After a brief, basic questioning, the escape room owner and his criminal file were quickly transferred to another unit, and the General Bureau sent a few criminal investigators to take custody of him.
Investigator: “I heard this was discovered by some customers playing the escape room? Do they need the Bureau to arrange post-incident counseling? Normal people usually develop psychological trauma after witnessing something like this. Here, let me contact the Bureau’s psychology department immediately…”
Ji Mingrui sighed and interrupted: “No need. They aren’t ‘normal’ people.”
“You know them—they’re the two consultants from the General Bureau. You’ve worked alongside them long enough to know exactly what kind of characters they are.”
As soon as they heard who it was, the investigator immediately abandoned the idea of calling in a psychologist. Before loading the suspect into the vehicle, the investigator leaned halfway out of the car door and asked: “But why on earth were they playing an escape room in the first place?”
Ji Mingrui: “…”
He couldn’t answer that strange question either. He had been too busy interrogating the suspect to question the two “parties of interest,” who were just as problematic as the case itself.
Inside the interrogation room.
After Chi Qing placed his hand over Xie Lin’s, the strange, unsettling aura around Xie Lin slowly faded. Before Chi Qing could pull his hand back, Xie Lin lazily added: [If you let go, I might feel uncomfortable again. Every time I see that escape room owner, I feel sick.]
Chi Qing looked through the glass partition at the next room and bluntly punctured his bubble: “He’s already gone.”
[It doesn’t matter if he’s gone; he’s still haunting my mind.]
Chi Qing: “…”
At first, Chi Qing actually believed him and didn’t let go. This was a man who used to go stiff all over if he was touched; now, he was lowering his eyes and taking the initiative to hold someone else’s hand.
It wasn’t until Xie Lin pushed his luck, moving his fingers to make a further demand: [Let’s hold hands differently.]
[The way you held me when we crossed the street—that would make me feel much better.]
Chi Qing: “…”
Chi Qing realized that Xie Lin was perfectly fine; he was just teasing him. Chi Qing pulled his hand away with a cold face: “I think you should just stay uncomfortable.”
The moment Chi Qing let go, the door was pushed open. Ji Mingrui walked in with a heavy stack of files, slapped them onto the table with a loud thwack, pulled a pen from the cup, and stared at the two of them without a word.
The atmosphere was heavy with silence.
“Time for a statement, right?” Xie Lin broke the silence, volunteering. “I’m familiar with this process.”
Ji Mingrui opened the record book, which was unusually thick, and felt exhausted before even writing a word: “You two aren’t just familiar—you’re suspiciously proficient.”
“What were you doing there?” he asked.
“At this hour, two people going to play an escape room? Since when were you two so close? And you—” Ji Mingrui didn’t give them a chance to answer, pointing his pen at Chi Qing, “You’re the one who hates going out to play the most.”
“In high school, you never went on field trips or stepped into internet cafes. College was even worse. You’d always pick the classes with the fewest people. While everyone else scrambled for popular professors, you were the only one digging for obscure electives… I remember once on my birthday, I wanted you to go out with me, and you asked why anyone would want to breathe polluted air in a crowded place… If I had to list every instance, I could talk for three days and three nights.”
Ji Mingrui: “In short, your behavior this time is highly abnormal. I expect a reasonable explanation. As of now, you two haven’t been completely cleared of suspicion.”
Chi Qing didn’t know how to phrase it. The phrase, “I’m trying to date him,” was stuck on the tip of his tongue.
Xie Lin took over: “Let me explain. This story begins the day before yesterday.”
Ji Mingrui: “…?”
Does playing an escape room really require such a long setup?
Xie Lin: “The day before yesterday, I couldn’t help but confess my feelings to the person I like. Do you have someone you like, Officer Ji? Never mind, you probably wouldn’t understand that kind of feeling anyway.”
Ji Mingrui: “???” Why do I smell something pretentious?
Xie Lin crossed his hands and continued: “Aren’t we taking a statement? Please record every word I say; this is quite important.”
Ji Mingrui thought, No problem. Even if what he says next is earth-shattering, I’ll remain professional. I’ve taken so many absurd statements from them that my psychological endurance has increased significantly; ordinary scenes no longer…
“I’m in a relationship with the person I like.”
…No longer…
“After getting together, we had to go on a date. It just so happens that my partner likes puzzles and dislikes crowded places, so we chose an escape room.”
…Cannot faze me…
“…”
Ji Mingrui wrote down every word Xie Lin said. When he reached the keyword “date,” his pen scratched harshly against the paper—
D-A-T-E?!
“What is actually going on?” In the corner of a quiet hallway, Ji Mingrui pulled Chi Qing aside and asked after a deep breath, “You two are together?”
The feeling this gave him couldn’t be described as mere “shock.” First of all, the equation “Chi Qing falls in love” was almost impossible to solve. Secondly, that the object of his affection was the man named Xie—that wasn’t just hard to solve; it was pure fantasy.
Chi Qing didn’t bother hiding it. They had agreed to “try it out,” not to have an affair: “Yeah.”
Ji Mingrui: “What does ‘yeah’ even mean?”
Chi Qing: “Exactly what you heard. We’re trying it out.”
“I was going to tell you, but there wasn’t a good opportunity. You know the situation—we were dealing with a case of corpse-hiding in an escape room.”
You really do see everything if you live long enough. If his brother Chi Qing could leave the single life, then pigs could truly fly.
Ji Mingrui said: “No, wait. Why would you be with him? I had absolutely no mental preparation for this. Although, if I think about it, you two do have a lot in common. Neither of you is exactly ‘mentally normal’—one stares at a corpse with a blank face, the other smiles at one—”
As he said this, he realized that, if you followed that logic, they were actually quite compatible? After all, there’s an equation in the world called “two negatives make a positive.”
Ji Mingrui had known Chi Qing for so many years that he often nagged like an old mother, knowing that the “common sense” most normal people take for granted is a blank, unknown state for Chi Qing.
Ji Mingrui: “Do you even know what a relationship is? Do you know what the prerequisites for dating are?”
Chi Qing lifted an eyelid: “Do I look mentally disabled to you?”
“…”
Ji Mingrui wanted to keep pressing, but Chi Qing suddenly said: “I might not understand those things perfectly, but if the person is him, I’m willing to try to understand.”
Ji Mingrui froze.
The two of them added another bizarre page to the thick stack of statements. Chi Qing held the pen and signed his name at the bottom—his name and Xie Lin’s, side by side, for the umpteenth time.
He hadn’t worn gloves since they left; that he had lasted this long was a miracle. After signing, he went to the restroom and washed his hands thoroughly.
As the cold water splashed over the backs of his hands, Chi Qing suddenly remembered the kiss in the escape room. Although he had told Xie Lin he would “try it,” the most intimate things they had done were hold hands and hug. Anything further hadn’t been in his plan.
The water was freezing, but Chi Qing felt his fingertips burning.
When he returned, Ji Mingrui and Xie Lin had changed positions. They were standing by the window. Ji Mingrui was smoking—a rare occurrence—and when he saw Chi Qing return, he stubbed it out. Chi Qing only caught Ji Mingrui saying, “My questions are all finished.”
The tone was soft. They separated as if they hadn’t been talking at all. Ji Mingrui pointed to the door, his head aching: “Get out of here quickly. Don’t let me take your statements again. Go to safe places; stop digging yourselves into murder cases.”
On the way back, Chi Qing still thought about that sentence, “questions.” What had Ji Mingrui asked him?
Chi Qing’s gaze landed on Xie Lin. Xie Lin, now that his leg injury had healed and he had stopped faking it, was back to his professional duties as their chauffeur. His hands rested on the steering wheel, and he smelled faintly of smoke.
While waiting for a red light, Xie Lin glanced at Chi Qing: “Though I’m happy to have you look at me, it makes me distracted when I’m driving.”
Then, Xie Lin added: “Back in the escape room, you didn’t finish what you were saying.”
Chi Qing remembered. What he had been about to say had been interrupted by the fingernail falling off the corpse. After a while, right before the light changed, Chi Qing pointed at his own hand: “You still haven’t asked why I can hear those voices.”
Xie Lin remembered sending the intoxicated Chi Qing home that first night, and the distressed expression he’d had in his dreams: “If it’s not a happy memory, you don’t have to say it.”
Chi Qing: “It’s a bit complicated to explain.”
Chi Qing was the type of person who could condense a 3,000-word story into two or three sentences. He gave a brief explanation: “I was in a case, ended up in the hospital, and when I woke up, I’d accidentally lost my hearing, and somehow, I started hearing voices.”
A normal person might say, “What kind of nonsense are you spouting?” but Xie Lin simply nodded: “I see. I was in a case once, too.”
The two didn’t delve deeper into the details of that “case.” The red light flickered and turned green.
Chi Qing still couldn’t suppress his curiosity: “Were you two just chatting?”
He didn’t know why he cared so much. He cared about Ji Mingrui’s opinion and Xie Lin’s response. He hadn’t intended to keep it a secret, but the public reveal of their relationship had been far too sudden.
Xie Lin: “We talked a bit.”
Chi Qing: “?”
Back at the station, Ji Mingrui had stared at him, smoking, while firing off a series of questions:
“How many have you dated?”
“How long was the longest one?”
“Have you ever cheated?”
“Have you cut ties with all your exes?”
“Looking at your usual behavior… have you ever deceived anyone’s feelings?”
“…”
“You’d better come clean. Don’t forget what I do for a living. I didn’t spend all that time in the detective courses at the police academy for nothing.”
Xie Lin had never expected that he’d tried to show off his relationship, only to nearly crash the car. After a long moment, he looked at the road ahead and said: “Your friend is good to you. He was worried I was a ‘scumbag.'”
“…”
