The morning sun scorched Ji Xun’s eyebrows.
He twitched his brows in the vast sunshine, opened his eyes, and found the phone on his bedside table, glancing at it.
Seven o’clock in the morning.
It was rare to wake up at this time… To be precise, it was rare to wake up naturally at this time. Recently, he was always forced to see the morning sun at this hour because of a certain someone.
Ji Xun mumbled twice and got out of bed.
When he opened his door, the door opposite was still tightly closed. Huo Ranyin seemed to still be resting and hadn’t woken up. He walked through the living room, glanced out at the neighborhood through the floor-to-ceiling window, and saw hardly anyone there. There was little noise. On the morning of Lunar New Year’s Day, everyone seemed to be resting, and the entire city was immersed in a sleepy, half-awake feeling, lazy and relaxed, as if, after an entire year, it could finally take a secure nap.
He entered the kitchen, found rice, and made some congee. Although he couldn’t use a knife, washing rice and making a bowl of congee was possible, and congee was suitable for Huo Ranyin right now.
The congee was ready, but Ji Xun didn’t eat any himself; he didn’t have the habit of eating breakfast in the morning. He poured a glass of warm water, walked to Huo Ranyin’s closed door, knocked lightly, and opened it.
The room was dim.
The tightly drawn curtains blocked the sun and also rejected the occasional sounds leaking from the city.
Huo Ranyin was sleeping on his side, the quilt covering his waist and abdomen. The hand pressed against the sheet was curled up, and his head rested in the crook of that arm. The majority of his face was turned toward the sheet and arm, hidden, exposing only a slight upturned corner of his eye to Ji Xun.
The sound of Ji Xun opening the door still startled him. He frowned, and the head buried in his arm twitched, as if trying to shake himself out of the hand of the sleeping demon.
“No rush to get up. Sleep a little more.”
Seeing the man struggling with fatigue, Ji Xun lowered his voice and spoke to Huo Ranyin.
Huo Ranyin either didn’t hear him or was still trying hard to wake up.
“I’m here,” Ji Xun changed his wording. “You can sleep peacefully.”
The facts proved his self-awareness was too strong. Huo Ranyin was not reassured by this statement at all; in fact, he looked like he was struggling harder and wanted to get up even more.
Ji Xun had no choice but to say a third sentence:
“It’s Lunar New Year’s Day. Everything is stable. No cases.”
This sentence was instantly effective.
After saying it, Huo Ranyin’s thin lips parted, and he let out a soft “Mm” in response, gradually quieted down, and fell back asleep.
Ji Xun didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and instinctively took a sip of water. But looking at Huo Ranyin on the bed, he placed the barely sipped water glass on the bedside table and quietly closed the door.
He was leaving.
On February 8th, he had a place to go.
Huo Ranyin was very thirsty when he woke up, but his mind was fully alert. The fatigue accumulated over days of insufficient sleep was swept away.
There happened to be a glass of water on the bedside table. He picked it up and drank it all in one go. The cool water entering his stomach dispelled the last remaining bit of dizziness curled up in his brain.
He checked the time.
Two o’clock.
Huo Ranyin paused, then looked again.
It was indeed two o’clock, two in the afternoon.
He slept for a full fifteen hours without a single dream… No, it wasn’t completely dreamless. Huo Ranyin thought as he got out of bed and drew the curtains open. It was the time of day when the sunlight was strongest. New Year’s Day was a good day. The sun was like a red-orange fireball, hanging high in the vast sky. The clear blue sky was cloudless, much like Huo Ranyin’s mood after a good sleep—suddenly clear, without a trace of gloom.
He squinted in the sunlight, trying to recall the dream’s content.
Ji Xun had walked in.
The person was backlit, so he couldn’t clearly see Ji Xun’s face, but he could hear Ji Xun’s voice, which was rarely sharp or decadent, but full of warmth, speaking several sentences. Oh, and Ji Xun brought a glass of water… Recalling this, Huo Ranyin’s heart skipped a beat.
He turned back to look at the empty glass on the bedside table.
Did I bring a glass of water into the room yesterday?
In the dream, Ji Xun seemed to take a sip from the glass…
He rubbed his temple and opened the door to leave the room. At this point, he was still contemplating what attitude to use with Ji Xun, but by the time he reached the hallway, he realized he didn’t need to consider much.
The apartment was silent.
Ji Xun wasn’t here. Didn’t he say they’d talk about the exercise book today?
A cloud floated into Huo Ranyin’s mind, casting a small shadow.
He first took out his phone to check. There were no messages.
He went to the kitchen, intending to make himself something to eat, but saw a sticky note on the refrigerator.
“There is white congee in the rice cooker. — Ji Xun”
Huo Ranyin’s gaze lingered on the note for a while. Ji Xun published books under his real name, and his everyday handwriting was similar to his book signatures: continuous from beginning to end, crooked and leaning, always looking for something to rest against, never standing straight on its own.
Through the writing, it was as if he could see Ji Xun’s soft, boneless body and his look of disdain for his surroundings.
The writing is the man.
Huo Ranyin scoffed, took out his phone again, and checked. Still no messages.
There are two public cemeteries in Ning City. One is old, in the old town, called Qingshan Cemetery.
Except for holidays, the cemetery was always desolate. Even the brightest sun shining on the continuous rows of tombstones revealed a chilling condensation that the sunlight couldn’t dispel.
Ji Xun drove there on the evening of New Year’s Day. The cemetery was naturally closed at night, theoretically making it an inappropriate time for grave sweeping. However, since no one seriously stood guard at the cemetery, Ji Xun easily climbed in. Under the sparse starlight, he found his sister Ji Yu’s tombstone among the identical rows.
The darkness turned most things into blurred silhouettes.
Ji Xun leaned in close to see the scarlet name of his sister on the tombstone.
Ji Yu.
He read it, then read it again.
Without turning his head, he knew his parents’ tombstones stood next to his sister’s. His heart trembled. He hadn’t come very often in the past three years, and the few times he had, he often remained silent opposite the people in the stones.
It was inevitably a somber sight.
Ji Xun quickly realized he had been squatting in front of the tombstone for too long. He supported his head, steadied himself, and placed the portable video recording device he had brought in the patch of grass diagonally above, like a camera pointed directly at Ji Yu’s tombstone.
That wasn’t all. He also took out a remote wireless speaker and buried it in another patch of grass.
Having taken care of both items, Ji Xun was about to leave when he kicked a stone beside him. The stone rolled a long way on the ground with a clatter.
“Who’s there?!” A voice, accompanied by the beam of a flashlight, shone towards him.
Ji Xun quickly squatted down, hiding behind a large tombstone nearby.
The wind howled, making the branches rustle. Ji Xun suddenly felt something odd on his ankle. He looked down, and a pair of green eyes floated in the air, staring at him.
“…”
He blinked.
Now he saw clearly: a cat, completely black with only a pair of glowing green eyes, was staring at him. This black cat had run to his feet sometime unnoticed.
“Meow—” A sharp cat sound echoed in the cemetery.
“It’s a stray cat, scared me for a moment.”
“Don’t be so jumpy. Ghosts scaring people might not kill, but people scaring people really will kill.”
The wind brought fragments of the security guards’ idle chatter. Ji Xun kept himself hidden, withdrew the hand he was scratching the cat’s neck with, and gently stroked the cat’s back, soothing the feline that had just saved him. As he stroked, he suddenly noticed a crescent-shaped bald spot above its tail.
Ji Xun’s hand paused, and he thought of Ji Yu.
Since birth, Ji Yu had a fingernail-width, crescent-shaped mark on the web of her right hand, which looked like it had been pinched. Whenever new classmates or friends saw it and curiously asked where the mark came from, she would almost always say pitifully: “My brother pinched it…”
When they believed her, Ji Yu would giggle and shake her wrist: “Just kidding! It’s a birthmark, isn’t it cute? Doesn’t it look like a little moon? In my family, I’m the only one who hits my brother, not the other way around.”
Ji Xun’s gaze involuntarily began to follow the black cat, wanting to find more traces of Ji Yu on it. But the black cat, which had been obediently squatting on his knee, suddenly flicked its tail, pushed off with all four paws, and darted into the cluster of tombstones, disappearing into the darkness like a wisp of smoke.
Ji Xun suddenly stood up, wanting to chase it, but the cat was already gone. He looked around again; the security guards and the light were also nowhere to be seen, as if the black cat had accomplished its purpose of helping him and immediately vanished.
Ji Xun stood for a few more seconds. Then, he retraced his steps, climbed out of the cemetery, returned to his car, and opened his laptop.
The laptop screen flashed and successfully connected to the camera. Ji Xun clearly saw the situation in the cemetery from his car.
Tonight or tomorrow, Meng Fushan would appear.
At least on Ji Yu’s death anniversary, he would show up.
And then…
Ji Xun rested his hand on the computer, his fingers hovering over the keyboard.
Meng Fushan had been investigating Ji Yu’s case. Ji Xun knew this but didn’t care. As for Ji Yu and that case, he had investigated it thoroughly back then and reached clear, unambiguous conclusions.
All of Meng Fushan’s subsequent investigation amounted to twelve characters for him:
No necessity, no value, no meaning.
Maybe Huo Ranyin’s evaluation wasn’t wrong. I really am arrogant. I really feel that everyone else in the world besides me is an idiot, Ji Xun suddenly thought. Because I investigated it myself, I reached a conclusion, and I closed the case. So I never concerned myself with what Meng Fushan was investigating or what he found.
… But, but.
Huo Ranyin’s words on New Year’s Eve had left him unsettled.
I should still go talk to Meng Fushan.
It won’t take too much time to talk.
He let out a sigh, ready to pick up his old habit and get back to the work of staking out overnight, when his phone suddenly rang. Speak of the devil; Huo Ranyin sent a message.
“Where are you right now?”
Where could he go on New Year’s Day? Ji Xun looked at the time. It was past ten in the evening.
“Catching up on my manuscript at home,” he wrote. “It’s difficult for my editor. Right after wishing me a happy New Year, he immediately asked for the manuscript. I’m determined not to make things difficult for him, so I started catching up on New Year’s Day.”
He sent the message, waiting for Huo Ranyin’s reply.
But Huo Ranyin was slow to respond.
Ji Xun could not pierce through space to see the familiar car—Huo Ranyin’s car—parked downstairs at his apartment building.
In the driver’s seat, Huo Ranyin looked up at the apartment window, where the curtains were drawn but no light was visible, and then lowered his head to look at his phone screen.
On the bright screen, the black characters seemed to be a solemn mockery of him.
