Captured By The Cold Detective (BL)-Chapter 631: His... What?

"What do you think he was doing in the hospital?" Kang Guanyu wondered out loud, curiosity evident in his tone.

"I don’t know," Mu Yuze replied curtly with his gaze fixed on the road ahead.

"Woah, so there’s something you don’t know about him, huh? Aren’t you two... you know..." Kang Guanyu tapped his two index fingers together and made kissing sounds with his mouth, earning him a repulsed glare from Mu Yuze. Sensing the danger, Kang Guanyu immediately dropped his hands and tutted, "Wow, talk about a look that can kill."

Ignoring his useless comment, Mu Yuze floored the accelerator harder and overtook the car in front of him. His quiet voice sounded after a moment’s pause, tinged with a hint of bitterness and irony. "I really don’t know. He might be my lover, but there are still so many things I don’t know about him." At the red traffic light, he stepped on the brake and cast a sharp and threatening look at Kang Guanyu. "Our relationship is a secret. If it leaks out, I will know who’s responsible."

"Geez," Kang Guanyu put up both hands in a gesture of surrender while protesting, "Who do you think I am? I might like to gossip here and there, but I still know how to keep a secret, okay?"

Mu Yuze released a mocking huff, "Of course. Otherwise you wouldn’t have concealed the fact that you’ve known him personally all this time. How did the two of you meet, anyway?" He had been dying to ask this question since the night at the Phoenix Ablaze, but somewhere between spending the night with He Juan, discussing the cases and visiting Zhong Yun, this matter had slipped off his mind entirely.

Kang Guanyu’s eyes lit up when he heard the question. Coincidentally, this was his favorite story to tell, one that he wouldn’t get tired of no matter how many times he reminisced about it. Clearing his throat, he put on a solemn look, "It all started in a cold winter when I was eleven..."

Throughout the journey to the hospital, Kang Guanyu spun a tearful tale about a boy kidnapped due to his mistaken gender, and XIU swooping in like a superhero to save the day.

***

The process of retrieving security footage unfolded smoothly and soon, Mu Yuze, Kang Guanyu and a bunch of operators were viewing them in the monitor room.

"Oh, he went to look for... Mr. Su? Isn’t that the same person from Zhao Xinya’s case?" Kang Guanyu let out a thoughtful hum as his fingers deftly danced on the keyboard, leaving the operators a little dumbfounded. "Let’s see... he arrived at 3.13 pm and waited for a little more than an hour to see Mr. Su. The conversation went on for around fifteen minutes before he exited the room and walked down the hallway and—"

He hit the spacebar, freezing the footage at the exact moment when He Juan stopped on his tracks and looked around. Pointing at the screen, he speculated, "This must be the moment when he crossed paths with the Manipulator, right?"

From behind, Mu Yuze patted his shoulder and told him, "Rewind the footage a bit... yes, there. Look at this." He pointed at the family of five that appeared from the corner of the screen in the opposite direction of He Juan.

"What about them?" Kang Guanyu scrutinized the screen closer, attempting to find anything suspicious about the seemingly ordinary family of five.

In lieu of an answer, Mu Yuze scanned the multiple screens mounted on the wall, each displaying four footages that were captured from various angles. It seemed like he was searching for something, and his gaze finally settled on a particular screen. "Pull this one up," he instructed the operator.

After the two footages were placed side by side, audible gasps echoed throughout the room. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

One footage was shot in the hallway, while the other showcased the garden where the family had just emerged from. However, instead of five, there were only four members, and the timestamps differed only by less than two minutes!

"Where’s their eldest daughter?!!" The operators exclaimed in shock.

Knowing what to search, Kang Guanyu’s fingers once again moved rapidly as he sifted through one footage after another, making the operators dizzy at the extreme speed. "There!" He exclaimed in joy, capturing the moment when the woman in gray sportswear and hat stepped out of the elevator. "Yes, now we have his appearance on screen! Well, even though this is not what he really looks like, it still counts for something, right?" As he spoke, Kang Guanyu happily copied the footage before pausing to ponder,

"Wait a moment, how did XIU identify him? I didn’t see any interaction between them..."

"That," Mu Yuze replied, "is something we need to ask him personally, isn’t it? Keep copying the footage, I will go down and question Mr. Su." Without waiting for a response, Mu Yuze turned and walked away.

"Oh— oh!" Kang Guanyu shouted to his retreating back. "I will come after you when I’m finished here!"

***

"I keep getting one interesting guest after another today," Su Xieren mused as Mu Yuze stepped into his office. "Let me guess, you’re here to ask what Da-ge was doing in my office, right? Aren’t you in close contact with him? Why don’t you just ask him yourself?"

What Su Xieren said was correct. Mu Yuze had He Juan’s number saved in his phone, so he could easily call the Alpha and demand an explanation. However, Kang Guanyu had been tailing him all this while, and he was unwilling to let it be known that he had He Juan’s contact— or so was the simple excuse Mu Yuze wished he could convince himself with.

The truth was... he found it a little hard to believe in He Juan’s words. The Alpha had a bad habit of downplaying everything that happened to him, thus Mu Yuze felt compelled to seek another perspective to piece together the bigger picture.

Of course, he did not tell the truth to Su Xieren. He merely raised the recorder in his hand and stated, "Evidence."

Sighing helplessly, Su Xieren gestured for him to take a seat.

Mu Yuze settled down and was prepared to turn on the recorder, but then he suddenly realized something amiss with Su Xieren’s words. He raised his head to question the man sharply, "How did you know that I’ve recently come into contact with him? Did he tell you?"

"Or else?" Su Xieren cast a furtive glance at his recorder. "I don’t know if you’d want to record this, though..."

Mu Yuze furrowed his brows. "What do you mean?"

Ever the blunt and straightforward man, Su Xieren did not beat around the bush as he revealed everything to Mu Yuze, "You don’t need to treat him like a criminal like this. He was just here to ask me about his rut schedule because he thought I might know something about it."

Out of all the possible answers he had concocted in his mind, Mu Yuze had not seen this coming at all. He was so taken aback that his mind turned blank. "His... what?"

"I can see that he hasn’t told you yet," Su Xieren easily made a deduction from his reaction. "Da-ge told me that his rut is coming soon. How is it? Will you spend it with him, Officer Mu?"