War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 2006 The Female Chef's Unexpected Gain from Dumplings
On the second day after returning to this world alive, Wei Ran, with the help of his assistant Liu Bofu, scanned hundreds of photo negatives into digital versions. Then, the two worked together to develop them into paper photos.

Only after everything was finished did Liu Bofu, whose face was somewhat pale, secretly let out a sigh of relief.

She knew very well that these were invaluable historical materials and evidence of war crimes, but facing these bloody photos still caused this young woman, who had a slightly perverse fondness for gore, to feel a physical aversion.

Even so, after calming herself down, she asked, "Boss, where should these photos be hung?"

“No rush yet”

Wei Ran declined the other party's suggestion, saying, "You've worked hard today, go and get some rest."

"Yes"

Lyubov wisely did not continue the topic. After respectfully saying goodbye, she left the room ahead of Wei Ran.

Only after watching the other person walk away did Wei Ran pick out the negatives from the metal notebook, which contained a paper bag, and the few photos that had been developed from those negatives.

These are all group photos, and they don't seem to show any signs of the pain of war.

With a soft sigh, he carefully placed the few photos into a small album. After collecting the corresponding negatives, he locked all the original albums and negatives in a safe and then dialed Xia Shushi's number.

"Are you calling at this hour because you're about to come back or about to start an investigation? Surely you haven't already gotten the results, have you?"

As soon as the call connected, Xia Shushi asked with some trepidation, "Wei Ran had promised to give us half a month first."

"What, what's that?!"

Wei Ran responded with a sudden realization. He finally vaguely remembered that before entering the Xifengkou historical timeline and before obtaining that small iron piece, he had returned to China and made a bet with Xia Shushi on the banks of the Yellow River.

"You made that 'Oh—' sound, so you've completely forgotten about the bet?" Xia Shushi said this with a sense of powerlessness, as if he had punched someone in the chest.

"How could that be? If you bring this up right away, everyone has to think about it first."

Wei Ran quickly brushed it off, then followed up by asking, "How's it going on your end? Any progress?"

"Qiqi, Zhang Yang, and I just finished our investigation in Lanzhou yesterday and arrived in Shenmu today. We're planning to look around here." Xia Shushi yawned as he said this.

"No clues?" Wei Ran asked after a moment of silence.

He recalled that the other person was searching for the owner of the kettle he had found on the riverbank, a task as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack.

"No, absolutely no clues."

Xia Shushi's tone was tinged with helplessness, "We haven't made any progress yet. What about you? Any good news? You can't be calling at this hour just to brag about the medal you got, can you?"

"It's good news, or maybe not," Wei Ran sighed, looking at the digital files of the negatives on the computer screen.

"Stop keeping me in suspense, what did you find?" Xia Shushi's curiosity was piqued.

"I've shared the email with you," Wei Ran said. "Take a look yourself, and we'll talk after you've read it."

After saying that, Wei Ran hung up the phone, got up and walked out of the basement into the increasingly warm sunlight.

It was nearly two hours later when Xia Shushi called again.

"These photos are..."

"That camera from Xifengkou"

Before Xia Shushi could finish speaking, Wei Ran gave the answer, "These things were all found based on that camera."

So everyone in the photo

"I'm afraid it's all true."

Wei Ran sighed, "We'll go back to China in a few days after Sui Sui finishes her work. We'll bring these things back with us. Take a look."

"I know"

Before Wei Ran could finish speaking, Xia Shushi interjected, "I'll help you make the contact. Under whose name?"

"Use ears of grain."

Wei Ran stopped halfway through his sentence, then continued, "Let's do it in Lola's name."

"In her name?"

Xia Shushi mistakenly thought Wei Ran was still joking about his previous unsuccessful attempt to pursue Lola. "Don't joke about things like that," he said.

"I'm not kidding, let's do it in Lola's name."

Wei Ran smiled and explained, "Lola can be considered a descendant of an old friend this time, so let's officially use Lola's name. It's her who's involved."

“I understand, it was found in the attic of their old home, right?” Xia Shushi had already learned to answer quickly.

"That's right"

Wei Ran nodded and said very bluntly, "Some of them were stolen from a family in Zhaohe with the surname Xiao Gu, who are descendants of the war criminal who escaped trial."

Unfortunately, and sadly, the family had already fled after discovering the photo album had been stolen.

"They ran away?" Xia Shushi was no fool; he immediately pressed, "What kind of escape?"

“The kind of escape that you can’t find at all,” Wei Ran said calmly.

So this part

"Let's talk about this part when we get back," Wei Ran suggested.

"Alright, when do you plan to come back?" Xia Shushi asked straightforwardly.

"A few more days, after Sui Sui finishes her work here, we'll go back." Wei Ran said casually as he looked at Sui Sui walking up to him from a short distance away.

We're waiting for you to come back.

After Xia Shushi finished speaking, he hung up the phone decisively, as he needed to continue processing the contents of the photos.

"When are you planning to go back?" Sui Sui asked, hugging Wei Ran's arm.

"Wait until you're done with your work."

"I'll go with whatever you want."

“There’s no rush for this.”

Wei Ran also put his arm around her. He knew very well that Sui Sui must know what she had found this time.

"The general direction has been set; the remaining details can be left to Lola and the others."

Sui Sui yawned as she spoke, then nimbly and skillfully turned around and opened her arms, letting her man pick her up and let her cling to him. "Let's go home. It's time to get off work. I want to eat dumplings tonight."

"Then let's have dumplings."

Wei Ran hugged the girl in his arms tightly and walked towards the villa gate on the other side of the courtyard. That evening, while Wei Ran was leading a group of girls, led by Sui Sui, around the long dining table to make dumplings, it was already past midnight in Kumamoto, who was recruiting.

But on this night that should have been quiet, deep inside a hot spring inn not far from Mount Aso, which is basically not open to the public, a number of men and women gathered in a hot spring pool filled with steam.

The Furutani family has disappeared.

In a corner of the hot tub, a middle-aged man covered in tattoos—except for one with a ribbonfish—said, "Does anyone know where he went?"

I've been to his house.

A few meters away, another man covered in tattoos said, "His house was cleaned very thoroughly, and even the surrounding surveillance cameras seemed to have been removed. This is not something a petty thief could do; it's more like a premeditated escape by the whole family."

Where did they go?

In the hot tub, a short-haired woman asked a question. She seemed to have an equal status with the people around her, and of course, she also seemed to have just as many tattoos.

“A smuggler said that his family boarded a cargo ship bound for Bangkok last night,” another person in the hot tub said.

“There’s nothing left in his house, especially none of the troublesome stuff,” said the short-haired woman in the hot tub.

"It seems someone has their eye on the Owl Valley family?"

"Shouldn't we transfer what we have?" The people speaking in the hot tub lost their usual order.

"Why are you panicking?"

The first person to speak in the hot tub picked up the sake floating in front of him and drank it all in one gulp. "Kobayashi family, you should arrange for someone to take over the work of the Ootori family. The rest of you, use your respective channels to investigate whether the Ootori family was kidnapped or escaped on their own."

If they escaped, we must find out why they suddenly fled. Perhaps they had some prior warning signs of danger; this is what truly concerns the life and death of all of us.

"crash"

Before the man could finish speaking, the sliding door of the huge hot tub was violently pulled open from the outside, and a group of people carrying weapons, wearing moving company overalls but with magic headscarves on their faces, walked in.

"Who are you?" the "boss" in the hot tub asked, frowning.

Unfortunately, the people who barged in did not answer his question. Instead, the woman in the lead walked to the other side of the hot tub and opened the sliding door that faced the courtyard.

After patiently waiting for the draft to carry away the moisture in the room, the woman, who had covered her face with a magic scarf, looked around with a flashlight and pulled the short-haired middle-aged woman out of the hot tub.

"Are you Miyo Kobayashi?" the woman holding the flashlight asked with almost certainty.

"It's me," the middle-aged woman replied, suppressing her panic.

"Were you Kosuke Furutani's wife 15 years ago?" the woman holding the flashlight asked.

Yes, yes.

The short-haired woman answered hesitantly, "We were only in a political marriage at the time, and we divorced after the subprime crisis."

"That's you."

After the woman finished speaking, she waved her hand, and immediately the people around her rushed forward, either pointing guns at the heads of the people in the hot tub or stuffing towels into their mouths.

Especially the woman named Kobayashi Miyo, before her mouth was gagged, the young woman holding the flashlight had already pulled out a sharp dagger and stabbed it into her throat, cleanly slicing open her vocal cords.

Immediately afterwards, another person stuffed a towel into her mouth.

Next, under the forced gaze of those around them, several moving company employees carried in a large roll of plastic and laid it on the floor next to the hot tub.

"Our boss ordered the brutal killing of the entire Ootori family."

The woman holding the flashlight explained gently, "We don't have the opportunity to see the boss, nor are we qualified to ask if Ms. Kobayashi is still considered part of the Akatsuya family. But it's always good to be cautious. This is the source of everything she's about to suffer. Please keep quiet now."

After saying that, the woman holding the flashlight looked towards the door.

A short while later, a burly woman who was no more than 1.7 meters tall walked in.

She was wearing a pure white Japanese chef's uniform with a black apron around her waist.

In her hand, she held a long strip of cowhide, and behind her, three people carried in three aluminum alloy folding tables that were only half a meter wide and no more than a meter long.

After the three of them put two of the tables together, the food was lifted onto the table and its limbs were tied to the table legs.

Meanwhile, the female chef had already unrolled the leather scroll in her hand on the third table, revealing a series of exquisitely crafted kitchen knives.

Bending down and pulling out a classic Japanese yanagi-ba knife, the female chef personally scooped up a ladle of water and poured it over the ingredients on the table.

"puff!"

The female chef was clearly not very skilled; with her first cut, she sliced ​​off a large piece of meat that was about an inch thick.

Almost habitually, she put the piece of meat in her mouth, chewed it, then turned her head and spat it at the ground. She muttered in Mongolian, which only the translator at the door could understand, "The meat is too tough and it wasn't castrated. It smells just like a ewe's meat."

Right after that muttered remark, the knife in her hand grew sharper and sharper, and the two tables that were joined together began to shake because the food was too fresh.

When the terminal nerves of HeLa tissue excessively execute Wei Ran's demands and accidentally gain an unexpected benefit.

Master Wei himself had already instructed a group of girls to set up several large soup pots at the entrance and throw plates of dumplings with various fillings and shapes into the boiling water.

Meanwhile, at the Queen's prompting, Lu Xinda and Lola, those two little alcoholics, brought up a large barrel of cider from the basement—the last one, perfect for pairing with dumplings.

"Boss, we just had some unexpected gains."

Having been misled by someone, Anfia, who strictly adhered to the tradition of eating hot dumplings by the pot, went to Chef Wei with a bowl of vinegar and switched her language system to Italian, which most people couldn't understand.

"Talk about it"

As Wei Ran spoke, he scooped five little rabbit shapes into the other person's bowl. They had heads, ears, and tails, but they could barely be considered dumplings.

"Following the clues from Xiaogu, we unexpectedly discovered some people."

"These people seem to be involved in distorting history and whitewashing dark history," Anfia said.

"so what?"

As Wei Ran asked the question, he picked up a strainer and filled the bowl that Anfisa was extending with his hand with five things that could barely be considered dumplings.

"These people all have a number of photos with similar content in their homes, more or less."

After finishing her first steaming dumpling while breathing out hot air, Anfia said, "There are at least a hundred or so. The Hela girls feel that things are out of control, so they urgently asked what to do."

"Master your knife skills"

Wei Ran also put five dumplings, which were actually dumplings, into Liu Bofu's bowl, who had also come over. "I will personally assess her on September 18th."

"I'll arrange it right away."

Although Anfia said that, she actually just picked up the second dumpling, gently bit it open, and then skillfully drowned it in sweet vinegar—dumplings should be eaten while they're hot.

Go read the new book, and while you're at it, please give me a trillion Gold Alliance Master rewards.