Prev | Table of Contents | Next
Chapter 5
His name is Chu Ci, ‘Ci’ for compassionate and kind.
After a long and tiring night of investigating the source of a new drug, Qin Chuan hurriedly returned to the police station upon hearing that the criminal investigation department had identified the source of the drugs. However, as soon as he pushed the door open, he was struck by a thunderous voice.
“But… but he’s alive?”
Ma Xiang held his forehead with one hand, saying, “Our investigation team didn’t do a thorough job…”
Yan Xie stood outside the interrogation room with his arms crossed and said coldly, “Then why don’t you go in and kill him first?”
Qin Chuan twitched at the corner of his mouth, his eyes indicating that he didn’t want to mess with this situation.
Inside the interrogation room sat a young man in his early twenties, wearing a light gray shirt and a white lab coat. He seemed cautious and wary, with his hands placed firmly on the table, fingers tightly interlocked, and even the tendons on the back of his hands slightly protruding.
“Are you Chu Ci?”
“Yes.”
“How old are you? Where are you from?”
“Twenty-one, Guizhou.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m studying for a master’s degree in chemistry in Beijing.”
“Then why are you in Jianning?”
“I’m about to graduate, and my supervisor arranged an internship at a chemical company here through his connections.”
The interrogators recorded his answers and continued, “Which company? Which university in Beijing? What’s your supervisor’s name?”
To everyone’s surprise, the young man in front of them immediately mentioned the name of a well-known chemical private company in Jianning and a nationally renowned university in Beijing. He provided all the details, including the department head, supervisor, and class, in an orderly and clear manner. He then explained, “My student ID is in my bag, and my supervisor has a good reputation in the industry. Feel free to verify. By the way, before I ask, what exactly am I being accused of? I’ve been staying in the lab recently, conducting experiments related to methanol sodium catalysis. You should be able to retrieve the surveillance footage to prove it…”
Yan Xie raised his hand to his Bluetooth earpiece and whispered, “Ask him if he knows about that bag.”
“On April 16th, at 2 p.m., you bought a bag at the Financial Center. What was that for?”
Inside the interrogation room, Chu Ci visibly hesitated for a moment before answering, “I don’t know anything about a bag.”
“He’s lying,” Yan Xie murmured.
Qin Chuan couldn’t understand the implication, and Yan Xie didn’t explain either. He instructed through the earpiece, “Show him the surveillance image of the deceased buying the bag.”
The interrogator opened a folder and took out a high-definition surveillance image from the luxury store in the International Financial Center. The deceased was facing the cashier with a large box already neatly packaged and placed by his side.
The police questioning was pressing, “How do you explain this?”
“…,” Chu Ci remained motionless, staring at the photo.
Although it lasted only a few seconds, his expression underwent an extremely subtle change, and Yan Xie and Qin Chuan immediately exchanged a glance.
“He’s my roommate.” Chu Ci used two fingers to push the photo back to the detective, saying, “His name is Feng Yuguang. So what? Did he do something wrong?”
“The relationship between these two roommates seems quite tense,” Yan Xie stroked his chin and said.
Qin Chuan looked at him with an expression that said, “You can tell this too,” but Yan Xie didn’t answer. He instructed Ma Xiang, “Have the Cultural Preservation Office make a call to their school and internship company to verify.”
Ma Xiang complied and left. Qin Chuan nudged Yan Xie with his elbow, saying, “Stop keeping us in suspense. Just let the fart go.”
“You’re the one who f*cking farts. Even if I fart, it’s the kind that smells like enlightenment and spreads for miles. Got it?”
Qin Chuan: “Fine, you’re the boss, you call the shots.”
Yan Xie was successfully flattered. Mimicking Chu Ci’s gesture of returning the photo to the police, he used the tips of his middle finger and ring finger to push the edges of the paper, gesturing for Qin Chuan to look. “See? The implied meaning of this action is, ‘I don’t want anything to do with this guy, keep him away from me as far as possible.’ And as a roommate, instead of thinking that something happened to him after not seeing him for a day and night, his first reaction was to wonder what he did wrong. Does this Feng Yuguang often get into trouble in his eyes?”
“What kind of person is Feng Yuguang, and what is your relationship with him?” the interrogator inside the interrogation room asked, not answering Chu Ci’s question.
Chu Ci took a breath and leaned back in his chair.
—At the age of twenty-one, a renowned graduate student from a prestigious university, it was obvious that he was a highly intelligent individual who had skipped several levels, the kind of person that detectives disliked dealing with the most.
“Our relationship is average,” Chu Ci began with this statement, “We are completely different people living in two different worlds.”
The detective frowned, “What do you mean by that?”
“Feng Yuguang is a Beijing local from a very wealthy family. He has a wide social circle at school, but he’s not that good academically.” Chu Ci paused for two seconds before tactfully adding, “He lacks talent.”
Yan Xie said through the earpiece, “Let me translate for everyone: He’s a poor student, and I’m an excellent student. I’m going to give him the ultimate contempt, yeah!”
The interrogator, “…”
“Although we’ve been roommates for over a year, we’re not close. Most of the time, I’m in the lab and library. I do private tutoring four times a week, so I spend very little time in the dormitory. Especially recently, I’m focusing on my Ph.D. application and have a heavy workload for my thesis, so I basically sleep in the lab.”
The interrogator questioned, “But you both came to Jianning for an internship together?”
“We are both under the same supervisor,” Chu Ci explained, “Although it’s an internship, I actually came to Jianning to collect some crucial data for my Ph.D. thesis in Beijing.”
“What about Feng Yuguang? Does he also want to pursue a Ph.D.?”
Chu Ci’s expression was somewhat difficult to describe. “…He should be here just to spectate.”
The detective leaned forward, “Spectating? Please elaborate. What does he usually do? Does he not study at all?”
“Not exactly,” Chu Ci replied. “But he spends less than eight hours studying, which is practically the same as not studying.”
The interrogation room fell into a brief silence.
“… A damn nerd,” Yan Xie muttered.
The interrogator used all his composure to prevent himself from rolling his eyes. He flipped over a page of the transcript and asked, “Apart from studying, does your roommate have any hobbies or particular habits? Can you tell us about that?”
Chu Ci thought for a moment and seemed to find it a bit tricky.
“Say whatever comes to your mind, the more details the better.”
“…,” Chu Ci fell silent for a moment before answering, “Feng Yuguang participates in some club activities, has many friends, and often stays out late after gatherings. He likes playing games in his free time, but I haven’t paid much attention to what specific games he plays, or even if I noticed, I wouldn’t know what they are. He doesn’t like going to the lab much, and he just barely passes all his courses. I don’t know how he manages to pass. He has close relationships with a few female students. They often video chat in the dorm until late at night. I’m not particularly sure about anything else.”
The detective immediately instructed, “Provide us with the names of those female students.”
“I don’t know any of them,” Chu Ci replied helplessly. “Do I look like someone who knows girls?”
The detective looked him up and down. Even from a male perspective, Chu Ci was undeniably good-looking, completely different from the traditional image of a studious nerd with a bald head and glasses.
But geniuses were geniuses. What could you say to a person for whom spending less than eight hours studying was equivalent to not studying at all?
The interrogator tapped the table with his pen and asked a probing question, “Does your roommate take any medication?”
Chu Ci asked, “I don’t know. What medication?”
“Vitamins, cold medicine, anything. Have you ever seen him take any medication?”
“No.”
Outside the interrogation room, Yan Xie and Qin Chuan stared intently at Chu Ci’s face, as if trying to discern any signs of abnormality from his simple one-word response. But Chu Ci firmly repeated, “Absolutely none.”
Yan Xie pressed her earpiece and said, “Ask him when was the last time he saw the deceased.”
The detective asked, “When was the last time you saw Feng Yuguang?”
“I saw him two days ago at noon when I went back to the dormitory to get a book. Feng Yuguang asked me why I hadn’t been sleeping in the dormitory for the past couple of nights, and I told him that we were at a critical stage of the experiment and the lab couldn’t be left unattended.”
“Just that?”
“Just that. Our relationship as roommates is ordinary. Even though we came to Jianning together from Beijing, we don’t have much to say to each other. No matter what he did, I don’t want to know and have no interest in getting involved.”
Chu Ci leaned forward, resting his upper body on the edge of the table, and asked, “If there’s nothing else, when can I leave? The methanol-sodium catalysis experiment is crucial, and I really can’t leave it unattended.”
“Captain Yan!” The door was pushed open, and Ma Xiang hurriedly walked in. “I’ve called the Department of Cultural Heritage and Textual Research to verify, and both the identities of the deceased, Feng Yuguang, and Chu Ci have been confirmed!”
Yan Xie nodded and listened attentively as Ma Xiang continued speaking rapidly, “We contacted the internship supervisor, the head of their school department, and the academic advisor, and we have basically confirmed the authenticity of most of the statements in the transcript. But there’s still the matter of the bag. If these two really have an ordinary relationship, then there’s no way to explain why the deceased used cash and Chu Ci’s name to buy a luxury bag. So I also contacted their class counselor—guess what?”
Yan Xie raised an eyebrow. “Is there a situation?”
Ma Xiang confidently opened his shorthand notebook and exclaimed, “A big situation.”
One minute later, the door to the interrogation room was pushed open again, and Chu Ci looked up.
Tens of thousands of yuan don’t come easy. Yan Xie, despite his wrinkled shirt due to staying up late, still had a stylish and elegant demeanor. Even the simple act of putting his hand in his pocket and pulling out a chair to sit down conveyed a completely different style from the entire criminal investigation team, as if a scene from a foreign crime investigation show suddenly interrupted a domestic police drama.
The interrogator quickly greeted him, “Vice-Captain Yan.”
Yan Xie nodded without saying a word. He took the transcript and flipped through a few pages. Nobody knew what he was looking at, but he seemed to be quite interested as he absentmindedly stroked his chin. Then, without raising his head, he asked, “You’re not close with your roommate.”
Chu Ci replied, “That’s correct.”
“Keeping a distance?”
“You could say that.”
Yan Xie asked, “Then why did you file several reports to request a room change between the beginning of the year and April?”
Chu Ci paused.
“On April 10th, you made your last request. After the class counselor rejected it, citing that there were no available rooms for graduate students, they gave you a keycard for the laboratory and told you that if you didn’t want to go back to the dormitory, you could sleep in the lab at night. On April 12th, a few other graduate students were conducting an all-night hydrothermal reaction experiment, and in order to continue sleeping in the lab, you helped them set up a reaction vessel.”
Chu Ci said, “The lab doesn’t have power cuts at night and has air conditioning…”
“On April 15th, you and Feng Yuguang arrived in Jianning from Beijing. On the afternoon of the 16th, Feng Yuguang went to the International Financial Center shopping mall and bought a luxury bag worth 18,000 yuan using your name.”
The interrogation room was unusually quiet, and Chu Ci remained silent.
Yan Xie leaned on the edge of the table with his elbow and said calmly, “If I were to use someone else’s name to buy something, there’s only one possibility: I wanted to give that item to them, but I was worried that if they didn’t like it, they could exchange it at the store.”
“But in the end, you didn’t take that bag.” Yan Xie paused for a moment and raised an eyebrow. “I suppose you and Feng Yuguang had quite a significant conflict, and you didn’t particularly like him.”
Chu Ci rubbed his temples with his knuckles, and when he raised his hand, both interrogators noticed the band-aids on his pinky and ring fingers.
“Yes.” Several seconds later, he finally lowered his hand and looked at Yan Xie, admitting, “There are indeed some conflicts between me and my roommate.”
Yan Xie coldly said, “Just some conflicts?”
Chu Ci crossed his arms in front of his chest and stared at Yan Xie. Most people would feel somewhat embarrassed or annoyed when pressed by the police with such questions, but this young and talented student had better composure than most. At least on the surface, there was no indication of any unpleasant feelings. He repeated clearly and firmly, “Just some conflicts.”
Yan Xie’s eyes flickered slightly, revealing no particular emotion.
“Fine then.” After a while, Yan Xie leaned back in his chair, shrugged indifferently, and said, “Tell us about these conflicts and why he wanted to give you an 18,000 yuan bag. Forgive me for being presumptuous, but luxury items like that, I’ve only given them during my first love, and even if I did, they never amounted to anything. They’re like dumplings; once they’re gone, they’re gone…”
“He was too noisy.”
“Hmm?”
“My roommate,” Chu Ci’s tone was very calm. “He would video chat until 2 a.m. five nights a week, watch dramas, and play games until 5 a.m., leaving the lights on all night. And on two days, he would stay out for parties until three or four in the morning and then come back, turning on the lights and making loud noises while getting ready. No matter how deep I was asleep, I would always be woken up. I can’t remember the last time I had a full night’s sleep.”
“I’m a financially disadvantaged student, and if I don’t receive the highest scholarship every year, it’s as if I’ve committed a crime. I can tolerate it most of the time, but during the exam period, I can’t bear it anymore. It’s also difficult to concentrate during experiments during the daytime. You know, some chemical experiments can be dangerous, and there were several times where I almost had an accident…”
Yan Xie suddenly interrupted, “Do you have neurosis?”
Chu Ci didn’t answer.
“You mentioned turning on the lights twice just now. Is it because you’re sensitive to light when you’re sleeping, right?”
“…,” Chu Ci finally sighed, exhaustedly saying, “I didn’t have this problem when my previous roommate was still here.”
Outside the interrogation room, Qin Chuan muttered, “This guy has a pretty solid motive.”
Yan Xie asked, “Since your conflicts have escalated to this point, why didn’t he move out? On the contrary, he bought a gift as—sorry, I can only think of it as a way to make you stay—did he want you to move back to the dormitory from the lab after you returned to Beijing?”
Chu Ci said, “I really don’t know why, but I guess his graduation thesis must have been unable to progress.”
Yan Xie looked up, peering down at Chu Ci’s shadow on the other side of the interrogation table with an openly scrutinizing and coldly suspicious gaze.
“Officer,” Chu Ci seemed somewhat helpless, “everyone has some conflicts with their roommates to some extent, but that’s not a reason for me to be inexplicably questioned here for so long. If I may ask, has something happened to Feng Yuguang? If that’s the case, don’t you think you should check the surveillance records of the lab since I’ve been there these past two days?”
Ma Xiang’s phone rang outside the interrogation room, and he made a gesture of apology to Qin Chuan before hurriedly walking out to answer the call.
Ten seconds later, he pushed the door open and entered. Qin Chuan turned around and used his eyes to ask what happened.
“…Brother Qin, Brother Yan,” Ma Xiang swallowed his saliva, his complexion not looking too good, “There’s been a minor situation at the internship company.”
Yan Xie took off his earpiece and looked up at Chu Ci, speaking sincerely, “I’m sorry.”
Chu Ci asked, “?”
“The feedback just came from your internship company. The surveillance in the lab was out of order for a period of time and was only repaired yesterday. This means that there are no surveillance records on May 2nd, the day you last saw Feng Yuguang.”
Chu Ci, “…”
“And perhaps you’re unaware, but May 2nd was also the last time you had a conversation with Feng Yuguang. Several hours later, he was found dead behind the back door of a KTV in Fuyang District, carrying the backpack that you had rejected,” Yan Xie pressed the transcript down on the table. “That day.”
Chu Ci’s previously composed expression finally changed.
“…What are you saying?”
Yan Xie’s voice wasn’t particularly harsh, but each word carried a more threatening force, echoing in the interrogation room.
“You better tell us honestly what Feng Yuguang said to you during your last meeting, classmate. The victim died of chemical poisoning, and you have sufficient motive, the ability to produce drugs, and no alibi. If you’re still trying to conceal the truth, you are the only suspect in this case so far.”
Yan Xie folded his hands, leaning back with his upper body, and calmly said, “You should know what that means.”
An intense silence filled the air. Chu Ci seemed frozen in the shadows, not even blinking his eyes.
“…It’s impossible…”
No one answered, and all eyes were fixed on his face.
After what felt like an eternity, Chu Ci finally spoke amidst several piercing gazes. His voice was soft and hoarse as he said, “When I went back to retrieve something that afternoon…”
“Feng Yuguang was in the dormitory, studying. When he saw me enter, he suddenly insisted on making a bet with me.”
Prev | Table of Contents | Next
For every Ko-fi received for a perticular novel, I will release a new chapter!
