Rising Questions...

“Hey…” A voice crept its way into my ear.

“Hey…” The voice spoke to me again.

“Not yet…” I replied.

“Hey…” The voice doesn't stop.

“What is it? I just want to sleep more.”

“Wake up.”

“Ugh, I can’t”

“Taji, wake up.”

“Ugh… I’m awake…”

“Wake up Taji.”

“Okay.. fine…” I rubbed my eyes open. I was flashed with Lei Mei’s beautiful pale skin.

“What happened to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why are you sleeping on the floor and not in bed with me?” she replied in a bitter tone.

Why was I on the floor? That’s a really good question. “That doesn’t matter right now. Look what I managed to discover.”

I handed my phone over to Lei Mei to check all the evidence I had gathered yesterday.

“Taji, your phone is dead.” She signed and walked away.

Ah. That is a possibility that could have occurred. “Charge it up and we can review it when we get home.”

“That was my intention, to begin with. Come on, we need to get going. It’s coming close to 11 am and we still haven’t left.”

“Forgot that we are in a hotel… oh well, we better get going then.”

As I attempted to stand up, I felt something wasn’t right. I can’t put weight on my leg? Why is my leg hurting me so much?

With a brittle voice and tears starting to run down my face, I called out, “Lei Mei, I have a problem.”

Lei Mei looked over to me as I tried to skip over to her. Her face was covered with confusion suddenly realised what the issue was.

“Let me see your leg.” She yelled out as she rushed to nurse me.

She rolled up my trousers and inspected my leg. “What on earth did you do to your ankle, Taji?” She asked in panic.

“I can’t remember fully. I was jumping between the balcony, I think.” I replied while weeping.

“Taji, you idiot, this is terrible. We need to get you to the hospital as quickly as possible.”

She quickly grabbed our things and put my arm around her and carried me out to the reception, where we requested an ambulance.

After a ride in the ambulance and a few hours at the hospital, I was finally free to walk out, with crutches, that is. It could have been worse, but on the bright side I will walk again only once they remove the cast and I’m fully healed.

“Taji, I really fear for your life sometimes. What were you thinking? Jumping between balconies in the middle of the night with almost no lights in the slippy cold. You could have died or ended up in a much worse condition. Do you want me to die from fear and stress? You came into my life, took me for your own, and now want to play at the edge of the cliff while I stand at a safe distance without knowing? Do you realise how awful I feel?” Lei Mei ranted without even catching a breath.

“I understand Lei Mei. However, I wanted to get your attention, but you were sleeping so cutely that I couldn’t bring myself to wake you up. I survived, I’m still here. Though I can promise that I won't be doing that again.”

“Well, of course, you won't. You can’t even walk normally. You definitely won't be jumping at all, let alone between balconies again. Learn your limits, Taji. You aren’t invincible, nor is my heart.” Her voice began to break the more she spoke.

“I know, I know. I learnt my lesson. This isn’t a kind of risk I will take again.”

The sun reflected more and more from Lei Mei’s watery eyes. I pulled her to me and hugged her tightly.

“I won’t make you worried like this again. I assure you, this was the last time you had to worry like this.”

She grabbed my back tightly and replied, “It better be.”

“We should get back before my parents worry too much. My phone has been dead and I don’t want to see how many times my mother tried to contact me.”

“Don’t worry, I asked my mother to pass the message on.” Lei Mei giggled as she spoke. “They should know that you had an accident while you were trying to show me how well you can tree climb.”

“Is that really what you came up with?” I’m not particularly happy with this excuse. Surely my parents are stupid enough to believe that.

“Yeah, you’re the type of person to do something silly like that, you dummy. Now just shut up and let's get you home already. I’m tired and overly embarrassed as of currently.” She replied with a beetroot-red face.

“Sure, let’s go.” With a smile, we headed back to my house.

Unfortunately for me, my parents actually believed that I fell off a tree and my gut is telling me not because they are gullible but more of them thinking I’m stupid enough to do that.

I can’t blame them. If I had to think about it enough, considering the recent events, I probably would have done something like that. I need to get this image out of their heads, only once I can freely walk again.

Regardless, time to analyse the evidence I gathered. “So Lei Mei, what do you think of this situation here?”

“Hmm, quite hard to make any decisive conclusion based on this. There is no audio and the visuals are very limited.”

“Do you know what sort of currency this is? I haven’t seen it before.”

“Let me see… hmm… mmm…” she stared deep into the screen, zooming in as far as possible. “AH. This is the Chinese Yuan!” She yelled out.

“Chinese Money?! What would my father need that for? Also, who is that woman and why are they handling money from China?”

“We received more questions than we did answers. This might go deeper than I would have thought.” Lei Mei leaned back and fell into her deep thinking mode.

I wonder what my father is doing. It is still too soon to try to confront him since we don’t have anything specific to confront him about. However, whatever this may be, it may be much bigger than we previously thought.

“How about we try to search through his room?” I suggested.

“We are deep into this now. I think that might be the next option. Although I doubt we will actually find anything of value, this doesn’t seem like something he would keep out in the open for us to find.”

“Good point… so instead, we search through his phone?”

“Yes, if there is any easy access to information related to this topic, I believe it will be on there. Though there is a possibility that he has a burner phone or has a different form of communication that is less detectable, but we can try, anyway.”

“I will try to get my hands on his phone tonight. You want to stay over?”

Lei Mei looked at me without saying a word and just nodded.

“Great, we can just say that you want to stay over to look after me as an excuse.”

“By the way, Taji. leave the phone to me. You will get caught instantly.”

“Ah, right… my leg. Forgot about that. Haha.”

“I was also looking forward to nursing you back to health, so I’m glad I will take care of you tonight. I will offer you some special relaxation services to help you recover at a faster rate.” Lei Mei started to blush. “Isn’t it kind of hot in here, haha, I will go get some fresh air and let my parents know.” She smiled and swiftly left the room.

I don’t know what got into her but doesn’t matter, glad that we get to spend more time investigating this together. I don’t think we ever spent this much time continuously together. It kind of makes my heart race none stop. I feel more and more excited the longer we are together.

This isn’t the best time to be thinking about Lei Mei since we are dealing with this investigation together but it’s starting to get stronger than me. Each time she comes close to me, just her smell starts distracting me.

Hopefully, I can hold it together till we finish this investigation.

Wait… I feel like we forgot something… at the hotel… wait… did we leave that guy in the toilet?