The words ‘Running away after sleeping with me’ looked very ambiguous.
Chi Qing: …
Chi Qing’s mental state was much better today. Two households in the building had planned to go traveling together and entered the elevator at 8 AM this morning. The sick person resting at home had also recovered. With a few households gone, the area around his ears became suddenly much quieter. The number of times the residents in the building stayed up late was also limited; it wasn’t like there were arguments to be had every single night. The only thing that gave him a headache was that one of the two vacant apartments downstairs seemed to be looking for tenants.
An agent brought people over to look at the apartment—three times in one afternoon alone, but negotiations fell through every time due to the rent being too high.
Approaching evening, the last person the agent brought was a female tenant. She wasn’t renting the place alone, because the distorted voice was saying: [This apartment is indeed quite good in all aspects, I wonder if he’ll like it…]
As to whether this ‘he’ was a ‘he’ or a ‘she’, Chi Qing had absolutely no interest in these things. He only hoped the person who ultimately moved in would be someone who spoke very little.
In short, with his mental state not being terribly bad, he didn’t mind temporarily returning to square one in his relationship with Xie Lin. Therefore, his attitude in replying to the message was very direct.
– I owe you a meal, made a bit extra while cooking.
Followed closely by four words.
– Eat it or don’t.
“Is this how you invite someone,” ten-plus minutes later, Xie Lin finished parking his car, took the elevator upstairs, and leaned against Chi Qing’s door. “If I say I won’t eat, does that suit you perfectly?”
Chi Qing: “Do you want to hear the truth?”
“?”
“Yes,” regardless of whether Xie Lin wanted to hear it or not, Chi Qing spoke the truth. “I don’t like eating with others.”
Xie Lin: “Then how do I eat?”
Chi Qing: “Take it back to your place.”
“…Heartless,” Xie Lin looked at him and smiled. “And you say it isn’t running away after sleeping with me.”
Xie Lin directly and consciously walked inside: “Then what should we do, I actually really like eating with you. How about you start by getting used to me first.”
On the dining table inside, two white dinner plates were set out, with two sets of knives and forks beside them.
The food Chi Qing made looked pretty good, although pan-fried steak and boiled vegetables weren’t difficult to make to begin with.
Xie Lin indeed hadn’t eaten. Wu Zhibin had asked him to stay and eat at the General Bureau’s cafeteria, but he hadn’t agreed.
That place, the General Bureau, was too familiar yet too foreign. Many things had changed, but everywhere he went, there were traces of Xie Feng.
He remembered the first time the spirited man in a police uniform took him to the General Bureau cafeteria to eat, the way he placed food in his bowl. The man’s face from back then had grown blurry in his memory, but he remembered that proud and hopeful sentence: “This is where gege [older brother] works.”
…
Chi Qing meticulously wiped the tableware down one more time before picking it up. His black-gloved fingers pinched the silver knife and fork. Before he even made the first cut, he heard Xie Lin say: “This patient’s attitude towards treatment today isn’t very proactive.”
“…”
Xie Lin: “Take off the gloves, who covers themselves up so tightly while eating.”
Chi Qing wearing gloves was entirely habitual.
When someone came, he habitually put them on without even needing to think about it.
A habit formed over ten years was very hard to change overnight.
The hand holding the tableware paused. The pit of ‘cooperating with treatment’ was dug by himself after all. Furthermore, he truly wasn’t too repulsed by Xie Lin, and it wasn’t like he couldn’t compromise.
So he put down his tableware and took off the gloves.
Grasping the knife and fork again, this time without the barrier of black fabric, his fingers directly touched the cold, hard texture of the utensils. It seemed to add a bit more sense of reality.
During the pauses in eating, the two occasionally chatted a bit.
Accustomed to eating Western food, the pad of Xie Lin’s index finger naturally rested on his utensils: “You seem to dislike talking when you eat.”
Chi Qing coldly sliced off the piece of beef in his hand: “I don’t like it when I’m not eating either.”
“Has your house always been this dark?”
“Lights aren’t on, curtains aren’t drawn either. The sunlight outside is quite nice today.”
“If you’re not happy with it, you can take it back to your place to eat.”
“…”
However, after they finished eating, as Xie Lin put down his knife and fork, he suddenly brought up a completely unrelated topic: “The girl who died in the Tianrui complex was named Xue Mei. Like Yang Zhenzhen, there were no traces of forced entry, but none of the people close to her are suspected of the murder.”
When investigating cases, Xie Lin rarely wanted to hear other people’s opinions.
Nor were there other people’s opinions to listen to. Yet Chi Qing’s performance in the cat killing case made him very mindful.
This end-stage germophobe—with a bizarre temper, covered in quirks, who stayed at home all day and disliked turning on the lights—possessed an insight far surpassing ordinary people in certain aspects.
Chi Qing: “What does that have to do with me?”
Xie Lin: “It doesn’t have anything to do with you, I just want to hear what you think of this case.”
After a long while, Chi Qing pulled a tissue from the side. As he wiped his hands, he said: “There are too few conditions to make a guess. The killer might possess a method to come and go freely, or might have disguised the traces. No forced entry might just be a superficial appearance. There are too many directions to guess, so it’s hard to say.”
The topic regarding Xue Mei ended there. After Xie Lin went back, he received a text message from Wu Zhibin: That neighbor’s whereabouts are indeed suspicious. He hasn’t gone to work at the company recently, and no one answers when we knock on his door. We are currently staking him out outside the Tianrui complex. If you’re free tomorrow, you can come over too.
Xie Lin replied: Understood.
The next day, Chi Qing stayed at home as usual. The agent brought another new resident to look at the apartment.
Chi Qing was forced to learn that this apartment downstairs was originally a marital home prepared by the owner for his son. But the son hadn’t chosen to return to the country to work after studying abroad and decided to settle overseas, which was why they planned to rent the house out.
He just pretended not to hear. As long as he didn’t go out and avoided crowded places, he could barely endure the sounds made by the people currently in the building for a while longer.
However, this tiny wish was quickly shattered by reality.
His former landlord contacted him: “Mr. Chi, do you have time right now? It’s like this, you moved out rather hastily, and I haven’t returned your deposit yet. Could you see if it’s convenient for you to come back for a bit? We can do an on-site handover and inspection, and if there are no problems, I’ll refund the deposit to you.”
Chi Qing didn’t want to go out at all: “Not convenient.”
Former landlord: “…”
Chi Qing: “Nothing is damaged. Go look for yourself, give whatever you see fit for the deposit.”
The landlord knew this tenant didn’t like paying attention to people much, but didn’t expect it to reach this degree. Still, he persisted: “If you aren’t present, my heart isn’t at ease either. If there’s any damage or something, it’s clearer if two people talk face-to-face. Don’t you think?”
There wasn’t that much trust between people.
The landlord was just thinking that if the amount needed for compensation exceeded the deposit, and this tenant wasn’t present, there would be nothing he could do if the tenant ran away or refused to admit it.
In the end, Chi Qing still went out.
This was his first time going out in over a week.
After losing control, the outside world was like a massive noise manufacturing plant to him. Countless mouths opened and closed; behind every spoken sentence lay another unspoken sentence. The two kinds of sounds mixed together, endlessly drilling into his ears.
Chi Qing wore a black jacket. To reduce the contact area with the surrounding air, he pulled the hood of his hoodie up. Simultaneously, due to a psychological effect, feeling as if this could block out the surrounding voices, the large, loose hood covered half of his face.
The moment the driver saw the order address, he chattered away: “You’re going to the Yangyuan area, huh? It’s really dangerous over there right now, heard they still haven’t caught the guy…” Every day the case remained unsolved was a day the public’s vigilance wouldn’t lower.
The rumors even intensified.
As he approached his destination, Chi Qing heard many voices, mostly still discussing the murder case.
[The killer definitely lives in this residential complex, otherwise why would the two dead girls be so close to each other.]
[Every day when I get off work and return to the complex, I’m scared to death, terrified the killer is still nearby. Better quickly find an apartment and move away from here.]
[…]
The former landlord was clearly also worrying about this. Seeing Chi Qing step out of the elevator, he couldn’t help but walk up and complain: “The apartments in this area are getting harder and harder to rent out now. Even dropping the rent by a third doesn’t bring anyone to the door.”
The former landlord was a middle-aged man who had received several properties from demolition relocation, and had shown an increasing trend of putting on weight in recent years.
Chi Qing actually had a very hard time hearing clearly what the former landlord was saying. There were too many residents in this building. From the moment he entered the complex, he had been arguing a headache by all sorts of noise, and he interrupted: “Open the door.”
The former landlord took out the keys and opened the door.
Although Chi Qing had moved out, he indeed hadn’t come back to check on this apartment. This wasn’t the only apartment the landlord rented out, and his lease contract with Chi Qing only expired at the end of the month. Chi Qing had moved out early and was still within the contract period, so the landlord hadn’t been in a rush to inspect it.
Looking at it now, the former landlord couldn’t help but be surprised: the apartment was as new as exactly when it was originally rented out. It didn’t look like anyone had lived in it at all.
The former landlord hesitantly looked around the apartment, then scanned Chi Qing up and down a few times. After noticing the black gloves on his hands, he realized this person probably had extremely severe germophobia.
“No problems, aiyo, this apartment is simply exactly the same as when I bought it,” the former landlord beamed with joy. The age and condition of an apartment greatly affected the rental price. “I’ll transfer the deposit back to you. Let’s cooperate again if there’s a chance in the future. If you ever want to rent it back, I welcome you anytime.”
Because of his germophobia, Chi Qing had received quite a bit of criticism.
During his school days, he was always out of place with his classmates, leaving no blade of grass where he passed, and other classmates were terrified of touching him.
He never expected to be exceptionally popular when it came to renting apartments.
It was exactly noon when Chi Qing finished the handover and went out. The sunlight was blindingly bright. He raised his hand to press his hood down, walking to the roadside to catch a cab back early.
There were too many people in this area.
Residents, shops along the street, pedestrians and vehicles on the road.
There were voices everywhere, all piled together. Chi Qing had no way of processing all these sounds simultaneously.
Ultimately, these sounds overlapped together, and he heard a dizzying humming noise.
Just as that humming noise passed, a man with a buzz cut wearing a thickly padded winter coat hurried past him.
At the exact moment they brushed shoulders, he heard an extremely clear, distorted voice: [Xue Mei is dead, the police will quickly investigate me. They’ll find out I’ve been… her…]
Chi Qing could only hear the first half of the sentence at the moment they passed each other. The most crucial few words in the middle of the first half were disrupted by the surrounding noise, sounding blurry and unclear. By the time the man had walked a distance away, that voice was drowned out among countless others, completely indistinguishable.
The name Xue Mei sounded very familiar.
Chi Qing recalled the words Xie Lin had said while eating yesterday.
—“The girl who died in the Tianrui complex was named Xue Mei.”
At the same time, 50 meters away from the Tianrui complex, inside a seemingly ordinary sedan, Wu Zhibin sat in the passenger seat quietly observing the movements at the entrance of the Tianrui complex.
Ever since the incident, the other entrances to the Tianrui complex had been blocked off, leaving only the South Gate for residents to enter and exit.
“The guy still hasn’t appeared,” Wu Zhibin said.
Sitting in the driver’s seat was a professional detective sent from the General Bureau. He asked in confusion: “There’s currently no definitive evidence pointing to him, why would he want to conceal his whereabouts?”
Before catching the person, no questions could be answered.
Wu Zhibin suddenly turned around and glanced at the back seat of the car: “I thought you wouldn’t come today.”
There was another person sitting in the back seat.
Xie Lin sat in the back seat, his elbow propped on the half-lowered car window, currently turning his head to look outside. There wasn’t the slightest hint of tension from executing a mission visible on him: “Since you personally spoke up, how could I not come.”
While they were speaking, the detective in the driver’s seat abruptly sat up straight and said: “Target spotted.”
“Wearing a black padded coat, direction is diagonally behind,” the detective kept his eyes on the rearview mirror while speaking. “Distance approximately 250 meters. He will pass by our car in a few minutes.”
Wu Zhibin also sat up straight: “Get ready!”
Only Xie Lin still maintained that leisurely appearance, looking out the window as if he were admiring the scenery.
The angle the car’s rearview mirror could reflect was limited, and during this period, other pedestrians would block the view. They couldn’t stick their heads out the window to look back either, and could only hold their breath, keep their composure, and wait for the target to approach them on his own.
As the distance closed, the blurry silhouette of the padded coat in the rearview mirror became clearer and clearer.
The detective spoke again: “Wait! There seems to be another suspicious individual behind the target!”
“Black hood, very long hair, tall and thin, very pale skin.” The detective briefly described the characteristics of the other suspicious individual: “He’s also wearing black gloves, and has been following right behind the target, looking very abnormal.”
Hearing ‘black gloves’, Xie Lin also sat up straight.
Xie Lin: “?”
__
Author’s Note:
Chi Qing: Blooming for a second time (striking again).
