She knew.
It was even highly likely that Ji Xun’s guess was part of the truth from back then.
But there was also a critical problem—
They had no more evidence. Everything was speculation. Speculation was no problem for a detective, but it was fatal in the process of criminal investigation. The police couldn’t solve cases based on guesses alone.
Ji Xun’s gaze swept over Cheng Xiang’s indifferent, frosty face.
He quickly thought about a breakthrough point.
For Song Tingfeng’s sake, Cheng Xiang was willing to seduce Mo Nai even after they had broken up. Yet, Song Tingfeng still ended up jumping to her death… Did Cheng Xiang feel guilty towards Song Tingfeng? Perhaps Song Tingfeng could be the breakthrough point. Although Song Tingfeng was dead, she still had parents. The parents had lost their only child in middle age. If they knew there might be a hidden story behind what happened back then…
No.
Such underhanded tactics were not proper. For the two elderly people, it would just be reopening their old wounds, letting them fester and bleed again. The truth was important, but the responsibility to pay the price and work hard for that truth should fall on the police.
It seemed long to say, but it was all thought in the blink of an eye.
In that same blink, Ji Xun suddenly glimpsed two shadows under the crack of the study door in the corner of the living room. It was the trace left by someone standing inside. There were only four people in the house. The three of them, he, Huo Ranyin, and Cheng Xiang, were in the living room. It was self-evident who was left in the study.
“You have a point,” Ji Xun said suddenly. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you so late and ruined your boyfriend’s proposal. Let’s call it a day for now. You two continue, we’ll be leaving.”
“But don’t travel far these next few days. We may have some follow-up matters to discuss with you,” Huo Ranyin added.
Cheng Xiang was right in front of them. He hadn’t consulted Huo Ranyin before saying this.
But Huo Ranyin picked up the thread seamlessly.
This is probably what trust in each other is. But was it rational trust, or emotional trust?
Ji Xun was somewhat curious, so he asked directly as they left Cheng Xiang’s apartment.
Huo Ranyin glanced at Ji Xun. He stood in the hallway without continuing to walk, just giving a light sneer. “Ji Xun, do you think you’re the only one who can see the feet under the door crack?”
“Oh—” Ji Xun was disappointed. “Being too rational is boring.”
“Rationality makes work go smoothly,” Huo Ranyin stated.
“But emotion is what makes life exciting, right?” Ji Xun added the second half of the sentence.
They didn’t move, just waited. There was a high probability that an argument would break out inside the room, and this argument might give them a chance for a breakthrough. Besides, by staying here, they could also ensure the argument inside didn’t get out of control—or stop it in time if it did.
The high-probability event happened quickly. Just three minutes later, voices could already be heard from inside, and quite clearly at that.
First was the boyfriend’s voice: “Xiangxiang, is what that police officer said true? Didn’t you say you made a clean break with your ex-boyfriend? How, how could…”
Then came Cheng Xiang’s harsh tone: “What do you mean? How do you know about this? Were you eavesdropping? And besides, does everything the police say have to be true? I haven’t said anything yet!”
Ji Xun stuck both hands in his pockets, leaned against the hallway staircase railing, and sighed.
“They say it’s better to buy old houses. Old houses are sturdy, the bricks are solid. As for new houses, because the government limits prices but the cost of building materials rises year by year, and developers still need to make a profit, they cut corners on materials and use hollow bricks. Looking at it now, there’s some truth to that…”
After this idle chatter, Ji Xun said no more, leaving the stage entirely to the two people inside the room.
Cheng Xiang’s boyfriend was named Wei Jun.
As his name suggested, he was quite handsome, but just listening to his current conversation, you couldn’t really tell how handsome he was.
Wei Jun said, “Xiangxiang, don’t be so agitated. I was just asking. My girlfriend has been approached by the police. Can’t I ask about it? Right, I’m just concerned about you.”
Cheng Xiang sneered, “Alright, then what do you want to ask? Do you want to ask how I slept with my ex-boyfriend?”
“Why do you have to say things so nastily!”
“So you don’t want to ask about that. Then what do you want to ask? About my roommate committing suicide after being r*ped?”
The room fell silent for a short while. Perhaps Wei Jun had lowered his voice and was whispering.
At this moment, Ji Xun couldn’t help but look at the door with a pitying expression. If Huo Ranyin weren’t around, he would have liked to press his ear against the door to eavesdrop on the conversation inside—unfortunately, Huo Ranyin was there, and he had to maintain his image.
Fortunately, this quiet exchange didn’t last for more than a few seconds.
A moment later, Cheng Xiang’s sharp, high-pitched voice came from inside again. “You still say you don’t care about what happened between me and my ex-boyfriend in bed! Aren’t all your questions about how Mo Nai and I went to the hotel and what we did there? I just don’t get it. Ever since we got together, you’ve been trying every which way to pry into my past relationships from university!”
“What do you mean I’m trying to pry? I’m concerned! We’re about to get married, can’t I even ask?”
“I don’t need this kind of concern from you! And first, I haven’t agreed to marry you. Second, I’ve never asked about your ex-girlfriends, have I?”
“Ask! It’s just an ex-girlfriend. Ask me anything, I’ll tell you everything, I guarantee there won’t be the slightest bit of concealment,” Wei Jun said.
“What a coincidence. I don’t want to know a single thing about you and your ex-girlfriends. I also hope you don’t know a single thing about me and my ex-boyfriend.”
“Why?” As he spoke, Wei Jun also became anxious. “Why won’t you just say it? Are you afraid I’ll look down on you because you slept with someone else? I won’t! We’re all people in modern society, that hymen doesn’t represent anything…”
In the hallway, Ji Xun couldn’t help but let out a soft huff upon hearing this, continuing Wei Jun’s sentence across the door: “I don’t see that you don’t care, I only see that you care a lot. Do you think others don’t know what’s in your heart? First, you coax out your girlfriend’s past. When your girlfriend becomes your wife, this past becomes a weakness you can attack in your future life, coupled with some slut-shaming… It’s 2025, and the feudalistic poison still hasn’t been cleared out.”
This kind of ‘not caring on the surface but caring the most in heart’ act couldn’t fool Cheng Xiang, who spent every day with him. In fact, a large part of marital conflicts, when told to an outsider, might elicit a “that’s it?” response from the outsider, who is speaking from a position of privilege. Only when you are in that environment can you truly experience the subtle battles of glances and the suffocating emptiness.
A string of meaningless female screams and crashing sounds immediately came from the room. Cheng Xiang had probably swept some glass objects onto the floor, shattering them. Then the door opened, and Wei Jun, with red scratch marks on his face, was driven out in a disheveled state.
He immediately saw Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin in the hallway.
It was that same saying again: as long as you aren’t embarrassed, the ones who are embarrassed are others.
Ji Xun, who was clearly eavesdropping on the conversation inside, looked at Wei Jun with extraordinary composure. Wei Jun, on the other hand, was furtive and shouted back into the room, “Cheng Xiang, are you crazy? What’s wrong with me asking? Did it hit a nerve? How many guys have you been with in the past? Couldn’t even fit them on a bus, could you? Let’s just call off this wedding!”
Another vase was thrown out from the room, smashing on the floor. It was a European-style vase with a clock. The enamel painting on its body shattered into pieces, the angel holding the clock broke its wings, and a spiderweb of cracks crawled across the clock face.
Then, intermittent sobs came from the room. Cheng Xiang was having a breakdown and crying her eyes out in the living room.
Standing outside the door, facing the entrance hall at the junction of the living room and dining room, they couldn’t directly see the person inside—and the person inside couldn’t directly see them.
Should we go in? Ji Xun asked Huo Ranyin with his eyes.
Wait a bit longer, Huo Ranyin replied with his eyes.
They waited for about ten minutes. The sounds from inside gradually subsided. But before the two could make a move, the elevator lit up, and a middle-aged woman carrying a bag appeared on this floor. She had sharp eyes that swept over and immediately spotted Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin standing in the hallway. She instantly became aggressive:
“Who are you? What are you doing standing in front of my daughter’s door?”
Of course, we’re looking for an opportunity… to solve the case.
The two were somewhat embarrassed. Just then, Cheng Xiang, hearing the voice, came over from the living room. With a pair of bloodshot eyes, she looked at her mother in surprise. “Mom, why are you here?”
“You still ask me why I’m here,” the mother immediately turned to her daughter. “Xiao Wei’s parents’ phone call reached your father and me at home!”
This sentence was like pouring oil on the fire. Cheng Xiang was instantly ignited. “How old is he this year? He still tattles to his parents after a fight? Forget it, this wedding is off!”
“You child… stop making a scene, let’s go inside and talk.” The mother instantly became anxious, pushing her daughter into the apartment.
As she spoke, she was about to close the door, but Cheng Xiang quickly grabbed Ji Xun’s sleeve and dragged him inside. Ji Xun reacted quickly too, grabbing Huo Ranyin’s arm in a backhand motion and bringing him in as well.
In a chain reaction, all four of them were inside the room.
The mother looked at Cheng Xiang, then at Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin. Something seemed to cross her mind, and her face turned pale. “Xiangxiang, who are these people? Still here so late, you and them, it couldn’t be…”
A mother knows her daughter best, and the reverse is also true.
Cheng Xiang broke down. “Mom, are you crazy? You see a man and you think he’s my boyfriend? These are two grown men! Am I having a three-some with both of them at the same time?”
“…” So that’s what she was thinking.
Even for Ji Xun, who was used to the broad thinking of the mentally ill, he couldn’t keep up with this auntie’s train of thought. He admitted defeat.
The mother gave an awkward laugh. “Why do you have to say things so nastily? I was just asking, wasn’t I? Since they have nothing to do with you, then let them leave. When family members are having a private talk, it’s not good to have outsiders present.”
“I’m afraid you’re going to push me to jump out the window later. To prevent a tragedy from happening and to stop you from becoming the murderer of your own daughter, I’m finding two people to protect me first.” Cheng Xiang’s anger passed its threshold and she returned to her previous coldness, her tone even more sarcastic and biting. “Mom, if you have something to say, say it quickly. If you don’t, I’m going to sleep.”
“I know you’re in a bad mood, I won’t say it, I won’t say it.” The mother said this, but just a second later, she spoke again. “Xiangxiang, I don’t object to you having a little fight with Wei Jun, but taking it to the point of not getting married is going too far. Wei Jun’s family is a good match for ours, he’s a nice person, and you two have always had a good relationship. How did it get to the point of not getting married? It’s not that I’m lecturing you, but you really were a bit wild in the past, not demure enough. It’s no wonder Wei Jun has his doubts. With something like this, you just need to act cute and it will pass.”
“Is this my fault?” Cheng Xiang sneered. “Doesn’t Wei Jun have ex-girlfriends?”
“It’s different for a man to have an ex-girlfriend than for a woman to have an ex-boyfriend. A man in his thirties, if he hasn’t dated one or two girls, I’d worry there was something wrong with him.”
“Mom, don’t you think your views are bizarre?” Cheng Xiang quickly retorted. “When I have an ex-boyfriend, I’m not demure. When he has an ex-girlfriend, it’s natural and normal. If there weren’t ‘not demure’ girls like me, where would he get his ‘natural and normal’!”
The mother also got angry. “I’m your mom, would I ever harm you? If you act demurely, of course, others will love you more. Why do you care about those girls who aren’t demure? They are just—”
“I just had a boyfriend, why do you make it sound like I’m some kind of slut?”
“Cheng Xiang, is there any point in you talking like this!”
“What do you mean no point? Do you think if I break up with Wei Jun, I’m worthless? The way you look at me is already filthy! Do you want me to jump off a building like Song Tingfeng before you’re satisfied?!”
“You—you, why did you bring up Song Tingfeng? What does this have to do with her?”
“What do you mean it has nothing to do with her? Let me tell you, the two next to me are police officers, and they’re here to investigate Song Tingfeng’s case! The school was right, and what you said in the past was right too. This master’s degree, this boyfriend, I only got them all because Song Tingfeng was r*ped and jumped off a building, securing my spot in the graduate program, right?!”
Cheng Mama’s face turned beet red.
This private cost-benefit analysis, discussed over the fresh life of a young girl, didn’t seem problematic when mother and daughter were quietly looking forward to the future in the dead of night. It was just stating the plain truth. But to have it laid bare in front of two strangers, in front of the police, a sense of conventional morality instantly seized her brain, making her feel ashamed and humiliated.
“What nonsense are you talking about? When did Mom ever say such a thing?” she denied in a panic, not even daring to look at Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin.
“Heh, how have you not said it? You praised me for being bad at my studies, but for doing well in this master’s program. You don’t dare admit it? You think it’s dirty? I think it’s dirty too, but since I’m already so dirty in your eyes, what’s a little more?” She suddenly spun around to face Ji Xun, sneering almost wantonly. “And you, you police officers, you bunch of incompetents. It took you nine years to realize I might have committed perjury. The case is already closed. You can’t even arrest me now if you wanted to.”
“What are you saying? What perjury? Are these things you can just say casually?” The mother was so angry she raised her hand and gave her daughter a crisp slap. She was so fierce and fast that even Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin, standing by, couldn’t stop her. But when she turned back to the police, she was all smiles again. “Officers, please don’t listen to my daughter’s nonsense. She had a fight with her boyfriend tonight and is too agitated. Nothing she says counts…”
Ji Xun looked past the mother to the daughter.
It was now 9:30 PM.
Less than half an hour had passed since they had first spoken with Cheng Xiang. Half an hour, a short time, yet so much had changed. A corner of a glamorous life had been lifted, and inside the silk-wrapped gift box, lay a pile of dead flies and mosquitoes.
He thought that, in fact, the first option ‘details to follow’ in the process of elimination he had listed with Huo Ranyin at noon contained a possibility: that Mo Nai was the r*pist, but the evidence was fabricated.
He was a r*pist, so he went to jail with a guilty conscience.
Cheng Xiang committed perjury, so she knew the truth.
Using fabricated evidence to convict a real r*pist—that was probably the storyline Cheng Xiang had decided on nine years ago.
As for why the evidence needed to be fabricated—
Ji Xun asked, “After Song Tingfeng was r*ped back then, did she not only take a shower but also wash her clothes, including her underwear?”
Cheng Xiang bit her lower lip hard. She ignored the burning sting of the slap on her face. Her thoughts, with Ji Xun’s words, were uncontrollably pulled back to that night nine years ago.
It was strange. It had been so long, and her life was surrounded by so many new and better things, yet her life seemed to be stuck in the past.
That night was so vivid, replaying in her nightmares in the years that followed, as if it were yesterday.
But her current life felt like it was shrouded in fog, soulless. The days passed one by one, seeming to have passed, yet also not.
That night, when she opened the dormitory door, Song Tingfeng’s bed was empty. All the bedding, clothes, and even the mosquito net were soaked in their three basins, being frantically scrubbed. The dorm floor was soaked with water.
She and Yu Yu asked her in confusion, “What are you doing, flooding the place in the middle of the night?”
And then they saw Song Tingfeng’s eyes, empty and dead. Her voice was squeezed from her throat, as dry and hoarse as a person at the end of their road. “Xiangxiang, A-Yu, I’m so dirty.”
So dirty…
No amount of scrubbing her body, scrubbing her clothes, could make her feel clean.
“That night, she went to the bathroom to shower every half hour. All ten of her fingers were pruned white,” Cheng Xiang began to speak, her voice very soft, as if afraid of startling someone. That person sat on the floor, hugging herself tightly, unwilling to go back to bed no matter what. “She was the best student among us, the smartest. She was the one who discovered that Mo Nai was lying to me. She said Mo Nai’s class schedule was strange, and then she went to the campus security to find a way to get the entire school’s roster. We went through it one by one and couldn’t find his student record. It had only been a few days since I broke up with Mo Nai, and she was retaliated against.”
Cheng Xiang was almost sobbing. “It was my fault she got hurt.”
Huo Ranyin: “You wanted to compensate her, to get revenge for her?”
“Is this considered revenge?” Cheng Xiang asked back angrily. “Mo Nai r*ped her! We were just letting the law do what it was supposed to do! You’ve never been r*ped, how would you know the terror of experiencing something like that? Who would be thinking about evidence at a time like that! Tingfeng was crying the next day, telling us she shouldn’t have washed her clothes. She was already smart enough and calm enough! If it had been me, I would have been breaking down for even longer, and the things I would have done in the heat of the moment would have been even more absurd!”
Ji Xun let out a soft sigh.
He thought of his novel, “The Poisonous Fruit,” taken from the fruit of the poisonous tree*.
Even if Mo Nai really was the culprit, would that have been a happy ending for everyone? —The criminal who escaped judgment finally faces the law. Regardless of whether the process was just, the result is justice.
Impossible.
An unjust process can only lead to an unjust result.
Ji Xun said, “But Song Tingfeng didn’t see Mo Nai’s face.”
“She didn’t see it, but other students did. That wasn’t a story we cooked up beforehand; it was what you police investigated and found out!”
Ji Xun ignored Cheng Xiang’s agitation. He continued calmly, “There is a sentence in Song Tingfeng’s testimony. She was sleeping groggily and heard the door open and close twice. ‘The door opened and closed twice.’ You, all of you, have you never once thought that maybe on the night of the incident, it wasn’t one person who entered the girls’ dormitory, but two? Mo Nai came in first, and another person came in after. The one who committed the r*pe wasn’t Mo Nai, but the person who followed him in?”
“How is that possible!”
Cheng Xiang denied it hoarsely.
“Mo Nai’s father is a murderer, his mother is a prostitute, and he lied to me saying he was a university student! A murderer’s child who is full of lies. If it wasn’t him who r*ped Song Tingfeng, who else would have? It was him, it was him!”
Ji Xun looked at Cheng Xiang for a long time without speaking.
It was Huo Ranyin who spoke.
“A murderer’s child is a r*pist,” Huo Ranyin said coolly. “This viewpoint has some similarities to your mother’s ‘a girl from a good family should be demure and pride herself on having no ex-boyfriends,’ doesn’t it?”
The gift box was smashed.
The bodies of the flies and insects scattered all over the floor. The silk ribbon was still bright and beautiful, but now it was just a shroud for the flies.
Cheng Xiang gasped for breath. She took a few steps back, suddenly lost her footing, and fell onto the sofa.
She leaned on the armrest and looked up at Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin. Her eyes were like two sharp blades, blades quenched in fire.
“Even if Mo Nai really isn’t the culprit, what about Song Tingfeng? She was r*ped. Is it just over like this because she washed herself clean? Nothing can be done, nothing can be sought, it’s just over?”
Author’s Note:
The fruit of the poisonous tree is a legal metaphor in the United States used to describe evidence that is obtained illegally. The logic of the term is that if the source of the evidence (the “tree”) is tainted, then anything gained from it (the “fruit”) is also tainted. It cannot be admitted in a court of law during legal proceedings, even if that evidence would be sufficient to change the outcome of the trial.
