly, she saw the enraged officer pull a pair of gleaming handcuffs from the edge of the desk, producing a dull metallic clatter.

Hearing the sound, Wu Zhenri's heart filled with dread as well. Defeated, he dropped to his knees and quickly forced a smile, telling the officer, "I'll kneel, I'll kneel."

"Some people only respond to hard punishment." The officer released the handcuffs and began the interrogation.

Another officer sitting by the window in the interrogation room opened a logbook to prepare the record.

Wu Zhenri looked at the cold, stern face of the interrogator and the eight large, square red characters on the wall behind him: *Leniency to those who confess, severity to those who resist!* Losing all courage to conceal anything, he now wished only to cooperate in hopes of receiving leniency.

When the officer questioned him about why, as a university intern, he wasn't properly focusing on his internship, and how he had ended up entangled with a watch repair girl from South Street, he recounted the whole story truthfully. Hearing this, the expression on Hu Mimi's face, kneeling beside him, shifted dramatically, replaced soon after by a look of utter contempt.

Wu Zhenri had originally been involved with a kindergarten teacher named Pei Huahua. Then, one evening while taking a stroll down South Street, he spotted a remarkably pretty girl who repaired clocks and watches—that girl being Hu Mimi.

Her beauty far surpassed Pei Huahua's, giving Wu Zhenri that overwhelming feeling of "once you've seen the best, the rest are mere trifles." Naturally, his attitude toward his newly made girlfriend Pei Huahua grew cold, and his thoughts became entirely consumed by Hu Mimi, the watch repair girl.

When he first tried to approach Hu Mimi, he was immediately given the cold shoulder; she completely ignored him.

Unwilling to give up, Wu Zhenri shamelessly begged Pei Huahua, who had once been classmates with Hu Mimi, to act as a matchmaker and introduce them.

Finding the results unsatisfactory, Wu Zhenri changed his strategy. He went to a pawnshop, bought a functional old wristwatch, and intentionally paid the pawnshop owner extra money. He then unscrewed a tiny gear inside so the watch would no longer tick, turning it into a broken timepiece. Carrying this to the watch repair stall on South Street, he handed it to Hu Mimi to fix along with a hundred-yuan deposit.

Because Hu Mimi had a backlog of broken clocks and watches to repair and was handling them strictly on a first-come, first-served basis, she told Wu Zhenri to come back later.

When Wu Zhenri returned to pick it up, Hu Mimi handed him the repaired watch and returned ninety-five yuan, explaining that the watch had only lacked a single screw, which she had replaced, so she was only charging a fee of five yuan.

Wu Zhenri took the watch but refused the change. "What harm is there in taking an extra ninety-five yuan? Consider it a gift from me."

Hu Mimi still tried to shove the excess money back into his hand, but he quickly backed away and said, "Just keep it here as a deposit. If my watch breaks again next time, I'll bring it to you, and you won't charge me for the repair. If it doesn't break, then forget about it."

With a mischievous, comical smirk, Wu Zhenri blew her a flying kiss and dashed away.