“Officer, please don’t misunderstand. I’m not a bad person.”
In the interrogation room at the police station, the man in the fisherman’s hat who had just been brought in looked nervous. He was a middle-aged man with a small mustache. His phone’s lock screen was a photo of a family of three. A check of his identity and work information revealed he was an employee of a public institution and owned a house and a car.
A stable family, a smooth career, and some assets meant that in society, he was a very stable element.
Such a middle-aged man indeed did not seem like someone who would engage in much illegal activity; the cost of doing so was too high for them.
Ji Xun thought idly, crossing his legs and continuing to listen to the conversation in the interrogation room.
“Name.”
“Xu Shuoguo.”
“Why were you following Bei Jia and her daughter?”
“I want to report something!”
This answer was unexpected. Huo Ranyin raised an eyebrow.
“Report?”
“My son is Lian Panpan’s classmate. Lian Panpan is attending a tutoring class,” Xu Shuoguo said.
“And?”
“Officer, I can tell you don’t have kids, do you?”
“…”
“Look, other kids are in tutoring, but my kid isn’t. Won’t he fall behind? One step behind, always behind. Tell me, how could I not follow them, not report it?”
“Hey, you’ve got it tough,” Tan Mingjiu hissed. He was curious. “But if you think your kid can’t keep up, why not send him to a tutoring class?”
Xu Shuoguo’s face fell. “Don’t tutoring classes cost money? And forget the money, some of them have ridiculously high entry requirements. Officer, have you heard the news about some schools requiring both parents to have master’s degrees and one to be a full-time stay-at-home tutor?”
Tan Mingjiu rubbed his bald head.
Xu Shuoguo continued, “I heard from a teacher I know that the ‘Fuxing Education’ program Lian Panpan is in has hired teachers from top city schools to teach. But their locations are very secretive, changing every two or three classes. So I followed them to take pictures.”
After finishing, he emphasized again:
“The Ministry of Education stipulates that active teachers are not allowed to run or participate in after-school tutoring. I am proactively upholding the country’s laws and regulations. Even if some of my actions were inappropriate, they are excusable, and… it’s not a crime, right? You won’t notify my workplace, will you?”
Huo Ranyin came out of the interrogation room.
“What do you think?”
“Educational institutions and teachers using parents to report each other. The education system is full of schemes these days; it’s most likely true,” Ji Xun said. He tossed the phone in his hand to Huo Ranyin; it was Xu Shuoguo’s phone. “His social media feed is just forwards of articles written by educational institutions selling anxiety: ‘Only When Your Child is Good, Are You Good,’ ‘Ten Key Points to Understanding Your Child,’ ‘They Got Promoted with Six-Figure Salaries, But Ended Up Regretting It for Life.’ Looking at the chat groups he’s in, it’s all related content—oh, here comes another request to forward something.”
Huo Ranyin saw it too.
Just now, in the Fuxing Education group chat, the institution’s teacher had @-mentioned all members.
“Dear parents, various illegal and criminal issues have been rampant lately. I hope everyone pays attention to safety and reminds their children to be careful as well. Children are the future flowers of our country, and there can be no mistakes in their cultivation for them to bloom beautifully. Please forward the latest content on my social media feed to understand the relevant events and raise your vigilance.”
Parents, if not treating teachers like gods, were generally responsive to their requests.
Immediately after the teacher made the request, the parents responded one after another. Several new, identical posts quickly popped up on Xu Shuoguo’s social media feed. One could imagine that another viral post was about to be born.
Huo Ranyin turned off Xu Shuoguo’s phone and spoke to Tan Mingjiu inside, “Give him a lecture, have him sign, and then let him go.”
He turned back to Ji Xun. “Are you busy tonight?”
Ji Xun hummed. “Thinking of following Lian Panpan? No problem, I’ll go with you.”
Today’s visit to Lian Dazhang’s home had yielded another discovery.
While they were paying attention to the stalker Xu Shuoguo outside, they saw climbing marks on the window of Lian Panpan’s room, and the bushes below were trampled and askew. But neither Lian Dazhang’s couple nor Lian Panpan had mentioned seeing a thief or having anything stolen recently. A thief casing the place could be ruled out. And if the couple wanted to leave the house, they wouldn’t choose this method.
That only left Lian Panpan.
Lian Panpan was climbing out the window to sneak out of the house—and this kind of behavior usually happened late at night.
At eleven o’clock that night, Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin once again arrived outside the residential complex where Lian Dazhang lived.
The light in Lian Panpan’s room went out at around 11:05 PM.
Huo Ranyin watched the window, while Ji Xun yawned, lowered his seat, took off his jacket to cover his head, and then a muffled voice came from under the clothes:
“You watch, I’ll sleep for a bit first. Lian Panpan won’t come out this early—she has to wait for her mom to be sound asleep. The trampled weeds around the bushes indicate she runs out frequently. Even if we don’t catch her tonight, we can catch her tomorrow night, or the night after.”
“What does she do out every night?” Huo Ranyin sounded more like he was talking to himself.
“Clubbing, cosplaying, gaming. Anything is possible except studying. The more strictly her parents watch her during the day, the wilder she gets when she’s free at night,” Ji Xun’s voice was tinged with drowsiness. “No wonder she’s always sleep-deprived.”
He was also always sleep-deprived.
He wanted to sleep but couldn’t.
Not long after, around 12:20 AM, he saw movement and nudged Huo Ranyin with his shoulder.
Huo Ranyin saw it too.
A corner of the curtain in Lian Panpan’s window was lifted. A fully dressed Lian Panpan pushed open the window, stepped onto the windowsill, jumped to the ground, and even turned back to close the window behind her.
Then she jogged all the way out of the complex and went straight to a white BMW parked on the side of the road.
She got in the car.
The BMW drove forward.
Huo Ranyin stepped on the gas and followed.
The journey wasn’t very far. The BMW circled the city a few times and stopped in front of a hotel.
Then the car door opened, and a middle-aged man got out of the driver’s seat, followed by Lian Panpan.
They entered the hotel.
Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin didn’t rush to follow immediately. Lian Panpan had just seen them that morning. Following too closely risked exposure. They waited in the car until they saw a light suddenly turn on in a room on the second floor.
“204,” Ji Xun estimated the room number. “The rooms on either side are dark. Hotel walls are thin. If we get the room next door and put our ears to the wall, we should be able to hear their conversation.”
Huo Ranyin nodded, entered the hotel, and went to the front desk, but did not show his police ID.
It was still just the suspicion stage; they tried to avoid alerting their target.
They also had to consider that if Lian Panpan was innocent and unrelated to the case, being followed and questioned by a criminal police officer late at night would somewhat affect her reputation.
“A room, please. Is 205 available? It’s my lucky number,” Ji Xun casually made up an excuse.
“Yes,” the receptionist said. “205 is a king-sized bed room, is that okay?”
“No problem.”
The two smoothly got the room card, went upstairs, swiped the card, and closed the door.
They pressed their ears to the wall and, sure enough, heard a conversation from inside—
It was Lian Panpan’s voice.
“My dad is out of the hospital.”
“Then tonight…” It was another person’s voice.
Ji Xun hadn’t seen this person’s face, only knowing it was a middle-aged man. This age could be connected to Xin Yongchu.
Ji Xun listened carefully.
“It’s more troublesome. I had to wait for him to open the door and secretly check on me,” Lian Panpan’s complaint carried a child’s petulance and coldness. “Why didn’t the silver nitrate kill him.”
Sometimes you really don’t know what a child is capable of.
“If he had really died, there would have been trouble. The current result is acceptable.”
There was a “crash.”
Lian Panpan seemed extremely unwilling, smashing something glass-like on the ground. After a moment, she said, “Did you bring the thing I asked for last time?”
Thing? What thing?
Ji Xun thought, listening patiently. But after that sentence, the room next door suddenly fell silent. There was only the faintest sound of footsteps, and a “whoosh—”
Huo Ranyin whispered a reminder, “Bathroom.”
Right, the whooshing sound was the bathroom faucet being turned on, the sound of running water.
The two people next door seemed to have both gone into the bathroom.
Ji Xun straightened up and went to the bathroom.
The hotel bathroom was not large, divided into wet and dry areas. There was a small bathtub inside, a sit-in type, installed in the corner where the walls met, in a triangular shape.
Ji Xun first went to the sink area. The faucet sound he had just heard came from the sink.
But there was a cabinet above the sink. With the cabinet in the way, he couldn’t hear anything.
He avoided the cabinet and listened with difficulty in the gap between the bathtub and the sink.
Lian Panpan was still talking, but they seemed to have turned on the showerhead. The loud sound of water covered their conversation. It was indeed a good way to protect privacy.
Ji Xun thought to himself.
They were cautious enough, which fit the profile of the mastermind behind the poisoning case.
But—it was really too much trouble to listen.
“Knock, knock.”
The wall was tapped lightly twice. Huo Ranyin, standing beside him, gestured to him.
Ji Xun glanced over and saw that at some point, Huo Ranyin had stepped into the bathtub. He was pointing at the wall above and whispered:
“The sound is loudest here.”
Ji Xun went over.
The triangular sit-in bathtub was already small; one person had to sit down to take a bath. With two grown men squeezed in at the same time, the space suddenly became cramped—what was more annoying was that, for insulation, there was a glass door in front of the bathtub.
And the two of them almost filled this triangular space.
Ji Xun let out a breath and complained, “I can already feel myself suffocating.”
But as a criminal police officer, he had experienced worse conditions when trailing suspects, and he had to endure.
Right now, just doing some eavesdropping in a bathroom, without the pain of being exposed to the elements or the risk of flying bullets, was already enough to pop a bottle of champagne to celebrate.
“If the police weren’t watching our family, I’d really want to give him another dose,” Lian Panpan said.
“Don’t mess around, don’t be crazy,” the middle-aged man said.
It sounded like this pair of accomplices was already having a falling out. The middle-aged man was starting to get impatient with the girl.
Indeed, if they were to poison Lian Dazhang, Lian Panpan was the most convenient weapon. But while she was a weapon, she was also a fifteen-year-old girl. From their two encounters, she did not possess the calmness, meticulousness, and rationality of a killer.
She was neurotic and unpredictable.
The success of the poisoning was due to her, but it could also fail because of her.
Because the sharpness of a knife does not discriminate, and with one slip, it could backfire.
Ji Xun tilted his head slightly and made eye contact with Huo Ranyin.
They did not speak, only communicating with a few brief hand gestures.
—Listen for a bit longer, get solid evidence.
—There’s a window ledge outside. Climb over the ledge, we can take them in the room.
And then suddenly, a seductive, nasal sound rang out.
Lian Panpan moaned, “Mmm—hate it—don’t be in such a hurry—”
Wait?
Ji Xun was not mentally prepared for this. His hand trembled, and his elbow hit the shower switch.
With a “whoosh.”
Cold water poured down on the two men huddled underneath, eavesdropping on the room next door.
They stood together under the stream of water, looking at each other.
Next door, Lian Panpan was still saying, “You said you love me—right—then help me get rid of my parents—if you don’t get rid of my parents, what kind of love is that—ah—”
Ji Xun came to his senses and quickly turned off the shower switch.
He realized what was happening next door. He felt both stunned and found a sense of inevitability in his astonishment.
He wanted to leave, but this ambiguous clue mixed in with the moans made it so he couldn’t leave, nor could he stay and listen.
After a few breaths, Ji Xun turned to look at Huo Ranyin beside him.
Huo Ranyin was also slightly stiff.
After a long moment, he blinked.
One of the water droplets from the shower just now had landed on his eyelash.
He closed his eye, and the droplet rolled around his long, curled lashes, dripped down onto his cheek, rolled past his sharp eyes and brows, rolled over his thin lips.
He raised his hand to wipe the water from his face.
But the back of his hand was also wet. The cold hardness of his work persona, in this sudden drenching, in the unexpected development next door, gradually softened, becoming wet and lushly vivid.
The water had soaked them both.
