The Murder We Were Drawn Into Is Not Yet Over

A few days later.

Xie Qingcheng had recovered.

That afternoon he and Xie Xue were eating in the Huzhou University canteen. Looking down at the chicken congee in his bowl, he realized it had been many days since he'd last seen He Yu — and He Yu's Moments feed had gone completely dark.

He frowned, and thought of the strangeness that had been about He Yu that day.

Xie Qingcheng was a deeply rational man, but not an unfeeling one — and besides, he had promised He Jiwei he would keep an eye on He Yu.

So when Xie Xue came back with her tray and sat down across from him, he asked her how He Yu had been lately.

She looked up at him as if he'd said something remarkable, eyes going wide. 'What? You don't know? He took leave to go to Hangzhou for a shoot. He didn't tell you?'

Xie Qingcheng's chopsticks paused. 'Isn't he in the directing track?'

'It's short — just a small supporting role, filling in for someone. Apparently he got spotted buying breakfast outside the school gate. He was a bit interested himself, and honestly, with that face, who's to say whether he ends up in front of the camera or behind it. He's ambitious — he won't pass up a chance to build experience.'

'...That's very sudden.'

'It was because the original fifth lead had something come up at the last minute. They'd actually cast someone from the acting department, but right before that kid joined the crew he got into a bicycle accident with a taxi outside the school gate — took a bad gash across the face, needed several stitches. The production was scrambling to find a replacement, and they found He Yu...'

Hearing that, Xie Qingcheng dimly recalled the phone call He Yu had taken at his place that day — it had been about this, it seemed.

Xie Xue went on, in that meandering way of hers: 'But there's one thing I find strange. I looked at the script, and it's a terrible little web drama — by his taste, he should have turned his nose up at it. But he just agreed. His role only needs about ten days, so it's not long, but still, who knows what he was thinking... his mood wasn't great when he came to ask for the leave either. He was barely paying attention when I talked to him.'

Xie Qingcheng listened, his expression growing gradually more serious.

He thought back to that day — the bandage wrapped carelessly around He Yu's wrist, the hospital bag of medicine...

'Has anything bad happened to He Yu lately?'

'No!' Since the field trip, Xie Xue's spirits had lifted considerably for reasons unclear — there was almost a bloom about her, a certain well-tended softness. She bit down on her ice cream spoon, and after a moment her certainty wavered. 'I don't really know, either... probably not...'

Xie Qingcheng looked at her — her bright eyes, her obviously good mood — with a pensive expression.

She'd been noticeably happy these past few days. Ever since coming back from the trip, she was constantly on her phone, firing off message after message, not lifting her head for half an hour at a stretch. No telling who she was talking to.

Her Moments feed had changed too. She used to post things like, 'New restaurant opening on XX road — anyone want to come check it out?' But lately she'd gone inexplicably literary: either quoting passages of coming-of-age fiction that made Xie Qingcheng frown and still not understand, or posting odd photographs — a stretch of lake, two fallen leaves. Last night, late, she'd posted a shadow cast against a wall, the light soft and blurring, the figure impossible to make out, possibly herself, with the caption: 'Hehe. Little white fluff.'

He had replied: 'Who's Little White Fluff?'

Xie Xue had taken a long time to answer: 'A cute little puppy.'

Xie Qingcheng: 'Don't post meaningless things like this. Go to sleep.'

She sent him back a tongue-out emoji. A little while later, Xie Qingcheng noticed she'd changed her profile picture too — to a swan looking away.

Recalling all of this, he asked: 'What about you. Has anything good happened to you lately?'

Xie Xue's face went pink. She turned her head aside and kept biting the spoon, carefully tucking a secret from the field trip deep into her heart. 'N-nothing in particular.'

Xie Qingcheng crossed his arms and watched her in silence — the body language, the flustered details in her expression. His gaze sharpened by degrees.

'Oh — gege.' Under his scrutiny Xie Xue was visibly uneasy. She tried to steer the conversation elsewhere. 'I brought back some local snacks from the trip for you and He Yu. Are you free this weekend?'

'Nothing on. Why?'

'I... there's a meeting at school I can't get out of, and the snacks go bad quickly. If you don't have class, could you make a trip to Hangzhou to visit He Yu on set? You could bring the things to him while you're at it.'

Xie Qingcheng's brow creased. He had a sense that Xie Xue was hiding something from him, but he didn't press.

'Fine.' He agreed. In any case, he wasn't entirely at ease about He Yu's condition — stopping by the set would give him a chance to look in on the state of him.

.

That evening.

Outside the ruins of Chengkang Psychiatric Hospital.

Yellow-and-white police tape stretched across the perimeter, trembling in the wind, sending up fine dust and debris from the scorched earth behind it. A crowd had gathered in recent days — some bringing flowers to mourn, others drawn purely by curiosity, there to see what there was to see.

In the thick of the crowd stood an unremarkable man in horn-rimmed glasses, wedged among the onlookers, staring at the charred expanse where Chengkang Psychiatric Hospital had been. His slightly bulging eyes held a conflicted look — hesitation and terror at war with each other.

'...That's right, all dead. Not a single senior management survived.'

'What if it really is Jiang Lanpei's vengeful ghost, coming to collect?'

'That woman was wearing a red dress when she died — they say that kind of ghost is the most powerful of all. No wonder the fire had eyes — it burned through every last person who was working with Liang Jicheng...'

'My God, how terrifying!'

The man in glasses trembled harder as he took in the chatter around him. The heat was stifling, yet a cold sweat had broken out across his whole body, his back nearly soaked through.

He swallowed, and turned to go —

He needed to get home.

His parents had been separated for years; he lived with his father, also part of 'the organization.' But among the shared property his parents still held, in the old family house where he had grown up, there was a safe — and inside it, a stack of papers, long sealed away, the corners eaten by insects.

Jiang Lanpei's true file.

His father had told him once: if anything ever happened to him, take those papers to the police, then turn yourself in. Even prison was fine — at least you'd come out alive.

He was a coward. Following his father, he'd barely grazed the surface of the organization's affairs. The day the police came to their house to investigate, he hadn't dared say a word; he'd panicked so badly he was sick on the spot. But now his head had cleared — he'd been looking at the death lists in the papers, and he knew this was nowhere near as simple as it seemed.

He didn't want to die... he didn't want the ghost to come for him, he was terrified, and all he wanted was to get what was in that safe and run to the Local Police Station —

He used to be afraid of sirens. In his Nightmare, the moment he heard a police siren he'd bolt upright, shaking uncontrollably. But now, belatedly, he understood: only the police could save him.

Thinking this, he passed through the gates of the villa complex — upscale once, twenty years ago — and broke into a full run. He was terrified on both counts: afraid 'those people' would catch up with him, afraid Jiang Lanpei's ghost would catch up with him.

Tongues of red flame. A ghost's red dress.

'Ah — ah!!'

The more he thought, the more frightened he became; running and running, he couldn't hold back a cry. He wet himself. His glasses slipped down his greasy nose.

He burst through the garden of the old villa and crashed through the door inside —

He was too terrified to register something he should have noticed: why would a house abandoned for over a decade have its front door unlocked, left merely ajar...

His mind a churning mess, he wheezed toward the basement. The rotting floorboards groaned under his feet like the bodies of the dead from Chengkang Psychiatric Hospital, heaving their last sighs beneath him. He was on the verge of a breakdown, his lips trembling beyond his control.

Help...

Help...

With a bang, he threw open the basement door and scrambled toward the safe.

He remembered the combination. His father, for all his sleazy and lecherous ways — the kind of man his proud mother had long despised — had been through a divorce, and yet the code was still his mother's birthday.

He could recall that his mother, when she was young, had loved to get her hair permed and wear red dresses. Hong Kong style was fashionable then — so many beautiful women copying the glamour of the magazine starlets. The bigger the waves, the redder the dress: the height of fashion.

The man in glasses turned the dial with trembling fingers. One click. Two...

'Click.'

The safe opened.

He reached his hand inside —!

Seconds later, his whole body convulsed as though he'd touched a live wire, a single violent shudder bordering on a seizure.

Gone!!

That stack of papers!! Gone!!!

Impossible... how could it be...

Despair and terror colliding inside him, he suddenly felt something warm and wet — drip — land precisely between his brows.

Every bone in his body seemed to want to scatter and flee, held captive only by the skin that contained them, with no choice but to stay trapped inside him.

Drip.

Again.

Another drop of something warm, this one landing on his lips.

Copper.

The man in glasses stared, eyes bulging, breathing in ragged heaves, and slowly — face contorting — raised his head —

He saw a woman.

A woman dead on the staircase, a gun still in her hand, skull blown through, blood pooled around her on the floor. Her face had been largely destroyed but was just barely recognizable, and her eyes were fixed in his direction.

It looked like a suicide. The man in glasses knew it wasn't.

Because that was his —

'Ma...' he cried out, voice gone, whether from terror or grief he couldn't have said. 'Ma!! Ma!!!! Ah!! Ah ah ah!!!!!'

His mother didn't live here. His mother hadn't set foot here in over a decade...

Had she known about the file? Had she come here to take it, to protect her son?

The man in glasses broke apart. He crumpled to the floor, tears and snot and sweat and blood smearing his face, animal howls tearing from his throat until he no longer knew what sounds he was making.

Then he heard footsteps behind him. Heels.

'Click. Click. Click.'

They were shod in specially made, high-tech anti-forensic shoe covers. Before he could turn around, he felt something hard press against the back of his skull.

A woman's voice sang softly behind him: 'Drop, drop, Drop the Handkerchief — lay it gently behind a friend, make sure that no one tells him...'

A yellowed manila envelope was passed from behind him to in front of his eyes.

Warm breath brushed the side of his face. The voice came soft: 'Is this what you were looking for?'

'...You...'

He didn't dare turn around. His teeth chattered.

'Your mother too.'

'...'

'Your father was a timid little hamster — disloyal to the boss, and keeping something like this hidden at home.' The woman's breath was warm against his ear. 'Really unacceptable... did he think the boss wouldn't find out?'

'You — who are you, exactly...'

The woman laughed. 'Someone disloyal still wants answers?'

'...'

'Ask in hell.'

Those were the last words the man in glasses ever heard.

A few seconds later.

'Bang!!'

A gunshot shook the dust down from the basement ceiling.

The woman stepped around the dark red pooling on the floor, dealt with the scene with cool efficiency, then lowered her eyes and spent a moment alone with Jiang Lanpei's file. After that, she walked out of the abandoned building without once looking back.