Chi Qing hadn’t noticed the few glances Wu Zhibin cast his way. He was so exhausted he just wanted to go back to sleep, but a certain someone just had to bump right in front of him.
“Get in the car.”
Chi Qing didn’t even lift his eyelids: “You are very annoying.”
The temperature had dropped for the night, and Xie Lin had draped a black jacket over his shoulders. One arm rested on the open car window. Even though it was approaching 1:00 AM, this man—from the strands of his hair to his fingertips—remained unreasonably fastidious. The slightly upturned corners of his eyes swept over lightly: “If you let me drive you back, I won’t annoy you anymore.”
Chi Qing ignored him and placed an order on a ride-hailing app.
There truly weren’t many cars available at this hour. About two and a half minutes passed before a private car driver finally accepted the order. However, the profile page showed that this was a novice driver, currently having completed 0 orders.
Furthermore, the moment this novice driver accepted the order, the app displayed ‘Vehicle has arrived.’
Connecting all the information, the identity of the car owner was glaringly obvious; there wasn’t even a need to check the license plate number.
Chi Qing finally looked up at him: “…You accepted the order?”
The hand Xie Lin had resting on the car window reached out. His five fingers gripped the phone, flipping the screen to face him, responding to his earlier remark about ‘changing careers and becoming a driver’: “You made a valid point, so I’ve changed careers to become a driver. Can I drop you off now?”
“…”
“Canceling the order won’t work either. As long as you hail a car, I’ll be able to snatch the order here.”
Chi Qing exited the ride-hailing page. After searching through the settings, he discovered that the ride-hailing app did not have a feature to block drivers.
If he walked back from here on foot, the sun might already be up by the time he got home.
In the end, Chi Qing could only contribute the very first completed order to this novice driver.
Xie Lin turned off the notification for nearby passengers hailing rides on his app, then said with mock professionalism, “Passenger, please fasten your seatbelt.”
The roads were completely clear at night, and coupled with the fact that Xie Lin was genuinely a steady driver, there was basically no bumping or sudden acceleration along the way.
Chi Qing was relatively satisfied with the driver’s skills, save for one point: the driver talked too much.
Xie Lin: “You don’t usually drive yourself?”
Chi Qing: “Troublesome.”
Not only was driving troublesome, getting a driver’s license was also troublesome.
Avoiding crowded places as much as possible was the basic self-discipline of a germophobe.
“Officer Ji just said you studied acting for four years,” Xie Lin asked while waiting at a red light. “With your condition, are you even able to have co-stars beside you when you act?” I imagine if they touch you even once, the scene would be over.
Chi Qing didn’t shy away from the topic at all. Not only were his words sharp and piercing when aimed at others, but they were the same when aimed at himself: “That is why I haven’t achieved any development on this career path.”
“…”
Chi Qing exhausted his last sliver of patience: “Do you have any more questions? Once you’re done asking, focus on driving.”
“Just one more.”
As the red light turned green, Xie Lin said: “Earlier at the psychological clinic, you mentioned ‘ten years ago’.” For some reason, Xie Lin was very sensitive to the phrase ‘ten years.’ He had remembered a casually spoken remark up until now.
When Xie Lin reached this point, his fingers tapped against the steering wheel, but ultimately, he didn’t ask: “…It’s nothing. Go to sleep.”
Chi Qing was actually already very tired. After answering Xie Lin’s questions, he drifted into a state between sleeping and waking. After closing his eyes, everything went black, yet the words “ten years ago” suddenly crashed into his ears. He didn’t open his eyes, but his eyelashes, dark as raven feathers, fluttered slightly.
“Brother Bin, you went to the General Bureau just now?”
On the other side, Wu Zhibin returned from his whirlwind trip and met the curious gazes of the three-person team.
Wu Zhibin gave an “Mm” and said, “I went to the General Bureau to look up a file.”
Ji Mingrui proactively reported on the Li family’s situation: “The reports regarding Li Kang have all been submitted, and the case has been transferred to other departments. It’s just that Li Kang’s father is still attempting to claim this was merely an accidental injury; he is unwilling to hand his son over.” After rushing through the report, Ji Mingrui asked, “What file did you go to the General Bureau to look up? Is there another major case recently?”
Before Wu Zhibin could speak, Jiang Yu and Su Xiaolan had already pulled out a chair for him.
Wu Zhibin didn’t know whether to laugh or cry: “I never see you guys this enthusiastic when I ask you to do everyday tasks, compared to when you’re listening to cases.”
Looking at them, Wu Zhibin often recalled what he was like when he first became a police officer. This was also why he had insisted on transferring down to lead this group of rookies. Unable to out-stubborn them, he spoke, his voice sounding as if it had traveled through cruel and ancient years: “I just thought of a case… a case from ten years ago.”
“You guys have probably all heard of this case.”
Wu Zhibin wasn’t sure how much Ji Mingrui knew about Chi Qing’s past. Since it had been entered into the archives and given the highest level of encryption, the victims’ information needed to be kept strictly confidential. He omitted the key figures and just gave a general overview: “The serial kidnapping case that year shocked the entire city. The victims were all children aged ten to fifteen. Children kept going missing.”
“I know this case,” Su Xiaolan said. “My mom even specially bought me a watch with GPS tracking and made me wear it to school. She wouldn’t even let me go out to play with classmates on weekends.”
Ji Mingrui stated tragically: “As someone of the same age, I also had to wear that kind of watch. Not to mention how ugly it was, I wasn’t even allowed to take it off.”
Jiang Yu: “Me too…”
Because of that kidnapping case, electronic watches with GPS tracking were extremely popular for a time. On school campuses back then, there might have been kids not wearing their school uniforms, but absolutely no one would forget to wear their watch.
This also indirectly reflected just how severe the impact of the case was back then.
Su Xiaolan: “Later, it seems the police discovered a connection between these kidnapped children. Most of them were kids with good grades who had participated in city-wide competitions and won awards. In short, their names had appeared in newspapers and magazines after winning awards.”
Ji Mingrui: “I remember this. At the time, I failed my exam, and for the first time ever, my mom didn’t scold me. She even rubbed my head and said, ‘It seems being stupid has the benefits of being stupid.’“
Jiang Yu, who had been a top student since childhood, had a completely different experience: “I… I had just won the ‘Three Good Student’ award that year, and my mom almost went crazy. She couldn’t sleep every night, constantly feeling like I might be next. She woke up in the middle of the night to tell me she had figured it out, telling me not to fight for the ‘Three Good Student’ award next year, saying that those were all just empty titles.”
“…”
But at the time, the three of them were just teenagers. Their impression of the case was limited to the electronic watches they were forced to wear and the panicked, out-of-control public opinion. They vaguely remembered that the case was later solved and the culprit was caught, after which it was sealed away in their memories along with the long passage of time and countless trivial matters of growing up.
Ji Mingrui, completely unaware that his own buddy was a survivor of that case, asked, “What’s the matter with that case?”
“That case was very strange,” Wu Zhibin pondered for two seconds before revealing, “To this day, no one knows why that person kidnapped those children, what those children experienced during the kidnapping, or why only two children survived in the end. And regarding all these unsolved mysteries, higher-ups didn’t let anyone continue investigating. The case was just closed like that.”
“The strangest thing was a sentence the killer said during his trial. He said, ‘You can’t kill me, and you can’t catch me.’ On the day he was executed by firing squad, he left with a smile.”
“Because of that sentence at the trial, it sparked a lot of public debate again. Some people questioned whether the police had caught the wrong person, while others suspected there might be more than one killer… But when no new victims appeared over the following six months, the public opinion gradually died down. Even today, ten years later, there is still a small faction of people who believe the true culprit was never caught.”
The information about the case mentioned earlier was well known to the public, and even personally experienced by Ji Mingrui and the others during their student days. However, this later “internal” intelligence was something they were hearing for the first time.
The eerie words and scene seemed to float before Ji Mingrui’s eyes.
— “You can’t kill me, and you can’t catch me.”
Chi Qing was having a dream in the car.
In the dream, he sat at the trial scene. The man’s voice was low and hoarse as he uttered a terrifying sentence that left infinite room for imagination. As soon as the words were spoken, everyone present was shocked, and a violent wave of discussion erupted around him.
The scene suddenly shifted, transitioning to a hospital room.
He opened his eyes and woke up in the hospital room, his head splitting with pain.
The world was filled with bizarre voices. He watched the surrounding medical staff rushing in and out of the ward. A nurse approached him, her mouth opening and closing. Everyone was talking, but the sounds he heard didn’t seem to originate from reality.
Relying on lip-reading, he deciphered the nurse saying: “You’re awake? How do you feel?”
But the only sound echoing in his ears was a massive ringing. Accompanied by that endless ringing, a distorted voice said: [That old man in the ward just now is so annoying. He pressed the call bell eight hundred times in one night. It’s so annoying.]
The doctor: “Can you hear me speaking? Can you hear me?”
Chi Qing didn’t know what the doctor was saying; he only heard one sentence: [Don’t tell me he’s developed some kind of sequelae… Let Doctor Wu handle this himself. If the blame falls on me, I won’t be able to explain it.]
[…]
Countless distorted voices continuously flooded into his ears.
Finally, the doctor wrote on a piece of paper: You are experiencing symptoms of temporary deafness, but it should be temporary. Don’t worry. You mentioned earlier that you heard strange sounds; it might be auditory hallucinations. Theoretically speaking, you shouldn’t be able to hear any sounds right now.
During those three months of deafness, Chi Qing didn’t need to rely on touch to read people’s minds—as long as they were within a certain range, and as long as that person was currently opening their mouth to speak, he could hear them.
At first, he couldn’t be sure if these were truly the thoughts deep in other people’s hearts, or just his own delusions.
In that world narrated by distorted voices, happiness could be fake, sorrow could be fake, and even love could be fake.
Three months later, his deafness recovered.
The distorted voices disappeared along with it. Chi Qing thought his illness had seemingly been cured, until the day he was discharged from the hospital and accidentally bumped into a nurse’s hand.
[I didn’t even have time to eat, and that old man rang the bell again…]
In his dream, Chi Qing saw himself talking to the nurse.
“Thank you,” he heard himself say. “Do you have time right now? I’d like to treat you to lunch.”
The nurse smiled: “I haven’t eaten yet either, thanks. But I still have work, I need to go check on the next ward.”
Chi Qing’s dream was fragmented and discontinuous.
Overwhelming voices, secrets hidden deep in people’s hearts, unspeakable desires, and the truths concealed beneath the surface. He told himself he had to wake up.
Not long after this thought emerged, Chi Qing felt something fine and dense brush against his face.
Chi Qing was woken up by this touch. Opening his eyes, the first thing he saw was Xie Lin’s face—which, even magnified, remained flawless. The inside of the car was very dark. Relying solely on the faint streetlights of the residential complex outside and the light projected from the car’s electronic screen, only half of the man’s face was illuminated.
Xie Lin was standing outside the car door, leaning over, very close to him: “I was just about to wake you.”
Only then did Chi Qing realize that what had brushed against his face earlier were the strands of Xie Lin’s hair hanging down.
“Passenger,” Xie Lin smiled. He had a high bridge of the nose and eyelashes so long they felt illegal. The voices from Chi Qing’s dream receded in their wake. “We’re home.”
