Room 602, Building 2, Huatian District, Xiaohe Road, Yi’an County.
Yuan Yue was standing right here.
It wasn’t much different from his memory. The door was still the same iron door, only more rusted and mottled. The corridor was still the same corridor; even the small advertisements pasted on the walls hadn’t changed much.
Yi’an County was one of Yuan Yue’s hometowns.
For the nine years from elementary school to junior high, he had lived in Yi’an County with his parents, right across from Room 602.
He raised his hand and knocked on the door.
Time is a solemnly dressed woman; with a gentle shake of her elaborate skirt, she sweeps people back into the past of their memories.
22 years ago, Yuan Yue was 12 years old, in the sixth grade of elementary school.
A major incident had occurred in the county, but his parents were unwilling to tell him and even warned him not to ask around. Yuan Yue was obedient and never curious, dutifully going to school and coming home. When other children wanted to whisper secrets to him, he would refuse if he sensed even a hint of that “major incident.”
Because he had promised his parents, and a promise made must be kept.
Until one afternoon, the weather was clear, the orange-red sun burning half the sky, and the clouds rolled up like flames of a sea of fire, wandering in the azure blue. Yuan Yue was doing his homework at his desk when he suddenly heard a thud.
The flower box outside his window shook, and a huge black ball fell onto it, then bounced into the room.
It was as if the sun had fallen from the sky.
It was as if a UFO had flown into his home.
It was as if all the fantastical stories he had read in books now had a basis in reality.
Then the black ball that had fallen into the room unfurled. It was a man with a stubbled face and a tall, sturdy build, wiping away cold sweat and breathing out a long sigh. He was not some fantasy creature; he was Uncle Cai from next door.
And both his and Uncle Cai’s apartments were on the sixth floor.
Yuan Yue looked at the high window, far from the ground.
Uncle Cai patted Yuan Yue’s head, his fan-sized palm making Yuan Yue sway. “You’re old Yuan’s kid, right? Wow, you’re so big now. A bit thin, eat more. You’re only cute when you’re sturdy.”
Yuan Yue: “…”
“By the way, little guy, you don’t have anti-theft bars installed. You have to lock the window, or thieves will pay a visit. Do you know what thieves are? They hook a hook on the roof, jump down, fly like bats, crawl like spiders, swish swish swish, and they’re in your house. Then they’ll roll up all your valuables and be gone…”
Uncle Cai grumbled.
“What a crappy construction company. None of the promised gardens, pavilions, or swimming pools are here. Nothing matches the blueprints. They built illegal structures and still want to charge us property management fees. And they say we can’t install our own anti-theft bars for the sake of aesthetics. Pfft, beautiful my foot. If it’s so beautiful, why not daydream, fly to the moon, and marry Chang’e as your wife?”
Yuan Yue: “…”
He didn’t understand and stared blankly at Uncle Cai.
“This kid, never talking, why so dazed?”
Uncle Cai didn’t linger for the woodenly stunned child. After glancing left and right like a thief, he opened Yuan Yue’s security door and quietly slipped away.
Yuan Yue stood at the door, about to close it, when he heard a woman’s crying from the apartment opposite, as well as the angry voice of Uncle Cai’s son. Uncle Cai’s son was in the fourth grade this year, two years younger than him.
But he seemed much smarter than him. That kid from the old Yuan family always reacted half a beat slower than other children. Could he be a dummy?
That’s what people in the neighborhood gossiped behind his back. He heard the other boy shout:
“Stop crying! That old guy is a huge idiot! He can’t solve the case, doesn’t dare to see you, and ran away! It’s useless for you to stay in our house!”
…
For several days after, life went on as usual. The only interlude was that two days after the incident, Yuan Yue went to his mother and asked for the video camera. It had been several days, and he only just realized that he couldn’t forget the big black ball that had suddenly jumped onto his window.
It would be great if the big black ball came again.
His mother suggested he become a journalist in the future, as journalists could record interesting things. He thought this made a lot of sense, because he wanted to record this scene. He even wrote in his composition:
“I want to have a pair of beautiful eyes that can discover the interesting things around me; I also want a pair of nimble hands that can carry a camera and record these scenes…”
And then the big black ball jumped onto his window again.
This time, it couldn’t jump straight in because Yuan Yue had followed the advice and checked the window lock every day. Except for an hour of ventilation in the morning and evening, the window was kept strictly locked at all other times.
A series of knocks urged Yuan Yue to open the window. When Yuan Yue opened it, the man quickly jumped in, looking with lingering fear at the cracked wooden flower box. “You kid, why are you so stubborn? You listen to whatever I say and actually locked the window? What if I needed to get in and you made the window fall off, what then?”
“Mom and Dad said I should listen to things that make sense,” Yuan Yue answered.
“This unlucky kid…” Uncle Cai said angrily. “Go, go, open the door and take a look. See if there’s anyone blocking the hallway. Those people are all here to give your uncle gifts, but your uncle is a policeman and can’t make mistakes. So you take a quiet look. If there’s someone, don’t make a sound, just come back and tell me, understand?”
Yuan Yue nodded obediently, but in the next second, he added, “Uncle is lying. Those people aren’t here to give gifts. They want Uncle to solve the case, but Uncle is useless and can’t solve it.”
A flush of shame and anger appeared on the man’s sun-tanned face.
“Hey, I say, are you doing this on purpose? Did you learn this from that little brat of mine? No respect for your elders!”
…
That afternoon, the staircase was constantly blocked by people, and Uncle Cai was never able to leave.
He had to stay in Yuan Yue’s room, playing on Yuan Yue’s game console, eating Yuan Yue’s snacks, and boasting to Yuan Yue, telling him many stories about criminal police and solving cases.
In his stories, criminal police were brave and wise, protecting the good and punishing the evil. Even the smallest clue was the key to unlocking the truth. Yuan Yue moved a small stool and sat beside him. Later, under Uncle Cai’s direction, he peeled apples and oranges. These stories were full of suspenseful charm, and he listened with great interest, his imagination running wild. That afternoon was great.
The only problem was when it got dark, the people outside left, and Uncle Cai also went home. His parents returned and asked him if he had played games and eaten snacks in the afternoon.
Yuan Yue honestly shook his head, but he didn’t rat out Uncle Cai because Uncle Cai had told him to keep it a secret and not tell anyone.
So he got a severe beating and had trouble walking for several days.
…
Some time passed. No one came to block Uncle Cai’s way anymore, and Uncle Cai no longer jumped onto his window from the flower box.
He saw Uncle Cai again at the bottom of the apartment building.
In the open space below, two groups of people were standing. One group was led by Uncle Cai, all policemen. This neighborhood was a collective housing project for police, so most of the residents were police officers. Only their family had moved in from outside. On the other side was the property management, which was a subordinate department of the neighborhood’s development company.
Yuan Yue had heard his parents discussing that the boss of this development company was originally a local ruffian who had boldly contracted real estate but hadn’t shed his gangster habits. He cut corners when building houses and acted tough when homeowners protested.
This was not the first conflict between Uncle Cai’s group and the property management, but this time the conflict was particularly large.
With a long honk of a car horn, a truck arrived. The doors opened, and dozens of sturdy men in camouflage uniforms got out, standing next to the property management staff, facing off against Uncle Cai and his group.
The two sides cursed at each other, then started pushing and shoving.
Yuan Yue lay on the windowsill watching for a long time. He found the scene magical and raised his video camera.
…
Yuan Yue learned about what happened later from his parents’ idle chat at the dinner table.
That day, after a brief shoving match, the conflict between the police led by Uncle Cai and the camouflage-clad men led by the property management escalated into a group brawl involving over a hundred people from both sides.
The camouflage-clad men were professional thugs and didn’t lose out against the police. Both sides ended up in the hospital with bloody heads. But after getting to the hospital, the property management unexpectedly reported to the police first, filing a complaint that the police had beaten people up.
The situation was very serious.
“Sigh, I heard that all the police who participated in the fight this time will be severely dealt with, all of them fired.”
“Why is the punishment so heavy? It was the property management that was bullying people too much, and the homeowners were just collectively resisting. They can’t be denied the right to defend themselves as homeowners just because they are police. Taking a step back, the law does not punish the masses!”
“What ‘the law does not punish the masses’? It’s all over the newspapers. The headline is ‘The Black Sheep in the Police Force.’ They’re masters at blowing things out of proportion. I think the real estate company paid off the media. The fight was in the afternoon, and the report came out in the evening. Who would believe that!”
“Speaking of which, it was also old Cai and his group who were too careless. The ones who start the fight are definitely in the wrong…”
Yuan Yue had been listening up to this point and spoke up: “But it wasn’t Uncle Cai and his group who started it, it was the other side.”
His parents told him: “Children shouldn’t interrupt when adults are talking.”
Yuan Yue: “The teacher taught us that being right or wrong has nothing to do with age. In a group of three, there must be one I can learn from. It wasn’t Uncle Cai and his group who started it. It was the camouflage uniforms from the property management side who started it. I filmed it with Mom’s video camera.”
…
That night, Yuan Yue accompanied his father to the police station and handed over the video camera.
The chubby police chief personally came out, watched the footage from the camera over and over, and then, his face flushed with excitement, he patted the little boy’s shoulder several times. “You kid, you have promise! At such a young age, you already know how to uphold justice!”
Later, Uncle Cai and the others were fine. The boss who built the houses went to prison, and the property management company was disbanded.
At the young age of 12, Yuan Yue had successfully saved the careers of several police officers with a piece of evidence he had casually filmed. At the celebratory banquet afterwards, everyone was very happy and drunk. Only Yuan Yue, being underage, could only walk around with a glass of fruit juice, toasting with every uncle who toasted him, drinking until his little belly was round.
Finally, he walked up to Uncle Cai.
Uncle Cai’s face was also flushed, and he patted his shoulder forcefully just like the chief. “Good kid, you’ve got it. You’ve got one-tenth of your Uncle Cai’s flair. You can brag about what happened today for the rest of your life!”
“I don’t want to brag for a lifetime.”
Yuan Yue looked up at Uncle Cai. He didn’t want to be a journalist anymore. From the moment Uncle Cai jumped onto his windowsill on a crimson evening, life had become an exciting story. The fiery clouds curling in the azure sky that day were hidden in the bottom of his heart, dyeing his imagined future with fantastical colors.
“I want to be a police officer. I want to uphold justice. I want to solve more cases.”
The bowl of noodles at noon was not a pleasant experience. After they finished eating, both of them subconsciously pressed their stomachs, trying to erase the heavy, strange feeling.
Then they continued their work.
Understanding Lian Dazhang’s past was the first step. Next, they had to investigate matters concerning Xin Yongchu. In Xin Yongchu’s file, his father had died, and his mother had remarried, starting a new family very early on.
They paid a visit. Xin Yongchu’s mother was much like Lian Dazhang’s mother; she showed impatience at their arrival and had no desire to talk about anything related to Xin Yongchu, only saying she had forgotten. Perhaps she really had forgotten long ago.
The two made no progress and so turned to Accountant Tang’s home. They had consulted the police station; Accountant Tang’s mother was still alive and lived next door to the house where Accountant Tang had died.
They followed the address given by the police station and arrived at their destination.
The destination was somewhat unbelievable. It was less a residence and more a forgotten field of reeds. The messy reeds grew to a person’s height, and Accountant Tang’s mother’s residence was deep within this reed patch.
To get in, they had to first trek through the wilderness and clear a path.
“Has this piece of land never been developed?” Ji Xun asked, sizing up the area ahead.
“Because Accountant Tang’s mother is unwilling. She insists on guarding the empty house where her son was murdered, saying she will keep it for as long as it takes, until the day the case is solved. No matter how much money or how many houses they offer her, she won’t move. She’s a lonely old woman, what would she do with so many houses? Who would she leave them to?” Huo Ranyin replied.
Ji Xun said no more.
Accountant Tang was in his forties when he died. Twenty-two years had passed, so his mother should be over eighty now.
An eighty-year-old woman had one less day with each passing day. When she went to sleep today, she didn’t know if she would wake up tomorrow. Perhaps this last wish was all she had left in her life.
After walking through the reeds for about three minutes, the two finally saw the house.
It was a rural mud-brick house, and a dilapidated one at that. A brick was missing here, a little rain leaked in there. Even just standing outside and looking at it felt dangerous.
But the inside of the house was clean and tidy. The old lady living inside, with her shaky hair and loose teeth, and staggering gait, still tried her best to clean her surroundings, insisting on living well every day she had left.
“Ma’am,” Huo Ranyin began, “I’m from the police station…”
He had only said that one sentence when the old woman’s cloudy eyes, sitting in her rocking chair, suddenly became clear, as if the morning sun had defeated the twilight. She once again possessed a vibrant life force.
