There was actually no need for Mo Cong to worry. An Jie saw immediately that the girl was a newbie. Even though her face was scarily colourful, under all that raucousness, she was at most in her innocent early twenties. He had felt the girl’s unconscious rigidness and uncertainty when he approached. He had been lucky enough to run into a bird on its first flight.
Even her wink had zero technical skill behind it… That was why An Jie had to ask if she was from inside. As far as he was concerned, this girl hadn’t finished her training yet and had been let out for trial simply because of her good face.
The young woman led the two into the shop. It was dimly lit with a bar attached, and those that sat in the main hall looked the same as those who’d hung out at the bar. It was obvious that quite a number of them were paid actors to confuse the cops.
The woman nodded to the drowsy barkeeper and led the two behind a door. She looked hesitantly at Mo Cong. “Mister, will both of you be joining?”
An Jie smiled and retorted, “Not enough money?”
The woman pursed her lips and shook her head, but her hand on the door handle shook a little. “It’s enough, it’s fine, it’s more exciting with two people – come in.”
What a stupid girl she was, degrading herself in a place like this and putting on a farce even when she was so scared. Mo Cong followed silently behind him, malicious intent pouring out.
An Jie coughed and chuckled. It was a strange laugh, low as if from deep in his throat and strangely flirtatious. “Just kidding, my friend here doesn’t like girls. Are there any… mm here?”
The woman relaxed visibly. She led them down a narrow spiral staircase and said, “Yes, quite a lot of them, Handsome. I’m not boasting, we do have everything you’d ever want in this shop.” She pouted her viciously red lips at Mo Cong. “What’s your type?”
Mo Cong’s expression was dark as he sneered, “Don’t bother, I’m just here to watch and learn.”
An Jie almost choked on his own spit. He didn’t know that Mo Cong had such dark humor in him. The two-centimeter thick layer of foundation on the newbie’s face couldn’t cover her terrible complexion as she looked strangely at these two handsome yet deviant guests, her lips trembling inconspicuously.
They didn’t reach the bottom of the stairs. The woman opened a door to a corridor before then. An Jie glanced down and asked pointedly, “What’s down there? Staff dormitory?”
The woman who had been stressed the entire way couldn’t help but burst out laughing. After she recovered, she looked back and inspected him all over. An Jie felt that her expression seemed to say ‘It doesn’t matter, I’ll just bear it and take him’. The woman led them inside and said, “Anything can happen down there, Handsome. If you want to open a room, I can take you down there too, but we’ll need to register it first.”
An Jie lowered his eyes and glanced down again. “You guys are pulling private jobs up here, right? How much do they take down there?”
“About thirty to forty percent,” the woman replied absentmindedly, then looked hesitantly at An Jie. “It’s forty percent for normal guests. If…” She paused and pulled up a smile at An Jie. “You have to leave some money for medicine for us sisters, right? – Handsome, if you have any extra requests, you have to let me know first.”
An Jie’s lips twitched. “Don’t worry about that.”
After a short walk, the view opened up into what seemed to be another lounge. A guard stood at the entrance. He saw the woman and glanced behind her, showing an discomforting, lecherous smile. He reached out and slapped her on the ass. “Nice, Mei Mei. And I thought you wouldn’t be able to get anyone on your first shift.”
The woman named Mei Mei turned cold. “Fuck off.”
The guard’s eyes glanced over the two people behind her, paused a little on An Jie’s face, and his lewd smile grew wider. An Jie and Mo Cong followed Mei Mei inside. A strange smell wafted through the air with a light tinge of sweetness; it might have carried some euphoric effect that, along with the dim lighting and the obscene, undulating noises, made one lose their senses.
There were about ten or so people in the lounge. It was like an AV shoot with all sorts of strange things happening. An Jie split up some of his concentration and glanced at Mo Cong out of the corner of his eyes. There was nothing special on the young man’s face – except for visible disgust.
An Jie thought a little. He suddenly grabbed Mei Mei’s waist and pulled her into his arms, his nose gently sniffing her hair as he murmured, “I smelled this on you before… Did you get it from here?” He didn’t wait for Mei Mei to answer and pulled out a few slips of red cash from Mo Cong’s wallet – he still hadn’t returned it. An Jie tucked the cash into her lingerie, the tips of his fingers drawing across her skin, causing her to tremble as he whispered, “My friend is new to this; I dragged him over and he’s too shy to call anyone. Find him somewhere clean and find a … somewhat clean person, mhm?”
He let go of Mei Mei and patted her on the back. Mei Mei jumped out from his arms and strode over to a corner with something like a service desk. She said something to a person there, took out the cash on her, and that person drew a few slips away.
The meaty man behind the service desk looked up at Mo Cong and then made a call. After a while, Mei Mei took the two out the door. A young man waited for them outside.
The young man wore a basic white shirt. Maybe it was because of his makeup, but his features were so pretty that it was almost impossible to tell if he was a man or a woman. And yet, there seemed to be some sort of natural innocence about him. He bowed politely at them. “Let’s go down to level four.” Saying that, he naturally came over to hold onto Mo Cong. Mo Cong frowned and dodged, glaring at An Jie who was admiring the drama.
Shit, I came here to search for people, not to whore around with you!
The young man didn’t mind; he had seen many guests who were much more difficult than Mo Cong. He smiled a little and didn’t try to approach him again. The four entered a neatly set-up room that looked like a bedroom. Mo Cong glanced at An Jie, meaning to say, ‘what will you do now?’
But An Jie seemed to have cut the connection and pushed Mei Mei against a wall. It turned out he was even more familiar with this sort of thing than shooting someone with a gun. A certain seductiveness permeated his deliberate slowness. Just one kiss and the newbie girl was dizzy.
Didn’t that bastard Zui She say that he was obsessed over this other girl and was insistent on keeping his innocence for her?! Something snapped in Mo Cong’s brain. His only thought right now was to grab An Jie’s neck and pull him off of that woman, but he was gently stopped by a hand.
The young man tangled onto him like a snake, gently caressing his skin through his clothes. This genderless thing made Mo Cong feel a bout of disgust and he pushed away instinctively, but it didn’t work. The young man puffed in his ear. “What, am I not as pretty as that friend of yours?”
Mo Cong, a little shocked, narrowed his eyes and stared dangerously at the young man.
“Don’t be like that, people like us have to have sharp eyes… You haven’t tasted what he’s like yet?” The young man’s fingers slowly slid down from Mo Cong’s shoulder and drew circles around his chest. “Do you want to try me first? I promise I’ll be as good as him…”
Mo Cong’s skin crawled with goosebumps and he kicked the young man’s knees out, immediately pulling him off. He looked up, only to see that An Jie and that Mei Mei had vanished. Recalling An Jie’s grin as he said ‘I’d be useless if I couldn’t even put you down’, he understood immediately that he had been one-upped by that sneaky old man. Grudgingly, he fixed his clothes and picked up the young man whimpering with a pale face. “Answer everything I ask and if you say an extra word, I’ll kill you!”
An Jie calmly looked at Mei Mei unconscious by his feet. He made to leave, sighed, then turned back; sorting through Mo Cong’s wallet, he ended up throwing the whole thing into her lap – it wasn’t his money anyway, just his kind deed of the day.
He had finally managed to shake off that newbie Mo Cong and he had efficiently scoped out the rough design of this place. From his understanding of Li…
An Jie chuckled. He was a sick bastard, Li was a clean freak. Both of them were terribly easy to read and control. In those terms, they were basically on even grounds… Li had always been the one on top of him, it was time for retaliation.
This level contained rooms for normal guests, the next level had rooms for those with abusive tendencies with special tools, and the final level was supposedly for VIPs… It was all a lot of sex. The usual place that person mentioned… what level was that in?
An Jie glanced at those stairs which seemed to reach all the way to hell, but didn’t descend them. From how much that person loved tidiness, it would already be a challenge to make it down to this level. He slowly and carefully searched through the level he was on, drifting along like a breeze across all those unnoticeable places, ensuring that no evidence would be left in the cameras.
This level was organised very dully. Apart from the suggestive dim lighting and the random paintings on the wall, every door looked the same except for a simple door number. Even though it was almost dawn, there was still the possibility of people entering. Plus, Mo Cong was smart enough to catch up to him in no time. The time left for him to investigate wasn’t long.
The corridors twisted and turned so much that An Jie almost lost his way after one round. The only thing that remained unchanged was that the rooms on the left were odd numbers from 1-15, and the rooms on the right were even numbers from 2-14; it had one less room than the left because of the placing of stairs… suddenly, a door was opened in outrage. An Jie, startled and quickly dodged behind a pillar at a corner. He saw Mo Cong hesitate then turn to go downstairs – he had probably gotten information on the layout of this building as well.
He didn’t budge even with a beauty in his arm. An Jie watched him as he left and praised him silently. Nice, kiddo.
The room Mo Cong came out of was ‘14’, and the one Mei Mei led him into was ‘12’. Apparently business was well tonight and there were no spare rooms left in the entire level. Then, the room that was skipped over… An Jie’s gaze fell on the door with a number plate of ‘13’. All other door plates were dark blue; only this one was pure black.
An unlucky and evil number. An Jie leaned against the cold wall and stared at that door.
After about half an hour, a door was opened with a light laugh. A young man with black-rimmed glasses looked out, then turned to speak to someone.
At that moment, something unexpected happened. A person jumped down soundlessly behind him. It was too late when Sixteen was startled into realization; his neck was met with blunt force and he fell forward. And as Sixteen stood by the door, by the time the people inside finally saw what happened, An Jie was already pointing at them with a gun he took off Sixteen.
There were two people in the room. One was that raincoated man. He was still dressed the same way, sitting on the bed without any weapons at hand. The other sat in a wheelchair, also wrapped up tightly. In the entire room, there was no one using their true faces except for poor Sixteen lying on the floor.
An Jie bristled. Without even so much as a look at the rain-cloaked man, he pointed his gun at the one in the wheelchair and slowly walked over.
The number plate on the open door behind him shook slightly. It was a ‘3’ written in soft blue.
An Jie gently cocked his head and smiled. “Zeus, Poseidon and Hades were the three sons of Kronos, and they split the control over the universe; there are three goddesses that preside over Fate; there are also three judges in hell appointed by the gods; the oldest Greek god is… three eyed Zeus? In these bullshit legends, ‘three’ is always connected with the highest power – Li, it’s been ten years, and yet you have seen no improvement at all.”
Author’s Notes: Mhm, I’ll update more on weekends, please forgive me on weekdays… Runs away praying…
One final shout, that old man Eason Chen is quite hot~~~ TAT
Vera & Luci Translations 