Jiang Yu considered the issue more comprehensively and asked, “Could it be a member of the faculty or staff at the school?”
Xie Lin: “Unlikely. If the suspect were an older individual who wanted to kill someone, the probability of them choosing to achieve that goal by dating them online… is virtually zero. Older people tend to feel they are stronger than these ‘kids.’ If they wanted to kill, it wouldn’t be that much of a hassle; it’s just killing a child.”
“And put yourself in their shoes—would you disguise yourself as a woman just to chat and vibe with high school students?”
Jiang Yu actually thought about it for a moment, and his mind drifted to Su Xiaolan’s nephew, Su Xiaobo.
Su Xiaobo shouted every day, “Wow, this newly released gear is seriously so cool!”
“…” Jiang Yu rubbed the goosebumps on his arms and said, “This, the mental gap is just too wide. I don’t think it would work.”
Having worked with these two for a long time, Jiang Yu felt his relationship with Chi Qing was fairly harmonious and amicable, so he turned to the side, attempting to pull this particular master into the middle of the conversation: “Don’t you think so? Su Xiaobo is honestly just too immature.”
Chi Qing hadn’t slept very well last night. Xie Lin didn’t seem to believe his sentence “when the case ends” and continued to bounce around his line of endurance every single night.
He had looked in the mirror before leaving the house today and noticed a red mark that was highly difficult to explain away as a bug bite. His skin was pale, so even if it really were a mosquito bite, it would still look exceptionally obvious. Therefore, he had specifically chosen a turtleneck sweater.
When he lowered his head, half of his chin buried into the deep gray collar: “I can’t quite understand it, after all, I wasn’t that immature back when I was in school.”
Having said this, Chi Qing thought about it again and added a final blow: “Oh, even back in middle school, I probably couldn’t compare.”
Jiang Yu: “…”
Su Xiaolan, being the aunt: “…”
Even though the person being insulted was her own nephew, she found herself unable to refute it.
After finishing his words, Chi Qing shrank back into the sofa again. Originally, this conference room didn’t have this single-seater sofa; it had been specially moved in for these two. Beside it stood a small round table, holding a small cake as if serving royalty, though no one except Ji Mingrui ever ate the cake.
His hands were habitually tucked inside his sleeves as he lowered his head to fiddle with his phone, having removed one glove.
Xie Lin sat on the armrest of the sofa—or rather, to be more precise, he was leaning against it.
He naturally reached out his hand and pulled down the sweater collar that was about to reach the tip of Chi Qing’s nose: “Your clothes… isn’t it stuffy?”
Chi Qing really wanted to sneer: “Do you think I want to?”
Xie Lin raised an eyebrow as he realized what was happening. While everyone else was busy compiling the list of all high schools in Huanan City, he used a single finger to hook Chi Qing’s collar, pulling it open somewhat playfully, and successfully saw his own “handiwork.”
Chi Qing: “Tonight, you sleep back at your own place.”
Xie Lin: “Then who’s going to pour the cat food for the cat?”
His tolerance toward Xie Lin had improved, but not toward the cat.
The cat shed its fur terribly. Even if he usually didn’t let it get near him, the cat fur would still indirectly stick to the sofa and float in the air, so the task of pouring cat food was still left to Xie Lin.
Thinking of that cat, Chi Qing said expressionlessly: “…Just let it starve to death.”
After narrowing down the scope of the suspects, the progress of the case became much faster. Whether it was checking through each high school one by one or continuing the deep investigation over at Honghai, the efficiency improved significantly. Previously, when they questioned the former Class 1 of Grade 10, the scope of questioning was too broad, but now they could ask directly and bluntly: “Which high school students did Wang Yuan and his group know? These students could be from the past—in short, did you ever hear the names of students from other schools from their mouths?”
What on earth was the connection between a student from an outside school and these few students from Honghai?
As for that video evidence, it wasn’t the primary focus anymore.
The next day, Xie Lin and Chi Qing, the two who didn’t directly participate in the case investigation, got off work early. As usual, they helped Su Xiaolan pick up her nephew from Guangyuan.
Seeing the familiar license plate, Su Xiaobo got into the car with a phone in his hand and his shoulders empty: “Thanks, sorry to trouble you guys. I have no way to repay you, how about I treat you uncles to a couple of cups of milk tea later?”
Xie Lin rested his hand on the steering wheel, casting a glance at him: “Uncles don’t drink milk tea. We drink iced Americanos.”
Su Xiaobo didn’t get it. He leaned back and started looking at his phone screen: “What’s so good about that stuff?”
A true adult and this kind of high school student really couldn’t chat for more than two sentences before hitting a generation gap.
“I snuck my phone out during class today, and it even got confiscated. Ah, the teacher is really double-standard. When a top student plays with their phone, it’s a love for learning and they must be using it to look up materials online. When I play with my phone, does it absolutely have to be playing games?”
“Aren’t you?” Chi Qing shot back.
Su Xiaobo: “Yes, exactly… I… indeed am!”
Chi Qing: “Why aren’t you memorizing the first page of the English vocabulary booklet anymore?”
At the mention of this, Su Xiaobo let out a whole sigh of relief: “Wasn’t the rumor dispelled yesterday? That massive cafeteria screen broadcasted it several times in a row, and they even have a suspect now. I believe in the capability of our Huanan City people’s police in solving cases.”
He added: “Fortunately, this news caught up before our mock exam this time, otherwise I’d still be holding the vocabulary booklet crying my eyes out, how could I have finished those three days of exams so happily.”
The car drove at a steady speed, the scenery on both sides of the road fleeting past.
Chi Qing: “I reminded you before.”
Su Xiaobo: “My aunt reminded me too, but that’s different. What if she was just comforting me? Don’t television dramas always play out like that? Before a person gets a terminal illness, their family members often choose not to tell them.”
Hearing this, Xie Lin let out a laugh: “Your self-positioning is still very accurate. Your grades are indeed not much different from a terminal illness.”
Su Xiaobo: “…”
“Right,” Xie Lin asked again, “Do you happen to know which schools have bad signals?”
Su Xiaobo: “Although my grades are poor, I have only attended one school like Guangyuan. I haven’t had the experience of being expelled multiple times and moving around the entire city.”
Xie Lin: “My apologies, I didn’t mean to offend you.”
Su Xiaobo shook his head: “It’s fine, I took the initiative to offend myself.”
“But our school’s signal is actually very bad,” Su Xiaobo added. “Several times when I was playing games, I disconnected and even got reported by teammates, losing credibility points.”
Once Su Xiaobo opened his chatterbox, that mouth of his wouldn’t stop. The game in his hand ended too quickly, so he gripped the back of the passenger seat, leaning forward to ask Chi Qing: “Why do you always wear gloves? Is it for decoration?”
Chi Qing lifted his hand clad in a black glove, flaunting it in front of him: “This?”
Subsequently, he said nonchalantly: “Oh, this is so that when I slit the throats of kids who talk too much, I don’t leave fingerprints. Do you want to try?”
Su Xiaobo felt a chill down his neck and sat back down.
Xie Lin shifted the topic: “Since you’re not memorizing the vocabulary booklet anymore, did you win your little girlfriend back?”
Su Xiaobo: “Not really… I ignored her for a few days, and she formed several new couples while playing games. It’s probably going down the drain. Besides, it’s not like I absolutely need her, okay? I can meet new girls just by playing a few rounds of games too.”
After saying this, he proceeded to launch a new game.
Chi Qing couldn’t understand what he was talking about at all.
Last time, he was still crying over there saying he couldn’t bear to let go of his ex-girlfriend, but today it turned into a completely indifferent attitude.
Xie Lin noticed his somewhat bewildered expression, cleared his throat lightly, and said in a low voice: “Online chatting is just like this. The internet speed is so fast now, and the speed of getting to know people is fast too. But wanting to maintain a good…”
His words ground to a halt right there.
Chi Qing: “Maintain a good what?”
Xie Lin continued: “Wanting to maintain a relationship well isn’t easy. So I just thought of a very strange detail. Do you still remember what words were written inside Yu Lan’s pile of paper stars? She said the other party hadn’t contacted her for several days, and similar words appeared multiple times in the notes.”
“If that person wanted to intentionally get close to Yu Yang, he shouldn’t do something like that. Keeping in touch every day to let the relationship continue to heat up would be the normal line of thought.”
While talking, the car had already driven to the entrance of the General Bureau.
After Su Xiaobo got out of the car, only Xie Lin and Chi Qing were left inside.
Chi Qing could discuss the logic of the case with Xie Lin, but a lot of times, it was still very hard to discuss emotional logic.
Chi Qing usually didn’t quite understand what these people were thinking, and he understood the concept of keeping in touch even less, so he said very coldly: “If one is usually busy with things, not contacting for a few days is also very normal. Everyone has their own life, it’s not necessary to chat every day. I believe that not contacting frequently is a very rational way of making friends.”
“…”
Xie Lin thought to himself, if you’re like this, it’s highly likely you won’t make any friends.
Xie Lin looked at him for a while, and right until Chi Qing felt a little uncomfortable, he spoke up: “I suddenly feel that your ability to respond to me emotionally really counts as a miracle.”
According to Chi Qing’s line of thought, placing the matter of dating onto him was no different from the sun rising from the west.
“In short, if that person targeted Yu Yang, he would absolutely not disappear frequently. Disappearing is not something a hunter would do.”
“He vanished for a while, frequently failing to contact Yu Lan for several days out of the blue. And what was Yu Lan doing? That person still doesn’t know who the person on the other side of the account is to this day. Yu Lan pretended to be Yu Yang, using the identity of a ‘boy’ to cautiously and gently nurse a boy’s secret and self-esteem,” Xie Lin said, constantly recalling the contents of the notes. “She sensed that the other side’s mental state might not be very good, so she wanted to photograph the next day’s sunlight to send to him… Facing such a ‘Yu Yang’ who treated him with sincerity, what kind of mood was that person in?”
Following the words Xie Lin spoke, Chi Qing attempted to put himself into this role.
The last time he did this kind of thing was when He Sen took him to find an acting teacher to analyze a script, only at that time he couldn’t comprehend a single word.
But Xie Lin’s voice seemed to possess magic, as if a hand reached up from the depths, caught him, and pulled him downward to see another world.
The old Chi Qing would have said, “Not contacting just means they didn’t want to contact. Being busy also represents that the other party isn’t all that important, or maybe he even quite disliked Yu Lan.” However, he truly didn’t sense a single shred of dislike.
He discovered that if he were that person, he would feel at a loss.
“Among the four people who died, ‘Yu Yang’ was special to him, so he didn’t even choose to kill him face-to-face—this is very rare in cases of revenge killings, and it’s also different from the first three victims. Generally speaking, killing someone with one’s own hands and watching the other party gradually lose their breath brings the pleasure of a revenge killing. But he locked the door from the outside and chose a massive fire, not daring to cast a single glance at ‘Yu Yang’ from beginning to end.”
Xie Lin said, “He was escaping. His hand might have once let go of his prey.”
