The paper star that had been unfolded by Yu Yang as it lay on the desk was blue. Because it had been tightly clenched in someone’s palm, the creases had become messy and blurred—as had the handwriting on it.
“Is this your sister’s handwriting?”
“Yes.”
“Have you seen these… paper stars before?”
“No. I rarely entered her room after I started high school.”
“……”
The paper stars originally scattered on the floor had already been picked up by Yu Yang and packed back into the transparent box. If the cat hadn’t suddenly dragged the box out, he wouldn’t have noticed that things were actually written inside these paper stars, even if he were to organize Yu Lan’s belongings afterward.
Chi Qing and Xie Lin were both originally preparing to leave work when the telephone inside the General Headquarters’ meeting room rang. Yu Yang’s stammering voice said on the other end, “I—I found… something. It might be related to my sister’s death.”
“It’s a box of… paper stars.”
The moment Chi Qing entered the door, the cat darted out from the room as if catching his scent, instantly rushing to his feet. However, its former temporary master didn’t even give it a glance. Instead, the annoying guy beside him squatted down, wanting to pet its head. The annoying guy still wore that same smiling demeanor: “We meet again, little kitty. How have you been lately? Look at you, have you lost a bit of weight?”
After a long separation, and since there was basically no one left in the house after Yu Lan’s death, the cat didn’t mind Xie Lin getting so close to it anymore.
The cat granted Xie Lin a sliver of attention, giving a perfunctory, “……Meow.”
The next second, Xie Lin picked it up by the scruff, pulling its paws away from Chi Qing’s trouser leg: “A little nuzzle is enough. Don’t keep nuzzling.”
To the side, Su Xiaolan and the others poured all the stars out of the transparent box and counted them: “A total of one hundred and eight stars. The colors are random—seven colors in total. Seven days a week; it’s estimated she changed to a different color each day.”
“The color isn’t important,” Xie Lin said. Squatting at the doorway as if he were just there to play with the cat, his entire state was very loose, giving off the impression that he wasn’t listening to the activity in the room at all. Yet, at the exact moment he released the cat, he drew a conclusion: “It seems the time that person spent setting the stage is far earlier than we imagined.”
One hundred and eight stars.
If each star represented a day, the time that person had spent as added friends with the victims was over three months.
“It matches the characteristics of the killer’s modus operandi—meticulous execution. To kill four people in a row in such a short period of time while managing to leave no trace and making no mistakes means he prepared for this for a very long time. Honghai’s dismissal times, Wang Yuan’s class schedule, Jin Hongbo’s family situation and his habit of frequenting internet cafes—even details down to Ma Hui going to the restroom to change his clothes were all within his grasp.”
Chi Qing had to admit it.
He felt a trace of curiosity toward that killer whom he had never met.
This curiosity stemmed from the distance brought by the virtual network.
The suspect was no longer a person whose hand he could tentatively touch to obtain crucial information. Separated by the internet, that person had no concrete identity and no information whatsoever, like an intangible ghost.
Su Xiaolan couldn’t bear to let Yu Yang stand here and listen to them make these cruel analyses, so she tried to have Jiang Yu take him outside, but Yu Yang shook his head.
“I want to listen.”
“I need to know how my sister died.”
Xie Lin finally pinched a paper star closest to him and said, “Let’s unfold all these papers.”
Unfolding more than a hundred paper stars one by one took quite a bit of effort.
Once these stars were unfolded, lines of handwriting revealed themselves before everyone.
There was no particularly clear information on the slips of paper, only some casual murmurs.
—— He’s very cute.
—— Actually, I was so sleepy last night, but I forced myself to stay awake all along.
—— I said too much today. Will he think I’m annoying? Actually, I’m not usually like this.
—— He said he wants to hear my voice. I don’t dare to tell him that I can’t speak.
……
There were also two slips of paper whose chronological order was likely right next to each other.
—— Why is he unhappy?
—— Want to make him a bit happier. If tomorrow is a sunny day, I’ll take a picture of the sunshine to show him.
Yu Lan rarely updated her status on her social account, wouldn’t post selfies, and seldom posted text. Her flaw of not being good at socializing improved a lot on the internet, but she was still not someone who liked to seek attention.
These paper slips folded into stars were her true inner world.
Several people joined forces to unfold the paper slips. When Su Xiaolan unfolded the very last one, a long sentence was written on it.
—— Today is my birthday. If I were to make a wish, I’d wish… to be able to meet him face-to-face one day in the future.
At the end of this sentence, Yu Lan had also used a black gel pen to draw a little emoji of two hands pressed together in prayer.
The words on these paper slips were packed with a young girl’s sentimentality. Men might not feel a strong resonance upon reading them—especially that emotionless one from their General Headquarters—but after Su Xiaolan read them, she only felt as if a soft place deep in her heart had been pricked by someone, leaving her soft-hearted and aching.
All because that girl had once looked forward so deeply to meeting him just once.
……
Did she know that the person on the other end of the network might be a demon?
Not only did Su Xiaolan think this way, but Xie Lin also lacked confidence in that person who looked completely devoid of emotion.
He glanced at Chi Qing: “Can you understand it?”
Chi Qing: “Am I illiterate?”
“……” Xie Lin said, “You can understand scripts well enough, yet I haven’t seen you act out a play properly.”
Chi Qing’s speed of unfolding the paper stars slowed down slightly.
Xie Lin stopped teasing him: “Just kidding. Are you angry?”
Instead, Chi Qing said, “Though I don’t understand why she didn’t just say what she wanted to say directly instead of writing it down to hide here, I can see that she liked this person.”
Even if this emotionless guy had become slightly more normal after entering a relationship, most of the time it was still difficult for him to comprehend certain emotions—such as this kind of rambling from a young girl.
Chi Qing wasn’t very interested in the content of the paper slips, but he could see that Yu Lan liked this “him” very much.
Taking advantage of the moment when Ji Mingrui and the others were busy taking photos for evidence and creating a hectic scene, Chi Qing added, “Because certain thoughts, I’ve had them too.”
Xie Lin had rarely heard this kind of remark from Chi Qing’s mouth.
In his memory, Chi Qing had been straightforward a few times, but most of the remaining time he still maintained that aura of “it’s best if you don’t talk to me.”
However, as a partner, he still held a bit of privilege. This “don’t talk to me” aura wasn’t that strong, having weakened into a state of “if you talk to me, I’ll reluctantly respond to you.”
Xie Lin really wanted to hear him continue: “For example?”
What Chi Qing held in his hand were those two paper slips that were close together. He substituted the sunny day with his own preferred weather: “If tomorrow is an overcast day, I want to take a picture of the rain to show you.”
“……”
Generally speaking, an overcast day shouldn’t make someone feel happy.
Yet Xie Lin was still deeply moved.
So moved that he even hoped every day would be an overcast day.
Just as Xie Lin was about to say something, Ji Mingrui squeezed between the two of them with his phone: “Make way, let me take a photo of the paper slips on your side. I have to hand them over to Brother Bin later.”
Facing these paper slips, Su Xiaolan voiced a question: “What’s written on these slips all refer to ‘him,’ but in Wang Yuan and the others’ chat logs, the ones who added them were clearly girls. So is this ‘him’ actually male or female?”
Indeed.
Anything could be faked on the internet.
Identity, gender, age, profession.
……
If this “him” in Yu Lan’s slips and the “she” who added Wang Yuan and the others were the exact same person, then was the person behind the network male or female?
“Could it be Jiang Yiyun?” Jiang Yu asked.
“No,” Chi Qing said. “Before this, she indeed held suspicion, but there is no need for her to kill Yu Lan.”
Xie Lin: “This is also the strangest part. Since so much evidence points toward Jiang Yiyun, why kill such a person who couldn’t possibly point to Jiang Yiyun?”
Finally, Su Xiaolan carefully folded these papers back up and packed them into the box.
As the few of them prepared to return and discuss further, they discovered upon exiting the door that the cat was quietly squatting at the doorway, watching them.
Yu Yang had been exhausted recently, making it difficult to spare any energy to care for this cat that Yu Lan had adopted before her death. He said, “Consultant Chi, this cat was brought over from your house by my sister not long ago… You can see our family’s current situation. I don’t have the energy to raise this cat for the time being.”
Chi Qing and the cat stared at each other quietly for a moment.
Ten minutes later, Xie Lin carried the cat litter box into the car. The car trunk was filled with the items Yu Lan had originally carried away from Chi Qing’s house.
Chi Qing sat in the passenger seat, a smoke-gray cat backpack resting on his lap. Inside the cat backpack, that foolish cat pressed its face against the protruding glass dome to look at him, its face completely distorted from its own pressing.
The two groups were heading home in different directions. Ji Mingrui got into his car and shook his head before driving, only wanting to say: “This cat probably didn’t just commit sins in its past life; it might have committed sins in the life before its past life too, to actually fall into Chi Qing’s hands twice.”
“Meow.”
The moment the cat entered Chi Qing’s house, it wandered around the living room with familiar ease. It still remembered Chi Qing’s habits and didn’t walk toward his bedroom.
While the cat revisited its old haunts to patrol its territory, the two of them moved the things back to the balcony.
Then Chi Qing took off his gloves, which had picked up a few stray cat hairs at some point, and went to wash his hands. Intending to pull out his phone to check the time, he saw a friend request sent by Yu Yang.
Before they left, Yu Yang had used the cat as an excuse to add Chi Qing as a friend.
Chi Qing originally wanted to say “not familiar with you, not adding friends,” but Xie Lin handed the phone over for him, seeing right through Yu Yang’s little thoughts: “He doesn’t truly want to add you as a friend; he just wants to know the progress of the case at the first opportunity. He shouldn’t bother you normally.”
Chi Qing originally intended to casually tap to accept.
However, the moment his gaze brushed past Yu Yang’s social account ID, he suddenly froze.
Xie Lin called out from the balcony: “Its cat litter is almost used up. Remember to buy some—forget it, I’ll buy it instead…”
He clapped the litter dust off his hands and saw Chi Qing standing at the bathroom doorway, lost in thought: “What are you looking at?”
Xie Lin’s gaze followed Chi Qing’s to land on that familiar string of numbers.
——The reason it was called familiar was because they had investigated Yu Lan’s social account for so long, and Yu Yang’s social account ID was almost identical to Yu Lan’s.
Yu Lan’s account ID was yang0811.
They had checked it—0811 was Yu Yang’s birthday.
The only difference was that inside Yu Yang’s current account, there was an extra ‘g’: yangg0811.
Even if the two shared a great relationship and were biological siblings, Yu Lan wouldn’t go as far as to set her own account according to her younger brother’s name + birthday.
The two spoke simultaneously:
“He……”
“This account……”
To verify this shocking conjecture, after Chi Qing accepted Yu Yang’s friend request, he took the initiative to send over a sentence: Your account name is the same as your sister’s.
A few minutes later, Yu Yang replied: Ah, because that account was being used by me a long time ago. My sister didn’t really surf the internet before she started working. Later, when my grades declined during my first year of junior high, I gave the account to her for the sake of my studies, letting her help me log in every day to claim experience points… Later, it was just given to her to use directly, and I applied for a new one.
To Yu Yang, that was all something from a very long time ago.
He didn’t think twice about it at all.
But Chi Qing and Xie Lin realized that the thread that had remained tangled and unresolvable throughout the case finally had a breakthrough.
Why Yu Lan had always been a figure outside of logic.
Why everything originally seemed very clear, yet a victim who couldn’t be explained whatsoever had been mixed in.
And, why the one who died was Yu Lan.
On the other side, Ji Mingrui was still driving, first sending Su Xiaolan back.
Su Xiaolan’s home was far away. After driving for over half an hour, while the two were discussing the case, the phone suddenly rang.
“Hello?”
The moment Ji Mingrui picked up the phone, he heard a sentence come from the opposite side: “Yu Lan’s death was an accident.”
Even if Xie Lin usually spoke nonchalantly, at this moment, his tone sank as well. He followed up immediately, saying: “The killer found the wrong person.”
Ji Mingrui slammed on the brakes. Both he and Su Xiaolan threw forward violently against their seatbelts: “What?!”
