“Beep—”
The sound crashed heavily into everyone’s ears.
The file lay quietly on the table.
Deceased: Yu Lan.
The WeChat account used prior to her death was previously used by her younger brother, Yu Yang: yuy…
Shen Xinghe was visibly stunned for a moment. Through his lenses, his gaze fell upon that familiar string of letters. He only caught the first half; the letters after “yuy” blurred before his eyes. He stared fixedly at that blurry halo for a long time until he blinked, and the haziness gradually receded.
Interrogating someone was like spending time and energy trying to pry open a seamless clam shell.
Seeing that a crack had finally been forced open, the criminal investigator naturally wouldn’t let him off easily.
The investigator’s sharp eyes locked firmly onto the youth in front of him. “Three months ago, she met a netizen online. She thought the person was her brother’s suitor, but soon discovered the person’s unique gender situation. Fearing the other person would get hurt, she carefully maintained her ‘brother’s’ identity. Do you really not know her?”
Shen Xinghe opened his mouth. “I…”
He didn’t finish his sentence. In that split second, all the wave frequencies on the computer connected to the polygraph began to fluctuate wildly and erratically up and down. Soon, every single cardiogram across the entire screen turned into dangerous red lines. It wasn’t just Shen Xinghe’s heartbeat that lost its rhythm—his breathing, his pulse… everything had spun completely out of control.
In the observation room, everyone stared at the screen full of red lines in dead silence.
Yet, even someone like Chi Qing, who entirely lacked an emotional reception system, caught a single detail: “Just now… was he crying?”
Though they hadn’t seen a single tear.
Even though Shen Xinghe had only blinked once.
Everyone held their breath, waiting for the next “beep.”
However, it never came.
Because Shen Xinghe lowered his eyes. Sitting in the cramped interrogation room, he spoke his only line of truth: “I am the person you are looking for.”
A moment later, he added, “I killed them.”
Ji Mingrui doubted his own ears. “He confessed?”
“If we knew Yu Lan’s file was this effective, we should have thrown it in front of him from the very beginning! The case would have been solved ages ago without all this tossing and turning.”
This interrogation was crucial, but their expectations had only been to catch some loopholes in Shen Xinghe’s words to bring them a step closer to the truth. There was currently no concrete evidence to implicate him, and Shen Xinghe himself knew this very well; he had no reason to confess.
They thought Yu Lan would at most be a breakthrough point, but never expected her to be Shen Xinghe’s ultimate line of defense. Once struck, it collapsed entirely.
After confessing, Shen Xinghe was transferred to another room, with spotlights and surveillance cameras pointed directly at him.
The number of people sitting across from him had changed from one to four.
Chi Qing and Xie Lin sat beside Ji Mingrui, observing Shen Xinghe up close.
For a while now, they had been tracking his coordinates across the elusive internet. Now, this person had stepped out of the virtual network and was sitting right in front of them.
The investigator asked, “You said you killed them. How did you kill them? And why did you kill them?”
After a long silence, Shen Xinghe spoke slowly, “Since you were able to find me, you must have already looked into my brother’s matters.”
“When the incident happened to Xingzhou, I wasn’t in Huanan City yet. I didn’t see his body, but I heard the police say he committed suicide due to depression caused by family reasons—at that moment, I knew it was impossible.”
“No one knew him better than I did; except for me, no one else understood him like that. My brother might have been introverted, but he was not weak.”
When mentioning his brother, Xu Xingzhou, Shen Xinghe’s expression softened. It was as if he could see a young Xu Xingzhou through time and space, running behind him and calling him “Brother.”
The two brothers had vastly different personalities. Xu Xingzhou was sensitive, gentle, and delicate-featured; when taking him out as a child, many people thought he was a younger sister.
Due to family reasons—negligent parents and constant arguments at home—Shen Xinghe, as the older brother, matured early. He knew very early on that he had to handle the family issues and take care of his brother, who was a year younger.
“From a very young age, our family was always fighting. It’s easy to understand; after all, many people don’t get married because of love, but for many other reasons. My brother (Xu Xingzhou) was exceptionally sensitive since childhood. He had excellent grades, but when he was wronged due to his introverted nature, he would hide behind the curtains and cry secretly, pretending he hadn’t cried afterward.”
The young Xu Xingzhou didn’t want his brother to worry, but he couldn’t hide it from the deeply perceptive Shen Xinghe.
Soon, Xu Xingzhou noticed that the thugs who used to corner him on his way home from school to demand lunch money would now steer clear of him; the classmate who had openly mocked him in class for being “sissy” apologized to him the very next day…
After their parents divorced, the two brothers were forced to live apart. Before Shen Xinghe left, Xu Xingzhou said to him, “Brother, I can protect myself. I want to be a doctor in the future, and I will ‘protect’ a lot of people.”
The breakdown of their family hadn’t happened overnight.
The blow to Xu Xingzhou wasn’t that severe.
At first, the two brothers kept in touch frequently. However, because Shen Xinghe’s school had an overly strict management system and he often had to participate in various competitions, the frequency of their communication decreased significantly. During this time, Xu Xingzhou had indeed grown. Months before his death, even someone as meticulous as Shen Xinghe didn’t detect any abnormalities.
The only thing that could be considered an anomaly was a retracted message from Xu Xingzhou one evening.
“That was a month before Xingzhou died. I was preparing for a competition at the time. When I saw that unread message at three in the morning, it had already been retracted when I clicked in.”
Shen Xinghe had replied with a question mark: ?
The next day, Xu Xingzhou said: It’s nothing.
— Just a problem I couldn’t solve.
— I wanted to send it to you to take a look, but I felt a bit embarrassed, so I pulled it back.
Finally, Xu Xingzhou said:
— No need for your help, I can solve it myself!
Xu Xingzhou would occasionally do seemingly childish things like this.
It had to be said that the internet was excellent at hiding emotions, making it easy to disguise oneself as if nothing was wrong. If the two had been talking face-to-face, Shen Xinghe would have definitely noticed something amiss. But at that time, Shen Xinghe simply smiled at those few lines of childish text, put his phone aside, and continued working on his competition problems.
Then, a month later, when he returned home from school one day, he learned of Xu Xingzhou’s death.
— “The school just called. Your brother committed suicide in his dorm.”
The situation was close to what they had deduced, but what they didn’t know was how it connected to the several deceased victims. “So you suspect there was foul play in your brother’s death? Do you have evidence?”
Shen Xinghe said, “There is a diary.”
“A diary?” the investigator pressed on. “Where did you find it?”
“Inside his textbook.”
Xu Xingzhou’s dorm room had been sealed off by the school after his suicide. The students in the dorms to his left and right had moved to other rooms; no students were allowed in or out of that fateful dorm, and no one dared to approach it. Xu Xingzhou’s clothes and textbooks from both the classroom and the dorm were packed up and handed over to his parents.
That night, Shen Xinghe sat in front of the bag of items for a very long time. Then, he took out Xu Xingzhou’s things one by one and neatly placed them into the closet.
After everything else was arranged, a large grey backpack remained.
Shen Xinghe slowly unzipped the backpack.
His gaze swept across the familiar handwriting on the textbooks.
Xu Xingzhou was very attentive in class, and his notes were highly organized. They had an upcoming quiz, and Xu Xingzhou had even specially prepared an exercise book to predict the exam questions, listing all the easily testable problem types together.
When flipping open the last mathematics textbook, a very thin notebook fell out. Shen Xinghe froze.
On the first line of the first page, it read: 2020/2/11.
Shen Xinghe realized this was a diary.
Intuition told him that this diary likely contained the contents Xu Xingzhou had retracted that night.
Only, at this point, he didn’t yet know that the truth was far crueler than he imagined.
The diary began with a seemingly beautiful sentence.
2020/2/11. I confessed to him.
Hearing this, Chi Qing knit his brows. He felt as though he had heard about this confession somewhere before. After a brief thought, it suddenly occurred to him that Yu Yang had once said: “…Someone likes me.”
— “Who?”
— “Xu Xingzhou.”
As Chi Qing was thinking, he noticed the glove on his left hand being gently pulled down a bit.
He turned his head and saw Xie Lin holding a black pen in one hand, while his other hand had secretly slipped beneath the long table at some point. Likely wanting to talk to him, Xie Lin had reached out to remove his glove.
The man’s fingertips slipped into the black fabric, brushing against his palm. Then, pinching two fingers slightly together, he pulled the black glove off his hand bit by bit.
Chi Qing’s hand came into direct contact with the slightly cool air, only to be immediately caught in a warm palm.
Chi Qing glanced at him.
Xie Lin’s face remained entirely expressionless, knowing Chi Qing could hear his thoughts:
[I’ll do the holding, you do the listening.]
Chi Qing: “…”
How was he supposed to listen properly with him holding his hand like this?
There was also a pen and a few sheets of paper for notes in front of Chi Qing. He picked up the pen and pointed the tip toward Shen Xinghe.
Xie Lin thought: [No need, I pretty much know what happened.]
Shen Xinghe fell into silence after mentioning his brother’s diary. Obviously, the contents of the diary were difficult to voice aloud.
[Where is the easiest place to spread ‘rumors’?]
[There are many answers, but school is definitely one of them.]
Furthermore, this wasn’t a rumor—it was the truth.
As a transfer student whose grades were among the best, and with Yu Yang being the bright, sunny boy whom the vast majority of the class had feelings for, how would the classmates evaluate them when the two were associated together?
Shen Xinghe did not continue reciting the exact sentences from the diary, but simply summarized: “That male classmate named Yu Yang usually took good care of him and often joked around, saying ‘Our Xingzhou.’ A few days after Xingzhou confessed to him, Wang Yuan suddenly approached him during a break between classes.”
Wang Yuan had stared at Xu Xingzhou for an entire period.
His gaze was bizarre. Xu Xingzhou assumed he just wanted to pick a fight again and ignored him at first.
It wasn’t until the break, when Wang Yuan passed by his side, that he intentionally bumped against Xu Xingzhou’s desk, leaned down, and whispered into Xu Xingzhou’s ear: “You like guys?”
With just that single sentence, from that day onward, Xu Xingzhou’s nightmare began.
