According to the chat logs provided by Shen Xinghe, the story between him and Yu Lan unfolded scene by scene before everyone’s eyes.
The volume of their conversation was far greater than anyone had imagined. This was true even though the exported logs consisted only of cold text and numbers, completely devoid of images or color.
Shen Xinghe suffered from frequent insomnia.
One night, Yu Lan forgot to wish him goodnight before going to sleep. When she woke up to use the restroom at three in the morning, she figured he must be asleep by now and sent two words to make up for it: “Good night.”
After sending it, she stared at the chat box for a long time, scrolling up through their past messages.
A long time passed—long enough that Yu Lan was on the verge of falling back asleep. In her half-awake state, she noticed a line of text unexpectedly appear at the top of the chat box: “The other party is typing…”
Yu Lan rarely communicated with anyone besides Yu Yang.
She was unable to speak. Even during online chats, if a conversation progressed to the point of initiating a voice call, she would silently stop replying. The boy on the other end, who harbored a secret crush on her brother, was the netizen she had conversed with the most.
In the beginning, Shen Xinghe had been the one to proactively seek her out. Later on, it was actually she who initiated more of the messages.
Because she knew Shen Xinghe was disguising his gender, she never had to worry about voice calls; she knew this boy would not send her voice notes.
Seeing that line indicating he was typing, Yu Lan realized Shen Xinghe wasn’t sleeping either.
But that night, she pretended she hadn’t seen anything. It was only in their subsequent conversations that she began to subtly fixate on whether he could sleep a little earlier.
Only later did she realize that this concern… was because she liked him.
Yu Lan began to dislike being treated as Yu Yang.
One day, when Shen Xinghe called her Yu Yang, Yu Lan couldn’t resist typing: “Actually… I have a childhood nickname.”
In hindsight, this was a very obvious signal, but the Shen Xinghe of that time didn’t pay it any mind—or rather, during his conversations with Yu Lan, he failed to maintain his usual sharpness of observation.
Shen Xinghe: “What nickname?”
Yu Lan fell silent on her end for a long time before finally typing out two words: “Xiao Lan.”
Shen Xinghe: “Xiao Lan?”
Fearing the name sounded too feminine, Yu Lan quickly tacked on two more words: “Big Brother.”
Put together, it became “Big Brother Xiao Lan.”
With her eyes closed, Yu Lan explained: “Because when… when I fucking was born, my health was poor. My family found a fortune teller, and the fortune teller pointed out this character.”
Even through the black ink of the printed logs, everyone present could still feel the hope and nervousness Yu Lan had felt at that moment.
In the end, Shen Xinghe had replied: “Alright then, Big Brother Xiao Lan.”
Scrolling further down the logs, they could see Yu Lan showing consideration for him, saying: “You don’t have to send these cute stickers.”
Although the exported logs couldn’t display the images, it wasn’t hard to imagine what kind of adorable stickers Shen Xinghe had downloaded in order to pose as a girl.
Yu Lan: “To be honest, I’m… a rather cool person.”
Yu Lan: “I don’t like these little cats, dogs, and pink hearts.”
Shen Xinghe: “Cool?”
Yu Lan: “Yeah, I like cooler girls.”
Shen Xinghe: “…”
Yu Lan: “Seriously, don’t you think so? The kind of girls who are cool and edgy are pretty handsome. Who says girls have to be gentle and cute? I just like the cool and handsome type.”
It took Shen Xinghe a long time to respond. Clearly, this trait of “Yu Yang’s”—one he hadn’t previously uncovered—had left him thoroughly shocked.
It was half a day before he replied: “Understood, Big Brother Xiao Lan.”
After that, Shen Xinghe spoke much more naturally, eventually dropping the “Big Brother” title altogether.
Yu Lan was incredibly happy whenever she saw him type the name “Xiao Lan.”
Yet sometimes, she would still tease him: “How come you don’t call me Big Brother anymore?”
Shen Xinghe replied: “Oh, I’m cool.”
Among everyone present, Su Xiaolan experienced the most intense emotional fluctuations. As a fellow woman, she could entirely empathize with Yu Lan’s state of mind—it felt as though she herself were the one holding the phone, waiting for the other person to reply. Yu Lan’s intentions had been pure and genuine, and Shen Xinghe might very well have developed real feelings.
No…
He absolutely had.
They scrolled through the chat logs for a while longer until the keyword “movie” began to surface.
Yu Lan had mentioned this movie as early as a month after they first met. As its release date drew nearer, she brought it up with increasing frequency.
Yu Lan: “I’ve been waiting for so long!”
Yu Lan: “To be precise, for a long, long, long time!”
Shen Xinghe: “Is it really that good?”
Wanting to see the movie together was an insinuation Yu Lan had initiated. Gathering her courage, she had thrown out a probing line: “Do you want to go see it and give it a try?”
This line was a glaring hook handed straight to Shen Xinghe.
As long as he went with the flow and agreed, his meticulous planning would achieve its goal.
But the first time, Shen Xinghe hesitated.
He typed and deleted his words repeatedly in the chat box. In the end, governed by some strange impulse, he sent out a sentence: “We’ll see.”
—He had, quite visibly, hesitated.
She had cast aside all her introversion and insecurity, choosing not to care whether her identity as a girl would be exposed. Because her love could no longer be concealed, she wanted to disregard everything. The only thing she didn’t know was that the person chatting with her on the other side had approached her with revenge in his heart.
Shen Xinghe hid behind the network. On one hand, he wore his school uniform, acting as the genius star student at Guangyuan High. Whenever people at Guangyuan mentioned Shen Xinghe, they felt his name carried a literal radiance—he was the aloof, unapproachable “God of Learning.”
On the other hand, he violated school rules by keeping a hidden phone, switching between different accounts every day to chat with these targets.
This hesitation persisted right up until the movie premier.
Shen Xinghe knew he had to make a decision.
Shen Xinghe: “Let’s go watch it.”
Yu Lan: “Huh?”
Shen Xinghe: “That movie you mentioned last time.”
Yu Lan: “Really?”
Shen Xinghe: “Really.”
He gave her the address of the apartment building room he had arranged: “Let’s meet up here first.”
In truth, Yu Lan had wanted him to know she wasn’t Yu Yang countless times.
More than that, she wanted to know whether he liked the previous Yu Yang or the current self who was actively chatting with him.
One particular segment of the chat logs read like this:
Yu Lan: “Do you think… compared to the person you imagined, I am any different?”
No matter how deeply Shen Xinghe calculated, it was difficult for him to instantly guess the delicate, intricate thoughts of a girl: “What?”
Yu Lan: “Just…”
Yu Lan: “Didn’t you only meet me once before? But back then, you didn’t really know me. Do you think you like the current me more, or…”
Shen Xinghe answered: “The current you.”
There had been so many opportunities.
If Shen Xinghe had simply thought about it a bit more on any of those numerous occasions, he would have discovered that the person on the other end was not Yu Yang himself.
“You didn’t have a single suspicion?” Seeing this, Ji Mingrui couldn’t help but ask.
He had.
But he simply didn’t dare to let the other party occupy too much of his emotions and thoughts.
In the end, Shen Xinghe said, “I couldn’t allow myself to think about it.”
The most obvious instance had actually been the day he killed Yu Lan.
He had to kill “Yu Yang”—he absolutely had to. After killing Wang Yuan and the other two, Shen Xinghe had processed the scene and the murder weapons while telling himself this repeatedly in his mind.
But just as Xie Lin had previously deduced, he was unable to kill “him” face-to-face.
In truth, he could have noticed it that day.
He had leaned against the door, standing at the entrance without leaving just as the fire began to catch. He could even clearly feel the vibrations of the door being pounded frantically from the inside. Yet at that moment, he didn’t stop to think why the person inside didn’t speak while crying out for help.
Why hadn’t he heard even the words “save me”?
“This is getting a bit hard to watch. I’m going to step outside for a moment to compose myself.” Su Xiaolan was the first to give in.
She hadn’t expected to witness this kind of relationship—one where malice and lies were intertwined, yet where both individuals had left behind a piece of genuine sincerity. She couldn’t even help but wonder if the ending of the story would have been different if Xu Xingzhou hadn’t died, or if Shen Xinghe hadn’t pursued revenge.
Su Xiaolan was genuinely sorrowful.
But just as she finished speaking and prepared to push the door open, she saw their two consultants sitting in the back row, completely unfazed.
Xie Lin was leaning his head over, speaking softly to Chi Qing. Seeing Su Xiaolan about to head out, he even offered a slight smile and stepped aside to clear a path for her.
Su Xiaolan: “…”
Chi Qing was even less worth mentioning. Wearing his black gloves, he hadn’t blinked once throughout the entire process, redefining Su Xiaolan’s definition of “distress” in a matter of seconds: “It is rather stuffy in this room.”
Su Xiaolan: “…………”
Was the room the issue here?
The emotions she had just conjured up vanished in an instant.
Su Xiaolan still decided to go out for some fresh air. However, before her hand could even touch the doorknob, the door was slammed open with a loud bang, the sound so violent it echoed as if the door had been smashed apart.
Rushing in was Yu Yang, his eyes bloodshot. Ignoring the criminal investigators who had been trying to dissuade him along the way, he roared, “Let me in—get the hell away! Let me in!”
Yu Yang had been waiting for the true culprit to be brought to justice. As he charged all the way in from the entrance, no one managed to stop him. He forced his way through the heavy heavy cordon, threw himself in front of Shen Xinghe, and threw a vicious punch straight into his face!
The glasses on Shen Xinghe’s nose flew off, dropping to the floor as the lenses shattered.
Beneath the fury in Yu Yang’s voice was a trembling sob: “You could have just killed me—why did you kill my sister?! What did she do wrong?! She knew absolutely nothing! Why did you have to kill her?!”
The situation nearly spiraled out of control.
Shen Xinghe’s vision was a total blur. He bent down, attempting to locate his glasses on the floor, but before he could fully squat, Yu Yang lunged at him fiercely again, following up with another punch.
This time, the words in Yu Yang’s mouth were no longer roared aloud. It was as if he had lost the ability to speak; he let out a whimper, his words muffled and indistinct, seemingly repeating “why” over and over again.
Shards of glass dug straight into Shen Xinghe’s palm.
The back of Yu Yang’s hand bore obvious scrapes, dripping with blood. As he slowly calmed down, he whispered, “My sister… my sister was a very gentle person. You don’t know anything at all.”
Yu Yang added, “She had just brought home a kitten. She named it Little Star.”
From the moment he confessed to the moment he recounted his crimes, Shen Xinghe had shown no emotion whatsoever. But now, the feelings he had forcibly suppressed in the interrogation room upon caught a panicked glimpse of the victim’s file came rushing to the surface.
“I…” Shen Xinghe’s voice was incredibly faint, and he ultimately couldn’t finish his sentence. It was a long while before he was grabbed by both arms by the investigators, who pulled him up to lead him away to detention. In a barely audible whisper, he uttered a single phrase:
“I’m sorry.”
