After they devoured the meal and had eaten and drunk their fill, the group cleared the bowls and chopsticks into the sink. Yuan Yue consciously stayed behind, rolling up his sleeves. “I’ll wash the dishes. Captain Huo, you and Ji Xun can discuss the case first. I’ll join you after I’m done cleaning up.”
Huo Ranyin looked at Yuan Yue, then at Ji Xun.
Ji Xun felt that this gaze was full of profound meaning, as if to say: With a performance like this, you think you can win Captain Yuan’s heart?
No, thank you, I really don’t want to.
Ji Xun shivered, draped an arm over Huo Ranyin’s shoulder, and dragged him directly out of the kitchen. “Be honest.”
Huo Ranyin: “About what?”
“What exactly did you come to my house for today?” Ji Xun questioned. “If you needed to communicate a clue, couldn’t you have just sent a text message?”
“As if I had your phone number,” Huo Ranyin scoffed.
In truth, Huo Ranyin hadn’t wanted to come either.
But as expected, the story of him and Ji Xun getting swept up in the vice raid had spread widely through the bureau. One by one, his female colleagues came over to gawk with giggles. Gawking was one thing, but they also hinted, both overtly and covertly, that he should check Ji Xun’s social media feed.
He wanted to look, but how could he when he didn’t have access?
Finally, when the main culprit, Tan Mingjiu, dared to come and provoke him, he snatched Tan Mingjiu’s phone for a look and finally saw Ji Xun’s post wailing about having no food.
Of course, Huo Ranyin wouldn’t run over to deliver food to Ji Xun just because of one social media post. It was just that he happened to be going to the Third Hospital in the afternoon to investigate something, and Ji Xun’s home was near the hospital. Before starting his work, he conveniently bought a box of chocolates to drop off. He had originally planned to leave right after dropping them off, but then…
He hadn’t expected Yuan Yue to be there, and he certainly hadn’t expected to stay for a meal.
“…No phone number is no phone number. It’s not like it’s stopped us from meeting and communicating,” Ji Xun paused for a few seconds before calmly replying. “Let’s be efficient and talk business while we’re meeting. What are the current clues and questions in the case?”
“There’s one thing I still haven’t figured out regarding Tang Jinglong’s body: after dismembering him, why on earth did the killer take his head?”
“Wow, great minds think alike.” Ji Xun whistled in appreciation. “Real-life police officers are so different from those in detective novels, so sharp and witty—I had the same question. A headless body, in a classic detective novel, would a hundred percent be a case of substitution. But that doesn’t hold up in this case. Tang Jinglong was a suspect in Xi Lei’s case, and his DNA is on file at the police station. The killer taking the head to conceal his identity becomes a meaningless and superfluous act.”
“Plus, considering the way the body was posed and the color of the plastic bags used to wrap it, there’s no doubt the killer completed this murder and dismemberment with the mentality of putting on a show. A show is meant to be seen by everyone. Analyzed this way, there’s even less reason to scatter the body parts. Surely the killer isn’t some perverted serial killer who collects victims’ limbs as trophies?”
“A plot from a novel,” Huo Ranyin sneered.
“I wouldn’t write it like that,” Ji Xun corrected Huo Ranyin’s prejudice. “After all, logic determines…”
“‘Logic determines everything, and of course, it also determines the truth’?”
“Captain Huo has read my novels?” Ji Xun was surprised.
Huo Ranyin was silent at first, then huffed, “I haven’t. I don’t want to. That famous detective catchphrase from your novel is printed right on the cover.”
At this point, Huo Ranyin let out a soft sigh. He felt the two of them were standing too close. Ji Xun was encroaching on his personal space for breathing, and that hand on his shoulder… Huo Ranyin raised his hand, extended an index finger, and touched Ji Xun’s hand. He lifted Ji Xun’s fingers off his shoulder one by one, then gave a quick poke to push his entire hand off his shoulder.
He said coldly, “Have some sense of propriety.”
Ji Xun was stunned. I just put an arm on your shoulder, where’s the lack of propriety? It wasn’t until he noticed that although Huo Ranyin was facing the floor-to-ceiling window, the corner of his eye was constantly observing the activity in the kitchen that he suddenly understood.
Ji Xun scoffed, leaned back, and rested his body against the floor-to-ceiling window. “Is this okay? Enough propriety for you now?”
This was indeed proper. Huo Ranyin was satisfied and began to talk about Xu Xinran.
He briefly recounted the various situations that occurred during Xu Xinran’s interrogation and his testimony. Just as he finished, Ji Xun let out a laugh.
“You guys were played.”
“What do you mean?”
“A very cunning fellow,” Ji Xun said playfully. “It seems like he confessed everything, but in reality, he confessed nothing.”
“He confessed a very important clue,” Huo Ranyin said in a low voice. “Tang Jinglong’s suspected involvement in organ trafficking.”
“Correct, Tang Jinglong was involved in organ trafficking. And him? He’s just a regular, unremarkable doctor with a bit of a gambling problem who did an under-the-table surgery. He merely stepped over a line but pulled back before truly breaking the law. All the mistakes, all the sins, they all fall on Tang Jinglong, right?”
Ji Xun went through the timeline point by point:
“Look at the timing of his confessions during the interrogation. You caught him at eleven at night and started questioning him at midnight. For a full eight hours, from midnight to morning, no matter how the pre-trial officers tried, the suspect remained silent. His psychological fortitude and willpower must be quite impressive, wouldn’t you say? For someone with that kind of mental strength to suddenly start talking at 8:00 AM, and once he started, he spilled everything like beans from a bamboo tube—don’t you find that a little strange?”
“Everyone has a breaking point. Once that line is crossed, it’s like a bag breaking open; everything naturally spills out,” Huo Ranyin said.
“You have a point, but let’s look at the timeline again,” Ji Xun continued. “According to regulations, the interrogation of a suspect can last a maximum of 24 hours. You only used eight and a half hours, with plenty of time remaining. Why did you let him go directly?”
“…”
“Because his lawyer arrived,” Ji Xun said. “Just as he revealed the information about Tang Jinglong’s involvement in organ trafficking, shaking the special task force, his lawyer conveniently arrived and requested his client’s release. The police discussed it internally and felt they had already pried a crucial clue from the suspect. Their goal was achieved, so there was no need to clash with the lawyer, which would only lead to more legal troubles. So they let the suspect go, right?”
Ji Xun patted Huo Ranyin’s shoulder.
“A urologist is a level-ten expert at pulling all-nighters. In this psychological game that began with sleep deprivation, you lost. To use gaming terms, you were like a noob who thought he was the MVP. A bit like an idiot detective from a novel, don’t you think?”
Ji Xun’s words were logical and hit upon the small doubt Huo Ranyin had felt after watching the entire interrogation. He couldn’t refute it and could only say unhappily, “What, have you never been an idiot detective in your police career?”
“Of course, I have,” Ji Xun admitted frankly.
There was nothing to deny. Making mistakes is normal. Everyone is human. Not only are suspects under pressure, but the police are too. Besides pressure, the police have many other concerns.
“But being an idiot detective is in the past.”
Ji Xun turned his head, met Huo Ranyin’s eyes, and brought two fingers together, tapping them dashingly against his forehead.
“The me of now is the author… of a brilliant detective.”
After a second of being dashing, Ji Xun returned to his listless state. He continued to lean against the window, shoulders slumped, body sagging. “There’s another clue. Have you unearthed it yet?”
“Are you talking about the illegal surrogacy?”
“Yeah.” Ji Xun yawned. After lunch, he was getting sleepy again. “I’m guessing it wasn’t just Lu Danying.”
“Correct, it certainly wasn’t just her,” Huo Ranyin said. “We went through the business cards in Tang Jinglong’s safe and found some unique families: several well-off couples who took a trip abroad and came back with a child, all claiming the child was born overseas. Through these couples, we discovered more surrogate mothers, and the results were unexpected…”
“Perhaps not so unexpected,” Ji Xun added.
“You knew again.”
“Because these things are predictable,” Ji Xun said leisurely. “But being predictable doesn’t mean it can be changed. Once it can’t be changed, that prediction becomes a tragedy—ah, don’t mind me, it’s just a third-rate novelist being overly sentimental.”
It wasn’t being overly sentimental.
Huo Ranyin remembered his meetings with those women. These meetings were beyond his imagination, and clearly beyond Wen Yangyang’s imagination as well. Wen Yangyang, the only female officer in the Second Criminal Investigation Unit, had previously gone to Zhou City to track Tang Jinglong’s movements. Now she was finally back and had immediately started participating in the surrogacy investigation. Since surrogacy is a crime involving women, having a female officer was much more convenient.
They thought they would meet a group of women who had been forced, threatened, or deceived. But in reality, they met a group of… glamorous urban women. Most drove cars, a few owned property, and almost all were impeccably dressed, adorned with jewelry, and faintly scented with perfume.
He tried asking questions, but not a single woman spoke up. Later, Wen Yangyang, using her fresh and innocent baby face that made her look like an 18-year-old, went to talk to them one by one in a casual, chatty manner. By the time she returned to the office, she looked dazed, as if she had been poisoned by black humor for three days and three nights.
She said, “Not a single one was forced. They were all willing. Tang Jinglong wasn’t involved in the specifics; he only acted as a middleman. He knew a lot of rich people, and many of them had this need. He connected the two sides, one wanting to buy, one wanting to sell, and they would strike a deal. Tang Jinglong also had some sense of contract ethics, cash on delivery, no delays. They even thought Tang Jinglong was a great benefactor with powerful connections. Forget about standing up to identify Tang Jinglong; when they learned he was dead, a few of them even cried, saying ‘good people don’t live long.’ I mentioned Lu Danying, but no one cared. They all thought Lu Danying was stingy, earning so much money but not willing to spend some to hire a postpartum nanny… Oh, and they were annoyed that we were meddling, stopping them from selling their wombs. They were very hostile towards us. It’s ridiculous.”
After venting, Wen Yangyang brought up another clue.
“By the way, I also asked them about Xi Lei. They knew her. They said Xi Lei had approached them once and asked some questions about their illegal surrogacy, but it was just that one time. They never saw her again after that.”
Huo Ranyin relayed these things to Ji Xun.
He spoke in a flat tone, and Ji Xun listened just as flatly. For things he had already foreseen, there was no surprise. He only said, “That’s a bit strange.”
“What’s strange?”
“Tang Jinglong is dead, and the investigation into him personally has made some progress. But I still don’t understand which secret Xi Lei died for. Regarding the organ trafficking, Xu Xinran’s account was not entirely truthful, so we shouldn’t take it too seriously until further investigation yields results. As for the illegal surrogacy, on the surface, it doesn’t seem like Xi Lei intended to delve deep into it. What exactly did Xi Lei know that made Tang Jinglong feel so deeply threatened that he had to kill her?”
“…” Huo Ranyin was silent for a long moment, then said with no small amount of sarcasm, “Has Specialist Ji handled so many horrifying cases in the past that he now considers illegal surrogacy and organ trafficking to be trivial matters?”
“I wouldn’t say trivial, but they certainly don’t give me that ‘aha, all the logic fits, this is the answer’ feeling. If nothing else, at the scene of Xi Lei’s murder, there’s still a disturbing element with no answer—those nineteen eyeless dolls.”
As Ji Xun said this, a faint glimmer of inspiration flashed through his mind. But the light was too dim and too swift, like a shooting star that vanished in an instant, leaving only the lingering afterimage of its tail, making him desperately want to catch it.
As his thoughts deepened, he lost control of his body. The shoulder leaning against the glass began to slide, and his whole body looked like it was about to slip from the glass to the floor.
Huo Ranyin endured it for a while, but couldn’t hold back any longer. He took a step forward, put a hand on Ji Xun’s waist, and prepared to lift him up.
Ji Xun awoke from his meditation, his gaze falling on Huo Ranyin’s hand wrapped around his waist.
He whistled and teased Huo Ranyin with his own words from earlier: “Where’s that sense of propriety?”
As luck would have it, Yuan Yue had just finished washing the dishes and came out of the kitchen, saying, “What have you two been talking about?”
Startled, Huo Ranyin, with his back to the kitchen, instinctively tightened his arm. And just like that, Ji Xun, who had been stuck to the window, was pulled directly into Huo Ranyin’s arms. As their chests collided, Ji Xun felt the man’s entire body tense up.
This jumpy reaction… tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk.
Ji Xun clicked his tongue five times in his mind and deliberately made trouble. He relaxed his neck, letting his chin rest softly on Huo Ranyin’s shoulder. First, he waved to Yuan Yue, “Hey, you’re done.” Then, he turned his head and mocked Huo Ranyin by his ear, “Such a phony.”
Huo Ranyin’s face was taut as he pushed Ji Xun away. This time he used more force, pushing Ji Xun directly onto the sofa. Not to be outdone, Ji Xun tried to hook Huo Ranyin down with his foot, but the police captain’s stance was incredibly stable. He let Ji Xun hook all he wanted, then simply lifted his leg and walked far away, not giving him so much as a sideways glance.
Yuan Yue saw it all.
They were surprisingly intimate. It seemed that exchanging WeChat contacts had indeed broken the ice between them and brought their relationship a step further. Yuan Yue felt a sense of satisfaction, like he had successfully matched a new pair of friends. He spoke up, “Let’s talk about the clues. Have you come up with anything new?”
Hearing this, Ji Xun instantly went mute.
“Captain Huo can talk,” he pushed the matter directly to Huo Ranyin, closed his eyes, stretched out his legs, and went back to communing with the universe.
“Actually, there’s not much…” Huo Ranyin took over and recounted everything he and Ji Xun had just discussed. During his retelling, Ji Xun remained silent, pretending to be asleep the whole time, which made Huo Ranyin look at him a couple of extra times.
It seemed that last night in the car, Ji Xun was telling the truth about not wanting to cooperate with the police. Not even Yuan Yue was an exception.
After everything was said, the three fell into silence. The atmosphere became a bit awkward and dull, as if they had entered garbage time.
Huo Ranyin stood up. “I should get going. I need to go to the Third Hospital later.”
Yuan Yue followed. “Let’s go together.”
As long as they weren’t talking about the case, anything was fine.
“I’ll see you out.” Ji Xun instantly flew back from the universe, proactively pulled open the apartment door, and pressed the elevator button for Yuan Yue and Huo Ranyin.
Soon, the elevator stopped at their floor and the doors opened. A neighboring auntie carrying large bags of things came out. She nodded and smiled at Ji Xun as she passed, and Ji Xun returned a polite smile. As he looked down, he saw various New Year’s goods peeking out of her bags.
The glimmer of inspiration flashed through Ji Xun’s mind again.
Huo Ranyin and Yuan Yue had already walked into the elevator. Yuan Yue said “See you later” to Ji Xun and raised his hand to press the close button.
The elevator doors slowly closed, the world outside becoming narrower and narrower.
In the final moment before they shut completely, a hand suddenly shot in. Amidst Yuan Yue’s stunned expression, Ji Xun pulled Huo Ranyin, who was standing in the elevator, right out!
The elevator doors closed the final gap.
Ji Xun looked down at Huo Ranyin, who had fallen into his arms unexpectedly, and said, “Little policeman brother, I’m taking a lawyer to Xi Lei’s hometown tomorrow to discuss moving her grave. Want to come along? It might be interesting, trust me.”
“Don’t mess around…” Huo Ranyin’s ears were red and itchy. He squeezed a sentence out through his teeth, “If you have the guts, wait until I’m off work.”
“Ha.” Ji Xun was about to continue when, with another “ding,” the just-closed elevator doors opened again. Yuan Yue had clearly used the hand speed of a veteran criminal officer to press the open button at the critical moment.
Taking advantage of the remaining gap, Ji Xun whispered in Huo Ranyin’s ear, “Why wait until you’re off work? You didn’t wait until you were off work when you pulled me around earlier. This is called fairness and reciprocity, tit for tat.”
The doors opened, and Yuan Yue teased, “What was so important that you had to say it at the last second, a secret I couldn’t hear?”
In the hallway, Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin had already sprung apart, standing far from each other, looking as proper as could be.
“I was asking Captain Huo if he wanted to go play with me tomorrow,” Ji Xun said. “I didn’t dare let you hear my plans to slack off.”
“Not going,” Huo Ranyin said with a faint expression. “Boring.”
“You’re the one who refused.” Ji Xun crossed his arms, leaned against the elevator door, and smiled roguishly. “Don’t regret it. There’s no cure for that.”
