“This doesn’t look like the road to school…”
It was an elementary school bus traveling at high speed. The exterior was decorated with simple sketches of school emblems and stickers of bright sunshine and green grass, giving it an exceptionally warm and comforting appearance. However, the scene inside the bus had absolutely nothing to do with the word “comforting.”
The interior was in utter chaos.
“Mister, who are you? Where are you taking us?”
“Waaah—!” One of the children broke into tears instantly.
Just ten minutes prior, the school bus had pulled up at the station. The students had lined up in advance and boarded orderly one by one. Walking at the very back was an exceptionally short little boy carrying a small yellow backpack. Just as the little boy struggled to step up with one leg, his entire body suddenly went airborne for a brief second as someone grabbed him by the collar from behind and hoisted him up.
The little boy kicked his legs in the air. Unable to turn his head, he initially thought it was someone playing a prank. “Let me down—let me down quickly!”
“Shut up,” a voice whispered from behind him like a demon’s murmur. “Be quiet, or I’ll strangle you to death.”
Then, the man tilted his chin up slightly, slid a folding knife out of his sleeve, pressed the tip against the child’s neck, and directed his words at the bus driver in the front: “Get out of your seat.”
_
By the time Ji Mingrui rushed to the station, it was already too late.
He hadn’t factored the school bus into his calculations at all. Originally, he thought the probability of capturing the suspect near the residential quarter would be greatly increased. Yet, he hadn’t expected that as he ran all the way out of the quarter, he would witness the exact moment the school bus doors slammed shut.
Through the glass window, he saw a man wearing a black cap sitting in the driver’s seat. The man’s hair was somewhat long, and from a side profile, one could only faintly discern the extremely hollow contour of his cheek, carrying an unhealthy, emaciated thinness.
At the exact moment the realization “He wants to hijack the school bus to escape” flashed through Ji Mingrui’s mind, his phone screen lit up. Like a paranormal occurrence, Chi Qing—who was supposedly deceased, with his corpse already sent to the crematorium for cremation—sent him a message.
The message contained only four characters.
Chi Qing: Watch the school bus.
…It was already too late.
Even though he knew that real backup reinforcements would arrive within five minutes and several police cars would give chase, it would be futile. The bus full of children were all hostages. No matter what demands “he” made, the police would be completely powerless against him. Because at any given second, these children could lose their lives due to a single word or action from the police.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, the police cars arriving as reinforcement all pulled to a halt at the entrance of the Tianxin Residential Quarter. The police cruisers’ lights flashed continuously, but not a single car dared to take a step away from the entrance.
“He just called 110,” Su Xiaolan reported. “He stated two conditions: first, no pursuing; second, no tracking. We’ve just finished the tally—there are a total of 17 students on the bus. One elementary schooler woke up late due to a cold and missed the bus; otherwise, there would have been 18.”
_
On the other side, Chi Qing tried his best to filter out the suspect’s voice from amid the wave of wailing and crying.
[My child is on that bus!]
[My child—]
[Why aren’t you chasing them?! What are you standing around for? Why aren’t you chasing them?!!]
There were too many parents’ voices. Chi Qing strained to differentiate them, barely catching a single sentence out of the chaotic jumble:
[…He isn’t my friend.]
The reason he picked up on this specific sentence was because the word “friend” was far too critical in this case. Thus, the moment the word “friend” surfaced, he captured it instantly.
Chi Qing thought to himself: Where does he intend to go? Can I hear his next move?
Enduring the continuous noise of crying and shouting transmitting from all directions, Chi Qing continued to hunt down “his” voice. He caught a line:
[Must kill one child…]
Kill one child?
However, in the very next instant—
The distorted voices echoing in Chi Qing’s ears suddenly subsided like a rapidly receding tide. In an instant, they fell completely silent, and those eerie, distorted sounds withdrew entirely from his ears. The sounds belonging to the real world rushed back in.
Honk, honk— the sound of car horns.
“Why are there so many police cars parked here?” asked a passing pedestrian.
There was also the sound of the wind, footsteps, and the noise generated by tapping. Finally, the voice that rang out by his ear was Xie Lin’s: “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t hear it anymore,” Chi Qing said, staring at the congested road. “…The alcohol wore off.”
_
The Bureau was already turned upside down in a frenzy of activity.
“Compile the list of all tenants in the Tianxin Residential Quarter immediately!” The bureau chief propped his hands on the conference room table. “We must find out where he lives.”
“Every minute delayed could mean another child dies. No one can predict what kind of madness he will unleash next—he is currently in a completely provoked state, and nothing he does would be surprising. Our sole mission right now is to find him as early as possible.”
Compared to the bureau chief on stage, whose entire body was tense and mind fully occupied with strategic deployment arrangements, the other people in the conference room were clearly struggling to maintain that level of focus.
Because sitting in the conference room, aside from several criminal investigation teams that had been continuously following up on the church case, were two individuals who absolutely should not have appeared here.
No, saying they shouldn’t appear here was an understatement. One could argue these two shouldn’t even continue to exist in this world.
At the far end of the conference table, two men dressed in black clothes sat quietly in the corner. They weren’t wearing police uniforms. Spring was just around the corner, and the weather was still slightly chilly. The one whose skin was white to an almost sickly degree wore an oversized sweater, his hands tucked inside the sleeves. Through the fabric of the sweater, he carefully flipped open the case file in front of him.
The man’s deep pupils stared unblinkingly at the highest-level archives.
One detective muttered in a daze, “I… I just attended his funeral a few days ago.”
“Who didn’t?” another detective whispered. “I specially bought white chrysanthemums and placed them on the coffin lid with my own hands. I even shed a few tears that day.”
“…………”
Can the dead really return to life? What was this, a walking corpse?
You couldn’t blame these detectives. Anyone who had just attended someone’s funeral—from recovering the body to issuing the death notice, all the way to watching the person be laid to rest with their own eyes—would be convinced by this series of events that “Chi Qing is dead.” Yet now, the man himself had appeared right in front of them without any warning.
“Actually, it’s like this. Assistant Chi has a twin brother who drifted away from the family,” the other man in the corner spoke up as he flipped through the files. His movements appeared much more casual; he rested one arm on the chair’s armrest and turned the pages with a single hand. As he spoke, he leaned over slightly, looking at the whispering detectives with a smile. “The two look exactly identical. What you’re seeing right now is his younger brother, Chi Lan.”
The hand Chi Qing used to turn the page paused. He rolled his eyes internally, wondering how anyone could possibly believe such a stupid excuse.
Yet, in the next second, he heard the people who had been secretly gossiping about him gasp:
“A younger brother?”
“They really do look exactly identical.”
Chi Qing: “…”
Xie Lin continued his nonsense smoothly, “Quite a resemblance, right? I just didn’t mention it to you guys before.”
The detective nodded, then looked back at Xie Lin: “But you…” What about you?! Didn’t you commit murder? Aren’t you a fugitive? Are we currently sitting in a meeting with a wanted suspect?!
Faced with this sharp, unspoken question, Xie Lin pondered for two seconds before replying, “If I said Xie Lin is my older brother, would you believe me?”
“…………”
_
There was no time for excessive explanations. Everyone was quickly assigned their respective tasks to thoroughly screen the rental properties in the Tianxin Residential Quarter.
“But it’s strange,” a detective reported back shortly after. “There are a total of sixteen rental properties available to the public in the Tianxin Residential Quarter, but none of the tenants match the criteria.”
Xie Lin analyzed, “Given his personality, he won’t stay in one place for long. The probability of him being an original resident of the quarter isn’t high. Have all the co-tenants been checked as well? Is it possible he used a fake identity to secretly rent a room with someone else? Some landlords have strict limits on the number of occupants out of fear that their property will turn into a packed group-rental. However, for the tenants, they are often more willing to take the risk and secretly find roommates behind the landlord’s back.”
“No,” the detective answered firmly. “We’ve screened everything. There isn’t even a matching co-tenant.”
This didn’t make sense. Chi Qing knit his brows.
“Let’s go over the list of original residents in the residential quarter again then. This one is easier to clear; all the information is registered with the neighborhood committee. You two shouldn’t just sit idly in the conference room either—help flip through the personnel information.”
There was only one copy of the list. Xie Lin took charge of turning the pages, while his other hand habitually reached under the table to touch Chi Qing’s hand. He familiarly slipped his fingertips past the cuff of the other man’s sweater and caught hold of his knuckles.
Chi Qing pulled his fingers back slightly, reminding him, “I can’t hear anything anymore.”
Xie Lin replied, “I know. It has nothing to do with whether you can hear or not. I just want to hold your hand.”
The roster for the Tianxin Residential Quarter was a thick stack.
Building 13:
Room 101: Feng Deyi (Father, 45 years old), Feng Aiguo (Son, 21 years old).
Room 102: Tao Zheng (Husband, 33 years old), Xu Jinghe (Wife, 26 years old).
…
Ordinary ID photos were flipped past one after another. Every household represented a family. Their occupations, permanent residents, and income situations were briefly recorded.
Xie Lin turned the pages while lightly pressing Chi Qing’s hand.
Chi Qing suddenly recalled the phrase he had heard right before his alcohol-induced ability wore off. Since that sentence couldn’t be spoken out loud to just anyone in the police station, he waited until only he, Xie Lin, and another detective left behind to help remained in the conference room before speaking in a low tone: “I heard a sentence back then.”
Xie Lin stroked the palm of his hand slightly, indicating he was listening. “What sentence?”
Chi Qing’s voice was completely unperturbed as he said, “Must kill one child.”
“Must kill one child?” Xie Lin repeated.
“Yes.”
Xie Lin raised his head and asked the detective beside them, “How many children are on the bus in total?”
The detective stopped his task of flipping through the Tianxin resident files and answered, “17.”
“17…”
If he killed one, there would be 16 left. Why did he absolutely have to kill one? What was the most obvious difference between 17 and 16?
Both Xie Lin and Chi Qing pondered this simultaneously in their minds. Then, both of them arrived at the most apparent difference between these two consecutive numbers: it went from an odd number to an even number.
Xie Lin stopped his hand from turning the pages. He picked up a pen and wrote down the numbers 16 and 17 on a scrap piece of paper beside him. Turning his head, he asked Chi Qing, “…Don’t you find this a bit familiar?”
Xie Lin paused, then added, “Furthermore, back on the 13th floor, he was the one who told me over the phone that my brother’s death ten years ago wasn’t an accident. He knows the case from back then inside out. Even though that case shook the entire city at the time, the files have always been encrypted. It should be impossible for him to know the internal details.”
It was far more than just familiar. All of them were children, and the number of people had to be an even number.
Chi Qing was instantly reminded of that shrill, piercing scream: “Ah—!”
Immediately followed by the words he had heard ten years ago:
—”What a hassle, we’re short by one person.”
Even though a whole decade had passed, recalling these two phrases still made Chi Qing feel as if he had been plunged into an ice house. But what made him feel even colder right now was the terrifying, striking overlap between what “that person” was thinking in his heart and the words spoken ten years ago.
It was as if… a case from ten years ago, passing through a cycle that no one had noticed in the dark, had swept back once more. The tragedy of a decade ago seemed to be repeating itself today.
Just as Xie Lin and Chi Qing were forming their deductions, the phone inside Xie Lin’s coat pocket suddenly vibrated a few times. The vibration was very faint. To prevent missing messages from that person when they were out, he kept his phone logged into the social media account used to communicate with “him.”
Xie Lin unlocked his phone. The screen indicated a few unread messages.
z: I’m very angry.
z: I thought we were going to be friends.
After a brief pause, a final message came through from the other side.
z: Let’s play a game with them, a game you are all very familiar with.
