“I didn’t see wrong, did I?”
“You didn’t see wrong.”
The two of them had just used their special means to get the door of 4-2 open when the scene inside stopped them cold.
The entire living-room floor was covered in bloodstains, and that alone was enough to be terrifying, never mind the rest.
It was everywhere, yet not in single pools, there were all kinds of patterns: soaking stains, drip stains, cast-off spatter…
Every variety imaginable, all present and accounted for.
To call it a murder felt like too much trouble for anyone to bother with.
Unless someone had a very particular taste, who would take on such a thankless, laborious job [1] 吃力不讨好, exhausting effort that wins no gratitude jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2691980_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2691980_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });?
And if it was suicide, wasn’t that being a little too brutal to oneself?
The girl lay on the floor between the dining table and the sofa, a fruit knife buried deep in her heart, driven in so far that only the handle showed, and even that was slick with blood.
Her face was twisted in pain, her eyes wide open, with a strange air of release about her.
“With my shallow, unprofessional knowledge, I can’t make a single call here.” Xiao Xingzhi closed his gaping mouth, looking at the horrifying scene without fear.
Since coming to the game, his nerve had grown bolder and bolder.
Arms crossed, leaning against the door frame, he wasn’t sure whether to go in. In real life he’d have dialed 110 [2] China’s police emergency number, like 911 jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2691980_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2691980_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); at once and stayed out to preserve the crime scene.
But this was a game, it didn’t connect to reality.
Besides, you couldn’t dial 110 here anyway.
“Go see if Doctor Xi is around?” Zhang Xiangyi stood in the doorway, her whole body tense, her breathing a little quick, then frowned and stepped inside.
The girl had died horribly.
If it were a simple death scene, the two of them might have squeezed out a little information. But this… was far too complicated!
Wasn’t this supposed to be a beginner instance?
Zhang Xiangyi couldn’t figure it out, why was a beginner instance this hard? She’d never played games, but “beginner” was a word easy enough to understand.
The moment Zhang Xiangyi spoke, Xiao Xingzhi turned and headed for 4-3. He knocked, but 4-3 didn’t open, instead, footsteps came from the stairwell. He hurried back to Zhang Xiangyi, pushed her inside, and shut the door, leaving a crack to watch through.
“Tap, tap, tap…”
The footsteps drew closer, and Xiao Xingzhi’s whole body tensed.
Until he saw a familiar face. “Xi Zirui! Over here!”
Xi Zirui had just been forced into overtime at the company, put through the whole firm’s spiteful harassment, and barely made it safely off work to rest, only to be dragged over to a scene like this. And handed a job like this on top of it.
He was honestly about to turn into a forensic examiner…
Xi Zirui: “……”
How do you two manage to leave a body wherever you go?
After a silence, Xi Zirui said, “I’m not a cop, and I’m not a forensic examiner.”
“You’re the only one here who knows medicine, so it’s got to be you.” Xiao Xingzhi acted as if it were the most natural thing in the world, hooking an arm around Xi Zirui’s neck like an old buddy. “Where are those little knives you wanted? Need me to fetch them for you? No idea whether this girl is the original 4-2 girl, but by style and looks she’s exactly the same. You don’t know it, but that big-shot woman Zou Yue looks just like—”
“I brought my things. You two can go look at the rest first.” Xi Zirui flung the arm off his neck and pulled a small case from his pocket, opening it to reveal a row of sharp little blades.
Xiao Xingzhi wasn’t put out in the least. He sidled back over to Zhang Xiangyi, earned himself a few choice words, and then cheerfully went off to search elsewhere.
Zhang Xiangyi: This guy is shameless to the core!
The bedroom held some clothes, all in a fresh, youthful, white-lotus [3] 白莲花, someone who cultivates a pure, innocent image, usually a jab at fake innocence, though here it just means the dewy, virginal aesthetic jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2691980_1_3').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2691980_1_3', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); sort of style, and that’s not meant as an insult.
Other than that, there was nothing unusual, the style was identical to the 4-2 girl they’d first met.
Searching the whole room, you could say that apart from the face being the same as Zou Yue’s, there wasn’t the slightest point of resemblance.
Zhang Xiangyi frowned. Then what about Wang Fugui and the jumper?
Were they also just the same face?
So why was it like this?
Zhang Xiangyi sank into thought.
“Suicide.” Xi Zirui stated it firmly, his gloved hands covered in blood, crouching there and gazing at the girl’s gruesome state with complicated eyes. “She was injected with a large dose of drugs. As for what kind, that would take a drug screen and lab analysis.”
Which they obviously couldn’t do right now.
Xi Zirui stood and slowly packed up his things. “She hasn’t been dead long, under four hours. She was probably injected over a long period before, with one massive dose at the end.”
“Generally, whether the drug is smoked or injected, you get symptoms like delirium, anxiety and agitation, hallucinations, violence. Look at her wrists and ankles, there are binding marks. She was probably tied down after an injection, for fear she’d hurt herself or someone else in a frenzy. And there are multiple wounds on her body that look self-inflicted.” After packing up, Xi Zirui went to the kitchen and scrubbed his hands meticulously with his own hand soap. “All this blood in the room is probably from the last time those symptoms hit. No one stopped her, she couldn’t bear it and self-harmed, and in the end her body and mind both gave out, she lost control and killed herself.”
How much strength, how much agony, would it take to grip a fruit knife and drive it into your own heart?
And in the end leave only the handle showing.
Xi Zirui didn’t want to dwell on it. This wasn’t something he wanted to see.
Suddenly he asked, “Are we moving tonight?”
He couldn’t quite take it. The moment he thought about all this, his mind dredged up the surgeries he’d done before, the deaths he’d been powerless to stop, the families weeping outside the doors, those hollow stares… one family after another shattered…
And yet those people had been heroes.
Xi Zirui despised anyone who touched this stuff, makers, dealers, buyers, he despised them all.
Zhang Xiangyi pressed her lips together, and even Xiao Xingzhi reined in his grin and turned serious.
“We move tonight!”
At seven in the evening, the three of them mixed in among the “people” heading to work.
“Work is such a pain!”
“Who’s it not a pain for? I still haven’t done anything today…”
“Sigh…”
“Wonder whose turn it is to be unlucky today.”
“It won’t be us anyway, so what’s the panic?”
“Of course I know it won’t be us, I’m just curious. By the way, you think that woman’s dead?”
“Probably not…?”
“I think she’s dead. She caused Sister Yue a mess this big, that night every one of us downed tools to help clean it up. How much did we lose in one night? Especially when Sister Yue trusted it so much! Knowing Sister Yue’s temper, I’m afraid…”
“I think Sister Yue can’t bear to waste that face, so she won’t kill her, but she won’t let her off easy either.”
“So what if she does? Kill one and pay to give someone a face job, problem solved. Wasn’t that always how it was done before? I really don’t get it, what’s wrong with plastic surgery? Afterward you’ve got it made, nothing to do, just keep Sister Yue happy, and she’s so gentle toward that face. And there are still people who’d refuse?”
“If I got picked, I’d be glad to!”
“You? Lose some weight first.”
The three of them reached a restroom again.
After checking it over, Xiao Xingzhi confirmed no one was there and closed the door.
“Did you hear that? Plastic surgery!” Xiao Xingzhi exclaimed in a hush. “That explains why the dead 4-2 girl looks just like Zou Yue, and the jumper Fugui and the landlord Wang Fugui too. It all connects now.”
“Why identical people keep showing up is explained, sure, but why bother making a fake Zou Yue and a fake Fugui?” Xi Zirui thought back to the amateur autopsy he’d done during the day, truly amateur, he hadn’t even thought to examine the face.
He’d missed the plastic surgery entirely. Looked like he’d need to brush up after getting out of the game.
Zhang Xiangyi, though, gave a small smile, faint but very confident. “What they do here needs scapegoats.”
“Everyone’s seen Zou Yue and Wang Fugui, they appear out in public too. If they ever got investigated, having look-alikes could stall things and buy them time to run.” Zhang Xiangyi slowly leaned back against the wall, her whole body relaxing. The more she knew, the more at ease and certain she felt.
“There’s one more thing. The other night, when something went wrong, everyone stopped work. It all points to a single event.” Xi Zirui pinched the bridge of his nose, whether from too little rest or not, his eyes ached.
“The jump.”
Xiao Xingzhi looked at Zhang Xiangyi. “Zhou Lan betrayed Zou Yue over this, and it brought the whole operation to a halt. For something that big… an escape? A whole crowd of people escaping?”
If only a few had run, it wouldn’t have been enough to shut down the entire factory.
“There’s another possibility.” Zhang Xiangyi murmured. When their eyes turned to her, she went on, “Zhou Lan and the others got hold of evidence and meant to take it out and report to the police. To keep the factory running normally and undiscovered, they had to…”
“Don’t forget, Zhou Lan looks just like Zou Yue’s little sister, and the jumper just like Fugui…”
“What if they’re undercover police?” Zhang Xiangyi said suddenly.
Plastic surgery? You could get that anywhere. The key was knowing exactly what Zou Yue’s little sister looked like, clearly knowing it, and being equally well-informed about everything inside the apartment. Apart from the people in the building itself, only the police could know all that.
“If it’s the police, then this is easy.” Xi Zirui came back to himself, his gaze on Zhang Xiangyi though it wasn’t clear what he was thinking. “Floors 2 through 7, the second unit on each is a senior boss, the whole first floor is just the landlord. Now we’ve seen the 4-2 girl’s death, are they really all bosses?”
“Most likely figurehead bosses, same faces as the real leaders, but only scapegoats pushed out front.”
“Since everything’s clear, let’s go finish our own tasks.” Zhang Xiangyi clapped her hands lightly and straightened up. She’d just gripped the doorknob when Xiao Xingzhi caught her. Turning to look, she saw Xi Zirui quietly turn away to give them space.
Zhang Xiangyi: “?”
“Your wounds aren’t healed. Don’t push yourself, it’s fine if you can’t finish.” Xiao Xingzhi was thinking of the wounds he’d seen when he changed her dressings before they left: the small cuts had scabbed over, those were fine, but the few deep enough to show bone were still closing, and never mind the itching, even the slightest movement could hurt like hell. The thought worried him more. “I’ll pick up the pace on my end and come find you. Really, don’t push yourself, got it?”
“Got it.”
It was well-meant, and Zhang Xiangyi wouldn’t refuse, in the game, helping each other meant getting out faster and safer.
In real life, she’d have turned it down even if it was well-meant.
Accept one kindness, and you owe one back.
So annoying.
References[+]