The short man lived in a run-down old neighborhood. Xie Lin spent quite a while finding a parking spot in the complex before parking the car and sending him upstairs.
The building was old. The exterior had been repainted, but the stairwell inside still looked like unfinished rough concrete. It had rained the previous day, and umbrellas left outside residents’ doors had made the corridor damp. Dark wet patches were scattered across the floor.
Standing in the narrow hallway outside the short man’s apartment, Xie Lin said, “Since we’ve delivered you home, we’ll head back first. My assistant has a bit of a cleanliness issue. If we stand here any longer, I’m afraid he’ll get upset.”
Hearing that, the short man looked at the former actor beside him and saw him carefully standing on a relatively clean patch of floor. He had his hands in his pockets, then pulled out a mask and, with a cold expression, put it on. “……”
[That cleanliness issue really is serious.]
After putting on the mask, Chi Qing looked even gloomier. The only trace of color on his face, his lips, was covered now, and his black bangs fell long across his forehead.
“Do you still need anything?” he asked.
“I…”
The short man didn’t know whether he should keep them inside with him a while longer.
On one hand, he was scared.
Anyone who had been targeted several times in such a short period would be too afraid to stay alone at home.
But the danger level of the two people in front of him was no lower than that of the assailant.
After hesitating for a while, the short man finally said, “Thank you both today. How about coming in for some tea before you go?”
Before entering, Xie Lin reached a hand toward Chi Qing.
Chi Qing thought he wanted the mask too. “No masks left.”
“Who asked you for a mask?” Xie Lin said. “…Hand.”
Chi Qing froze.
He realized that ever since that conversation last time, whenever they went somewhere crowded, Xie Lin would always reach for his hand first.
The short man’s apartment was a one-bedroom, one-living-room place. Because of his work, he often spent nights outside, so the home was fairly tidy and had few things. One wall in the living room was covered with photos, all taken from very tricky angles. They were all candid shots.
Most of the people in the photos were blurry silhouettes. In some, half a face was unexpectedly visible beside a half-open curtain. In others, someone dressed tightly for the weather could be seen hurrying through an underground garage. There were even two shots of people holding hands from behind.
“Work display,” the short man explained. “These were all taken after staking out for a long time.”
Xie Lin looked around the living room, and the short man finally couldn’t help asking, “Why are you two holding hands?”
They had seemed to be holding hands back at the station too.
“He’s allergic to other people,” Xie Lin said. “If he accidentally bumps into someone, I’m not comfortable unless I’m holding him.”
Chi Qing: “……”
Short man: “……”
Besides the photo wall, the living room also had a bookshelf. The most eye-catching item on it was a set titled Daily Tracking Tutorial.
Xie Lin said, “You’re quite studious.”
The short man replied, “Competition in our line of work is huge too. Everyone wants first-hand information. There are only so many celebrities. If someone else gets the scoop first, you won’t have any news to report.”
Xie Lin stopped in front of the bookcase and nodded in agreement. “So first-hand information is very important to you?”
“Of course,” the short man said.
Xie Lin suddenly brought up the dead paparazzo. “Zhang Feng met with you before he died, didn’t he?”
The short man was pouring water for them, holding disposable cups. When he bent down to get water, he nearly forgot to let go. “Why would you ask that?”
“We know each other. He took me under his wing when I first entered the profession, but later, after we took different projects, we lost touch.”
“Mr. Wang, you still haven’t answered me directly. Did you see each other a few days ago?”
“……”
Xie Lin leaned forward slightly and pressed closer. The short man realized that when he got close, the amusement in the man’s brown pupils was actually very faint. In Xie Lin’s eyes, he saw his own reflection like a shadow cast on a still lake.
“Like you said, you weren’t on the same project. So why did the two of you get attacked one after another? Why was it that right after Zhang Feng died, they immediately locked onto you?”
Chi Qing immediately realized what Xie Lin was getting at.
Xie Lin’s guess was that the masked man from today might not have come specifically to kill one particular person. There was no overlapping clue between Zhang Feng and the short man. If it wasn’t about the person, then it was likely about an object.
The other side might have been looking for something.
Who the person was might not matter. What mattered was who had the thing.
The short man had poured only hot water. He straightened up, apparently not feeling the heat at all. He opened his mouth.
“I… didn’t.”
He repeated it again, unsure whether he was trying to convince others or himself. “I didn’t meet him.”
Standing beside Xie Lin, Chi Qing moved his fingers slightly and slipped a few fingers out of Xie Lin’s grasp. The moment he pulled away, many sounds rushed into his ears.
[Old man, you left too early. I’ve missed you all these years…]
A sharp female voice screamed, [Other people can get full marks, why do you only get ninety?!]
[…]
He tried his best to ignore the chaotic noise and distinguish the short man’s voice.
After a moment, he finally focused on the closer sound. The distorted voice was muttering in his heart, getting lower and lower as it went: [Anyway, he’s dead. No one will know that thing is in my hands. I haven’t had any big news for a long time. If this keeps up, I’m likely to lose my job. My boss even talked to me about it recently…]
Chi Qing thought, So it really is some object.
He often suspected that if one of them had mind-reading abilities, it was probably Xie Lin.
He couldn’t judge the other person’s true intentions from expression, tone, or even body language, but Xie Lin could do all of that with ease.
“Tell me honestly,” Xie Lin said, “did you take anything from Zhang Feng? For example… an SD card.”
Xie Lin went on, “If you still want to live, it’s best not to lie. Whoever has the item is the one ‘he’ is targeting. You can think this has nothing to do with Zhang Feng and dress it all up as coincidence, but you only have one life.”
After a long silence, the short man set down the scalding disposable cup and said, “Two days ago, I met him at a café.”
“I didn’t really know what he’d been doing lately. I heard he was following a celebrity and had gotten onto some very important information. That day he excitedly asked me to meet. He said that if he released this information, the entire entertainment industry would be shaken. It would definitely be a first-ever explosive scoop.”
Two days earlier.
In the café, Zhang Feng had excitedly told him about it.
The short man hadn’t had valuable news in a long time. Holding his coffee cup and sitting across from Zhang Feng, he smiled along, but he didn’t truly feel happy for his former “mentor.”
“I’ll follow him again tomorrow and see if I can get more photos,” Zhang Feng said animatedly. Halfway through, he took the camera off the strap around his neck, set it by the table, and stood up. “…Hold on, I’m going to the bathroom.”
“Ah, okay.”
The short man answered casually, his eyes fixed on the camera on the table.
It seemed like a devil was whispering in his mind:
Take it out and look. Take it out and it becomes yours.
The short man rubbed his hands together, unable to stop himself from taking the SD card out of the camera. Looking at the tiny black card, he quickly swapped it with the blank SD card from his own camera.
“Even if he opened the camera and found the SD card empty,” the short man recalled, “it would be hard to prove I’d swapped it.”
The short man had good luck. Zhang Feng didn’t notice the card had been replaced. He hadn’t slept for several days in a row, went home and crashed, then got up again at noon the next day and headed to the mall with his camera—he probably never realized the card had been swapped before he fell to his death.
But clearly—someone else did.
Time returned to the day of the fall.
Zhang Feng’s body lay in a puddle, crimson blood flowing quietly. Amid the screams and chaos around him, a pair of black rain boots stood not far from his corpse.
The owner of the boots stood in the crowd for a while, then pushed aside the camera wreckage, bent down, and picked up a very inconspicuous black card. Turning around, he disappeared into the crowd.
At this point, the case gradually became clear: for the sake of a so-called “big scoop,” someone stole another man’s SD card and brought disaster on himself.
At the same time.
The black van avoided the surveillance cameras and slowly drove into the area near a remote factory, eventually stopping on a weed-covered patch of wasteland.
The man in the driver’s seat ripped off his hood. He had been sweating heavily just now. He raised a hand to unbutton his coat, then pushed open the car door and got out while taking a call.
A voice came from the other end: “Is it done?”
The voice was obviously distorted, sounding sharp and strange.
The man said, “No… he got away.”
“He got away?!” The other side exploded in shock.
“A bit of an accident,” the man said, wiping sweat from his face. A deep scar ran from the corner of his eye downward, like a twisting serpent crawling across his face. “Ran into two lunatics.”
The other side was clearly displeased. “Are you sure the thing is on him?”
“It’s not on Zhang’s body and not in his house. It has to be on this guy. I looked into him—Zhang met him before he died.”
“Whatever happens to the person, I don’t care. I only want the thing,” the other side said.
“Don’t worry,” the man said, getting back into the car. He opened the computer on the passenger seat. “As long as I get paid, I’ll get this done for you.”
The computer screen showed a black-and-white surveillance feed.
The night before, while waiting for that paparazzo, he hadn’t been idle either. He had installed a miniature surveillance camera at the entrance to the man’s home. Because the hiding spot was some distance from the door, the picture wasn’t especially clear. The camera faced a dusty corridor, stacked boxes, and an old door number. The black-and-white image looked still, almost frozen.
He waited and waited, until the neighbor across the hall opened their door and went out. After the neighbor downstairs left, the screen returned to being still.
The man stared at the surveillance feed without blinking, grinding out a vicious curse through his teeth: I’m killing you today for sure.
It was only about ten minutes later that the feed finally moved.
The door he had been watching opened, and the first person to step out was a tall man in a black long coat— the same lunatic from earlier.
The lunatic’s clothes were completely out of place in this building, as if he were standing in some luxury club instead. The person following beside him, though wearing a mask, was instantly recognizable to the man as the one who had been in the passenger seat earlier… the other lunatic.
“…”
But that wasn’t the point. The point was that the lunatic was holding something in his hand.
The man abruptly sat up straight.
He leaned in to look. The SD card was clearly pinched between the man’s fingers.
The man watched the SD card, then looked up and saw the thin ring on Xie Lin’s finger.
Then he saw Xie Lin seemingly glance up intentionally or unintentionally, lifting his chin slightly. His eyes met the surveillance camera across the distance for a single second—so coincidentally that it almost made one suspect he had done it on purpose.
