They received more than just one emergency call that day.
About an hour later, the day had fully broken. Sunlight pierced through the dawn as the school began its morning reading session. The female teacher looked at the three empty seats in the classroom, her mind deeply unsettled—of the three empty spots in her class, the student who sat next to the window, Wang Yuan, had been discovered in the school’s small woods yesterday, dead in a gruesome manner.
As for the other two empty seats, one of them belonged to a boy named Jin Hongbo, who had been found dead in a park this morning.
She had never imagined that such a thing could happen in a class she was leading.
According to the police, Jin Hongbo had been murdered sometime last night. He hadn’t returned home after school dismissed, choosing instead to go to an internet café alone. He stayed there until the early hours of the morning, and was killed not long after stepping out. His time of death was placed between two and three in the morning.
Two students turning up dead at the same time.
Could this really be a coincidence?
And the last remaining one… Ma Hui, why hadn’t he come to class either?
Her right eyelid kept twitching uncontrollably.
The morning self-study session ended.
The female teacher gathered the textbooks and homework assignments from the podium. Pressing a hand against her still-twitching eyelid, she prepared to walk out. The class representative, a boy from the class, helped her carry a large stack of homework: “Teacher, why didn’t Wang Yuan and the others come to class today? Some police officers came to our school yesterday; did something happen?”
The sight of those police cars last night and the cordoned-off woods had quickly spread across the campus. However, a student dying at school was hardly a matter of pride for the institution. The school administration had ordered the information to be suppressed, so most of the students remained in the dark about what had actually transpired.
The female teacher didn’t know how much longer this matter could be swept under the rug. She simply said, “It’s nothing. Why are you, a big boy, being so gossipy?”
The boy had a very cheerful, sunny look. He grinned widely: “Just curious. Everyone is talking about it, saying that our school…”
Lowering his voice, the boy whispered, “…has a dead person.”
The female teacher couldn’t help but recall the corpse she had witnessed yesterday. Her heart skipped a violent beat, yet she also knew the boy was merely making blind guesses and joking around idly.
“Day in and day out, you never focus your mind on studying,” the female teacher slapped the back of the class representative’s head. “Your rank dropped by five places in this latest exam. Hurry up and use your time to properly review the core knowledge points.”
The class representative repeatedly nodded in agreement, and the moment he put down the stack of homework notebooks, he bolted like a streak of smoke into the restroom.
The restroom was located diagonally across from the staff office. Not many people used it in the morning; the stalls were mostly empty, and at most, only a few students on cleaning duty would come over to fetch water.
After all, for students, time in the morning was exceptionally precious. Before the very first period began, the representatives for each subject had to collect yesterday’s homework. Those who were scrambling to finish their assignments would bury their heads, frantically scribbling before the morning self-study started, fighting for every second. Even if they needed to use the restroom, they would choose to hold it in.
Half a minute later, a piercing shriek echoed out from the boys’ restroom.
With one hand resting on the waistband of his trousers, the class representative had used his other hand to push open the door of the very last stall. To his horror, inside the stall that should have been completely empty, one of the three classmates who hadn’t shown up for class was slumped on the tiled floor, still wearing their school’s uniform.
He appeared to have been murdered just as he was preparing to use the toilet. The toilet lid had been flipped open, and a few stray strands of hair floated in the water inside. The school uniform trousers on the corpse had been pulled down to his calves, leaving something between his legs glaringly exposed to everyone’s sight. The corpse was rigid; it seemed that after being murdered, he had spent the entire night in the school restroom just like this.
Someone passing by the restroom entrance called out, “Who is that? What are you ghost-shrieking for?”
Facing the visage of a classmate he had spent day and night with, all the words caught in the class representative’s throat. Finally, he managed to scream out: “D-Dead body—Ma Hui is dead!”
Click—
Click-flash.
The camera flashes strobed continuously.
The police quickly arrived at the two new crime scenes, cordoning off the areas tightly with yellow police line tape. Only this time, they failed to keep the nature of the cases hidden like they had last night. No matter how the police tried to divert them, a dense ring of people remained gathered around both the park and the restroom.
There were pedestrians who had stopped to cluster together while passing by, and even more students who were curious to see what the scene inside the restroom looked like.
“Move along quickly, get back to your classrooms. Do not come near here.”
“Stop looking. Student, which class are you from?”
“…”
In the end, to clear the scene and handle the body, the school authorities forcibly evacuated all the students from the entire building, driving them out toward the sports field.
Meanwhile, the cameras continued filming the scene of the crime, taking photos from various angles to secure evidence—capturing everything from the corpse to the minutest details, letting no trace at the scene go undocumented. Finally, two cameras concurrently aligned their viewfinders directly at the school uniform on the body.
The final sound of the shutter fell.
The two images frozen in place.
“The deceased are three male high school students: Wang Yuan, Jin Hongbo, and Ma Hui. The three of them were classmates. Among these two, Wang Yuan and Ma Hui have very close times of death, while Jin Hongbo died the latest.”
The identity of the victims was highly unique. Three high school students turning up dead in a row—especially Ma Hui, who was discovered inside a restroom—caused the matter to spread like wildfire. The nature of the case was far too severe, prompting the main bureau to urgently establish a task force to investigate the matter with full force.
The criminal detective responsible for the briefing said, “The three of them had always been on good terms and sat near each other, frequently playing mobile games together during class hours. According to the investigation, they had some entanglements with individuals outside the school a while ago… but strangely, no external personnel have been found entering or leaving the school. The first victim, Wang Yuan, has strangulation marks on his neck; the cause of death was being strangled from behind. Jin Hongbo has a fatal wound on the back of his head; the forensic pathologist diagnosed it as being struck to death by a heavy object. Jin Hongbo only had a phone on his person, along with a stick of chewing gum brought out from the internet café. Ma Hui, on the other hand, was suffocated to death by having his head forced into the toilet. The causes of death are completely different from one another.”
Inside the main bureau’s conference room.
The high-definition photographs taken that morning appeared on the large projector screen.
Three high school students.
Just a single day ago, these three high school students had been laughing, playing, and bickering in school just like all the other classmates. Although the three of them had been defiant of discipline and frequently caused headaches for their teachers, they now appeared before everyone completely lifeless, presented in this manner.
The conference room was more silent than usual.
With a loud thud, the Bureau Chief slammed the stack of files in his hand onto the table. He could already anticipate the public sentiment brewing outside; cases involving students had always been far more likely to trigger widespread discussion and public scrutiny than other cases: “—When you went to investigate Wang Yuan’s corpse yesterday, did you not check any other areas? You call that conducting a thorough sweep?!”
The detective responsible for the briefing lowered his head.
The Bureau Chief asked again, “Regarding this case, what are your insights?”
“Currently, the clues are too sparse…”
“…”
After a long silence, the Bureau Chief looked back at the large screen covered in photographs. The fluorescent light cast a glow over his face as he asked quietly, “Has Xie Lin been contacted?”
They had to admit that the man who, even to this day, still made them feel a sense of danger was also sometimes the very first person they instinctively thought of turning to for help.
Ten years ago, Xie Lin—whose facial features hadn’t even fully matured yet—had sat in the exact position the chief was sitting in right now. Just like these victims, he had also worn a school uniform, possessing a psychologically terrifying sharpness in capturing the minds of criminals.
If a person understands crime even better than the criminal himself, what could be the reason behind it?
He had never dared to contemplate the answer to that question.
And then there was that assistant Xie Lin had “hired.”
Every time the Bureau Chief saw him, he felt a haunting sense that he had seen him somewhere before…
Facing this “high school student murder case,” a fleeting fragment of an image flashed through the Bureau Chief’s mind for a split second. Yet just as he was about to grasp it, that shred of memory drifted past, rendering it impossible to catch again.
When Xie Lin received the case file data, he was currently feeding the cat at Chi Qing’s house.
Ren Qin had found an affectionate owner for the cat and would pack up the cat to send it over to them in a couple of days. The cat had absolutely no idea that its days in this house were numbered, obediently burying its head to eat its food.
It had only taken a couple of bites when, not wanting to be stared at by Xie Lin, it lifted its head again.
Cat: “Meow, meow, meow.”
Xie Lin: “Go ahead and be arrogant. You’re leaving soon anyway.”
Chi Qing passed by from the side holding a glass of warm water. A sudden thought struck Xie Lin: “That special ability of yours that lets you hear humans—can it hear other species?”
Chi Qing stared blankly at him for a moment, not knowing the answer to this question himself.
“I don’t know,” Chi Qing said. “I don’t even want to touch humans, let alone other species.”
This cat had been at Chi Qing’s house for so many days, yet Chi Qing hadn’t touched it even once.
To prevent cat hair from flying randomly around the house, he ran the robotic vacuum cleaner three times a day to sweep the floor. Even so, several sets of his clothes had already been ruined.
However, once this question was voiced, the answer to it truly sparked a bit of curiosity.
Even Chi Qing himself kind of wanted to know whether he would actually read anything if he went to touch the cat’s hand (paw).
And so, as if conducting an experiment, Xie Lin scooped up the cat in one swift movement and grabbed its front paw. Chi Qing set his water glass aside, then went through a brief phase of mental preparation: This cat licks its fur every day, its body isn’t dirty, and it loves cleanliness quite a bit.
Thinking this way, he used the very tip of his index finger to lightly tap the cat’s soft and springy paw pad.
The tactile sensation of an animal was completely different from that of a human.
The cat tightened its five claws, extended them again, and let out a comfortable “meow” toward Chi Qing.
The two men had absolutely no awareness that they were currently doing something extremely childish.
Xie Lin: “What did you hear?”
Chi Qing fell silent for a short while before saying, “…I heard it.”
Xie Lin: “What did it say?”
This time, Chi Qing fell silent for an even longer period.
Under Xie Lin’s urging, he wiped the finger that had just touched the cat’s paw, and then uttered a single word: “Meow.”
This time, the person who froze in place became Xie Lin.
A moment later, Xie Lin let out a soft laugh.
Seizing an opening, the cat slipped out from Xie Lin’s hands and returned to the front of its food bowl to continue eating.
Once Xie Lin started laughing, it was quite difficult to stop.
Chi Qing: “Is it that funny?”
“No,” Xie Lin said. “It’s very cute. Do it again?”
Chi Qing gifted him a single word: “Beat it.”
Once the two of them finished feeding the cat, Xie Lin finally received the crime scene photographs and case files faxed over from the main bureau. A thick stack of documents lay arranged on the table, containing everything from photos of the crime scenes to all the homework assignments and exam papers these three high school students had completed since the start of the semester.
The cat was the only one who couldn’t comprehend the photographs, hopping back and forth across the table even after finishing its meal.
Xie Lin was always extremely silent when reviewing this information. Through the photographs and files, the progression of the crime gradually reconstructed itself bit by bit before his eyes—like building a house, starting from the reinforced concrete up to the interior decoration, becoming more detailed the further inside it went.
Chi Qing swept a cursory glance across them, but his attention didn’t remain on that stack of photographs. He remembered that back in the observation room last time, Xie Lin’s reaction had been slightly abnormal.
Chi Qing suddenly said, “Give me your hand.”
Life could be quite fascinating at times.
In the past, it was always Xie Lin who said this sentence to him. Now, the roles were reversed, and the person speaking those words was Chi Qing.
Xie Lin was still contemplating the case and didn’t immediately register what Chi Qing wanted to do: “Hmm?”
Chi Qing’s palm pressed against the hand Xie Lin extended.
…
What else could he be doing?
He was just afraid Xie Lin would overthink things.
“Maintaining social order,” Chi Qing joked in a cold voice, “and reducing the crime rate.”
The cat stepped here and there on the table. After scattering the photographs, it jumped back down. Those few steps of its happened to kick open the top few pages of the files, exposing the exam paper at the very bottom.
Just like Guangyuan High School, Honghai No. 6 High School had also recently conducted its school-opening examination. The scores of the three individuals were evenly matched; added together, their average score for each subject did not exceed 40.
Xie Lin’s gaze landed on those few exam papers: “What is that?”
Chi Qing took a glance: “It’s a score that’s impossible to get that low even if you kept your eyes closed.”
“No,” Xie Lin said, “…the thing next to the score.”
The fax printout wasn’t very clear—especially since the handwriting on the margins hadn’t been written with a gel pen, making the ink look even fainter from a distance. Only when lifting the exam paper closer to their eyes could they see clearly that it was the grade ranking. When teachers finalized the grades, they would always use a pencil to mark the overall ranking in the class right next to the score.
32/32.
31/32.
30/32.
Whether it was a coincidence or not, out of a class of 32 people, these three individuals were neatly arranged as the bottom three.
