After everything was said, Officer Qin helped out.
He checked the locations where Xu Shijin’s phone signal had appeared since she went missing. The results came back quickly. In the past week, her phone signal had only appeared in two places.
One was inside a residential building in Qin City. After checking the homeowner’s information, it was found to be a property under Yu Xiaoyu’s parents’ names. The other place it appeared was at the school.
After telling Ji Xun and Zhou Zhaonan these two locations, Officer Qin scratched his head with some difficulty. “Now we can basically confirm that Yu Xiaoyu purchased drugs. But…”
“But?”
“But, purchasing drugs in a quantity that doesn’t reach a certain amount doesn’t constitute a crime. You know that much common sense, right? Since it doesn’t constitute a crime, there’s no basis for filing a case.”
“Yu Xiaoyu didn’t just purchase drugs. She also poisoned someone,” Ji Xun reminded him.
“There’s no evidence,” Officer Qin said, throwing his hands up. “Zhou Zhaonan does have a bottle of poisoned water, but how do we prove that the water came from the mineral water dispenser? Even if the students in Class E were poisoned, how do we prove it was from the drinking water? Even if we prove it was from the drinking water, how do we prove it was diluted from the poison Yu Xiaoyu purchased? Similarly, even if we prove it was Yu Xiaoyu’s poison, we can’t prove she was the one who administered it.”
“…” Ji Xun was amazed. “Senior, in a certain sense, you’re really something.”
“Evidence, evidence, with evidence we can—”
“If all the evidence was laid out perfectly, what would be the point of having police and police stations? Wouldn’t it be a waste of taxpayers’ money? Just hand it over to the court for a verdict,” Ji Xun rolled his eyes, his tone full of sarcasm. “In short, Officer Qin, there’s a pit in front of you. you’ve already fallen into it once this morning. Are you going to fall into it again?”
“Don’t rush me, don’t rush me, let me think. What we know now is that Yu Xiaoyu definitely bought drugs and very likely poisoned someone… But the physical evidence is currently hidden by the school, which doesn’t want to make a scene. The police have no evidence, so they will be very passive throughout the investigation process…” Officer Qin was hesitant.
“Let’s just find a reason to file a case first,” Ji Xun said, his eyes narrowed.
“Don’t think a problem is unsolvable before you’ve even tried to solve it,” Zhou Zhaonan added, annoyed. “Do you decide you can’t solve a math problem before you even start?”
“Purchasing a small amount of drugs isn’t a crime… but providing a place for others to take drugs is. Based on Xu Shijin’s phone signal, she was likely staying at Yu Xiaoyu’s parents’ house while she was away from home,” Officer Qin said suddenly. “How about we file a case on that basis?”
“Senior, that’s a bit of a stretch…” Ji Xun was surprised. “And isn’t drug investigation the job of the anti-drug squad? They have so much to do. Do you think they’ll care about a small, unproven case of providing a place for drug use?”
“You got a better idea?” Officer Qin said angrily.
“Yu Xiaoyu kidnapped Xu Shijin. How about that idea?” Ji Xun said, confident he had the answer. “Xu Shijin has been away from home for a long time. Her parents must be very worried. If you just hint at it a little, they will definitely report their daughter missing. This will allow you to legally file a case, and then, using Xu Shijin’s phone signal, you can smoothly search Yu Xiaoyu’s residence to find new evidence. Everything will be solved.”
“You don’t think the idea of ‘Yu Xiaoyu kidnapping Xu Shijin’ is a bit of a stretch?” Officer Qin was dazed. “Everyone knows they’re best friends, right?”
“Does it matter if it’s a stretch? What matters is that this pretext is highly actionable,” Ji Xun said.
“…Damn.” Officer Qin thought it over and found that he couldn’t come up with a better reason. He cursed. “Fine, fine, I get it. If you have nothing else to do, get back to class—”
“Hurry up, time is money!”
“I know, I’ll start investigating tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Ji Xun cried out in surprise. “It’s only 10 PM now!”
“…Tonight, I’ll find Xu Shijin’s parents first, have them come in to file a report overnight, then go to my superiors, get a search warrant, and finally, find out the property information under Yu Xiaoyu’s parents’ names, and finally—” Officer Qin gritted his teeth. “Tomorrow, my colleagues and I will go to her house. Is that okay?!”
“When the results are out, I’ll let you know. So you guys, do not, I repeat, do not take any more dangerous, illegal actions on your own! If I find out you’ve ignored my advice and acted on your own again, then I’ll—”
“Then you’ll what?” Ji Xun asked curiously.
“Then I’ll…” Officer Qin held it in for a long time before saying something completely unoriginal, “Tell your parents! Tell the school!”
The two fearless students looked at the police officer and collectively thought, “Tch.”
In any case, the purpose of coming to the police station today was achieved. He and Zhou Zhaonan walked out together. It was getting late. Ji Xun said, “You missed evening self-study today. Will your teacher tell your parents? Will they scold you? Should I go back and ask Officer Qin for a Good Samaritan certificate for you to take home to your parents?”
“Are you really not afraid of driving Officer Qin to his death?”
“Not afraid,” Ji Xun muttered righteously. “If he had just told us everything in the first place, none of this would have happened. It’s all his own fault.”
A hint of an amused smile appeared on Zhou Zhaonan’s lips. But the smile was like morning mist; it vanished before it could be clearly seen.
“It’s fine. No need to trouble Officer Qin,” Zhou Zhaonan said coolly. “My family won’t scold me, and they don’t really care about what I do.”
“Why not?” Ji Xun asked.
Zhou Zhaonan didn’t answer. He probably didn’t want to. Ji Xun said again, “It’s true that family can be a bit annoying, but sometimes people lack willpower and need external help. Parents, under normal circumstances, also love their children. I think…”
He had a belly full of chicken soup for the soul to feed to Zhou Zhaonan. But Zhou Zhaonan not only didn’t speak, but even the sound of his footsteps, which had been following him, disappeared. Was he angry? Was the topic of family such a big minefield and shadow for him?
Full of doubt, he turned around and found that he had misunderstood. Zhou Zhaonan wasn’t angry or sulking. He had stopped in front of the blackboard in the police station corridor, thinking. Then he said to him, “I remember now.”
“Remember what?” Ji Xun walked back to Zhou Zhaonan’s side.
“That poem. Hsi Muren’s ‘Supposed Melancholy.’ I remember where I saw it,” Zhou Zhaonan paused, his eyes a little unfocused as he recalled. “It was for a class blackboard display. The blackboard displays were done by students in rotation. It was Xu Shijin’s turn, and Yu Xiaoyu was there too. Xu Shijin wanted to write this poem on the board, but Yu Xiaoyu wasn’t tall enough, so she asked me to do it. I wrote the poem on the board… Right, I also remember that after I finished, Yu Xiaoyu didn’t thank me. She glared at me instead.”
It was a very small thing, even the malice hidden within it was so trivial. So, on the day he finished writing it, Zhou Zhaonan had already pushed it to the back of his mind.
Only now, with the mirror image reappearing, did he find this memory from the corner of his past.
“Remember the last time we saw Yu Xiaoyu?” Zhou Zhaonan said, as if he had come to a realization. “The way Yu Xiaoyu looked at us was wary. She hates us… She doesn’t hate us, she hates me.”
At Qin City International High School, outside the venue for the book signing, there was a blackboard wall that stretched for half a corridor. It was clear that it was time for the school to change the blackboard displays. Most of the original content on the blackboard had been erased, but not cleanly, leaving a rainbow-like trace of chalk dust of various colors on the grayish-black surface.
Eyin, walking beside him, cast a questioning look. The editor seemed genuinely afraid that he would run away at the last minute. Not only did he call him countless times in the morning, but at noon, he even insisted on staying by his side, watching him personally to ensure the signing went smoothly.
There were only 15 minutes left until the signing officially began. Looking through the window from the wall next to them, he could see the readers sitting neatly in their seats, holding his published novel, whispering to each other, and eagerly awaiting.
Ji Xun stopped and picked up a piece of chalk.
“Time…” Eyin’s voice served as a reminder.
Along with Eyin’s voice came the sound of the chalk tip scraping against the blackboard.
On the blackboard in front of him, Ji Xun wrote the third stanza of Hsi Muren’s “Supposed Melancholy.”
Ah, my dear friend
Who can tell you
Of my apology and sorrow today?
In two cities so far apart
The lights are equally brilliant
“That’s a poem by Hsi Muren,” Eyin said. “What’s with the poem?”
“Nothing,” Ji Xun said self-deprecatingly. “Just that when I was young and read it, I didn’t understand its meaning, yet I thought I had grasped its essence.”
The longer he thought about the events of the past, the more a question grew.
When he left Qin City after solving the case, he and Zhou Zhaonan had already been through a lot and gotten along well. Although Zhou Zhaonan didn’t have a phone and they couldn’t exchange numbers, he had specifically left his phone number with Zhou Zhaonan. And he had used that number for two whole years, only gradually changing it when he returned to Ning City for his internship in his senior year.
Zhou Zhaonan could have contacted him—so why, after he went back to university, did Zhou Zhaonan never once call to contact him?
Perhaps the same question had quietly surfaced in his mind during his university days, on sleepless nights, in the hazy state between waking and sleeping.
But this question, which only existed in the loneliness of the night, would disappear like a phantom bubble in the bright sun every morning. Remembering and forgetting again and again, Qin City, and Zhou Zhaonan, became a happy interlude in his life, a beautiful note. No matter how happy or beautiful, it was all in the past.
But later… he met Huo Ranyin again, and went through a lot with him again, and then he understood. A long, long time ago, on this grassy slope where everything has now changed, what kind of bittersweetness and bewilderment Yu Xiaoyu had been silently reciting from the poem she always held in her hands.
