“…How did you think of all this?” After a long moment, Huo Ranyin asked Ji Xun.
“Hardship always helps people overcome themselves,” Ji Xun sighed dramatically. “Trying to give a rose on Valentine’s Day to someone like you, who treats the office as home, is just too difficult. If I sent it to your home, no one would be there to receive it and it would just wither. If I sent it to the office, hmm—it would just cause you to be surrounded and stared at by everyone. Neither left nor right was a good option, so of course, I had to use my brain and innovate a little.”
With these words, Ji Xun moved away from Huo Ranyin’s shoulder, and the hand that had been tightly holding Huo Ranyin’s naturally let go.
Huo Ranyin glanced at his palm.
A faint imprint remained on his palm, the outline of a rose.
It was as if this intangible rose had truly been passed from Ji Xun’s hand into his own. He gently closed his fist, and the rose folded; he opened his palm again, and the rose bloomed.
“Of course, my being able to think of this is also thanks to your very forward-thinking choice of a surveillance camera blind spot,” Ji Xun said, finding the sight of Huo Ranyin’s movements deeply pleasing, so he added a compliment.
“What you said just now…” Huo Ranyin began.
“Hmm?”
“I’ll let you do it when we have time.” Suddenly, a light kiss landed on the corner of Ji Xun’s mouth. As he kissed him, the words hidden on the tip of his tongue were also secretly delivered, “I can take the initiative, too.”
After saying this, Huo Ranyin stood up.
Ji Xun watched, wide-eyed, as the other man’s face turned serious, switching from a state of flirtation back to a cold, impassive, and detached work mode.
“We need to conduct a surprise interrogation of Zhu Huan tonight. We just discovered a recent large transfer on his confiscated phone. The payer is named Duan Hongwen, who is the husband of Wei Zhenzhu, the informant who claimed to have seen Mo Nai on her way to buy groceries. Wei Zhenzhu and Duan Hongwen, in turn, have intricate connections with Zhuo Cangying and Gao Shuang. This is a closed loop of relationships, definitely not a coincidence. I think Wei Zhenzhu might be hiding the real reason why she saw Mo Nai, a reason she didn’t tell the police.”
“Mo Nai didn’t have any of the valuables he stole from the Zhuo family on him. He must have put them somewhere, and those items might hold clues. He won’t talk, but Zhu Huan, who he likely knows, might.”
He said all this not only to inform Ji Xun of the current situation but also to add a reminder.
“You can go straight back and rest. Go to my place, it’s closer. I’ll give you the key.”
Listening to all this, Ji Xun’s interest waned. Really, did Huo Ranyin need to emphasize all these things that he could analyze and handle himself?
“…We can also order some more roses.”
Ji Xun froze. His attention, which had scattered like spreading vines, refocused. He looked at Huo Ranyin again, and this time, the man seemed different from before.
Huo Ranyin maintained a cold expression but silently winked at him. His left eye. The beauty mark under his eye flashed like a star in the night sky.
“Sleeping on a bed of rose petals should also have a decent visual impact, right?”
That was Huo Ranyin’s last sentence. Then, Ji Xun watched as he grabbed a piece of tissue, placed it over his palm, and walked straight out of the office. Just as he had said, the night’s task was still heavy. Other team members could go home and rest, but Huo Ranyin would not and could not choose to go back to sleep.
Ji Xun remained seated where he was. He decided to sit cross-legged.
Dragon fruit juice, a bed of roses.
When there’s time.
He knew what Huo Ranyin’s “when there’s time” meant—the two days after the case was completely closed. For any other free moments, even if Huo Ranyin was willing, he really couldn’t bring himself to do something so inhuman.
Hmm—
Ji Xun suddenly found a strange motivation to solve the case.
“Explain the ten thousand yuan Duan Hongwen transferred to you.”
Zhu Huan sat in the interrogation room. To be honest, he was a little baffled when he heard this sentence. Who was Duan Hongwen? Then, the ridiculously specific amount of ten thousand yuan made him remember everything.
Uh… how should he explain this?
Why were the police asking about this?
Zhu Huan’s brain spun rapidly. There was a gap between theory and practice. The thick volumes of criminal law he had crammed for this very moment all twisted into knots, becoming crispy and useless. He couldn’t recall a single useful article.
This is bad. How can I avoid adding to my crimes? Zhu Huan cursed his own utilitarianism, only reading the useful parts of the law, and from free books at the library at that.
“Officer, this… what does this have to do with Xiao Man’s death? It’s just a little side money, right? You can’t… you can’t stop me from earning money, can you?” Zhu Huan racked his brains.
Xiao Man was the name of the female victim from the KTV.
“Just answer the questions honestly. Don’t beat around the bush. What kind of side money, why did he give you money, and how do you know each other?”
Zhu Huan swallowed and answered cautiously, “I’m just… pretty good with words, able to offer guidance to the lost. He, he seemed to have family problems. I comforted and advised the boss, and the boss was in a good mood, yes, in a good mood, so he tipped me.”
“Offer guidance?” the interrogator said coldly. “Why don’t you just say you’re a fortune-teller who charges a thousand gold pieces per prediction and is never wrong?”
“That’s feudal superstition, after all,” Zhu Huan chuckled awkwardly. “But then again, isn’t there a saying that the end of science is theology? From another perspective, isn’t feudal superstition just something that science can’t yet explain…”
The interrogator slammed the table.
The loud bang echoed in Zhu Huan’s heart, making his liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys tremble.
He secretly pouted.
What the hell, it’s the truth. That idiot came to me to kill his wife, isn’t that a family problem for which I gave guidance? You don’t believe me? Then I guess I have to lie.
“It’s like this,” he said, putting on a sincere face. When his round face made a sincere expression, it always managed to win the trust of young and old women alike. “I’m privately involved in hospital scalping. This person said he heard a rumor from a certain Dr. Zhuo and wanted to get some inside information. Officer, being a scalper isn’t illegal, is it?”
The officers in front of Zhu Huan exchanged glances, scribbled on a piece of paper, and pressed their earpieces, listening to instructions from outside.
“Large amounts constitute the crime of illegal business operation.”
“Oh…” I really was too utilitarian when I read the criminal law, Zhu Huan thought. Who would have thought being a scalper was also illegal?
“Do you know this person?”
A photograph was pushed in front of Zhu Huan. It showed a thin woman with a sallow complexion. Zhu Huan didn’t recognize her.
“She is Duan Hongwen’s wife. She happened to see you and Mo Nai interacting and walking together, so she reported you to our police station.”
“That’s impossible!” Zhu Huan cried out.
A surge of anger at being fooled shot through his heart. So this is what the police were waiting for all along! He had definitely never walked openly with Mo Nai, but was this a police negotiation tactic or was that woman lying to the police?
And Duan Hongwen—could Duan Hongwen be at the police station too? Was this a sting operation? What lies would he tell? Were the husband and wife setting him up? No, no, dammit, things are getting complicated. What is the situation now!
Zhu Huan wanted to calm down and sort through the current situation.
But how could the police give him time to think up lies? The cold voice of the interrogator was like blocks of ice, each word a frozen chunk smashing down on him.
As time passed, Zhu Huan could almost see the growing suspicion in the eyes of the two officers across from him.
Dammit, if this goes on, no one will believe me even if I tell the truth later—dammit, dammit, I shouldn’t have been greedy and taken that ten thousand yuan!
He thought back and forth, then suddenly said, “Officer, this woman must be lying! I’ll tell the truth, I’ll confess everything. It was this guy Duan Hongwen who, for some crazy reason, came to me to hire a hitman to kill his wife, this woman, Wei Zhenzhu. I saw he was an idiot, so I recorded him and scammed him out of ten thousand yuan. Really, I still have the recording saved on my cloud drive. I really didn’t do anything else. This Wei Zhenzhu must be retaliating on purpose, telling lies to frame me!”
That’s how interrogations go. Once the suspect starts talking, the rest comes pouring out like a broken dam.
Soon, he couldn’t hide the transaction location under the overpass. He had to reveal the hotel’s location by the overpass. Naturally, he reluctantly admitted that Mo Nai was staying there. Oh, in Zhu Huan’s words, it went like this:
“He said his name was Cang Bai. How would I know he was Mo Nai? His makeup was so good. Look at that face, it’s not Mo Nai’s face, right? Officer, subjectively, I didn’t think he was Mo Nai. Our subjective and objective elements don’t align here.”
Huo Ranyin immediately led a team to conduct a surprise search of the overpass hotel.
The raid under the overpass yielded significant results. First, a drug den with about a dozen people was caught red-handed. This haul made the narcotics team grin from ear to ear. It was truly a case of merit falling from the sky while they were sleeping at home. The new captain of the second branch had only been transferred for a month and had already sent them two meritorious cases. What a guy!
Next, a mobile phone and some of Gao Shuang’s jewelry were found under Mo Nai’s bed.
This smartphone was Mo Nai’s direct bridge to society nine years later. This was reflected in the first few entries of his UC browser search history.
“How to interfere with a corpse’s time of death”
“Can burning a body destroy the time of death”
“How to determine time of death from a burned body”
Tan Mingjiu held a printed copy of Mo Nai’s browsed pages, which included screenshots from Q&A sites, academic pages, pirated science-fiction novel pages, and more. The most frequent topic was the idea that stomach contents could help a forensic examiner determine the time of death. His pupils quaked again.
“So this son of a bitch relied on Baidu to destroy the body? Doesn’t he find it disgusting? Gouging out eyeballs and organs?!”
Huo Ranyin’s focus was not on this point, which had already been speculated upon and was now merely confirmed with evidence. He scrolled through the phone’s past chat logs and looked up the ownership of the numbers he found, murmuring softly, “This is an old number. Although it’s registered under someone else’s name, the user was Gao Shuang. She used it as a backup phone for gaming. The contacts on WeChat and QQ are all game-related. It has a startup password, and the password is Gao Shuang’s birthday. How could Mo Nai open it and use it?”
Because his voice was very low, and Tan Mingjiu was not Ji Xun, he didn’t notice at all. He was still buried in the pile of screenshots, saying to Wen Yangyang, “It seems there are no screenshots of Ji Xun’s books. Thank goodness, thank goodness, he hasn’t been corrupted by him.”
Huo Ranyin sighed. It had only been a few hours since they separated, and he was already missing Ji Xun. He put down the evidence, stood up, clapped his hands, and announced, “That’s all for today. From now on, this case will officially be investigated with the theory that Mo Nai is not the killer or not the sole killer. Check the social circles of the deceased, with a focus on Duan Hongwen and Wei Zhenzhu.”
With his instructions given, everyone dispersed.
Huo Ranyin, who had originally planned to pull an all-nighter at the station, no longer had a reason to stay.
He glanced at the time. Four in the morning.
He hurried back to his home.
Four in the morning, the quietest time of the night. The late sleepers were already resting, and the early risers had not yet woken up. He deliberately made less noise when opening the door, worried about disturbing the person inside who had severe sleep problems.
But his cautious movements only lasted until he stepped inside.
His intuition told him there was no one in the room.
He hesitated for a moment, for once not immediately trusting his feeling. He walked a short distance in the dark to the guest bedroom, the place where Ji Xun had slept twice, and glanced inside.
The bed was flat, the quilt neatly arranged. Even the curtains hanging on the window were deathly still.
Besides him, there was no other living person in the house.
Huo Ranyin raised a hand and turned on the light.
The light made the empty room feel even emptier. Huo Ranyin leaned against the door for a while and gave a self-deprecating smile.
Thinking about it carefully, Ji Xun had never actually agreed to come over tonight.
Perhaps it was the kiss, or the chocolate, or—
He raised his hand again. The flower on his palm had already faded away.
This flower.
It must have given him the wrong impression.
A night of rest.
When the sky brightened the next day, Huo Ranyin, as planned, took Wen Yangyang to see Wei Zhenzhu. There, he encountered someone he absolutely had not expected to see.
“Teacher Ji!” Wen Yangyang was the first to cry out, her surprise unconcealed. “Why are you here?”
“Why can’t I be here?” It had been another difficult night of sleep for Ji Xun. With dark circles under his eyes, he was nursing a coffee to stay alive. “I still have to help your Captain Huo solve the case.”
“Huh?” Wen Yangyang hesitated, but her curiosity got the better of her. “Teacher Ji, you seem very proactive recently…”
“That’s because your Captain Huo gave me an offer I absolutely couldn’t refuse,” Ji Xun said to Wen Yangyang in a heartfelt tone. “When you have time, learn more from your Captain Huo. You’ll benefit endlessly.”
The withered rose silently bloomed in Huo Ranyin’s heart again.
From last night until now, he had been troubled by a small matter, and then happy because of another small matter.
Perhaps this is what being in love is like, full of anxieties about gains and losses, completely head over heels.
But this infatuation—
Huo Ranyin walked forward, as calm as ever.
He didn’t let anyone notice.
Especially not Ji Xun.
