“I stole the knife.”
The boy’s full name was Li Kang. He sat in the chair opposite the interrogation room, his overly large school uniform wrapping around him. There was a dark patch on his cuff—the bloodstain he had accidentally gotten on himself just now.
“The one before was me too. Xiaoliang (the little boy at the convenience store) and I are friends, and I often go over to play with him. I knew there were no surveillance cameras installed in the convenience store, so even if I stole a knife, he wouldn’t notice.” He even knew the importance of leaving no information behind. “If I left a purchase record, it would be very easy for you to find me.”
“Maybe it was because I killed too many; stray cats gradually stopped gathering at the factory. That day, I was walking home from the factory empty-handed. The window at Granny Wang’s house was open, and her cat was lying right on the sill. When I grabbed the cat, I dropped my phone, and I didn’t have time to pick it up.”
“I knew that if you found the phone dropped at the scene, you would definitely find me, and there was no way I could explain appearing in her house for no reason. So I took the wood carving from the cabinet.”
“Why did I choose cats? …Because cats are as small as my brother.”
Even though Li Kang had been caught red-handed, he didn’t appear nervous. Going through puberty, his face was broken out in acne. It was an extremely ordinary face, looking no different from countless other students sitting in classrooms taking lessons. But the words coming out of his mouth caused Li Guangfu—who had been yelling ‘It can’t be my son, there must be a misunderstanding’ through the glass—to gradually fall silent.
Li Kang’s stepmother was a factory worker. She had originally been on the night shift today, but rushed over immediately upon receiving the news, crying and cursing through the glass.
However, Li Kang slightly raised his head, a hint of a smile actually hanging on his lips: “I knew long ago that he and that woman were secretly together before my mom even died. As soon as my mom passed away, he couldn’t wait to marry her. From the day he was born, I’ve wanted to kill him.”
“Bang!”
The woman pounded her fists fiercely against the glass window several times.
The soundproofing in the room was excellent. They couldn’t hear what the woman was screaming, but going by the shape of her mouth, they could vaguely decipher half a sentence: ‘…you animal.’
Only then did Li Kang’s flat features shift slightly. Ignoring the woman screaming outside the door, he said, “I shouldn’t have aimed that knife at his arm just now. I should have slit his throat first.”
In the interrogation room, Ji Mingrui sat opposite the boy, so stunned by this undisguised malice coming from a child that he couldn’t speak.
After Li Kang was taken out, the woman ignored all attempts to stop her and made a move to lunge at him: “He’s your brother—he’s not even a year old—”
During the scuffle, the collar of his school uniform pulled askew, revealing a very ordinary silver necklace around Li Kang’s neck. From the shape of the exposed corner, the pendant appeared to be a cross.
The three-person team had only recently taken up their posts. Usually steeped all day in the trivial disputes of the neighborhood, this was their first time facing a criminal case directly.
It started as a very ordinary stray cat killing incident. Li Guangfu, Li Kang, and the woman who arrived later—they lived in the Haimao residential complex and normally just looked like an ordinary family. Nobody could have imagined that behind such an ordinary family hid such a “secret.”
Ji Mingrui hastily jotted down a few concluding sentences in his interrogation notebook. After Wu Zhibin rushed over overnight, he handed the remaining procedures over to the more experienced Brother Bin.
He closed his notebook, went out, grabbed a chair, and sat down outside.
Sitting opposite him were the other two participants in the case. It was already late at night, and one of the two hadn’t been able to stay awake. The participant surnamed Chi had expertly found a spot on the sofa to sleep. He likely found it too noisy, as one of his wrists was draped horizontally across his ear. Also, his germophobia fully showcased his intense insecurity—he had retracted his hands completely into his oversized sleeves.
The other participant sat next to him, flipping through a magazine. Seeing Ji Mingrui come out, he greeted him: “Officer Ji.”
Xie Lin pressed a finger to his lower lip and added, “He’s asleep.”
This situation felt familiar. Not long ago, Ji Mingrui had taken their statements in this exact manner.
The only difference was that back then, these two were still pointing fingers at each other as suspects. Now, the real culprit had been caught and was confessing to his crimes in the interrogation room.
Ji Mingrui began taking notes: “How did you realize there was a problem with the phone call?”
Even with all his silver-tongued eloquence, Xie Lin found it hard to explain the specific reasons. It was as if he had merely noticed someone was thirsty and needed to drink water—eating and drinking water weren’t really things you could explain.
“Intuition, I guess.”
Ji Mingrui: “…”
After this incident, Ji Mingrui vaguely felt that rather than calling it intuition, it would be better described as some sort of dangerous talent.
Ji Mingrui asked again: “Then who kicked the door open?”
“Him,” Xie Lin said. “I originally told him to act like property management with me, but his acting was truly unconvincing.”
Ji Mingrui agreed completely: “Yeah, his acting skills really are terrible, otherwise he wouldn’t have…” wouldn’t have graduated from film academy only to disappear into obscurity.
Before Ji Mingrui could finish his sentence, Chi Qing, who had always been a light sleeper, twitched the hand covering his ear and half-opened his eyes.
The words in Ji Mingrui’s mouth did a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn: “…But actually, there are definitely commendable things about him. Even though he can’t play normal people, when he plays villains, he really brings them to life.”
Chi Qing sat up and said, “Did you think I didn’t hear that first sentence?”
Actually, counting the very few roles Chi Qing had successfully auditioned for, basically none of them were good guys.
In the early years, just to contribute view counts to his buddy’s work, Ji Mingrui had watched every single one. Finding exactly where his buddy was amidst the vast majority of scenes that had nothing to do with Chi Qing was sometimes a fun part of binge-watching the shows.
Most of them were gloomy, brooding, behind-the-scenes major villains. The roles seemed to carry a lot of weight, but their actual screen time was genuinely sparse.
Xie Lin caught the keyword: “Plays?”
Ji Mingrui: “You probably won’t believe this, but he actually graduated from a performance academy. He studied acting courses for a full four years.”
Recalling the entirely unqualified ‘I am from property management’—from demeanor to tone—in the car, Xie Lin let out a laugh: “It really is hard to believe.”
Chi Qing ignored them: “Can we leave now?”
Ji Mingrui handed the pen to Xie Lin: “Sign here, and you two can head back.”
Chi Qing kept his hands retracted inside his sleeves the entire time. Only after Xie Lin finished signing did he reluctantly extend a hand. With practiced ease, he pulled a tissue from the side and used it to accept the pen Xie Lin handed over.
“There’s no need to be so disgusted, is there?” Xie Lin said. “Is everyone with germophobia like you?”
“My case is just more severe,” Chi Qing admitted frankly. After signing, he shoved the pen back into his hand, crumpled up the tissue, and said, “…So keep your distance from me at all times.”
And so, their brief cooperation ended, and the two reverted to their previous state.
Acting as if he couldn’t understand the words ‘keep your distance,’ Xie Lin asked, “Leaving? I’ll drive you.”
“…”
“What’s with that expression? It’s not like you didn’t sit in it just now.”
Chi Qing: “I didn’t have a choice just now.”
Wu Zhibin came out of the interrogation room just in time to hear this exchange. Before he could even step through the door, he collided head-on with Chi Qing, who was pushing the door open to leave.
From behind him, Xie Lin said, “You probably won’t be able to get a cab at this hour. I’m just dropping you off, your eyes are red from sleepiness.”
Chi Qing: “Since you like dropping people off at home so much, why don’t you change careers and become a driver.”
Chi Qing had just slept for those ten-odd minutes, but he felt even more exhausted after waking up, the corners of his eyes tinged with red. His appearance was very distinctive: black hair drooping slightly decadently over his eyes, red lips, hands stuffed in his pockets, and his eyelids drooping listlessly, looking completely unbothered by anyone.
Xie Lin, on the other hand, greeted Wu Zhibin: “We’ll be going now.”
Wu Zhibin’s cane paused slightly, but he wasn’t looking at Xie Lin; he was looking at Chi Qing.
Behind Wu Zhibin, Su Xiaolan, clutching the record book to her chest, was still muttering to Jiang Yu: “He’s just a child, how could he have such thoughts?”
After Chi Qing left, Wu Zhibin still remained frozen at the door until Ji Mingrui called out “Brother Bin,” snapping him out of his daze: “Is that your friend?”
“Ever since the first time I saw him, I’ve felt like that kid looked familiar.”
Ji Mingrui was a bit surprised: “Have you seen him on TV? Even though the guy isn’t famous, he does have a few works to his name.” He began listing them off like family treasures: “He played the suspect who showed up for three seconds at the start of Pursuit, and the villain in the third arc of Legend of Cultivation, uh, basically none of them were good roles…”
Wu Zhibin normally never watched dramas at all.
What he had been looking at all these years were all kinds of criminals and major cases.
When they met last time, he hadn’t paid much attention to Chi Qing, focusing entirely on listening to Xie Lin’s analysis before hurriedly dispatching Ji Mingrui and the others to investigate Haimao. It was only today that he found him familiar.
Where exactly had he seen him before…
Wu Zhibin asked: “What’s your friend’s name?”
Assuming Chi Qing had finally reaped a drama fan after years of obscurity, Ji Mingrui enthusiastically introduced him: “Chi as in chachi (error), Qing as in ganqing (navy blue). Chi Qing.”
Wu Zhibin returned to the office with the materials on hand. As he finished organizing the files, he suddenly recalled Su Xiaolan’s remark: ‘He’s just a child.’
Child.
Wu Zhibin chewed on those two words, carefully recalling Chi Qing’s facial features. After a long moment, he suddenly grabbed his car keys, stood up, and drove all the way to the General Bureau. The General Bureau was still bustling with people working overtime for cases on the hour. Seeing him, someone put down their work and greeted him: “Brother Bin.”
Wu Zhibin tapped his cane on the ground and nodded at them.
It had been a while since he last returned to the General Bureau. After brief greetings, he headed straight for the headquarters archives.
All past cases were sealed in the headquarters archives, which required encrypted access permissions. As he walked, he pulled out his badge to scan it. The electronic doors verified the visitor’s information and automatically opened.
He arrived in front of the final door, which meant the files stored here had an extremely high level of encryption.
Wu Zhibin began searching through the archive shelves, eventually finding a stack of yellowed document files in a corner.
The cover read: 2.18 Serial Child Kidnapping Case.
That was ten years ago. The winter of 2011.
Standing in the archives, Wu Zhibin fell into a brief, heavy silence. Then he turned the pages one by one, stopping when he reached the second-to-last page. There, under the survivor column, he found a name: Chi Qing.
Attached beside it was a slightly yellowed photograph.
The facial features of the teenager in the photo hadn’t fully matured yet, but one could still catch a glimpse of the stunning appearance within his contours: delicate brows and eyes, and deeply colored pupils. This face gradually merged with the face he had just seen earlier today.
The file read: Upon medical examination after being sent to the hospital, the victim was found to exhibit symptoms of deafness and auditory hallucinations. Ruling out other medical causes, it is suspected to be psychological, originating from the body’s spontaneous, excessive stress response after experiencing a massive trauma.
The record-keeper had clearly followed up on the situation, as the next line was written with a different type of fineliner pen: Auditory hallucinations disappeared after three months. The patient has fully recovered and been discharged.
The final line of the file was the psychological evaluation column.
In the psychological evaluation column, a highly ambiguous sentence was written: Although there are no abnormalities, long-term observation is still recommended.
