After leaving Luo Sui’s home, the group went to her workplace.
Luo Sui worked as a sales representative at a medical equipment company called Quanquan Health. When they arrived to ask questions, the company manager received them.
The manager was an older woman. She was polite and professional, and she also called over an employee who sat next to Luo Sui’s desk to answer questions.
“Luo Sui, in my impression, was an employee with good character and a strong work ethic. As for her private life, I don’t really know much,” the manager said with an apologetic smile. “She hasn’t taken leave these past two days, and she hasn’t come to work either. I tried contacting her, but I couldn’t get through. I don’t know what happened.”
As for the employee seated next to Luo Sui, her surname was Lu, and her nickname was Lulu. Lulu knew much more than the manager, but only in broad strokes.
“Luo Sui? All I know is that she really likes cats. Her computer wallpaper and phone lock screen are both cats. There’s a cat café she often goes to called Meow Meow Café, I think? Other than that, nothing particularly special…” Lulu said.
The two coworkers gave very little information. In modern life people are busy, and social distance is the norm; under normal circumstances, people don’t deliberately pay attention to other people’s private lives.
“What’s with the flowers on Luo Sui’s desk? Do you know anything about that?” Ji Xun suddenly asked.
They were sitting in the manager’s office. The office was surrounded by glass, and from there they could see a bouquet of blazing red roses placed on Luo Sui’s desk. The flowers were already somewhat wilted.
“That was delivered on March 14, White Day. She didn’t come in that day, so it’s just been left on her desk. It should be from the person who gave it to Luo Sui,” Lulu said.
“That person?” Zhao Wu asked. “Which person?”
“We don’t know. The sender never signed a name. At first Luo Sui would still ask who it was from, but later she stopped asking. Maybe she figured out who had been sending the gifts,” Lulu said. “It’s easy to guess, though. It must have been someone trying to pursue her. Otherwise, who would keep sending flowers, snacks, and cute little cat figurines every few days? And everything would hit Luo Sui’s taste exactly?”
“How early was the first time?” Ji Xun asked again.
“I forgot… I think she started receiving them not long after she joined the company,” Lulu answered. Maybe inspired by the more specific question, she opened up more. “But even though the other person kept sending things, he never once came to the company to pick Luo Sui up. Most of the time, Luo Sui moved around on her own. Maybe they were in a long-distance relationship and could only date online.”
“Do you know whether Luo Sui had any particularly close friends?” Huo Ran asked.
“…Probably not,” Lulu said.
“Not?”
“Right, I don’t think so,” Lulu said. “Everyone uses WeChat for contact and work now. Since I sit next to her, once I used her phone and saw her WeChat was unusually clean. Besides coworkers, there wasn’t even anyone selling stuff in her Moments. Later we chatted, and she said her mental state wasn’t great for the past two years. At one point she was depressed and impulsively cleared out all her Moments. Now she’d beaten depression and come back to life.”
“Also, it’s not just her Moments. She worked very hard, came in early in the morning, and stayed until seven or eight at night. You can tell she didn’t have much time to go out with friends. Then the company would occasionally do team-building activities. Ours allowed people to bring friends, boyfriends, or family. Most people would bring someone—single people brought friends, people with partners brought boyfriends or girlfriends, married people brought family… Luo Sui always came alone every time. So I think she probably didn’t have any particularly close friends in her daily life. Even if she did, we never saw them. Oh, but we did meet her god-grandfather.”
“God-grandfather?”
“Mm, a pretty stylish old man, very handsome, and he seemed quite rich,” Lulu said. “I think Luo Sui met him while doing sales not long after joining the company. They got along well and became god-relatives. He would occasionally come to the company to pick Luo Sui up, and every time he came she was very happy. Even though they were god-relatives, I really think they were close. When he came, that was the one time Luo Sui was least dedicated to her work. But everyone understood. With people that age, you get one day less together every day…”
Without a doubt, that stylish, handsome, wealthy old man was Hu Kun.
Hu Kun would occasionally come to pick Luo Sui up from the company.
It was just that the people at the company didn’t know Hu Kun and Luo Sui’s true relationship, just as the neighbors near Hu Kun’s home only treated Luo Sui, who frequently came and went, as Hu Kun’s granddaughter.
They asked a few more questions, but the people at the company couldn’t say anything else.
The group didn’t press further and told the manager that if Luo Sui contacted her, she must notify the police immediately.
Then they headed to Old Hu’s house to question his family.
The villa was still the same villa. Compared to last time, this time Hu Zheng’s wife was living inside, and so were the relatives of Old Mei. It should have been a pretty large place, but every time they came it felt noisy and chaotic. In just a day or two, even Old Hu’s portrait, which had once stood in the living room, was gone—like all traces of him were about to be erased completely from the villa that had once belonged to him.
When the police arrived, Hu Zheng’s wife was the most proactive.
She knew her husband had been arrested and wanted to plead for him, but she was also eager to cause trouble for Luo Sui, so she said everything she knew.
“You’re asking about ‘K’? ‘K’ is Luo Sui’s lover!” she said.
In the course of police interviews, witness statements rarely cut straight to the heart of the matter. People usually say what they want to say, while the police want objective, factual evidence.
Fortunately, after going back and forth a few times, Hu Zheng’s wife gradually got into the groove and started talking in detail about “K.”
“Luo Sui had a Weibo account called ‘Melancholy Florence.’ I learned about ‘K’ through her Weibo. She interacted with ‘K’ a lot, leaving affectionate comments, wishing each other well for holidays, and even posting separate Weibo messages @-ing each other. They’d also invite each other to scenic spots they saw in photos. Tell me, is that what decent people do? Their relationship was definitely not simple. They probably met offline countless times already. Her interactions with K online were completely unhidden—basically just bullying the old man because he didn’t know how to use the internet and couldn’t discover her shameless true colors, hmph… I don’t know what kind of spell she cast on the old man. After we found K and tried to hint at it to the old man, every time we barely started, he would get impatient and tell us to leave! The old bastard was blind!”
Hu Zheng’s wife cursed in disgust.
While Zhao Wu and the others talked with her, the rest of them watched the scene unfold. Ji Xun and Huo Ran, however, did the opposite: they began quietly observing the villa.
Since the “Old Hu” who died in the hospital wasn’t the real Old Hu, then Old Hu must have had an entirely different death location. If they wanted to let him die without alarming anyone, the best place would naturally be his own home.
Most likely, Luo Sui had acted on Old Hu right there in the house.
Everyone was in the living room watching the police question the family, which gave Ji Xun and Huo Ran the perfect opportunity to move around. The two of them were quick, walking up and down through the villa, and soon found something suspicious in the basement media room.
The basement media room was for watching movies and playing games. It wasn’t large. The television was huge, taking up half a wall. There was a small window overlooking the garden, and a wooden coffee table sat directly in front of the TV.
“The coffee table has been replaced,” Huo Ran said.
No matter how well maintained, it wouldn’t be completely new, with not even a trace of wear on the legs. There should at least be dust, scratches, or some hair stuck to it.
Using a gloved hand, Huo Ran carefully lifted the rug beneath the coffee table. In the gaps of the wooden floorboards were brown stains.
“It should be here,” he said.
“Reasonable. The media room lets you turn the sound up very loud, so even if Old Hu struggled violently before his death, the sound would be covered by the movie or TV noise and wouldn’t carry out. Then Old Mei wouldn’t have noticed…” Ji Xun said, but suddenly paused.
“Do you remember when we went to the hospital, and the nurse said Old Mei had also been there?”
“Of course I remember.”
“Hu Zheng noticed something was wrong with the corpse when he handled it. Then did Old Mei notice that the Old Hu in the hospital wasn’t the real Old Hu?”
Looking through the media room’s little window, they saw the people in the garden.
Hu Zheng’s wife and Old Mei’s relatives were all in the living room, surrounding the police conversation, but Old Mei was alone in the garden, efficiently moving flowerpots and loosening soil, doing all kinds of work.
She had tied her hair back simply with the most ordinary black string, and in the sunlight her bent-over figure tending the flowerbeds looked like the silhouette of an old ox silently plowing the earth.
“Everyone knows Old Hu’s death was off,” Ji Xun commented. “But no one chose to say it.”
“But when you think about it, that’s not so strange.”
Because of Luo Sui, Old Hu and his children had poor relations.
Because of Luo Sui, Old Mei, who had been living properly with Old Hu, looked like an invisible person.
Old Hu and Luo Sui, on the other hand, were all sweet and affectionate.
And yet Luo Sui was the one who killed Old Hu.
The two of them came out of the media room. Ji Xun, with his face that seemed to charm both young and old, went over to help the lonely old woman in the garden, who seemed out of place compared to the others in the living room.
“Grandma Mei, can I ask you a few questions?” Ji Xun said while helping her move flowerpots.
“Yes,” the old woman said without looking up. Her voice seemed to come from the soil itself, heavy and muffled.
“Then can I ask your name first?” Ji Xun smiled. “This is a statement, and it needs to be recorded. I have to write down your full name.”
The old woman looked up at him. A flicker of unfamiliarity seemed to pass through her eyes.
“…Lili,” Grandma Mei said. “Mei Lili.”
Mei Lili, a lovely and graceful name that didn’t quite match her current aged appearance.
Ji Xun understood why the old woman had shown that look of unfamiliarity—she was unfamiliar with his question, and also unfamiliar with her own name. That name must have suited her when she was at her most youthful and beautiful. It matched the young version of her, and naturally drifted far away from her now-aged self.
Grandma Mei worked especially efficiently. In just the span of those one or two sentences, they had already moved all the potted plants from the shelf. The old woman then went to arrange the flowerpots in the corner of the garden.
Compared to the pots outside, these plants were hidden deeper inside. Ivy hung down in front of them, and if you didn’t look through the gaps in the vines, you could hardly see them.
“Can’t these plants take the sun?” Ji Xun asked curiously. “So that’s why they’re kept here?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because that woman doesn’t like them,” Grandma Mei said flatly.
Without a doubt, “that woman” was Luo Sui.
Even though this was the old woman’s own living space, she couldn’t go against an outsider’s wishes. Ji Xun was surprised for a moment, and after the surprise, he actually felt a little sympathetic toward the old woman.
“Then do you know anything about Luo Sui?”
“What kind of things?” Grandma Mei asked back.
“For example, how Luo Sui and Old Hu met, what Luo Sui usually did, how often she came here, where Old Hu and Luo Sui met, whether Luo Sui ever acted strangely…” Ji Xun casually listed off a long string.
Grandma Mei was silent for a while.
“I don’t really like to pay attention to their matters. But they were often together, very sticky, always kissing and hugging whenever they could avoid being seen. Sometimes I was still at home and they’d start… Outside, they didn’t do it as often, maybe they still cared a bit about appearances. As for the rest you asked, I don’t really know. But…”
“But what?”
“Old Hu really liked woodworking. He had a dedicated place for woodworking. He didn’t let me go there, but maybe he took Luo Sui there,” Grandma Mei said.
