The door to the observation room was suddenly pushed open. The two parties involved, Chi Qing and Xie Lin, didn’t have much of a reaction, but the person at the door almost had his jaw drop to the floor.
It took a good while for Ji Mingrui to find his voice. “You guys…?”
Chi Qing glanced at him.
Ji Mingrui: “Where’s your glove?!”
“Took it off,” Chi Qing said. “Is there a problem with your eyes, can’t you see?”
“…”
Of course, he saw it.
The problem was, why would this master take his glove off?
Ji Mingrui was feeling a little jealous right now. This jealousy mainly stemmed from the fact that he had always considered himself to be Chi Qing’s best friend. Since high school, his relationship with Chi Qing had been closer than anyone else’s. Others had to stay two meters away from him, but he could appear within a one-meter radius.
Even though when he talked to Chi Qing, Chi Qing generally ignored him.
But the other classmates didn’t even have the chance to have a one-sided conversation with him. Compared to them, his relationship with Chi Qing seemed extremely “close,” even if this “closeness” felt very lowly.
…
Only after Ji Mingrui’s bitter struggle for many years had he finally seen what Chi Qing looked like without his gloves.
And now.
He wasn’t the person who had the absolute best relationship in the world with Chi Qing anymore!
Ji Mingrui’s pupils quaked.
If Chi Qing knew there was this much psychological activity going on in this person’s head, he would only give him two words: You’re sick.
Ji Mingrui: “So neither of you wants to explain… why you’re letting him hold your hand?”
Chi Qing didn’t plan on saying much. “Treatment.”
Ji Mingrui: “?”
Xie Lin helped him finish the sentence. “The psychiatrist suggested he interact more with people in his daily life.”
Ji Mingrui: “Why don’t you interact more with me?”
Chi Qing: “Touching you is disgusting.”
Ji Mingrui: “And touching him isn’t…?” Isn’t disgusting?
Ji Mingrui didn’t finish asking the question. The scene before his eyes clearly already told him the answer. Asking further would only be inviting humiliation.
Yet Xie Lin had to continue, making it completely clear to him. “The excuse of ‘interacting more with people’ isn’t actually very accurate.”
“?”
“It’s mainly interacting with me,” Xie Lin continued. “He still can’t accept anyone else right now.”
Ji Mingrui: “…”
They didn’t get to dwell on this issue much. Very quickly, there was a knock on the observation room door. Officer Liu, who was on the same task force but had a different division of labor, poked his head in and said, “Xue Mei’s parents have arrived.”
Xie Mei’s parents were both from the countryside. They had two daughters and one son. Xue Mei was the second child—neither the eldest nor the most favored youngest—caught in the middle and often ignored by her family.
Xue Mei had also left home to go to university elsewhere, so her family was very used to her being away on her own. They figured as long as the child could take care of herself, it was fine. Not being in contact for a month or so was a common occurrence. The only time the family would actively contact her was when Xue Mei got her salary every month and the family needed subsidies.
This family situation was exactly the same as Yang Zhenzhen’s. Yang Zhenzhen’s parents were divorced, one remarried and the other remarried, and neither side had time to care for her. Getting a single greeting during the holidays was already considered pretty good.
Wu Zhibin: “Ask them carefully. See if Xue Mei revealed any information to them. You need to be as specific as the content of every single phone call. Don’t let any situation slip by.”
There was still follow-up work to be done, which had nothing to do with Xie Lin. He gave the fingers in his palm a slight shake. “Leaving? Let’s go back together.”
Chi Qing followed behind Xie Lin. Xue Mei’s parents were standing in the corridor. A weather-beaten rural woman was crying herself hoarse. “How could this be, we just talked on the phone last month—she said she was coming back for New Year’s, how could she just be gone.”
Chi Qing couldn’t understand the kind of grief Xue Mei’s mother was feeling.
Xie Lin noticed Chi Qing taking an extra look at the woman. “What is it?”
Chi Qing: “Didn’t she rarely contact her daughter normally?”
“Humans are very complex creatures,” Xie Lin said. “Love is also very complex.”
The joints of Chi Qing’s fingers were still resting against his palm. Xie Lin led him through the clamor of the corridor, the man speaking as they walked. “Everyone expresses love differently. Some love enduringly, some love for an instant. Some people only realize in hindsight, after they’ve lost it, that they actually deeply loved the other person. Sometimes, even hate is just another kind of love.”
Late that night, Chi Qing lay with his eyes open as the hour hand turned past ’12’.
This time it wasn’t because it was noisy, but because of what Xie Lin had said.
The word ‘love’ seemed even more unfamiliar than the emotions he couldn’t perceive. He had never thought about this word.
For many people, their first lesson in love usually came from their parents.
However, Chi Qing’s impressions of his parents from a young age were extremely scarce. Perhaps there had been warmth, but that was from when he was very young.
The dusk outside the window was dark. The General Bureau was still brightly lit, everyone working overtime for the case. When they got tired, they just laid down on their desks and slept for a while. Because this bizarre home invasion case had occurred in their jurisdiction, Wu Zhibin had been temporarily transferred back to work at the General Bureau.
Right now, he was leaning on his cane, walking out of the archives room. However, what he held in his hand were not documents related to this case, but a personal file.
The first page of the file read: Chi Qing.
“I pulled the file for you,” Wu Zhibin said into his phone. “Are you looking at it now?”
On the other end of the line, Xie Lin’s voice sounded casual. “Send it over.”
Wu Zhibin had been a detective for decades; he wasn’t as easy to fool as Xie Lin. Although he hadn’t asked to his face during the day, he was muttering in his heart—this Chi Qing, bumping into the case several times in a row, could it really just be a coincidence?
Because Chi Qing was one of the survivors of the major case from back then, the investigators had investigated him. The personal file recorded his detailed information, family situation, and some brief follow-up tracking.
But the encryption level of a survivor from the kidnapping case was very high. Even in the personal files stored at the Municipal General Bureau, not a single bit of information related to the kidnapping case could be revealed.
Therefore, the parts related to the kidnapping case had been erased from this personal file.
Xie Lin sat in his study, a black fountain pen twirling between his fingers, flipping through the faxed documents Wu Zhibin had sent over. “Family situation: Parents died in a car accident, fostered at his uncle’s house since childhood, excellent academic performance…”
The documents showed that Chi Qing had a passable relationship with his uncle’s family growing up. Since he wasn’t their own child, they couldn’t be called close, but they hadn’t skimped on his food and clothing either. But after Chi Qing unexpectedly lost his hearing one time, his attitude towards his uncle’s family underwent a noticeable change.
After being discharged from the hospital, there was even a conflict over the car accident compensation money left by Chi’s parents from back then, which cleanly and efficiently went to court. It was only after going to court that he found out they had adopted Chi Qing solely for that massive sum of compensation money. They claimed to be holding it for him, but in reality, they had squandered it all over the years.
“…”
Xie Lin’s gaze landed on the four words “noticeable change.” He couldn’t imagine what catalyst occurred during Chi Qing’s hospitalization that made him discover the truth about his uncle’s family adopting him.
The latter half of the file basically matched what he currently knew: a withdrawn personality, went to study acting after the college entrance exam, but clearly lacked talent for it.
Although there were some parts in this personal file that made Xie Lin pause slightly while reading, overall, there was nothing suspicious.
The phone hadn’t been hung up. Wu Zhibin asked on the other end, “Do you think there’s a problem with him?”
Xie Lin thought for a moment and said, “I have some doubts, but they have nothing to do with the case. It’s about another aspect.”
Wu Zhibin thought to himself, It doesn’t sound like you have doubts, it sounds more like you’re very interested in the guy.
Chi Qing didn’t sleep well that night.
The next day, while listening to all sorts of noises in the building, he had an online therapy session with his psychiatrist. Over the phone, Doctor Wu greeted him, “How are you feeling lately? How’s the cooperation with Mr. Xie going?”
Chi Qing wasn’t very willing to mention the certain Xie who had dragged him to the police station and kept him there all day, but he had to admit that when he was beside Xie Lin, the whole world was very quiet.
Chi Qing admitted that his current state was very awkward. “I don’t want to get close to him, but I can’t help wanting to.”
Doctor Wu: “…This phenomenon is normal. After all, you’re not used to it yet. Being able to not be repulsed is already very good. We’ll take it step by step, slowly.”
Doctor Wu asked his routine questions, and the two chatted for a while.
During a pause in the consultation, the noise in the building suddenly increased.
The apartment downstairs had finally found a tenant. They finalized it today and signed the lease contract.
[It’s good that it’s a girl, I feel more at ease renting the apartment to a girl. Girls are careful and easy to talk to.]
This distorted voice was the landlord speaking.
Immediately after, another distorted voice rang out. Chi Qing remembered this voice; it was the girl from last time who was going to live with someone: [Finally rented a suitable apartment. It’s close to where I work, and he really likes it too.]
As Doctor Wu was speaking, he realized there was no sound from the other end. He asked, “Can you hear me? Hello?”
Chi Qing barely managed to distinguish Doctor Wu’s voice from the pile of noise. “Sorry, it’s a bit noisy. Didn’t hear clearly.”
“Noisy?”
Where is it noisy? It’s clearly very quiet on this end of the phone.
“It’s noisy, let’s stop today’s session here,” Chi Qing said. “We’ll make an appointment for another day.”
Listening to the long string of dial tones on the phone, Doctor Wu was baffled and muttered to himself, “Could it be that the sound of my voice was too loud for his ears?”
After the apartment downstairs was rented out, the moving company quickly arrived, and the building became lively again. Starting in the afternoon, the movers constantly went in and out.
Chi Qing hadn’t slept well at night, and he couldn’t get any peace during the day either.
He clicked open Xie Lin’s chat box in the WeChat app, stared at it for a long time, and found he couldn’t come up with any excuse. Just as he decided to exit, a new message appeared in the chat box.
Xie Lin: Someone moved in downstairs, want to go down and take a look?
Chi Qing replied: Look at what.
Xie Lin: Heard it’s a girl.
Chi Qing subconsciously thought of the ring on Xie Lin’s hand, really wanting to say, If you want to look at girls, go down and look yourself.
However, Xie Lin immediately sent another sentence.
– The case hasn’t been solved yet. It’s inevitable for girls renting outside to think too much, especially someone newly moved in who doesn’t know anyone. It’s close by anyway, let’s go down and show our faces.
Perhaps it was because there was some truth to what Xie Lin said, or perhaps because it was too noisy in his ears.
When Xie Lin asked “Going or not?” for the second time, Chi Qing replied with a “Going.”
– Then come out.
– I’m at the elevator.
When Chi Qing opened his door and went out, Xie Lin was waiting for the elevator. He was dressed normally and hadn’t specifically changed clothes just to go downstairs. They really were just going to do a simple greeting.
Xie Lin: “I thought you were going to say you didn’t want to meet anyone, and tell me to go by myself if I wanted to.”
Chi Qing: “…”
He had indeed wanted to say that, if not for losing control.
The place was just downstairs, and the elevator arrived quickly.
The moment the elevator doors opened, those messy noises instantly came much closer to him.
Chi Qing didn’t step out of the elevator, dawdling inside inconspicuously for a few seconds.
Xie Lin glanced at him, knowing he felt there were too many people outside. Noticing that the hands hanging by his sides weren’t wearing gloves, he very naturally reached out, took his hand, and led him out. “It’s fine, I won’t let them touch you.”
There really were a lot of people outside the elevator, with movers constantly dragging large cardboard boxes in and out.
But after it suddenly quieted down, Chi Qing felt… these people didn’t seem quite so annoying to look at anymore.
