The candlelight of the birthday candles flickered in the dimly lit living room. The wind outside grew stronger, battering against the windows with a loud shuck-shuck.
Amidst a chorus of cheers, Xie Lin closed his eyes.
The candlelight reflected onto his face, accentuating the high bridge of his nose.
Right at the exact moment the candles were blown out, the pitch-black sky outside the window flashed simultaneously, the fleeting glare for a split second overlapping with the shifting shadows of the candlelight.
The living room television was on, but it had been muted. It happened to be broadcasting the weather forecast. The female host wore a formal suit, her hair meticulously arranged, as the scrolling captions across the screen displayed the late-night weather updates, warning of a potential torrential downpour.
Yet, at this moment, no one noticed a thing.
“What wish did Consultant Xie make?” Su Xiaolan asked out of curiosity.
When Xie Lin opened his eyes, he said, “Wishes can’t be spoken aloud. If you say them, they won’t come true.”
Su Xiaolan didn’t press any further. As she turned her head, she was caught off guard when Ji Mingrui smeared a face full of cream onto her.
She gritted her teeth: “You better get over here—”
Ji Mingrui: “Am I stupid? No way.”
While those few were making a chaotic ruckus over there, Xie Lin turned his head to look at Chi Qing: “Do you want to know?”
Chi Qing wasn’t particularly keen on knowing: “Didn’t you just say it won’t come true if spoken aloud?”
Xie Lin: “If you want to know, whether it comes true or not doesn’t matter.”
Locking eyes with him, Chi Qing felt that the surprise he had meticulously planned for half the day probably hadn’t been a surprise to Xie Lin at all. He said, “You already knew, didn’t you?”
“…To be honest, it would be quite hard not to know,” Xie Lin said. “You never chat with people, and Jiang Yu’s surveillance skills are honestly pretty mediocre. I noticed him tailing me before I even crossed three streets.”
Xie Lin asked again: “Eating cake?”
Chi Qing looked at the “defiled” cake: “I don’t really want to starve.”
“Just have a taste,” Xie Lin used his finger to swipe a small dollop of cream from an untouched section, bringing it right up to Chi Qing’s lips. “Try it.”
For some reason, Chi Qing—who clearly should have asked Xie Lin if he had washed his hands first—the moment that slender finger extended over, instinctively parted his lips and gave it a very light lick.
It was sweet.
Even a little cloying.
When he raised his eyes, he saw Xie Lin naturally eat the remainder of it himself.
The three team members couldn’t stay for too long as they had work tomorrow, so they headed back before ten o’clock. When Ji Mingrui left, he stood at the doorway: “The gift is on the table. Make sure to wait until after we leave to unwrap it, alright?”
“Oh, right,” Ji Mingrui added to Chi Qing before leaving, “You can look at this gift too. It’s for both of you.”
Chi Qing thought to himself: Why on earth should a gift meant for Xie Lin count as his too?
The gift box on the table wasn’t large; it was rectangular.
Once he unwrapped the red silk ribbon from the packaging and lifted the lid, he was caught entirely unprepared to see the thick book resting inside, bearing two large characters—Criminal Law.
Chi Qing: “…”
On the other side, Ji Mingrui was sitting in the car chatting with Jiang Yu: “The gift I chose is pretty great, isn’t it?”
Jiang Yu said after some deliberation, “Uh… it’s alright, I guess, but they probably won’t like it, right?”
Ji Mingrui: “What do you know? I just hope they stop adding to the thickness of my statement files. I’m truly exhausted.”
While driving, Ji Mingrui noticed that the intersection was starting to experience a bit of congestion.
Then, a few minutes later, raindrops began to patter and pelt against the car windows—
It was raining again.
Staring at this copy of Criminal Law, Chi Qing seriously felt like severing ties with Ji Mingrui for a few minutes.
Xie Lin’s hand reached out from behind him, shutting the copy of Criminal Law. Keeping his hand resting flat against the cover without moving it away, he asked, “Where is my gift?”
Chi Qing: “What gift.”
Xie Lin: “My birthday gift. Didn’t you buy me one?”
Chi Qing lied: “Didn’t buy one.”
Xie Lin closed in on him, lowering his head to look at him: “Then do you plan on giving yourself to me?”
“…”
“Fine,” Xie Lin said. “I accept.”
The situation began to spiral toward an unanticipated development. Chi Qing had rarely worn an inner shirt today; with his sweater pulled off, he was left wearing only a white dress shirt. He rarely wore white, and the color dispersed some of the gloom hanging around the man, making his entire being appear exceptionally clean.
Xie Lin’s hand slid little by little beneath the hem of Chi Qing’s shirt. Perhaps it was because of the clothing, but he was exceptionally out of control today.
Chi Qing could distinctly feel that the kisses landing on his neck were far heavier than before. Sharp teeth ground meticulously along his blood vessels, sparking a very noticeable, stinging ache.
Chi Qing applied a bit of force with his hand gripping Xie Lin’s hair, but the man seemed entirely oblivious to it.
This frantic, out-of-control intensity persisted all the way until the end.
Chi Qing’s hair was completely soaked through with sweat, black strands clinging to his forehead as he panted softly: “…Get lost.”
Xie Lin locked their hands together, his fingers wedging their way between Chi Qing’s millimeter by millimeter, completely deaf to the words.
Chi Qing threw his head back, catching sight of the drenched leaves outside through tear-blurred eyes, the raindrops striking the windowpane with a sharp pitter-patter.
This rain seemed heavier than any before.
The wild wind howled past, and within the torrential curtain of downpour, a slight sensation of suffocation gave Chi Qing the fleeting illusion that he and Xie Lin were desperately clinging to each other to the death.
In the dead of night, the downpour showed no signs of letting up.
The security guard yawned, watching a car drive out from the underground garage. The man in the driver’s seat wore a black poncho, the hood obscuring half his face.
Beside him, a black plastic bag seemed to be resting in the passenger seat.
It wasn’t until the man turned his head slightly that the neighborhood security guard caught sight of a face dripping with rakish charm and casual indifference.
Ring——
Ring, ring, ring——
Inside a certain old residential complex, a telephone rang relentlessly.
Yet, it rang for a long time without anyone answering.
A few minutes later: “Because the call was unanswered, you are being automatically redirected to the voice message system—Beep—”
Following the beep, there was a brief silence on the other end, before a somewhat familiar, middle-aged male voice said: “Old Guo…”
The words that followed were drowned out by the rolling thunder and flashing lightning, rendering them impossible to hear clearly.
Sitting quietly on a chair near the window was a man. His body bore old knife scars, and the passing years had left his hair grizzled. He closed his eyes, appearing to be fast asleep. After a long while, the hands folded across his lap suddenly went limp and fell downward, allowing vivid red blood to drip down from his wrist, drop by single drop.
The next day, by the time Chi Qing got out of bed while supporting his lower back, it was already approaching late afternoon. It was still raining outside the window.
Little Star kept pacing back and forth around his feet, meowing for ages before Chi Qing managed to spare it a sliver of attention.
Little Star promptly dashed in front of its food bowl, letting out another couple of meows at it.
Chi Qing walked over and saw that the food bowl was completely empty.
…
Did Xie Lin not add cat food for it?
Chi Qing bent down, scooping a ladle of cat food from the storage bucket to pour into its bowl. Before he could even stand back up, his phone rang.
“Hello,” Chi Qing said.
“…” Ji Mingrui’s end was incredibly chaotic. He pushed through a dense crowd of people, and his voice only became clear once he reached a relatively quiet spot. “Is your man at home?”
No matter how detached Chi Qing usually was, he could hear the sheer gravity in Ji Mingrui’s voice.
Clutching the scoop, Chi Qing said, “He’s not here.”
Ji Mingrui bent down, ducking under the police cordon. Holding up an umbrella, he stood at the entrance of a certain residential building and asked, “When did he leave?”
“What happened?”
After Chi Qing threw out this question, a long silence ensued on the other end of the line: “A case broke out in the north of the city. Guo Xingchang is dead.”
Fearing that Chi Qing wouldn’t know who Guo Xingchang was, Ji Mingrui explicitly clarified: “It’s that driver from the accident the other morning—the one you deduced used to be a criminal investigator. He’s dead.”
Chi Qing’s hand holding the scoop froze.
Ji Mingrui: “I received a report early this morning saying that no matter how much the neighbors knocked, no one would open the door, and that something felt off. They were talking about Guo Xingchang’s place. The person is completely dead. The time of death is between three to five o’clock in the morning. Upon forensic assessment, the cause of death is homicide.”
With Xie Lin absent, Chi Qing hastily packed his things and rushed to the scene.
Holding his transparent umbrella, he stepped out of the taxi and crossed through the torrential rain. By the time he closed his umbrella and arrived at Guo Xingchang’s home, the scene bore a striking, sudden resemblance to their very first encounter—just a few days ago, he had also been holding this exact umbrella, standing before this middle-aged man and studying him.
The only difference was that right now, Guo Xingchang was a corpse.
His expression was highly tranquil. The wound on his wrist from the severed artery was very deep, and the blood had pooled into a lake on the floor. The man’s hand still maintained its posture of hanging off the side of the chair, his fingers appearing extremely rigid.
“Although it looks like a suicide, there are signs of forced entry,” Ji Mingrui said, standing beside Chi Qing. “Furthermore, the placement of this knife is wrong too.”
Ji Mingrui was pointing at the murder weapon dropped near the chair—the weapon was a brand-new utility knife.
The handle of that knife was pointing toward the bedroom door. Under normal circumstances where a victim commits suicide, when the knife falls to the floor, the handle would absolutely never land facing the opposite direction.
“There is a high probability that this is a homicide staged to look like a suicide.”
Chi Qing said nothing. The umbrella in his hand was still dripping water. He stood the umbrella up by the door and asked, “Can I look around elsewhere?”
Upon receiving permission, Chi Qing wandered around Guo Xingchang’s home for a bit.
Guo Xingchang lived alone. A photo frame rested on the nightstand in the bedroom, containing a photo of a family of three. The boy in the photo looked to be no more than eleven or twelve years old, standing right in the center of the frame. To the boy’s left was Guo Xingchang—or rather, a much younger version of him. To the boy’s right stood a woman with a gentle appearance, wearing a floral maxi dress, looking at the camera with a beaming smile.
Back in the living room.
Everyone was on-scene collecting evidence, while others were responsible for photographing the scene for verification.
Su Xiaolan: “Fingerprints were lifted from the murder weapon. It has already been confirmed that the fingerprints do not belong to Guo Xingchang.”
Ji Mingrui said in surprise, “They aren’t Guo Xingchang’s?”
That person left behind fingerprints?
At this moment, Jiang Yu, who was in charge of conducting the background investigation on the deceased, said, “It’s pretty strange. He didn’t usually hold grudges with anyone, and the surrounding neighbors all speak very highly of him. Why would he suddenly be murdered?”
If it was a homicide, who held a grudge against him?
Chi Qing walked out of the bedroom, standing right at the doorway as he stared straight at Guo Xingchang’s slumping hand for a long moment.
Outside the window, the rain kept falling.
Time rewound to the previous rainy night.
He had removed his glove and said to Guo Xingchang, “It got wet. Do you have a tissue?”
Guo Xingchang patted his pocket: “Ah, yes, I do.”
Right when Guo Xingchang handed over the pack of tissues from his pocket, he felt a sensation that was colder than the rainwater. It seemed to be the man’s bare hand; the tips of the fingers had accidentally brushed against his hand, making a fleeting, detached contact.
Recalling this, Chi Qing pulled his memory back. Facing that lifeless, rigid hand, the distorted words he had heard that day echoed in his ears:
That distorted voice had been deep and panicked.
[…How could Xie Lin know.]
[I didn’t mean to do what happened back then, I just… I just wanted to save my son. My son was inside too. He said that as long as I helped him do one thing, he would grant my son a way out. I never intended to harm Captain Xie.]
At the exact same time, the fingerprint comparison results came out swiftly.
“The fingerprints found on the murder weapon indeed do not belong to Guo Xingchang.”
The very next sentence was—
“The fingerprints belong to Consultant Xie.”
