Xingyu leaned closer. Weiran’s chest seized.

“Chen what?”

“Ah…Chen Jun, I think?”

“He’s the president of Core Industries. The one who’s holding the event. Xiaokai was supposed to meet one of the Chens tonight but had to reschedule because of me.”

Look at how that turned out. He still disappeared without an explanation. “Do you think he’s part of the List?”

“Chen Jun? Mn…probably. I didn’t see my father make any deals with him of that nature, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he did. What does the email say?”

Weiran clicked it open. Read through it. It all looked like gibberish, but he wasn’t very polished with his hanzi anyway—could just pick up a few words like “dress formally” and “event.”

“That’s just for the event I’m going to on Sunday. It looks like Xiao-Xiao helped arrange it—he’s busier than I thought.” He sounded proud. Weiran rolled his eyes.

“Okay…Hu Yongzhu?”

“I know about the Hu family, but Hu Yongzhu specifically doesn’t ring a bell. That email…hm. It’s a real estate deal. I saw some papers for that on the desk earlier—there wasn’t really anything weird.”

“What about Kang Haichi?” Zhang Weiran opened that one. It was short—just Kang asking Xiaokai if they could meet, and Xiaokai replying that he could make an appointment through the traditional means, thank you very much, which almost made Weiran smile. At least the kid didn’t let himself get pushed around.

“The name sounds familiar…I’m pretty sure he had a crush on Xiaokai when we were younger, but back then his father ran the company. You know my Xiao-Xiao is the city’s most eligible bachelor?”

Any trace of a smile Weiran might have had disappeared. “Really.”

“Yeah, I didn’t believe it either until I looked it up. Maybe check the spam folder?”

It was empty. How did a person not have any spam?

“Ah…Ba made sure we didn’t use our emails for anything but business. What about deleted emails?”

Again, nothing—and nothing that really stood out in the archives either. Weiran accessed the flash drive he brought and set it up to download everything in Xiaokai’s email.

“What are you doing?”

“We’re not going to have the time to look through these carefully enough, so I’m copying it to look at later. If we find anything weird, we won’t be able to take it to the police, but at the very least we’ll have a jumping-off point.” It would also help for Weiran to be able to look up any phrases he didn’t know. They could make a night out of it, even. The thought brought his smile back, but he forced it down again.

“Is that really necessary?” Xingyu sounded uncomfortable.