“That’s their score from the school-opening examination. They… weren’t very attentive during class, and their grades had always been bad, consistently landing them at the very bottom of the class.”
The following day, the task force visited Honghai No. 6 High School once again. The female teacher repeated the student information she had already gone over numerous times these past few days to them yet again: “They always played on their phones during class and wouldn’t listen when told off. To be honest, my relationship with them wasn’t very good. At the end of last semester, I had a chat with them once, saying I only hoped they wouldn’t affect the other students during class, and as for what they did themselves, I wouldn’t meddle anymore.”
The female teacher had only led them for one semester, so her understanding of these few troubled youths wasn’t deep either.
“You didn’t meddle anymore?” the criminal detective asked while keeping records.
“It’s very difficult for a person to change,” the female teacher let out a sigh. “When I first started teaching students, I was full of passionate enthusiasm, thinking I could help these children. But it really can’t be done. Later, I realized that keeping them under control so they don’t cause trouble and letting them graduate peacefully is already quite good.”
As she spoke, she noticed two unfamiliar faces among the people who had come this time—she had seen these two men in the small woods yesterday. Among a crowd of police officers, only the two of them were not wearing police uniforms, their plain clothes looking exceptionally prominent in the crowd.
The two men walked into the office side-by-side from the doorway.
She couldn’t help but steal a few more glances. Then, one of them walked toward her with a smile and handed her a cup of hot coffee. The look the man cast gave off a certain illusion, making one mistakenly think he was looking at them “with deep affection” at this moment. Even the words coming out of his mouth were incredibly gentle: “It’s fine, we’re just chatting casually. Don’t be nervous.”
The female teacher took the warm cup of coffee and uttered a “Thank you.”
“How many years have you been working? You look very young, you couldn’t have just graduated, right?”
The temperature of the coffee in her hand scalded its way all from her palm to other places, causing the female teacher’s face to flush: “I… I’ve been working for almost six years now.”
Xie Lin tilted his head to look her over: “Then one really couldn’t tell.”
“…”
The atmosphere instantly shifted out of the interrogation vibe that the task force excelled at.
The tension dissipated by more than half.
The female teacher: “Are you a police officer too?”
Xie Lin: “You could say I’m half of one.”
After entering the office, Chi Qing found a spot near the wall to stand. The detective responsible for the recording just now stepped down, retreating to stand beside him. He watched Chi Qing putting on his gloves, his expression looking rather displeased.
The detective didn’t dare to take the initiative to greet Chi Qing, so he stood beside him obediently.
To his surprise, a few minutes later, this Assistant Chi, who looked like he didn’t want to interact with anyone at all, suddenly called out to him.
The detective: “Ah? You’re calling me?”
Chi Qing used his finger clad in a black glove to point at Xie Lin and that female teacher: “Do you all usually communicate like this when you’re working?”
The detective didn’t understand his meaning: “…Like what?”
Chi Qing had accompanied them today to investigate the case; perhaps there was some hidden information in the office.
But his attention had no way of staying on any information related to the case.
With a cold face, he said, “Caring about how many years someone has been working, praising the other party for looking very young.”
The detective scratched the back of his head and said, “Generally… no.”
Although the detective didn’t know why Chi Qing was asking this, he took another glance at Xie Lin and added a sentence: “Nor do we buy coffee for people.”
Xie Lin and the female teacher were chatting very harmoniously. The two of them conversed for a couple of sentences before getting into the main topic. Ignoring the hair-raising sensation behind his back, Xie Lin asked, “The relationship among these three should usually be quite good, right?”
The female teacher: “Their seats were all in the very last row, and they always walked together usually. Their relationship was indeed quite good. From where did you see that?”
Xie Lin pointed at the three exam papers on the desk.
“I focused on reviewing their exam papers last night. Generally speaking, it’s very difficult even if you want your rankings to be squeezed that closely together, so besides a coincidence, there is only one other situation,” Xie Lin said, “copying each other’s answers.”
“The places where errors were made on these three exam papers are identical; it’s obvious at a glance that they copied from one another. Therefore, their relationship should be very good.”
Squeezing together in rankings looked quite terrifying at first glance.
Making it look like some report card murder case, as if specifically picking out poor students to kill.
But Xie Lin didn’t think this matter had too much to do with the report card. Instead, it confirmed that these three individuals should be a small clique.
Among high school students, the phenomenon of forming cliques was very common.
It also aligned more with the basic characteristics of a revenge killing.
They stayed at Honghai for most of the day, investigating all the way until evening when school was about to dismiss.
The other students in the three deceased’s class accepted the police investigation one by one.
“How do you feel about your classmate dying?”
“Scared, I guess. After all, my grades are quite poor too,” a boy with acne on his face said, always keeping his head lowered when speaking.
“Besides being scared?”
The boy’s character was self-deprecating and sensitive. He clutched the hem of his clothes tightly, saying unexpectedly, “Nothing else.”
“Don’t you feel sad? That is your classmate after all.”
What surprised all the detectives present was that almost the entire class expressed the same viewpoint: “Not sad. They… were quite annoying. They usually loved to crack many jokes that weren’t funny at all, and the teachers couldn’t manage them either. All of us disliked the three of them very much.”
The mischievous and recalcitrant character of the three deceased stood out sharply.
Disliked by teachers, disliked by classmates, complex family backgrounds, bad characters, and neglecting their studies.
Except for standing a bit forward at the beginning when chatting with the female teacher, once he finished asking the questions he wanted to ask, Xie Lin worried that there were too many people in the office and that Chi Qing would probably find it unbearable standing there alone.
“What do you want to eat later?” Xie Lin said as he wanted to grasp Chi Qing’s hand. However, just as his hand was extended halfway, it was avoided by Chi Qing.
A split second before Xie Lin was about to touch him, Chi Qing stuffed his hand into his coat pocket as if nothing had happened.
“?”
For a moment, it was difficult for Xie Lin to judge whether this movement of Chi Qing’s counted as “dodging.”
“Waited too long? Or did some person not watch where they were going and bump into you?”
“There are a bit too many people today…”
Xie Lin thought his clean-freak tendencies were acting up.
Chi Qing also wished his clean-freak tendencies were acting up.
Otherwise, how was he going to resolve this inexplicable mood?
One of his ears was listening to the information gathered by the police, while the other ear uncontrollably drifted toward the conversation between Xie Lin and the female teacher.
From you look very young to finally, the female teacher asking if they could add each other as contacts, so that if she thought of any information later, she could inform the police side at the first instance.
That somewhat uncomfortable emotion of his exploded completely after Xie Lin actually took out his phone to scan the other party’s QR code.
Reasonlessly, and even somewhat making trouble out of nothing, he thought, If there is any important information, why not hurry up and dial 110? What message is she sending to Xie Lin?
At that time, he didn’t understand yet.
This feeling was called jealousy.
He only knew that after seeing Xie Lin’s face, he felt especially uncomfortable.
“It’s nothing,” Chi Qing finally suppressed these hard-to-explain emotions and said, “it’s just that you look a bit unpleasant to my eyes today. Try your best not to hover around in front of my eyes.”
Xie Lin: “…?”
Xie Lin thought to himself that he and his partner…
…had been together for less than a week if counted generously, and he was already starting to look unpleasant to his eyes?
Xie Lin: “Unpleasant? Be more specific.”
Chi Qing said honestly, “I can’t really be specific. Everywhere looks unpleasant.”
“…”
There were many people at Honghai. In order not to disturb the students’ classes, Su Xiaolan and the others had also come over to help. After being busy for half the day, the dismissal bell rang, and only then did Su Xiaolan remember she still had her nephew to pick up.
But the work on hand wasn’t finished yet, so Su Xiaolan cast a hopeful gaze toward the two people in the corridor outside the office door.
Xie Lin and Chi Qing hadn’t yet discussed a concrete result regarding the question of “where looks unpleasant” when Su Xiaolan poked a head out from inside the office: “Um… if you two have nothing to do, can you help pick up Xiaobo again?”
Thus, the two of them pressed down the original topic and drove to Guangyuan High School to pick up the kid. This time, Su Xiaobo came out very quickly. He tossed his backpack, stuffed to bursting, onto the back seat of the car, getting into the car while reciting “abandon” from memory: “Abandon, ability, able…”
Xie Lin glanced at the rearview mirror: “Why so diligent today? Didn’t you say you don’t like studying?”
Su Xiaobo heaved a sigh: “The most important thing in life is to be happy, but the prerequisite is that you have to be alive.”
The police side knew that this murder case might not have too much to do with grades, but other people didn’t know. Additionally, with high school students passing away consecutively, this information spread very quickly. From the occurrence of the incident until now, it had already spread among all the high schools across the entirety of Huanan City.
The trending posts of every school were tagged with the five words “Honghai Murder Case.”
Even though the school authorities deleted them as soon as they saw them, they still couldn’t block the students’ endless desire to discuss.
—Three people died at Honghai.
—My friend is from Honghai. The police have all come, the fuss is exceptionally huge.
As they discussed, the topic gradually went deeper, and the information changed its flavor along with it.
—The three dead students were at the very bottom of the entire grade.
—I heard they were killed precisely because their grades were poor.
Finally, it evolved into:
—The killer released word saying that next, he is going to kill off all the poor students in the entire city!
For a time, panic spread among all the major high schools in Huanan City.
Especially those with poor grades. The students who usually drifted through various internet cafés skipping classes to surf the web stopped going to internet cafés; those who usually liked to hold their phones to play games during class obediently and proactively handed over their phones to the teachers; those who usually liked to talk back during class also began to speak politely and establish a new decorum.
When Wu Zhibin brought Su Xiaolan and the others over in the afternoon, he lamented a sentence: “This case is making a fuss just like that serial case from ten years ago…”
Ten years ago, the victims were top students of the entire city.
Ten years later, such a case that allegedly only killed “poor students” broke out.
History seemed to have spun a circle in comparison, and spun back again in an unexpected manner.
Within a short single day, countless poor students solved problems with tears in their eyes, displaying an unprecedented enthusiasm for learning, including Su Xiaobo.
“I’ve already verified it with my aunt. The ones who died were really at the very bottom.”
“I haven’t played on my phone for the entire day today. At the Xinhua Bookstore at our school entrance, the reference books are all sold out. I originally wanted to go grab a set of Five Years of College Entrance Exam and Three Years of Simulation,” Su Xiaobo continued to speak very illusionarily, “the result was that by the time I rushed to the battlefield, not only was Five-Three out of stock, not even a single copy of a calligraphy copybook was left for me.”
After finishing speaking, Su Xiaobo turned toward Chi Qing again, saying with true sincerity, “Uncle Glove, you’re right. If I don’t study, I won’t be able to reach Rome.”
However, Chi Qing, who had ranted at him that day until he doubted his life, ignored him.
Su Xiaobo sensed a strange atmosphere.
He asked Xie Lin, “Did you two have a fight?”
Xie Lin: “Do we look like we’ve had a fight?”
Su Xiaobo: “Yes. His expression is so cold, as if he doesn’t want to see us.”
At the same time, a ding sounded.
Xie Lin’s phone rang.
The notification interface displayed that he had a message from “Teacher Wu.”
Xie Lin was just about to say “That’s not wanting to see you, don’t include a ‘us'”.
The result was that just as his peripheral vision caught a glimpse of the message sent by the female teacher, he heard Su Xiaobo say: “Now it’s even colder.”
