The two stood in the hallway staring at each other for a long moment.
“If I wanted to kill you,” Chi Qing said, looking him in the eyes, one word at a time, “there are at least ten methods that wouldn’t leave a single trace. It would be effortlessly easy to ensure the police could never find the killer — there might not even be anyone who noticed a crime had occurred at all. Which is to say, no one would ever find out you were dead.”
Chi Qing’s tone didn’t waver in the slightest as he spoke. Just from that tone alone, Xie Lin felt as though he were already a corpse in Chi Qing’s eyes.
Xie Lin had seen many ways of warning someone. This was his first time seeing this particular method.
Xie Lin laughed a little. “…That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?”
Chi Qing entered the last few digits of his passcode and said, “While I still have my sanity, get out of my sight.”
For Chi Qing, merely issuing a verbal warning and letting Xie Lin walk away with all four limbs intact was already very out of character for him. On top of that, Xie Lin was generating more and more exceptions from him — for instance, why had he just allowed Xie Lin to get that close?
He lowered his head, took off his gloves, and wiped the corner of his mouth.
After going back inside, Chi Qing showered again and changed into a fresh set of clothes.
Once he was done, he climbed into bed in the dark and closed his eyes.
The clock on the wall ticked clockwise from “9,” its minute hand letting out a soft click with each full rotation.
Chi Qing lay in bed for roughly four or five hours, then snapped his eyes open at the exact moment the clock pointed to “2,” as if something had timed it precisely. His fathomless dark pupils merged with the black of the night.
The sky outside was even more overcast than before. In the residential complex below, only two or three stray cats still wandered around, their thin, shrill cries slicing through the night sky from time to time before fading back into silence.
He pushed back the covers and got out of bed barefoot. Without turning on the lights, he felt his way from the bedroom to the living room and sat down — if someone had suddenly walked into his apartment at that moment, they might have been unsettled by the strange sight, since very few people would be awake and “sleepwalking” on their sofa in the dead of night.
The protagonist of this eerie scene was idly tossing a TV remote back and forth in his hand.
In the stillness of the deep night, the mind tends to be far more active than during the day.
Chi Qing bent his legs, lowered his neck, and rested his chin on his knees. He thought quietly: the voices he used to hear during his out-of-control state generally appeared between three and four in the morning, with no fixed pattern — though they were more likely to occur on weekends, which might be connected to his work schedule.
By now, a full month had passed since the incident.
Xue Mei had died two months ago. And two months ago, Yang Zhenzhen had dragged her suitcase all the way to Huanan City, stood in the crowded train station, and waited for her boyfriend to pick her up.
Although Ren Qin had been living here for less than half a month, she must have spent some time looking for a place after arriving in Huanan City.
Using “one month” as the anchor point, Chi Qing connected all three victims and thought: was it possible the killer found a new target every month, and once he found someone new, disposed of the previous one?
…
At that thought, he glanced at the calendar on the wall.
Because the lights were off, the “28” on the calendar wasn’t very clear. But it was obvious that counting from the date of the crime, Xue Mei’s death was… almost exactly one month ago.
And then there was the most important question of all.
Would the killer come tonight?
No one could answer that question except the killer himself.
Chi Qing finally lowered his head and looked at the floor beneath his feet. Ren Qin’s apartment was directly below, separated by nothing but a single wall.
Right now, she might be lying in her bedroom, fast asleep and completely unaware. In an hour, her bedroom door might be quietly pushed open — just as the buzz-cut man had seen through the peephole in the wall — and the man who came in would stand at the bedside, silently watching her.
At that thought, ten minutes before the hour hand reached “3,” Chi Qing picked up the black hoodie hanging on the armrest of the sofa and stood up.
Ren Qin had let her mind run wild before going to sleep and ended up having a terrifyingly vivid nightmare. She dreamed that someone was using a key to try to open her front door. The sound of the key sliding into the lock was unnervingly clear in the dead of night.
She was so frightened that her hair almost stood on end. She lunged forward and pressed her hand down hard on the door handle, trying to stop the person outside from turning the key and pushing the door open.
Two forces met on either side of the door. The person outside turned the key, felt resistance, and paused briefly.
Ren Qin’s breathing stopped along with that half-second pause.
Then, in the next second, the person outside began frantically turning the key!
With no other option, Ren Qin threw her whole body against the door. But the difference in strength between them was too great. The motion of the lock turning grew faster and faster, the sound louder and louder… Ren Qin screamed in silent despair in her heart, and just before the door was forced open, she jolted awake from the nightmare, trembling all over.
The alarm clock on her bedside table read exactly 3:00 AM.
Ren Qin’s back was damp with cold sweat. Unable to fall asleep again for the moment, she got up, turned on the light, threw on some clothes, and headed to the kitchen to get a glass of water.
Cradling a ceramic mug, she drank several mouthfuls before she could barely pull herself out of the nightmare.
The orange cat, who had been asleep in the living room, also opened its eyes when it heard the noise and padded softly over to Ren Qin’s feet, tilting its head at her. “Meow~”
“Gaogao,” Ren Qin called to it. Just seeing it made her feel considerably calmer. “Sorry, did I wake you up?”
“Meow~” The orange cat rubbed against her pajama pant leg.
After finishing her water, Ren Qin was just about to go back to bed, but before she moved she glanced toward the front door on a strange impulse — the dark brown electronic door stood there quietly, its silver handle gleaming cleanly.
The door that should have made her feel safe offered no comfort right now.
The nightmare had felt far too real. She carried her mug and walked step by step to the door, and for some reason she couldn’t quite explain, her heart rate quickened as she quietly leaned toward the peephole.
She looked through the door viewer, not really expecting to see anything. But the moment she drew close, her gaze unexpectedly caught a strand of black hair tucked under a hood.
Ren Qin felt the blood drain from her body from head to toe. Her pupils suddenly went wide.
Three in the morning. There was really a man. Standing at her front door.
The man on the other side of the door was lean and slight, dressed in a black jacket with the hood up. The loose hood covered most of his face, and through the peephole she could only make out the long, unruly fringe across the man’s forehead. It was hard to tell at first glance who he was.
Ren Qin only looked for a moment. When the figure very slightly tilted his head up, she immediately looked away and didn’t dare look again — afraid of making eye contact with the person outside, afraid of being discovered looking.
But in the instant she looked away, she happened to catch a glimpse of his face — pupils bottomlessly dark, jaw gaunt, his complexion a sickly pale, with lips that were deeply red.
She clapped a hand over her mouth. The terror reached its peak.
It was Mr. Chi from upstairs.
Chi Qing stood outside the door for about ten minutes or so. At first, he leaned against the emergency stairwell door, then, growing genuinely bored, he paced back and forth down the corridor.
He turned the matter over in his mind: if the killer still hadn’t appeared by four in the morning, then he probably wasn’t coming tonight.
Chi Qing was running out of patience. He thought to himself, it wasn’t as if he could stay up every single night to keep watch. It would be far more convenient if there were a security camera up here… so he stood in front of the door, tilted his head back, and carefully worked out which position would be best for installing one.
He sized it up for a few moments, then thought: forget it, installing a camera at someone else’s front door was illegal.
He’d better find a way to suggest to Ren Qin tomorrow that she install one herself.
Inside the door.
Ren Qin suppressed the fear inside her. A moment later, she summoned her courage and looked through the peephole again.
“That person I mentioned to you before, the one upstairs who seemed a bit strange — do you still remember?” A few minutes later, Ren Qin had retreated into the bathroom, her voice trembling as she spoke. “He — he’s standing at my door right now.”
The person on the other end was the girl who had originally planned to move in with Ren Qin. Her voice was still foggy with sleep when she picked up, but a few seconds later it registered, and all the drowsiness vanished at once. “…What did you just say?”
“He,” Ren Qin said, her hands shaking more with every word, picturing what she had seen through the peephole the second time. “He’s still pacing around outside my door.”
“…Right now? At this hour?! Is your upstairs neighbor a psycho?”
“I don’t know… Oh, and when he left after dinner tonight, he said something very strange to me.”
“What did he say?”
Ren Qin said, barely coherent, “He said that if he — if he were the killer, he would choose me as his next target.”
“…”
On the other end of the phone, Ren Qin’s best friend decided to retract the question mark from her earlier question and turn it into a statement.
This man was definitely a psycho.
Ren Qin searched through the limited personal information she had about her upstairs neighbor and added, “And he used to live over near the crime scenes. He moved here from the area right by where both incidents happened.”
“?!!”
Every single detail lined up with disturbing precision.
“Holy shit,” came the panicked voice on the other end. “Okay, let’s calm down and think about what to do. Don’t panic. First of all, you absolutely cannot give yourself away. Do not, under any circumstances, let him know you’ve seen him. If you back a psycho like that into a corner, there’s no telling what he might do. Just act like nothing’s happened for now. Besides, he lives upstairs — the police can’t do anything about someone pacing in a hallway in the middle of the night. Until he actually does something, confronting him directly will do nothing but put you at a disadvantage.”
Ren Qin slowly calmed herself down. Shaking, she said, “You’re right… I can’t let him find out. I have to act as if nothing happened.”
Ren Qin didn’t sleep at all that night.
Her mental state was even worse the next morning when she left for work, with dark circles under her eyes and her canvas bag on her back.
She was distracted throughout her shift. The weather had been gloomy for the past few days too, and the heavy, oppressive air before the rain pressed down on everything. Just after nine, the rain finally came.
Passersby on the street pulled their jackets tight and hurried past.
“What’s wrong with you? You’ve got the customers’ orders wrong multiple times.” One of the shop employees said with irritation, “If we get reported, our pay will be docked. Can you please focus?”
Ren Qin quickly said, “I’m sorry, last night I…”
She stopped halfway. In the adult world, sometimes only results matter, and no one wants to hear excuses. Saying it wouldn’t help anyway, so she simply apologized once more. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
Ren Qin exhaustedly made it through to her lunch break. As she was boxing up the last order before the break, something made her instinctively alert. She looked up toward the door —
Traffic flowed steadily outside. A fine drizzle fell. People of all kinds wove their way through the gaps between cars. But Ren Qin immediately spotted a black figure across the street, holding an umbrella.
Even from one street away, she could clearly see the black glove resting on the umbrella handle.
That figure stood in the rain, seemingly watching her from far away across the fine mist and the long street.
“…”
Midway through, a car rolled slowly down the street, the road slightly congested. It passed right through the line of sight between them.
By the time the car had gone, the spot across the street where the figure had been standing was empty again, not a soul in sight, as though the glimpse she had caught a moment before had been nothing but an illusion.
Ren Qin stared at the spot blankly, then looked down to find she had tied the red ribbon in her hands into the wrong knot. She frantically began undoing it.
…She felt like she was on the verge of a breakdown.
Chi Qing, who had no idea any of this was happening, crossed the road under his umbrella.
He was retracing the route that he and Xie Lin had identified after avoiding all the surveillance cameras, trying to find the connection between this commercial street and the three victims — Xue Mei, Yang Zhenzhen, and Ren Qin.
He had stopped for an extra look just now when he passed by the shop where Ren Qin worked, but ultimately decided not to disturb her during her shift. The matter about the security camera could wait until the evening.
Just as he was thinking that, his phone began vibrating in his pocket without stopping. He answered. “Hello?”
Xie Lin: “You’re not home?”
“I’m out,” Chi Qing said. “Something you need?”
Xie Lin’s voice came from the other end of the line. “Nothing much. Just wanted to make sure you’re not refusing to open the door on purpose because you’re still angry with me.”
Chi Qing: “I’m not that petty. But if it were you, I’d admit it’s not out of the question.”
Xie Lin added, “I’m apologizing.”
Chi Qing said, “oh,” and then said, “I don’t accept it.”
“…” Chi Qing heard the faint sound of breathing on the other end pause for a moment. He crossed the intersection, walking under his umbrella around the far end of the long street. The drizzle was scattered by the wind. Then he heard Xie Lin’s voice again, the man saying with a resigned helplessness, “Assistant Chi, you’re not only hard to deal with—you’re also very hard to appease.”
After his brief phone call with Chi Qing, Xie Lin received an unexpected second call.
The name “Ren Qin” flashed on and on across his screen.
“Miss Ren?” Xie Lin answered.
To his surprise, her voice was frantic. “Mr. Xie.”
“What’s happened?” Xie Lin said gently. “It’s all right. Take your time.”
Ren Qin had considered that Xie Lin and Chi Qing were obviously friends, which left a question mark over whether he could be fully trusted.
But the fondness one person feels for another is an elusive thing. Xie Lin was good-looking and carried himself with grace. Sometimes, just looking at his face and listening to his voice, it was easy to find yourself slipping one-sidedly into something warmer than you intended.
Though her fondness for him was still just fondness, and nothing more.
…Besides, there was no information from either of the two cases to suggest the killer had an accomplice.
Ren Qin decided to trust him. “Are you home tonight? I’m sorry — I know this is very sudden and presumptuous to ask, but I genuinely have no one else to turn to… I think… I think someone has been watching me.”
Xie Lin: “…?”
