Netherworld Investigator

When we arrived at the apartment, we could hear the children chattering and laughing through the door.

Qiao Kejun handed the cardboard box to the person behind him, and when he took out the key, he heard cheerful footsteps coming from the entrance.As soon as the door opened, I saw that Xiaoshou Xing had been stuck behind the door like a puppy waiting for the owner to come home. His small face was pretending to be calm, but the flushed cheeks still betrayed his joy.

Wen Baifan poked his head out from behind Qiao Kejun, "Hey, brother Xiaoxin, you bastard..."

Qiao Kejun turned to look at him.

"...Who gave it to you?" Wen Baifan finished speaking.

"It's from Sponge." Qiao Xin showed them the bear puppet in panda skin in his arms, "This is its clothes, you can take it off."

Qiao Kejun raised his mouth slightly, glanced at Wen Baifan, and said slowly that a nephew is like an uncle.

As soon as the words fell, Liangliang plunged into Wen Baifan's arms like a small steel cannon, "Uncle, I succeeded. Qiao Xin said that my magic is very powerful!"

Wen Baifan couldn't help humming in his heart, the double standards of Qiao Xin really shouldn't be too obvious, he clearly exposes his own magic tricks mercilessly every time, turns his head and praises his inexperienced little apprentice Come.

Wen Baifan put a cardboard box about the height of the children on the ground, and motioned for the little birthday boy to open it.

Qiao Xin picked up the small scissors and slowly opened the carton from the side. Liangliang squatted beside him, and when he saw the gift showing its true colors, he couldn't help but "wow", "Fat Da!"

A gigantic panda plush doll was huddled in a cardboard box, and it took two children to drag it out together.

"Look, there's another book here." Liangliang dug out a hard cuboid object hidden under the panda's belly, "It's a photo album, and it contains photos of our previous visits to uncle's house!"

Qiao Xin stretched her neck and leaned over to look at it, her chin was buried on the panda's head, and she pulled the round fur ears back and forth with both hands, touching them once in a while to show comfort, and then continued to pull them back and forth.

"Oh, my expression is so funny. Uncle, why did you include me like this?"

"What does it look like?" Wen Baifan leaned over to take a look. It was a photo of Liangliang eating a cake.The child's nose was rubbed with white cream, but he didn't notice it, and smiled foolishly. "Isn't this cute, and I didn't pick it on purpose. I put in all the photos I took that day. You think you're a little girl taking selfies, and you pay attention to taking ten saves, five repairs, two shots and one shot."

Liangliang was amused by him, Qiao Xin also laughed for a while, then suppressed the smile again, and glanced eagerly in the direction of the balcony.

Qiao Kejun was squatting on the balcony not knowing what to do when he suddenly felt someone tugging at the back of his coat.

He turned around, only to see Qiao Xin raised her little face, and her expectant eyes fell on him undisguisedly.

Qiao Kejun pursed his lips, thinking that his son's expression begging for candy was seen somewhere, but he had never seen it before.

It was rare for Qiao Xin to express his desire so bluntly in the past. Even this time, Qiao Xin took the initiative to invite his friends to play at home.

Qiao Kejun has never celebrated Qiao Xin's birthday, and it's not because he doesn't want to. After all, it's just a matter of a cake and a few candles.He just doesn't know that birthday, for most children in the world, is actually a happy, sacred and memorable day.

His eyes fell on the little hair on Qiao Xin's head. Perhaps, the decision to bring Qiao Xin to Chaocheng together was a meaningful and correct choice for both father and son.

Hearing Qiao Xin's voiceless exclamation, Liang Liang got up from the carpet with a grunt, and ran to the balcony with a da-da.

There was only a weak sound of "呵呵", and a snow-white Samoyed puppy poked its head out of Qiao Kejun's arms.

"Your father gave you a dog! Isn't that great!" Liangliang blushed with excitement.

Just as everyone was huddling around the puppy on the balcony, Qiao Xin suddenly raised his head.Wen Baifan leaned against the floor-to-ceiling window with his arms folded, and mischievously blinked at him lightly, one big and one small exchanged a tacit look.

"Qiao Kejun, is this your dad?" Wen Baifan called out to the man who was changing clothes in the bedroom.He was helping Qiao Xin to add the pictures stored in the cloud to the electronic photo frame. In the folder, he accidentally saw a photo of a man who was [-]% similar to Qiao Ke. "You and your dad look too much alike!"

Qiao Hengjing was too low-key, and never left any publicly published photos. This was also the first time Wen Baifan saw his real face, "I feel that Mr. Qiao has a very kind face, as if I've seen it somewhere."

Qiao Kejun changed into casual home clothes and walked out of the living room, "Well, my dad not only looks like me, but also has the same surname as me, Joe, do you think it's interesting?"

Wen Baifan was choked by him and was speechless for a moment, "Didn't I just make a slip of the tongue at that time, is it interesting for you to hold on?"

"Have."

"have what?"

"interesting."

Wen Baifan sighed: "It's really hard to chat with you, neurolinguistics should give you a separate chapter."

Qiao Kejun glanced at him in surprise: "Are you reading such a professional book?"

"I'll just say it casually." Wen Baifan denied it, and asked again, "Will Mr. Qiao come to see his grandson today?"

Qiao Kejun was silent for a moment, "No, he has never had the habit of celebrating birthdays."

Qiao Kejun was handling cooked food in the kitchen, while Wen Baifan was sitting on the floor of the living room playing with the two children.

"Why didn't Xiaomei come to the birthday party today?" He asked suddenly.

Liangliang was concentrating on studying a Rubik's Cube, and replied without raising his head, "The two of them are having a fight."

Wen Baifan was a little dumbfounded.

Qiao Xin remained silent, forcing Wen Baifan to straighten his thigh like a coquettish kitten, patted Wen Baifan to confirm the feeling, and then put his head on it.

Wen Baifan reached out and pinched his face: "Little birthday boy, is it swollen?"

Qiao Xin was silent for a while, then said sullenly, "Who knows, she suddenly stopped playing with me."

"Is that so..."

In Qiao Xiaoxin's faltering narration, coupled with Liangliang's distracted intervention from time to time, Wen Baifan finally figured out the whole story.

To put it simply, Xiaomei wants to invite Qiao Xin to take the duet exam at the end of the music class, but Qiao Xin has been dawdling and refused to agree.As a result, Xiaomei not only didn't talk to him for several days, but when Qiao Xin took the initiative to talk to the little girl, she didn't know that she had found a new acting partner.

"Xiaomei's approach is also a way that many people subconsciously choose to express their emotions." Wen Baifan said with a smile, "Obviously they like each other, but once this person does something that is not to their liking, they will intentionally get along with others in front of each other , let the other party realize the importance of oneself in the process of being jealous."

"I won't be jealous. The partner she found can't sing as well as me." Qiao Xin muttered softly while playing with a button on Wen Baifan's sleeve, "You're quite experienced... there are girls Are you deliberately being nice to others in front of you?"

"It's a pity." Wen Baifan sighed, "I'm that other person."

Qiao Xin touched his face and sighed, "Oh, I'm so sad."

"I'm not sad yet." Wen Baifan didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and then coaxed him: "Come on, don't be upset, I'll sing a live nursery rhyme for Little Birthday Star."

One minute later, Liangliang dropped the Rubik's Cube, threw himself into Wen Baifan's arms, and covered his mouth with his hand: "Stop singing, uncle, it's out of tune!"

Wen Baifan stubbornly let out his voice from between his fingers: "I am a... little green dragon... I have many... little secrets..."

"Change a new line?" Liangliang wailed for a while.

"Although I can sing out of tune, I can also sing out of my mind. I don't want you to destroy other people's music dreams like this." Wen Baifan clasped his hand and fixed it on top of his head, making the child laugh out loud.

"Okay, then I'll change it." Wen Baifan compromised.

In the kitchen, Qiao Kejun heard a magical sound filling his ears in the living room. After listening to it for a long time, he realized that it was "Counting Ducks": "Under the bridge in front of the door, a group of ducks swam past..."

Qiao Kejun couldn't help but sang silently in his heart: "...Come on, come on, count, three, six, eighteen."

"No, you sang wrongly, come and count, two four six seven eight." Liangliang corrected.

"Impossible, it's [-], this is a multiplication formula." Wen Baifan retorted nonchalantly, "[-] sounds unscientific, where is [-]?"

Liangliang couldn't argue with his uncle, so he could only sigh: "Oh, why do you like to argue so much?"

"Okay, then in order to avoid disputes over the lyrics, I'll sing it..."

"Still singing?" Now even a kid as calm as Qiao Xin couldn't help protesting.

"I sang two tigers, the French version." Wen Baifan stretched his waist on the sofa leg, and laughed, "You guys definitely won't."

"I know French." Liangliang was unconvinced and shouted, "Stupid pig, silly donkey."

Wen Baifan grinned: "Then I know one more word than you, code."

"Tuck code?" Liangliang was puzzled, "What do you mean?"

"jet'aime." A subtle and deep voice sounded behind him.

"Huh?" Wen Baifan was stunned for a moment, then turned around.

At that moment, flickering light lingered between the two of them like a faint smoke.

Wen Baifan coughed lightly, concealed his slightly unnatural expression, and praised: "You can read... with a good accent."

Qiao Kejun repeated the sentence again casually.

When speaking a foreign language, with the change of the resonance cavity, there will be subtle differences in the tone and timbre, which makes his voice reveal a strange sex appeal.

jet'aime.

A slightly hoarse voice rushed through Wen Baifan's spine like an electric current, like a magic vine in an old castle, instantly tightening his breathing.

Qiao Kejun turned his gaze to one side, pursed the corners of his mouth, seemed to have smiled, but also seemed to have never done so.

The puppy was brought to this strange environment not long after he was born. At the beginning, he was very cautious, huddled in the small den on the balcony, not daring to move.But it's a young dog, well-adapted, and by the time it's time to cut the cake, he's happily scurrying around the table legs.

The children's laughter came from the living room, mixed with a few clear puppies barking, and the warm aroma of food floated in the air.

Although Wen Baifan took the tune of the birthday song to an unknown valley, Qiao Xin happily made a wish.

"What wish did you have in mind when you were blowing out the candles?" Wen Baifan asked him.

Qiao Xin thought for a while and said, "I want you to finish singing quickly."

Wen Baifan: "..."

Qiao Xin smiled: "I'm lying to you, it won't work if you express your wish."

While I've had a bunch of fried chicken pizzas before, the sweet treat is still the kids' favourite.

"Chocolate mousse, my favorite!" Wen Baifan happily divided the cake into paper plates, and couldn't help asking Qiao Kejun, "Why do you like cocoa, milk and cocoa milk, don't you think it's a bit childish?"

"You know how childish you are." Qiao Kejun chuckled and gave him a piece of cake.

"Sweets nourish the brain, I do it to replenish blood sugar." Wen Baifan found a very high-sounding reason for himself.

"I'm just... getting used to it." Qiao Kejun thought for a while, "I think this taste gives people a sense of accomplishment."

Wen Baifan's eyes widened, thinking he heard it wrong: "Sense of accomplishment?"

"Yeah." Qiao Kejun narrowed his eyes slightly, lost in memory, "A long time ago, a child came to my house. My dad loved him very much, and cared more about him than me. This child loves to eat dry cocoa powder and then Swallow milk. At that time, I was a few years older than him, and I especially liked to grab his snacks."

The corner of Wen Baifan's mouth was stained with chocolate shavings, and his face was full of disbelief.

"He cried as soon as he was robbed, and he didn't dare to complain after crying, and he didn't dare to snatch him back." Qiao Kejun chuckled, "It's very cute."

"Brother Xiaoxin, I was wrong." Wen Baifan swallowed the cake forcefully, and took a deep breath, "Compared to your father, you are not a bear at all, not at all."

The air smells like it's about to rain, and staying indoors gives me a special sense of security.Since it rained a few days ago, the whole city has completely cooled down. People finally caught up with Wen Baifan's progress in keeping warm and put on long johns one after another.

Wen Baifan worked for a whole day and played with his children for a long time at night, so he was already exhausted.He bent one leg, sat lazily on the carpet, leaned his head on the sofa, and his eyelids were battling.

Two children were playing chess next to him, and Qiao Xin's mind was spinning rapidly. After making a move, Liangliang on the other side had to think hard for several minutes.

Qiao Xin poked Wen Baifan and chatted with him in a low voice: "I like heavy rain on a Friday night like this, so that when I wake up tomorrow, my father will touch my hair and say, it's raining outside, so sleep a little longer."

There seemed to be a strange magic in the child's description, Wen Baifan looked up at Qiao Kejun, and saw that the man was bending over to clean up the messy dining table.The soft light sprinkled on him like icing sugar powder, creating an indescribable tenderness in the tired and reassuring air.

When he was bored, Wen Baifan picked up the electronic photo album that was placed under the coffee table, and casually flipped through the contents.

Qiao's family doesn't seem to like to take pictures. With a full 32G capacity, there are only a dozen or so photos that can be saved.

However, the genes of this family are really strong. The appearance of the three generations of grandparents and grandchildren are all printed out of the same mold. The similarity is so high that it is a bit surprising.What is even more suspicious is that in the few dozen photos, there is no one who resembles a mother or wife.

In the dead of night, Qiao Kejun was leaning on the head of the bed, holding his mobile phone in both hands and typing intently.

"Thank you today, Qiao Xin is very happy."

"Yes, I feel that the red scarf on my chest is more colorful."

"[hehe]"

"I'm not surprised that you would choose this expression, [hehe]"

"?"

"It's okay, don't worry about it. [Rose]"

"Hmm. [Rose]"

"[Cover your face and smile] Hey, you should stop expressing, you are not suitable for expressing."

Qiao Kejun chuckled, clicked on a set of dog-themed emojis, chose a face-pinching .gif and sent it.

The words "the other party is typing" on the upper left of the screen lasted for more than a minute, but in the end Wen Baifan only sent a series of ellipsis.

Qiao Kejun smiled and asked, "Are you short of words?"

"You're so poor...I didn't expect you to be like this."

Just when Qiao Kejun was about to reply something, an email notification popped up in the upper left corner of the screen. ''

Click to open.

A picture is slowly loading.

The bedside lamp was turned to the darkest, and the picture that popped up on the screen illuminated Qiao Kejun's face.

I don't know how long it took, until the phone rang the message notification tone again, and Qiao Kejun came back to his senses.

He switched the chat interface, only to see that the previous conversation ended abruptly after Wen Baifan said, "I didn't expect you to be like this",

This kind of ridicule with a sense of proportion is a kind of temptation, and Qiao Kejun's inexplicable silence undoubtedly made this temptation in vain.

Therefore, when Wen Baifan uttered the topic again, he couldn't help showing a trace of caution in his seemingly casual words:

"Why the sudden silence?" he asked.

Qiao Kejun replied: "Give me some time to rebuild your three views."

"Haha." Wen Baifan replied with a little embarrassment.

The wonderful atmosphere that relied on virtual signals to ferment disappeared instantly after the sudden interruption.

The conversation ended hastily.

Qiao Kejun closed the chat page and clicked on the photos in the mailbox again.

In the photo, there is a bed, a window, and a young woman with mid-length hair holding a baby in her arms.

Her face was a little pale, but her facial features were beautiful, and the tear moles at the corners of her eyes were particularly moving.The sunlight slanted down from the window sill beside her, as if the smooth glaze flowed on the fragile and exquisite porcelain.

The lower right corner of the photo is seven years ago today, the day Qiao Xin was born.

Qiao Kejun narrowed his eyes slightly, with a thoughtful expression on his face.