If he had to choose between listening to someone crying, laughing, and acting hysterically over a melodramatic soap opera in the middle of the night, and listening to a couple being all lovey-dovey, Chi Qing would rather choose the former.
He went to the kitchen to boil a pot of hot water. While waiting for the water to boil, he heard another sentence: [Qinqin, you are very beautiful.]
“…”
Chi Qing expressionlessly poured the boiling water into his cup.
He remembered the day Ren Qin moved in, she had mentioned having a friend living with her.
Judging by this, she was probably cohabiting with her boyfriend.
Girls are easily embarrassed, and since they weren’t familiar with each other on their first meeting, it was perfectly normal for her to be too shy to tell her strange upstairs neighbors that she was living with her boyfriend.
Chi Qing tried hard to pretend he hadn’t heard anything. He opened the medicine box on the side. The inside of the medicine box was organized very neatly, almost obsessively so, with the medications categorized and arranged in order of size. He wasn’t wearing gloves at home, and his fingers slid past the boxes of medicine one by one, finally stopping on a small bottle of sleeping pills.
Although he had developed a certain resistance to sleeping pills, he would still occasionally take one.
While lying in bed waiting for the medicine to take effect, he vaguely heard a few more sentences.
[Your hair is so soft. I just took a shower, did you smell it? The scent on both of us is the same now.]
[…You look so beautiful even when you’re asleep.]
Chi Qing didn’t quite understand what was so great about being so excessively clingy when two people were in love.
After taking the pill, he lay in bed with his eyes open. With his eyes open, the passage of time felt exceptionally long. After a while, he reached for his phone on the side, only to find that less than twenty minutes had passed. The voices downstairs continued intermittently without stopping, and the sleeping pills hadn’t kicked in yet.
Chi Qing swiped open his contact list and saw that his conversation with Xie Lin was still stuck on yesterday.
During the day, the two had returned from the General Bureau. Xie Lin dropped him off at the entrance of the residential complex but didn’t get out of the car himself. He rolled down the window and said, “There’s something going on at the company today, I have to go take a look. Not sure when I’ll be back.”
Chi Qing looked at him: “Why are you reporting this to me.”
Xie Lin: “Afraid you won’t be able to find anyone when you come knocking on my door tonight.”
“…”
Recalling this, Chi Qing admitted that if Xie Lin wasn’t away tonight, he really would have wanted to go knock on his door a little.
Just as he was about to exit the chat box, toss his phone aside, and continue his difficult attempt to fall asleep, the person on the other end of the chat, as if knowing he couldn’t sleep, sent a message at exactly the right moment.
– With me not there, can you fall asleep alone?
Actually, what Xie Lin meant was “treatment,” but since Chi Qing basically just held his hand and slept during every treatment session, he deliberately chose the word ‘sleep’ to refer to it. He didn’t expect to accidentally hit the nail on the head regarding Chi Qing’s current situation.
He waited on the other end for a while, and seeing no reply from Chi Qing, added two more sentences.
– Just joking.
– Seems like you’re asleep, good night.
Chi Qing stared at the words “good night” for a moment. The sleeping pill seemed to be taking some effect, and the excessively clingy man downstairs in the middle of the night also went silent. He soon fell asleep, until daybreak the next day, when someone in a certain household in the building got up early to cook, cut their hand, and let out an “Ah.”
[Ah—my hand!]
Chi Qing was woken up by this ‘Ah’.
Although he had now crossed professions to become the second consultant of the General Bureau, he didn’t need to report there every day. Even Xie Lin didn’t need to go over every day, so his time was even more flexible.
Therefore, Chi Qing stayed at home for two days, crossing off the date on the calendar for every day that passed.
The calendar hanging on the wall already had a large section crossed out. A black marker had been crossing out dates starting from over half a month ago, drawing a swath of “X” shapes. The starting date was heavily circled—it was exactly the day he went to the bar to deliver clothes.
These two days passed just like usual, nothing special.
Except, every late night he could hear the voice coming from downstairs, the man’s very gentle words constantly chattering in his ears.
His voice was very soft, the timbre ordinary and common, with nothing memorable about it.
At 3 AM on this day.
Chi Qing sat in the living room, turned on the TV, randomly changed the channel, and held a throw pillow while watching a rebroadcast of a daytime program on some TV station. The sound from the program mixed with the voice of the man downstairs.
On the TV: “After investigation, it has been confirmed that the two murders that occurred in the Yangyuan and Tianrui complexes a while ago were committed by the same person.”
[Qinqin.]
“There may be other similar cases in other cities. The police are still currently investigating these cases…”
[You smell so good… I want to hold you like this every night.]
“The police have stepped up the pace of solving the case. We hope citizens will not panic. If you have any relevant clues, you can call the following number to provide them to us…”
[…]
It was only after the program finished broadcasting that the various noises in the building stopped.
Chi Qing repeatedly stayed up late intermittently. He could occasionally get a quiet moment of sleep at Xie Lin’s house, and when he went out, he could occasionally touch Xie Lin’s hand under the guise of treatment. Even so, his overall mental state was still nearing its breaking point.
It wasn’t until the third day of staying at home that Chi Qing took his medicine and managed to fall asleep at night. He felt as if he slept for a very long time—so deeply that, due to being in a sleep state for so long, his brain began to feel dizzy while half-awake.
He seemed to have slept for a very long time.
“Ding-dong, ding-dong ding-dong—” The doorbell rang.
Chi Qing raised a hand to press against his eyes. After a long while, he opened them.
Ji Mingrui stood at the door carrying bags big and small. Seeing him open the door, his eyes widened: “It’s already this hour and you’re still sleeping?”
Chi Qing half-squinted: “This hour?”
Ji Mingrui: “It’s 4:30 PM now. Does this count as an afternoon nap for you?”
“What are you doing here,” Chi Qing asked.
Ji Mingrui squeezed in through the door carrying his large and small bags: “Delivering stuff. My mom was too bored at home, so she went to the kitchen and whipped up some things… So here I am, she told me to bring them over to you on my day off.”
Their batch of high school classmates back then were all very clear about Chi Qing’s family situation. After all, suing one’s own uncle’s family all alone was too shocking for high schoolers and the rumors spread widely. The whole grade knew their class produced a ruthless character who took his own relatives to court.
Of course, at first they didn’t know exactly what happened, but Ji Mingrui’s mom worked at the school and quickly found out the whole story. Plus, Chi Qing had good grades, so she couldn’t help but look out for him more, and this care had continued until today.
Ji Mingrui’s days off were relatively fixed; he usually had a half-day off on Sundays.
But Chi Qing remembered that when he went to sleep, it should have been Friday.
“Your day off?” Chi Qing asked. “What’s the date today?”
Ji Mingrui: “I think you’ve slept yourself silly. No wonder you didn’t reply to my messages these past two days. It’s already the end of the month today…”
Only then did Chi Qing realize he had slept for a full two days. Ji Mingrui’s mouth opened and closed, chattering endlessly. After he helped stuff the things away, Chi Qing rubbed the back of his head, realizing through Ji Mingrui’s voice that during all this time Ji Mingrui had been in his house chattering, aside from the sounds coming out of Ji Mingrui’s mouth, he hadn’t heard any other voices.
The room was uncharacteristically quiet.
He couldn’t hear what Ji Mingrui was thinking.
Nor were there any voices from the other residents in the building surging from all directions.
“Tick.”
After the surroundings returned to quiet, he could even clearly hear the sound of the wall clock’s hand ticking.
It seemed there was no need to continue drawing that pile of black “X”s on the calendar.
Ji Mingrui found it strange: “What’s wrong with you? Why are you just standing there?”
“…Nothing,” Chi Qing snapped back to reality and said. “Just sobered up.”
Ji Mingrui didn’t suspect anything: “Don’t you rarely drink? No wonder you slept so late, drinking too much does make it easy to sleep.”
Ten minutes later, wearing gloves, Chi Qing saw him off to the underground parking garage. There were many cars coming and going in the garage. In the past, he definitely would have found it annoying, but now, compared to when the whole world was previously filled with talking voices, this little bit of noise wasn’t enough to affect him.
At the same time Ji Mingrui walked to his parking spot, the black sedan in the adjacent spot had just turned off its engine. A person got out of the car. The man twirled his car keys between his fingers, his suit pants crisp, casually leaning against the car door and looking over at them: “I was just about to go up and look for you.”
Xie Lin added: “Xue Mei’s boyfriend will arrive at the General Bureau in half an hour. Mr. Assistant, want to go together?”
Xue Mei’s boyfriend looked about the same as in his photo. His build was ordinary, and his appearance was ordinary, but he knew how to dress up. He wore an earring and was relatively young. He had genuinely liked Xue Mei. Even though they had a huge fight and broke up the last time they met, he didn’t want her to die so mysteriously.
He sat in the office for a long time. Seeing someone come in, he hurriedly asked, “Are there any results in the case?”
“I’m very sorry,” Xie Lin sat down opposite him with Chi Qing. “Not yet at the moment.”
Xue Mei’s boyfriend was puzzled: “Then what did you call me here for? I already told you everything I know last time.”
He had given his statement at the police station last time, and couldn’t figure out why they had formally called him here this time.
Xie Lin: “Nothing, just some details that need to be filled in. After all, you are the person who knew her best… You don’t need to be nervous.”
“We met at the mall. She worked at a counter. The first time we met, the store employee miscalculated the discount. I was quite angry at the time. She later took the initiative to advance the money to resolve it, and we added each other on WeChat.”
“…Later, as we chatted, I found she was a nice person and pretty, so we got together.”
“Because of the nature of my job as an engineer, I’m quite busy when there are projects, so I don’t reply to messages promptly. She always got angry at me because of this, saying that if something happened to her one day, I wouldn’t even be able to rush over immediately. I felt she was especially insecure.”
“She never told you she felt someone was watching her?” Xie Lin asked.
“Never said that,” Xue Mei’s boyfriend said. “Probably knew that even if she did say it, I’d just think she was being paranoid.”
Xue Mei’s boyfriend didn’t know what else there was to say about the matters between him and Xue Mei: “That’s about it.” His tone lowered, “I’ve figured it out now. I really don’t blame her for arguing with me, I really didn’t care enough about her.”
Hearing this, Chi Qing vaguely felt something wasn’t right.
The person responsible for taking notes on the side saw the second consultant, whose eyes had been constantly lowered, suddenly lift his gaze and look straight at the person opposite.
Recorder: “Is something wrong?”
Chi Qing: “The logic doesn’t hold up.”
The recorder looked down at the statement he had written word for word in his notebook: “The logic… is quite sound.”
This process of getting to know each other, falling in love, dating, and arguing was extremely ordinary. Did this even need logic?
“What about the times you two spent the night together?” Xie Lin asked.
Xue Mei’s boyfriend’s ears turned red. He wasn’t prepared to reveal such private content, but still cooperated: “We, uh, when we had been dating for about four months, I went to her place for the first time… That day, both she and I drank quite a bit, so…”
“I’m not asking you about that,” Xie Lin interrupted. “You didn’t care enough about her, you didn’t reply to messages promptly, and your work was busy, yet you could still frequently make a special trip to see her late at night at three or four in the morning after finishing work. If you had the time to rush back and forth, you normally wouldn’t lack the time to reply to her messages, right?”
Xue Mei’s boyfriend froze: “Huh?”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying. I didn’t go to her house at three or four o’clock to stay the night. Sometimes I would stay the night at her place, but usually it was right after a date that day, or when we agreed in advance to eat at her place and she cooked for me… When I was busy with work, I was so busy I didn’t even have time to go home and sleep. How could I possibly make a special trip to go find her.”
“And where did you hear this gossip from?” Xue Mei’s boyfriend asked. “At three or four in the middle of the night, who saw me?”
The recorder’s pen tip suddenly paused, the writing violently dragging out a stroke.
He finally understood what Chi Qing meant just now by the logic not holding up.
This was clearly different from what that peeping tom living next door had said previously.
For this situation, there were currently only two explanations. One was that the peeping tom was lying. As for the second… the second was chilling just to think about.
What the peeping tom saw wasn’t the same person at all—during the long period he used that small hole in the wall to spy on Xue Mei, he very likely had already seen the killer.
