When Huo Ranyin woke up, Ji Xun was no longer in the room. But there was a new message on his phone, from Ji Xun.
The time was 07:45. Ji Xun had sent him: “I’m on the train now.”
He stared at the screen for two seconds, then got out of bed. For a rare change, he made himself a breakfast of bacon, fried eggs, and cereal.
After finishing a hearty breakfast and heading to the police station, the timing was just right.
The job of a criminal detective is extremely busy when it’s busy, but during lulls, one could live a life of goji berries in a thermos and a newspaper on a massage cushion. But why do at eighteen what you can do at eighty? With nothing on his plate, he might as well find something to do.
He pulled out the pile of unsolved case files stored in the cabinet. There were so many files that the pile could bury him. He picked out the more recent ones and placed them on his desk, planning to first get a general overview and then focus on a few more promising cases.
While reading the files, he kept his phone beside him, just in case of any urgent matters.
But today, not just him, but even the first team next door was calm and peaceful. It was so quiet you could squat in a corner and grow mushrooms.
At a time like this, the phone screen flashing from time to time was rather eye-catching.
At 10:50, Ji Xun sent another message: “I’ve gotten off the train.”
He’s really free today, Huo Ranyin thought. He’s even sending messages about little things like getting on and off the train. But the tone-setting particle at the end has changed. Was he in higher spirits when he got on the train than when he got off?
He finished reading the page of the case file he was on and couldn’t help but lift his eyes to look out the window, to give his eyes a rest.
The sun was shining brightly outside.
In Qin City, the sun should be just as bright, right?
After eleven in the morning, in just over an hour, it would be lunchtime, followed by a lunch break. Just as the lunch break was about to end, his phone lit up again. It was still Ji Xun. This time, Ji Xun had sent a picture.
Is Ji Xun going to take over my phone messages today?
Huo Ranyin thought critically, but his finger had already swiped open the screen, tapped into WeChat, and looked at the picture that wasn’t directly displayed in the status bar.
The photo was taken from inside a school. In the distance, Qin City’s landmark—the Drum Tower—could be seen.
He looked at the photo. On the school gate in the picture were the words “Qinjiang International Middle School.”
No.
This place wasn’t called Qinjiang International Middle School in the past. This place, in the past, was called…
“This is the location for my book signing this time.”
More messages popped up in the chat box. Ji Xun told him:
“Qinjiang International Middle School has merged with the adjacent Qinjiang Affiliated Middle School. I took a quick look around, and it feels almost as big as a regular university. It has three grades of junior high and three grades of senior high. Students with good grades can even get a recommendation to Qinjiang University. Speaking of which, I went to Qinjiang University once when I was in college…”
You didn’t just go to Qinjiang University; you also went to Qinjiang Affiliated Middle School.
Huo Ranyin looked at his phone, silently reciting in his heart.
Qin City.
The city where he was born, grew up, and left. The city that gave him many things, including endless confusion.
Qinjiang Affiliated Middle School.
The school he attended, the school where he met Ji Xun.
“Gurgle gurgle gurgle.”
A sudden sound startled Huo Ranyin. He looked up and saw Wen Yangyang holding a cup, getting water from the police station’s water dispenser. A string of fish-eye bubbles rose in the water. He stared at that string of ephemeral bubbles, born and extinguished, and remembered the poisoning case that happened that year, in Class 2-E of his second year of high school.
But that seemingly terrifying poisoning case was just the tip of the iceberg of everything that happened that year…
“Kill him.”
Every day, these words would be written on Zhou Zhaonan’s homework paper, and then torn up.
First, tear the A5-sized homework paper into thin, long strips. Then, tear each strip into snowflake-sized pieces. Then, gather the snowflakes, mess them up, and sprinkle them into the trash can. This way, not even a god could restore the paper.
And thus, the secret in my heart cannot be spied upon.
Huo Ranyin was a student in Class 2-A of Qinjiang Affiliated High School. I was a student in Class 2-E.
In the second year of Qinjiang Affiliated High School, there were a total of fifteen classes, ten of which were for science. Class A was the honors class, and Class E was the bottom class. His academic performance wasn’t the absolute best, but in the honors class, he could still keep up. Moreover, he was tall and strong, with an outgoing personality, and had many friends at school. These friends clustered around him like his lackeys.
Every time we met in gym class, or after school, their entertainment consisted of jeering, mocking, throwing fruit peels and cans, and even shoving and chasing under the guise of “joking.”
Class E was not without his friends. My desk would often have things that didn’t belong to me, sometimes insect carcasses, sometimes some disgusting slime.
Even if I avoided these, when I got home, I still had to face Huo Ranyin.
We lived under the same roof.
A three-bedroom, two-living-room apartment.
He lived in the south-facing, sunny room of fifteen square meters. I lived in the north-facing utility room, about seven square meters, which was also occupied by various cabinets that took up a lot of space.
A small desk on my bed was where I studied and did my homework. A space that outsiders would find cramped, on second thought, was also tight and secure.
My relationship with him in junior high was still acceptable. He didn’t seem to like me, but he wouldn’t bully me either. Whenever he needed to call me, he would just shout “Hey,” not even twice a day. The bullying only started in high school. Of course, the adults knew nothing about all this.
Or maybe they knew and pretended not to. Adults have a kind of hypocritical decency. For things they like to see, even if they don’t see them, they will embellish them to make it seem like they exist. For things they don’t like to see, even if they are right in front of them, they are invisible.
Some children also have this hypocrisy, but they are not as well-trained as adults, for whom it is almost instinctive.
The thought of killing him began to brew at the end of the first year of high school. Of course, perhaps the murderous intent had already sparked on the first day I was bullied, but I had hypocritically covered it up, enduring it, hoping it would disappear. A whole year passed, and when I realized I would have to endure the same thing next year, my hypocrisy was torn apart by my murderous intent.
My weak disguise melted away. It clearly told me that it was in my chest, and like a beast needing blood to sate its hunger, it needed Huo Ranyin’s life as a sacrifice.
Huo Ranyin couldn’t stay idle for a moment. During the summer vacation, he went out to play with his degenerate friends almost every day.
He liked to ride mountain bikes, and he rode them wildly, even trying to ride down stairs. Every time I saw him riding on the stairs, I always fantasized that he would fall, but he never did.
It wouldn’t be hard to make him fall.
Just damage the brakes when no one is looking. Then all it would take is a small danger, a moment of luck from the goddess… a result left to fate.
This didn’t fit my fantasy, so I rejected this plan.
He also lied to his parents about going to school for tutoring, but was actually going to internet cafes to play games with his friends, sometimes playing until eleven or twelve at night. At that time, he would take a shortcut back, through a demolition area where all the residents had moved out. No people, no cameras. More than one robbery had already happened there.
So, it seemed reasonable for a murder to happen there as well.
In the dark, perhaps my hand would cover his mouth, slit his throat. Blood would spurt from his windpipe like an unfurling scarlet wing.
But this also had the risk of an unpredictable struggle and leaving traces of murder. I chose several ambush points and escape routes, and then gave up on them too.
Then the aimless summer vacation passed.
Not long after the start of the second year of high school, the school organized an anti-drug campaign. Photos of various festering bodies, amputated limbs, and drug addicts paralyzed like lumps of rotten meat on stained beds were displayed at the school entrance for nearly half a month.
I saw them every day as I entered and left. One weekend, I went to the drug rehabilitation center in Qin City.
I didn’t have much pocket money.
The rehab center was an hour’s bus ride from my house and from Qinjiang Affiliated High School.
I took the bus at eight in the morning on a weekend, went to a bookstore on the road that one must pass when leaving the rehab center, and read until eight at night, then took the bus back to the house where I rested.
By this time, the people in the house had already had dinner.
Sometimes they would leave food for me, sometimes they wouldn’t. When there was no food, the aunt watching TV on the sofa would sometimes shout, “Have you eaten? Take five yuan from the drawer and buy some bread,” and sometimes she wouldn’t.
I hoped to see the five yuan.
That way, I would have the bus fare for the next weekend.
After going to the bookstore to read three times, I selected a car that often came to pick people up.
It’s quite ridiculous, actually. Most drug addicts, the moment they leave the rehab center, are pulled back into using by their old buddies in the car.
I followed the car again, tracked them to the house they rented and the places they frequented, and found the internet cafe where they traded drugs. The owner, seeing that I couldn’t produce an ID card, was instead very eager.
The dealers weren’t always there. Now that the internet was slowly becoming popular, they had a secret code. As long as a specific instruction was given in a game, they would bring the goods for a trade.
It only took me three tries to figure out the transaction process. Then I went home and started thinking about how to poison Huo Ranyin.
There were too many opportunities.
We lived under the same roof. Flaws were everywhere.
He drank a bottle of goat’s milk every day. In the house, only he drank goat’s milk. Every bottle of goat’s milk in the fridge was prepared for him. And he didn’t always finish it in one go. Sometimes he would drink half in the morning, throw it in the fridge, and drink the rest at night.
At that point, the bottle was already open. For a strong-tasting dairy product like goat’s milk, even if you added a little bit of drugs, you probably wouldn’t be able to taste it, right?
I heard that people new to drugs have a low tolerance and will have some physiological reactions.
But I wouldn’t put in too much, just a little bit each time. Plus, with his chaotic desk that was always a mess and his careless personality of never being able to find his own notebooks, he wouldn’t care even if he felt a little unwell physically.
Through such subtle influence, by the time he realized it, he would probably already be addicted.
To get him addicted, to have him suffer from withdrawal during an exam, to fail the exam, to ruin his entire life—perhaps that would be more painful for him than killing him.
After all, he was so proud, so arrogant. A ridiculous and fragile pride and arrogance.
But that didn’t seem right either. An addict, while not knowing where the drug was put, would know what to drink to alleviate the withdrawal symptoms. When Huo Ranyin’s withdrawal kicked in, he would subconsciously look for goat’s milk. And for something with such a specific target, the police would be able to find me right away as the one who could have tampered with it.
So I still had to find something more generic.
Perhaps it would be better to put it in mineral water. He drank water every day when he played basketball. I just had to secretly get close to him at that time and put the poison in the plastic bottle. With so many people coming and going at school, it would be difficult to trace it back to me.
Killing is really simple, much simpler than I had imagined.
So simple it’s like eating or drinking, something you can do casually. So simple it’s like a basic question where you can write down the answer after reading the first half of the prompt.
Suppressing the desire to kill is, on the contrary, more difficult. To deliberately answer a question you know the correct answer to incorrectly requires an extra step.
So simple it’s even frightening.
I developed a habit of biting my nails.
My nails were bitten ragged, often drawing blood. No one cared when they saw the blood, no one ever asked a single question. So I was left with only one annoyance: when I wrote on papers, and even when I wrote my murderous words, bloodstains would always get on the paper.
Disgusting.
The dirty blood, like a dirty thought, carried a thick, fishy smell, mottling the clean white paper. Every drop was a manifestation of my murderous intent, every drop took the monstrous form of the beast in my chest.
Perhaps the one who should be killed is not Huo Ranyin, but me. Dirty me.
I began to try to look forward to becoming a victim. But when someone comes to kill me, will the final victim really be me?
I have an unreasonable confidence.
Perhaps not without reason.
As long as I’m willing, there are too many, many unsuspecting lambs around me. Huo Ranyin is just a bigger sheep.
But no one ever comes to kill me. And with every taunt, every ridicule, every time trash is poured over my head, watching the ignorant sheep bleating with laughter, a new piece of clean paper is stained with dirty words and blood.
Frustration and pain.
Being able to answer correctly but having to deliberately answer incorrectly.
Over and over again, a strange loop I can’t get out of.
…
Later, someone stole my plan.
They put poison in the water dispenser.
