The Gods Are Fighting Over Me - Chapter 4

Twilight had settled in.

Outside the large floor-to-ceiling window of her bedroom, Tokyo Tower glowed a reddish-orange, standing tall amidst the twinkling lights of the buildings.

The stylus glided across the drawing tablet, making a rustling sound. As the last line curved into the hollow of a jaw, Lin Jianyue let out a long sigh and stopped.

She glanced at the silent clock on her desk. “It’s already 2 a.m.”

Whenever she held a pen, time seemed to speed up, flying by as if on fast-forward. By the time she snapped out of her creative flow, the city outside had already melted into the darkness.

Lin Jianyue stood up and stretched her body in a few simple movements, wincing a little, but her eyes were still glued to the drawing on the screen, not willing to move an inch.

On the high-color-gamut display she had spent a fortune on, the outline of Kenji Hagiwara, now complete, sat in the driver’s seat of a silver car, turning to look at the passenger seat—the camera’s position. He had one hand on the steering wheel and the other reaching out toward the viewer, a gentle smile on his face.

The moonlight in Lin Jianyue’s eyes created a soft glow. She stared at the picture, her lips curving into a smile, and affection spilled out with the slight trembling of her eyelashes.

Ding-dong.

A message notification interrupted her thoughts.

It was from Yumi Miyamoto, Sorry, Lin, that the super handsome guy from the Mobile Unit I told you about can’t make it.

Lin Jianyue frowned at her phone, taking a few seconds to remember who “Yumi Miyamoto” was.

A few months ago, Lin Jianyue had met a new friend in Tokyo, a tall traffic cop named Takahashi. A week ago, after learning that Lin Jianyue wanted to experience Japanese mixer culture, she extended an invitation.

“A colleague of mine is organizing a mixer, and she said she plans on inviting a handsome guy from the Bomb Disposal Squad. I remember you really like the Bomb Disposal Squad, so what do you say? Wanna come?”

Lin Jianyue had agreed.

It would satisfy her curiosity about Japanese mixer culture and let her get a taste of her “stand-in.” What was not to like?

“Sounds good. I’ll have my colleague add you. Her name is Yumi Miyamoto. She’s a gorgeous and super energetic person.”

Yumi Miyamoto?

When she first saw the name, Lin Jianyue just blinked blankly, thinking it sounded familiar. She vaguely remembered a female police officer in Detective Conan named Yumi, but she couldn’t recall her last name.

After accepting Yumi’s friend request, Lin Jianyue exchanged a few pleasantries before getting back to her own things. She didn’t even bother to check the full set of Detective Conan manga on her bookshelf, simply dismissing it as a coincidence and putting it out of her mind.

Yumiko, Yuriko, Keiko… There were countless women with names like that in Japan.

Lin Jianyue didn’t think twice about it, so when she saw Yumi Miyamoto’s name again, she almost didn’t remember who it was.

『That’s okay, I’m just happy you invited me.』 Lin Jianyue replied politely while saving the unfinished drawing of Kenji on her computer.

She often saw mixers in Japanese dramas. Just like school festivals were a staple in anime, mixers were an essential plot point in more than half of all Japanese dramas. She hadn’t had many chances to experience a school festival, but she was more than happy to experience a Japanese-style mixer.

Lin Jianyue didn’t like the overly complex etiquette of the Japanese, but luckily, Yumi Miyamoto was also someone who wasn’t into pleasantries. They ended the conversation in just a few sentences.

Lin Jianyue closed the chat with Yumi and went back to her home screen. But when she saw the pinned contacts at the top, her pupils constricted, and a wave of unpleasant emotions began to churn in her chest.

At the top of her recent chats were three accounts she had pinned: her brother, her dad, and her mom.

Japan and China used different messaging apps, but her parents’ jobs often took them all over the world, so her whole family had LINE accounts.

Her dad’s LINE profile picture was a half-body shot of him—his waxed hair slicked back to reveal a clean forehead. He was in a black suit with a genuine diamond tie pin, holding an expensive violin in his hand. He held it casually, as if it were a common object, but he made sure to show off the Stradivarius logo on the violin.

A Stradivarius violin was a priceless masterpiece in the world of violins, with an unknown number of them still in existence, but it was definitely no more than a two-digit number.

No one would hold a Stradivarius violin so casually unless it was a fake. But Lin Jianyue knew very well that the one in her father’s hand was real. He just loved to show off.

She remembered that after taking that picture, her father couldn’t hold his polished facade anymore. He rushed to put the violin back into its bulletproof glass safe, carefully wiping it down repeatedly with a special cloth.

Recalling her father’s two-faced behavior, Lin Jianyue’s face fell, and her lips turned down slightly.

She opened the chat with her father. Their last conversation was six months ago, right after she landed in Japan.

Don’t you dare come back! I hope you die out there!

I won’t! I won’t!!

She had sent the second message, followed by a red exclamation mark—he had blocked her, all because she had flown to Japan alone to study against his wishes.

The words on the screen made her eyes sting and her stomach churn. Of course, she wasn’t going back. She was going to make a name for herself in this country.

Her back teeth ground together, the joy of drawing Kenji completely gone, replaced by endless anger and bitterness.

She couldn’t let her father look down on her.

The next time they met, it had to be on an interview show on a major website, with her surrounded by camera flashes and receiving the glory that belonged to her.

After a moment of hesitation, Lin Jianyue exited the chat and threw her phone on the bed before heading to the bathroom.

After her nightly routine, Lin Jianyue lay sprawled out on the double bed in her matching pajamas.

As was her habit, she would open Twitter before bed to check out what the big-name artists had drawn and see how many more followers she had gained.

But as a somewhat well-known Chinese illustrator, she would occasionally get rude comments and nitpicking in broken English from anonymous accounts with unknown nationalities. Sometimes they were filled with machine translations.

She wasn’t in a good mood today. She didn’t want to see anything that would upset her before she went to sleep. She grabbed the plush Kenji doll from beside her pillow and rubbed it against her face twice. “Please, please, please appear.”

Kenji hadn’t appeared in her dreams for a long time.

Her friends back home would tease her, saying she must love drawing more than she loved Kenji Hagiwara, which was why she no longer dreamed of him.

Lin Jianyue just pouted dismissively at that.

Are you kidding me? She had always been more passionate about drawing than about Kenji. She had risked a complete fallout with her father to fly to Japan alone. Was it to experience the local culture of a city where Kenji Hagiwara had lived?

Of course not.

Everything she did was for herself.

The air conditioner continuously sent cold air into the room. Lin Jianyue curled up in her blanket, quietly whispered goodnight to the Kenji doll, and closed her eyes.

On the day of the mixer, Yumi Miyamoto brought a police officer from the Bomb Disposal Squad named Tanaka.

“I said I’d bring an officer from the Mobile Unit, so how could I disappoint my new friend?”

She sat down next to Lin Jianyue, her voice smooth and playful. Then she held up her hand to the staff. “I’m so thirsty. Can I get a cold beer first?”

The man named Tanaka sat across from them and was the first to extend his hand to Lin Jianyue. “Hello, my name is Rihito Tanaka. I work in the Bomb Disposal Squad and I’m a small team leader.”

He purposefully turned his wrist thirty degrees toward Lin Jianyue, showing off his Cartier watch like a peacock.

At the words “Bomb Disposal,” Lin Jianyue’s eyes lit up with excitement. But when she saw his hand hovering in the air, she lowered her gaze and avoided looking at it.

She didn’t want to shake Tanaka’s hand.

Not just shaking hands, she didn’t want to have any intentional physical contact with any stranger of the opposite s3x.

She could endure being forced to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a stranger on a crowded subway, but she didn’t want to have contact like shaking hands or shoulder pats that were a conscious choice.

Just thinking about her palm touching a stranger’s made goosebumps crawl from her scalp down her back. It felt like ants were all over her.

Lin Jianyue showed no emotion, but the hairs on her forearm were already standing on end, and her back muscles were slowly tensing up.

She wasn’t good at social interactions. For most of her long years as a student, she had been trapped in a music room, practicing day in and day out, with few opportunities to socialize.

She had no idea how to gracefully defuse the awkward situation in front of her.

“Excuse me, here’s the beef sukiyaki you ordered.” A young female attendant appeared with a pot full of meat, perfectly interrupting the stalemate.

Tanaka, who was sitting near the door, quickly pulled his hand back to make room for the attendant to serve the food.

Seeing Tanaka’s attention shift, Lin Jianyue let out a silent sigh of relief, and her body relaxed.

Next came a boring round of self-introductions. The four men and four women weren’t all from the police department and didn’t all know each other.

The rest of the mixer went smoothly. They ate, chatted, and looked for common ground.

Yumi was busy drinking, Tanaka was busy trying to charm her, and the other five were talking among themselves. The atmosphere was surprisingly harmonious.

Lin Jianyue wasn’t interested in Tanaka, but that didn’t stop her from resting her chin in her hand and listening to him brag about his work.

When Tanaka proudly boasted that he could do a 30-pound weighted training, something many male officers couldn’t do, Lin Jianyue’s eyes, now focused on her bubble tea straw, sparkled with interest.

She couldn’t help but think that Kenji Hagiwara could probably carry much more weight and get even better results. Maybe he could even lift her with one hand, just like in her dreams.

As she listened to Tanaka’s meaningless bragging, Lin Jianyue kept a polite smile on her face, but her fingers were tapping impatiently on the table.

The man, completely immersed in his own world, went on and on about his work and even showed off what he considered to be “manly” arm muscles to Lin Jianyue before finally remembering to exchange contact information.

He took out his phone. “Lin, let’s exchange contact info.”

Lin Jianyue smiled at him without giving a direct answer. She didn’t have a great impression of Tanaka. He always talked about himself and would often interrupt her.

Besides, the way he had casually shown off his brand-name watch when they first met reminded her of her father.

Just thinking about the man who was her bl00d relative made her feel suffocated by a damp, heavy air of unpleasant emotions.

She hated that feeling.

“I bet you haven’t registered for LINE yet,” Tanaka pressed on, not even waiting for Lin Jianyue’s answer. “Can I help you set one up?”

Lin Jianyue frowned, about to refuse, when a message notification suddenly popped up on Tanaka’s phone. The sender’s name was clearly on the screen.

Lin Jianyue only had time to see the two big characters for “Captain” before Tanaka quickly pulled his phone away.

Lin Jianyue frowned in confusion. “Captain?”

She remembered Tanaka saying he was a team leader in the Bomb Disposal Squad.

Tanaka gave an awkward laugh, looking at the message and trying to figure out how to explain.

Being a team leader in the Bomb Disposal Squad was a very impressive position for a young person, a height that many would never reach in their entire careers. To get to this position, one had to be an expert in bomb disposal, have brilliant courage, and possess a top-notch mental fortitude.

But above a team leader, there was another position: a captain.

The Security Department’s First Division was split into nine Mobile Units, and the Bomb Disposal Squad was just a small part of each unit. The person who messaged him was the Captain of the First Mobile Unit. He was an incredible genius. In the decades the department had been around, there had only been two people who had been promoted as fast as he had.

In the shadow of that captain’s brilliance, Tanaka’s achievements became worthless, like a dusty trophy sitting in a corner.

Tanaka pursed his lips in a difficult expression, not explaining. He was worried it would ruin the respectable image he had worked so hard to build.

He figured Lin Jianyue didn’t understand the Japanese police system. What if she heard the explanation and thought a team leader was just some low-level grunt?

No. I finally found a woman I like, so I can’t let this ruin her impression of me.

Seeing that Tanaka wasn’t speaking, Yumi Miyamoto leaned over. “That’s the captain of the First Mobile Unit. Tanaka’s Bomb Disposal Squad falls under the First Mobile Unit, so the person who messaged him is his direct superior.”

After she said that, Lin Jianyue noticed that Tanaka’s face had changed.

Lin Jianyue wasn’t good at social interaction, but she understood her father and men who were like him. After just a glance, she saw right through Tanaka’s intentions.

He felt like he had been exposed, and he couldn’t handle the embarrassment. How could a man like him tolerate another person who could outshine him, especially when he was trying to show off?

Especially at a mixer, where people were competing to impress, and to be exposed by a woman in front of a group of other women?

Lin Jianyue didn’t think it was an exposé.

But for a man as arrogant and insecure as Tanaka, Yumi’s words were an attack, one that had completely knocked down the stage he had so carefully built.

Seeing that Yumi was about to say more, Lin Jianyue quickly put her hand on her arm and smoothly changed the subject. “Yumi, what were you eating just now? It looked really good. I want some, too.”

Yumi didn’t suspect a thing and immediately started enthusiastically talking about the Japanese snack in her bowl.

Lin Jianyue listened intently, but she also discreetly glanced at Tanaka.

The man who felt his pride had been wounded had now regained his composure. He gave an apologetic smile to everyone. “Sorry, I need to take this call outside.” Then he left his seat.

As Tanaka disappeared from Lin Jianyue’s sight, Yumi finished describing the snack. She playfully poked Lin Jianyue with her elbow and leaned in with a conspiratorial smile. “I’ll tell you a secret: The person who just texted Tanaka is the super handsome guy I was originally going to invite. He’s the most popular guy in the whole police department. He’s got a great personality, he’s good-looking, and he’s emotionally intelligent.”

Lin Jianyue’s interest was piqued. “The super handsome guy you’re talking about, is he tall? Like, almost 6’3″?”

Yumi thought for a second and gestured. “I think he might even be 6’4″.”

She cupped her face and praised him relentlessly. “His smile is so mesmerizing. His droopy eyes are like melted caramel pudding, and his voice is so sweet.”

Lin Jianyue’s lowered eyelids shot up, her eyelashes fluttering as if caught in a breeze. A captivating light glowed in her eyes. “Yumi, if he ever goes to a mixer again, could you invite me?”

“You’re interested?”

“Mhm.”

Yumi sighed, her face full of regret. “But he’s unexpectedly a very loyal guy. He’s been dumped for almost two months, and he’s still heartbroken over her. I don’t think he’ll be going to any mixers anytime soon.”

Then her tone changed again, and she put her hand to her mouth conspiratorially. “But I could take you to see him secretly.”

Lin Jianyue hesitated. “Isn’t that a little much?”

“What’s the big deal? It’s just a quick look.”

Lin Jianyue was curious. “How?”

“I sometimes catch him breaking traffic rules. If he gets a parking ticket, he has to go to a nearby police station to deal with it. I’ll call you when that happens, and you can wait at the station, I tell you, and you’ll definitely run into him.”

“…” Lin Jianyue was at a loss for words.

…She really didn’t need to go to such lengths for a stand-in.

Lin Jianyue couldn’t bring herself to say what she was thinking. She was about to politely decline when she saw Tanaka returning from the corner of her eye.

Worried that he would ask for her contact information again, she quickly leaned over to Yumi and whispered, “Sorry, Yumi. My stomach hurts. I think my period came early.”

She put on a distressed expression, her eyebrows furrowed. “I get really bad cramps. Can I go home early?”

Yumi waved her off. “It’s fine. If you don’t feel well, you should hurry back.”

With permission granted, Lin Jianyue pretended not to notice Tanaka and quickly walked out in the opposite direction, her head lowered.