“Captain Huo.”
“Hmm?”
“Considering how resistant you are to love, your future partner probably won’t be easy to find. They have to love you, but also not lose their absolute reason because of that love. Is your ideal type a robot that loves you?”
“…”
The train rumbled along the tracks, and the vibrations from its movement accompanied their conversation.
At this moment, the two were lying in the business class seats of the bullet train, looking out through the small windows on the side of the carriage.
After leaving the pancake stall owner’s place, it was still early enough to make it to the capital. Huo Ranyin didn’t delay, directly buying two business class tickets to the capital.
“Is this the joy of the rich?” Ji Xun remarked.
The business class seats on the bullet train looked like round, white eggshells from behind. The front was a red leather seat enveloped by the white shell. The seats were adjustable, with modes for sitting, reclining, and lying down.
This train was relatively empty, and for now, they were the only two people in the entire business class cabin.
The carriage was quiet, quiet outside the window and quiet inside.
This long steel serpent was traveling on tracks far from the city, flanked by lush trees, continuous mountain ranges, and the occasional glimpse of a lake shimmering with sparkling light.
“Not stimulating enough,” Huo Ranyin said nonchalantly.
“Huh?”
“A robot,” Huo Ranyin clarified, “is not stimulating enough.”
“Your standards are really high.” Ji Xun raised an eyebrow in surprise. “To get mixed up with me despite having such high standards, Captain Huo, I must be quite significant to you. This significance, I guess it comes from the past, right?”
“…” Huo Ranyin fell silent again. He looked at the other’s eyebrows, thinking that this pair of eyebrows had become increasingly flexible lately. And that little yellow chick, which was finally no longer nesting on the other’s head, had now moved to—
His gaze shifted slightly downward to Ji Xun’s collar.
The little yellow chick was perched there now, having become a fluffy little lapel pin.
“Well, since we’re idle anyway, why don’t we have a chat and talk about things from the past?” Ji Xun suggested again. “If just chatting is boring, how about we play a game of Truth or Dare?”
Huo Ranyin directly tossed his phone to Ji Xun.
Even with Ji Xun’s perpetually jumpy train of thought, he was confused by this disconnected action. He caught the phone and asked, puzzled, “What’s the meaning of this? You want me to search your phone myself… that’s not very appropriate. I’m afraid I might see your other secrets.”
Huo Ranyin lowered his seat, lay flat, and closed his eyes.
“I’m not asking you to search it. I’m going to sleep for a bit. The phone is for you. If a work message comes in, you handle it for me.”
Ji Xun thought for a moment, then suddenly remembered.
He himself had gone to bed after midnight last night, but Huo Ranyin seemed to have gone back to work.
“What time did you sleep yesterday?”
Huo Ranyin didn’t answer.
“Two o’clock?”
“Three o’clock?”
“Four o’clock?”
“Five o’clock?”
Ji Xun looked at Huo Ranyin, who was resting with his eyes closed, and guessed one by one, finally saying, “Looks like it was four.”
“You know everything,” Huo Ranyin huffed lightly. But this time, Ji Xun made no sound.
And so, amidst the faint fatigue that permeated his entire body, he slowly drifted off to sleep.
A person doesn’t fall asleep in an instant. With the silence, the air suddenly solidified, beginning to press down heavily. A moment later, Huo Ranyin suddenly felt a hand reach over. His body tensed reflexively, but soon, the coolness and dryness of the palm were perceived by his skin through the air.
It was Ji Xun’s hand.
Huo Ranyin let out a soft sigh of relief, and his tense body began to relax. He was indeed a bit weary, so he resolved not to open his eyes and speak, but to silently watch what Ji Xun intended to do.
That hand came over, grabbed a blanket, and covered him with it. Then it left.
Not only did the hand leave, the person left too.
Huo Ranyin heard the sound of rustling clothes and footsteps, and the sound of the business class cabin door opening. A few minutes later, he opened his eyes.
The person was indeed gone. The seat next to him was empty, with only light and shadows rapidly shifting on the unoccupied seat.
He left?
It’s only natural.
He withdrew his gaze and was about to close his eyes again when he suddenly saw the little yellow chick, which should have been on Ji Xun’s collar, in the corner of the blanket.
It was clipped to the edge of the blanket, with a note attached.
Huo Ranyin picked it up and saw Ji Xun’s handwriting.
The words on the note were crooked, likely because it was difficult to write on a moving train.
“I’ve been thinking and thinking for the past two days, going through all the case personnel I’ve come into contact with since I started working, and none of them connect to you. Excluding that, the answer isn’t hard to guess. We knew each other in university, right? Good junior.”
After the words “Good junior,” there was even a little heart.
[Heart]
P.S.: Your phone has a lot of work tasks. I’m going to stand in the connection between carriages and help you reply to messages. Don’t worry, I won’t look at your private stuff.
Huo Ranyin couldn’t help but smile.
This nap on the train was unexpectedly comfortable. By the time the high-speed rail arrived in the capital, Huo Ranyin was completely refreshed.
It was exactly nine o’clock at night, still in time to find Cheng Xiang.
Cheng Xiang’s address had already been sent to their phones by their colleagues. They went straight to her residence.
It was a high-end residential complex. Cheng Xiang lived on the third floor of a small Western-style building, a large 140-square-meter apartment. They had just knocked on the door and hadn’t even had a chance to say who they were when the door opened. With a “bang,” colorful ribbons flew as confetti fluttered. Amidst the vibrant colors, Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin saw a man holding a small party popper close his eyes, hold up an open red velvet ring box, and kneel down in one fluid motion, shouting:
“Marry me! Believe me, I will treat you well for the rest of my life!”
An awkward silence followed, so silent that even the man kneeling on the floor felt something was wrong and cautiously opened his eyes… then, as if his knees were on fire, he leaped up from the ground. An even more awkward and suffocating silence permeated the space between the three of them.
Finally, Ji Xun nonchalantly patted his shoulders, brushing off the colorful ribbons from his clothes.
As long as he wasn’t embarrassed, the ones who were embarrassed were others.
“I can’t marry you. Even if I could, he can’t either—oh, sorry, my country hasn’t legalized same-sex marriage yet, so you can’t marry either of us.”
“Ji Xun,” Huo Ranyin said, not pleased.
“Alright, no more nonsense.” Ji Xun shrugged his shoulders and said to the dumbfounded man, “To put it simply, we are police officers, here to ask Cheng Xiang a few questions.”
But Cheng Xiang wasn’t here right now.
“I lied to her today and said I had to work overtime and had no time. She got very angry and went shopping with her best friend,” the man, who was Cheng Xiang’s boyfriend, answered listlessly, sitting in a single armchair facing the window. “But based on the texts she sent me, she should be back in a little while.”
Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin sat on another sofa.
With the suspect not yet present, there was nothing they could do but look around the room.
The spacious European-style living room was now an ocean of flowers, balloons, and decorative lights. Red roses covered the surface of every piece of furniture, balloons completely occupied the ceiling, and the twinkling small lights wrapped around the entire floor-to-ceiling window in a rainbow of colors, looking very pretty—Ji Xun’s gaze lingered here for a moment. Cheng Xiang’s boyfriend silently raised his hand and turned off the lights.
He regretfully withdrew his gaze, then strolled around and picked up a rose.
“There are so many flowers here. You don’t mind if I take one, do you?”
“Be my guest,” Cheng Xiang’s boyfriend said lifelessly.
“Ning City, Liucheng, the capital, we’ve run to three different places and the 14th still isn’t over. After getting together with you, time has become really durable.” Ji Xun pulled out the rose and pinned it to Huo Ranyin’s chest. “Looks good. Now we have a real rose too. This Valentine’s Day can be considered complete, right?”
Just as he finished speaking, the sound of a key turning in the lock came from the door.
Cheng Xiang was back!
In nine years, the once-immature student had completely transformed into a mature urban woman. She carried large and small shopping bags, fashionably dressed in shorts and high boots. Wavy, chestnut-colored curls cascaded over her shoulders. She held her phone with her ear, still talking angrily as she entered. From the sound of it, she was complaining about her boyfriend working today.
But soon, she saw the decorations in the room.
The anger was still there, but surprise had surfaced. Before delight could awaken, Huo Ranyin had already stepped forward and shown his police ID:
“Police. Ms. Cheng Xiang, we’d like to ask you about a case from nine years ago.”
Houses in the capital were not cheap, but Cheng Xiang had never worried about such things. She had met her boyfriend in graduate school; his family background was as privileged as hers. They were a perfect match in looks and talent, a classic case of being well-matched in social status.
Her mother didn’t care much about her studies, only occasionally mentioning during holidays that her graduate studies were good because they had helped her find a good husband. That was it.
Whenever this happened, Cheng Xiang would think of Song Tingfeng, but it was just a fleeting thought. This former best friend, like Yu Yu who had gone abroad, was no longer relevant to her life.
It had been nine years. Why would the police show up after nine years?
Of course, Cheng Xiang knew what they wanted to know, but why? Hadn’t Mo Nai already been sentenced to ten years in prison?
He had confessed very early on. Could there still be any doubts about this case?
She sent her boyfriend to his room and told him not to eavesdrop. Cheng Xiang felt a little tired, probably from a whole day of shopping. She sat amidst the ocean of red roses and balloons. This surprise, single-handedly orchestrated by her boyfriend, already felt like a cold curtain call before it even had a chance to be unveiled.
She made a preemptive strike. “If it’s about that r*pe case, I’ve already said everything I needed to say in the past. If you ask me to recall it now, I can’t remember the details.”
Huo Ranyin: “We want to ask why you didn’t report it to the police that night, but waited a few days to go to the station.”
“It’s difficult for a girl to talk about being r*ped. Do I need to repeat that again?” Cheng Xiang said, annoyed, as she plucked a rose from in front of her and tore at it idly. “If it’s different from the record, it’s not me committing perjury. It’s been so long, there are bound to be discrepancies. But I don’t think I remember incorrectly.”
Although she had been extremely assertive since she began speaking, Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin both simultaneously picked up on the subtle key point in her words.
Perjury.
Ji Xun ground his teeth. He abandoned the “engage with the witness to catch loopholes” plan he had discussed with Huo Ranyin on the way and went straight for the bluff.
“No, you did commit perjury. You used the excuse of getting back together with Mo Nai to get a hotel room with him. You seduced him and, while he was lost in passion, you smeared his semen on Song Tingfeng’s underwear to frame him as a rapist.”
On the way there, the Liucheng police had already run tests on the preserved evidence. It had Song Tingfeng’s DNA on it, but no vaginal secretions.
Cheng Xiang showed no surprise, nor any other reaction.
She tossed aside the rose in her hand, uncrossed her legs, and her high heel happened to land squarely on a rose on the floor.
That fresh, beautiful flower became a pool of bright red blood.
She coolly took out a woman’s cigarette and lit it. Through the swirling smoke, Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin heard her exceptionally cold counter-question:
“I only have one question for you. If that’s the case, why didn’t Mo Nai protest his innocence?”
