Mr. Jian Mingjue, the esteemed blood brother of the chairman of the mighty Jianyue Mingliu Group, entered the police station like a bald-tailed chicken that had fallen into a hawk’s nest, its makeup stripped and magnificent feathers plucked away. It did not matter how elegant, charming, or composed you had once been. Once you sat inside an interrogation room lined with iron bars, experienced old hawks would hammer and temper you until your original shape—and every bit of piss and shit inside it—came out. Until the true form appeared, you could forget escaping their claws.
Jian Mingjue’s hair was disheveled. His bloodshot eyeballs bulged slightly from their sockets, looking as though they were barely attached and might tumble loose onto the floor at any moment. He was already close to complete surrender. Spread across the table before him were the bloodstained clothes and shoes the police had recovered from a mountain of garbage.
Captain Xue had not slammed the table or used force against Second Master Jian. He was very polite. All he had done was send people to search through two days’ worth of “fresh stock” at the garbage dump beneath the mountains in Linwan New District, using a method involving neither blades nor guns to encourage Second Master Jian to hurry up and confess honestly to the invincible criminal authorities of the municipal yamen.
Jian Mingjue’s large chin trembled. Having exhausted every trick he possessed, he finally asked Xue Qian for a cigar.
Xue Qian leaned closer, confiding like an old friend complaining about work. “The bureau doesn’t reimburse us for cigars. They’re stingy as hell. There’s no budget for that. I smoke this stuff—ten or twenty yuan a pack. If you don’t want one, I’ve also got some refreshing tea stems that are pretty chewy! Conditions here are rough. Pick whichever you can tolerate.”
Both sides of Jian Mingjue’s face trembled desolately, like dead leaves blowing across a cold autumn road.
Xue Qian loosened his uniform collar and began his earnest psychological intimidation. “Mr. Jian, prison conditions are even rougher. The tea stems are all from the night before. The cell bosses and bunk chiefs chew them first, spit them out, then let you have another turn. It’s dark in there! Whether you did it or not, if you confess honestly, we’ll definitely consider leniency.”
Jian Mingjue’s tall body seemed to shrink inside his shirt. Throughout his statement, Captain Xue’s cheap cigarette smoke repeatedly made him cough. “I-I only… arranged to meet Mr. Mai that night. Really, it was an ordinary hookup. He said he had to fly back to Hong Kong first thing in the morning….”
“The hotel was newly built and extremely high-end. He said the bed was specially made and really comfortable, so we picked that place.”
“I don’t know how we ended up in that kid Liang Youhui’s room either. Mr. Mai booked the room and gave me the room number. Hotel rooms all look the same anyway. You walk in and everything’s spotless. How the hell would I know whose room it was?”
“I-I had sex with Mr. Mai…. Captain Xue, you know how it is, two adult men go on a date late at night—what else would they do? Mai Yunliang wasn’t a minor. I did not molest a minor. That sort of thing was consensual….” Jian Mingjue’s cigarette trembled between his fingers as he desperately tried to absolve himself.
“So Mai Yunliang booked the room?” Captain Xue obviously understood what two adult men deliberately booking a luxury hotel room in the middle of the night were doing. It was certainly not chatting idly or playing Fight the Landlord. Yet his sharp eyes narrowed as he abruptly shifted direction. “But those extraordinarily imaginative, very stimulating imported toys didn’t seem to have been brought by Mr. Mai, did they?”
That was the real question. Jian Mingjue’s face suddenly turned liver-red—not because he understood shame or embarrassment. What would Jian Mingjue know about shame? Extreme anxiety had knocked him completely off balance. He nearly suffocated himself holding his breath. The deep red slowly washed over with an ugly whitish pink until his face became deathly pale, glowing ash showering from the cigarette between his fingers. “Just… a few little things for fun. People in our circles play with them all the time. There’s nothing unusual. Sorry you had to see that, Captain Xue….”
“A little thing for fun that killed Mr. Mai, correct, Mr. Jian?” Xue Qian’s gaze sharpened. He leaned across the table and stared directly at the suspect, his slow words striking the target cleanly. “That dog-collar-like device locked tightly around Mai Yunliang’s neck, with sharp serrated teeth—is that one of your special interests?”
Bean-sized drops of sweat emerged on Jian Mingjue’s forehead and rolled down his eyelids and cheeks, gathering into streams along his protruding chin before falling drip, drip onto the tabletop, beating out the rhythm of a man terrified into confessing everything for leniency.
Second Master Jian had always prided himself on being well-endowed, skilled, romantically generous—a veteran driver who had plucked blossoms through ten thousand willows, with abundant driving experience and excellent technique. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined that casual play could produce a corpse! And of all people, the victim had to be a famous celebrity, a life he could not make disappear no matter how much money he spent greasing palms…. Mai Yunliang was also a battle-tested old hand, a veteran ornamental beauty who had endured countless rounds and normally withstood plenty of rough treatment. How could he have—how could that night possibly have….
Jian Mingjue had watched it happen with his own eyes.
Blood.
Blood that would not stop.
＊
Blood burst from Mai Yunliang’s neck in sprays, splattering the bed, pillow, bedside lampshade, and walls, as well as Zhao Qifeng’s stunned face and dress.
Jian Mingjue had screamed in terror and lunged forward, trying to release the horrifying thing that had transformed from a toy into a murder weapon, but the demonic device would no longer open. He tried pressing a towel over the wound, but the towel turned scarlet almost immediately….
Second Master Jian was an idiot when it came to medical knowledge and knew nothing about first aid. The only physiology he understood was what a man like him necessarily knew about sexual hygiene. In school, the subject he had studied most enthusiastically was the handful of chapters in his health textbooks dealing with everything below men’s and women’s waists. But when the artery in Mai Yunliang’s neck ruptured and blood sprayed several feet, Jian Mingjue completely lost his mind….
His own naked body became coated in the other man’s blood.
It was the most terrified and shattered he had ever been in his life….
Mai Yunliang remained handsome even at the end. His eyes were half-open, as though he had died unwilling to close them—or perhaps as though he had finally been released from half a lifetime of humiliation and pain. The five fingers of one hand remained locked around Jian Mingjue’s wrist, as if Mai’s departing soul intended to drag someone along the road to the Yellow Springs and stand before the judges of hell together. Second Master Jian was so frightened he struggled madly against a dead man for a long time. He used every ounce of strength he had possessed since infancy before he finally pulled free without being driven to chop off Mai Yunliang’s wrist or fingers to escape.
He rolled off the bed in panic and spread more blood onto the floor and sofa. He went to the bathroom and rinsed the blood from his hands while pink water spiraled down the drain. Then he picked articles of clothing off the floor one by one and pulled them on at random, even fastening the buttons of his suit vest incorrectly.
＊
Xue Qian did not want to hear any more unpleasant details. He threw the notebook entirely to the recording officer, turned his face away, and concealed half of it inside a cloud of cigarette smoke.
His deputy came in and leaned close to report, “Captain Xue, we’ve been trying to identify which front-desk employee checked in Mai Yunliang. But Mai Yunliang is dead, and everybody else is pointing fingers at one another without identifying anyone for certain. At least two hotel employees suddenly quit around the time of the crime and have disappeared.”
“Anyone who suddenly quit is suspicious.” Xue Qian crossed one leg over the other and bit hard on the filter.
“The registration information is extremely incomplete, and the IDs were fake. They disappeared without a trace. Hotel management is absolute garbage! These people cut corners like this when nothing happens, and once something does happen, all they leave behind is a field full of holes.” The deputy had spent the entire day running around outside and dropped heavily into a chair, panting in frustration.
Captain Xue still had a short statement from Zhao Qifeng in his hand.
Ms. Zhao’s evening makeup and formal dress complemented each other. Her beauty had lost none of its former glamor and practically transformed the municipal bureau’s interrogation room into the boardroom at Jian headquarters. Even the habitually arrogant, impossible-to-impress Captain Xue had to admit the sight brightened the room. Their decrepit office, which had not been painted or renovated for ten years, seemed honored by her presence.
Ms. Zhao had ordered coffee and cigarettes. Even while smoking, she maintained the refined bearing of high society, her voice measured and clear. She remained unflustered in adversity. A phoenix might have fallen into the mud, but it absolutely could not lose its style.
Even giving a police statement looked as though she were assigning work to her underlings, carrying the attitude of I’m in a good mood, so this old lady will deign to give you something to eat.
“I’m waiting for my lawyer. Don’t ask me questions about things you already know, and anything you don’t know, I don’t intend to tell you.”
“I drove there in my own car. When I left, somehow I drove away in the wrong one. And that only happened because Jian Mingjue, that idiot bitch, is so stupid! My electronic key unlocked that Bentley. Once I got inside I realized it wasn’t my car at all, but my own car key had disappeared. Jian Mingjue, that idiot, caused a death and panicked, then dragged me down with him!”
“I never touched Mr. Mai with so much as one finger.”
“Jian Mingjue killed him. He’s a complete pervert. I have no interest in any of that.”
“That’s everything. I rest and do my skincare at this hour every night. Wait until my lawyer arrives if you want to discuss more. Officers, you may all leave now.”
The tone of Madam Jian sounded like an Empress Dowager in the imperial palace lowering her eyelids and raising one hand: Little Qian, you may withdraw.
“Jian and Zhao probably just panicked. No matter how fearlessly they usually command storms and summon demons, that may well have been the first time either of them watched someone die. We can approximately reconstruct the chaos: they saw Mai Yunliang’s terrible condition before his death, panicked, wanted to leave the scene first, and accidentally drove away in another Bentley with a similar color and appearance. The key question is, how did the electronic keys get swapped?”
Inside the large office, Xue Qian rested both legs on a desk covered in stacks of documents and calmly analyzed the case in front of a large whiteboard.
His deputy said, “Zhao Qifeng arrived after Jian Mingjue, roughly ten minutes later. She also came through the main lobby. She bought several bottles of drinks and chewing gum downstairs at the hotel. It would’ve been entirely possible for somebody to switch something inside her handbag along the way.”
Xue Qian stared fixedly into an imaginary point in front of him and nodded. “If someone deliberately wanted to make the switch. And I’m guessing that person was yet another face attached to a fake ID we still can’t trace.”
“Don’t you find this whole thing bizarrely funny? Liang Youhui is one hundred percent cleared. He’s just a wealthy family’s stupid, carefree son! Apparently his reputation inside the circle is actually pretty good. Honest and generous. To him, this whole case is a disaster that fell straight out of the sky, right? It’s like….” Xue Qian narrowed his eyes, sketching Liang Youhui’s completely transparent giant-baby face in his mind. “It’s like somebody was determined to drag the Liang family into this kicking and screaming. The method was clumsy and forced, but it achieved the intended effect. The Liang family clearly had nothing to do with anything, yet somebody still smeared them with filth they can’t wash off. Doesn’t that feel deliberate?”
A young officer below interrupted, “He’s still the son of the richest man in neighboring Yandu. People in the circle call him the little god of scattering wealth—stupid kid, too much money. If you’re framing somebody, why not frame him? Chairman Liang must be furious. Something like this is humiliating.”
“But Zhao Qifeng was called to the scene by some inexplicable phone call, while Jian Mingjue explicitly denies making that call. He says he never invited his sister-in-law over for a threesome, yet she still showed up. We still need to trace that call between them, especially whether this Mr. Yan was involved!”
Xue Qian had certainly not forgotten the deeply carved “Yan” in his notebook. He trusted his own consistently sharp instinct for suspicion.
The case meeting was also threaded with endless gossip from wealthy circles. People inside the yamen knew plenty, and if they could not at least exchange gossip, then working themselves to death like dogs every day would offer no pleasure whatsoever. Nightlife during overtime on a major case was especially miserable and certainly not worth the miserable salary and allowances they received every month.
“Zhao Qifeng wants to use her husband’s connections to settle this? She was in the same hotel room late at night with Jian Mingjue and Mai Yunliang. What kind of relationship they had is already obvious…. Even if she clears herself of murder, she’ll never wash away the rest of that mess!”
“People are already leaking stories. They say Ms. Zhao has had that kind of relationship with every one of the four major real-estate families around here. There’s one unbelievable story that she slept with the seventeen-year-old son of one of her business partners. A minor. That could destroy her. Her nickname in the circle is Zhao Jinlian!”
“Keyboard warriors are terrifying. Damn, every member of Jian Mingjue’s family, all the way through three generations of ancestors, has been doxxed. Every rotten thing they supposedly did while building their fortune has been dug up. Internet users have uncovered more than our actual investigation. It’s a full-on wealthy-family revenge drama.”
“Hey, somebody dug up sexy photos of that Zhao woman….”
“Do people even need us police to solve cases anymore? Just follow the netizens. Every fucking one of them thinks they’re brilliant. This trending Weibo topic is practically its own case-analysis meeting. If every keyboard warrior is Sherlock Holmes, what the hell do they need police for?!…”
＊
Xue Qian wandered out of the office, his leather shoes striking the corridor loudly enough for every room nearby to hear the arrival of the male yaksha. Holding a forensic report, he entered the bureau’s medical examination laboratory.
“The saliva DNA and relevant fingerprints on drinking vessels inside the room belong to Jian Mingjue and Zhao Qifeng. That part is certain. Naturally, some fingerprints also belong to the deceased.”
“Male semen was found inside the deceased. Preliminary testing isolated two semen samples. One belongs to Jian Mingjue. The second remains unidentified.”
“But no biological traces belonging to Zhao Qifeng were found on the deceased’s body, the bedsheets, or the sofa.”
The medical examiner reported the essential points succinctly. “Wait. Two men’s samples?” Xue Qian frowned hard at the test report.
“That’s right, Captain Xue.” The middle-aged medical examiner was short, broad, and looked extremely stable by sheer tonnage. “We estimate that within a relatively short period before death, the deceased had sexual contact with two different men.”
Xue Qian sucked air through his teeth. Fuck. I have to go back and investigate that entire blacklist of patrons all over again.
“Finally, we found this inside Mai Yunliang’s body. It was… inside the intestinal tract… lodged very deep. That’s why I didn’t find it during yesterday’s external examination. Today we received signed consent from his company and family for the autopsy, and only then did we discover it.” Using forceps, the medical examiner lifted a transparent evidence bag from the storage container.
Xue Qian dramatically wrinkled his face in disgust, but professionally lifted the bag into the bright sunlight. “…Fuck me. Expensive too. Jade.”
＊
Captain Xue packed the important evidence into a document envelope and charged energetically into the corridor to arrange a new deployment of manpower. The “yaksha” immediately ran into the bureau’s “King Yama”—Deputy Bureau Chief Bao.
“Well?” Bao Zhengwei’s face was solemn. He crooked his fingers and led his capable subordinate toward a corridor corner. “You’ve only got eleven days left. Any progress?”
“We found biological traces belonging to a second man inside the deceased, plus a jade ring. We’re assuming there was another man who slept with him that night. I’m going to investigate that person now.” Xue Qian put his head close to Bureau Chief Bao’s, voice lowered. In a few sentences he hit the important points and briefly showed him the evidence in the file. “Current preliminary suspect is that Mr. Yan from a Baoding Group branch.”
“…Who?” Deep, experienced lines spread from the corners of Bao Zhengwei’s eyes as he narrowed them.
“We’re investigating him now. Yan Xiao,” Xue Qian said.
“Oh… mm.” Bao Zhengwei lifted his brows calmly. “I’ve heard of him. Probably isn’t him.”
“Quite a few little pieces of evidence suggest he could be involved.” Xue Qian braced one hand against the wall and looked at his superior with immense confidence. “Chief, I’ve always trusted my instincts. There’s definitely something wrong with this Mr. Yan. Liang Youhui just happens to run and hide at Yan Xiao’s house when the crime occurs? You didn’t see Mr. Yan when I went to bring Young Master Liang in. Calm as could be, tall and elegant, completely in control, plenty of presence. That level of calm and composure is exactly the profile of a high-IQ criminal personality. Unshakable psychological quality, natural resistance to lie detection, anti-surveillance instincts. Every answer was watertight and nothing stuck to him.”
“…” Bao Zhengwei looked at Xue Qian’s expression, completely absorbed in the psychological gratification of cracking a major case, and had no idea how to contradict him without damaging the brat’s habitually inflated self-confidence. He could hardly say, I know Yan Xiaodao’s background. He’s survived enough storms that seeing us police isn’t going to make him piss himself and convulse. Calm and composed is normal for him. The day you see him panic is when something really is wrong.
Xue Qian snapped the file in his hand. “Tomorrow I’ll invite this Mr. Yan over for tea and trouble him to donate a semen sample while he’s at the bureau! Just watch. We’ll run the DNA and see whether he was the second man who slept with Mr. Mai that night. Eight chances out of ten, it’s him.”
Bureau Chief Bao tried very hard to remain expressionless, but even he finally could not resist pouring cold water on that enthusiasm. “Are you sure you haven’t gotten something wrong? Tsk…. I heard that man isn’t into that. He’s straight, isn’t he?”
“How do you know Yan doesn’t like men and he’s straight?” Xue Qian laughed, his humor becoming shamelessly vulgar in front of his superior. “You know him? Are you that good at judging people, Chief? Back then, you didn’t figure out what I liked either.”
Bao Zhengwei’s expression immediately became uncomfortable. He stepped quickly aside as though to establish safe distance, waved one hand impatiently, and looked disgusted. “All right, all right. Don’t parade your damn personal business in front of me!… That one—your ex. Did you two finally break up?”
After displaying his disgust, Bureau Chief Bao could not resist prying into his subordinate’s emotional life anyway. A love of gossip had nothing to do with age or rank. Xue Qian answered with his usual bland expression, not particularly bothered. “We broke up. He cheated. Why wouldn’t I dump him?”
“Ahem. Don’t let it affect your work.” Bao Zhengwei nodded sympathetically. “Fine. Investigate it your way. I won’t interfere. You’ve still got the half-month deadline. Handle it!”
Bao Zhengwei realized he had already said too much on Yan Xiaodao’s behalf. He always instinctively wanted to protect Xiaodao, but that could easily make other people suspicious. He should not let anyone see the connection between them. That would not help Yan; it would create even more trouble…. Let them investigate. If you didn’t do it, the criminal-investigation team isn’t going to frame an innocent man for no reason.
＊
That single hour felt like the longest, most unbearable hour in Yan Xiaodao’s vivid memory.
During that hour, the gardener used the lawn mower in the front yard for eighteen minutes. A large camellia in the backyard quietly dropped its final three withered red blossoms. Twelve clear pigeon whistles passed over the shore. Nervous Yang Xifeng sneaked upstairs four times to peer toward the bedroom door, his clumsy footsteps impossible to ignore…. And Yan’s heart cramped more than seven hundred times. He lost count and gave up.
Yan Xiaodao never heard Ling He call for him, nor did he hear him cry out in pain. He had already crushed three drinking glasses, destroyed the armrests of two lounge chairs downstairs and upstairs, and driven wooden splinters into his own fingers.
Finally Kuanzi could no longer bear it. “Boss, enough. Stop hurting yourself out here too. How serious can a fight be? Bro, go upstairs and coax him a little. Whatever happened today, let it pass.”
How serious can it be? Yang Xifeng shot Kuanzi a look and communicated silently: For a couple to fight this badly, did one of them cheat?
Kuanzi shook his head. Definitely not our boss.
Fengfeng nodded. Right. Boss is the most dependable person alive. But that other one hasn’t even left the house. We watch him every day. How would he cheat?
＊
In the end, Yan Xiaodao was the one who compromised.
Because his heart was softer.
He regretted it somewhat too. Tormenting Ling He felt like using a blade to shave flesh off his own body.
When it came to Ling He, Yan would always soften first. He could not bear to personally smash apart the beautiful image he still held in his heart. In this lifetime, other people had betrayed him, but he had never betrayed anyone. He would not do things that made him faithless or cruel.
Yan Xiaodao went upstairs again with an iron-blue face. He pointed once and, using nothing more than a blade-edged look, forced Bear Two and Third Lady back below the staircase. No living creature was permitted upstairs to bother him. He gently opened the bedroom door and swept his gaze across the room. What he saw instantly made his heart contract into a tight mass beneath a spear of pain.
Ling He lay motionless on the bed. He had not moved or shifted at all. He remained in precisely the same position Yan had left him an hour earlier. Only now, the bed and the man himself bore evidence everywhere of pain endured in silence….
A thin winding line of blood ran from the center of Ling He’s lower lip, down his chin toward his neck and Adam’s apple. The faint red thread slowly leaned to one side as it traveled, finally slipping into the hollow above his collarbone. It did not look frightening or brutal. Instead, there was a unique, cold beauty to it.
His black hair was completely soaked and spread across the bedsheets with sweat. Layer after layer of bedding had been saturated through. Sweat had leached some of the warm color from his honey-toned skin, making the porcelain quality of his bone structure even more striking.
Only Ling He could somehow make the miserable appearance of someone who had endured torture look this moving. Yet beneath the calm, peaceful expression, what truly shocked and hurt to see was the resilience and fierceness so completely at odds with that surface.
Yan Xiaodao strode over and bent down to look at him. He wanted to pick him up but did not even know where he could safely touch him. Ling He’s gaze was exhausted and icy. There was not even anger left to see. Enduring the pain had worn him out. Yan met his eyes once, and neither had anything to say. He turned toward Ling He’s feet, sat at the bedside, gently lifted one leg, then had no choice but to grip the bones again and force the dislocated joint back into place.
With his back turned, he heard a torn “mm” dragged from deep in Ling He’s chest, followed by one long, extended breath. Yan knew it hurt terribly.
Yan Xiaodao genuinely was not skilled at this technique. Earlier, his hands had been far too rough and heavy. If the man surnamed Pei were doing this, he would have been an expert. Pei Yi, that psychotic pervert, could dismantle a person’s bones until the body was practically taken apart while leaving the flesh and skin outwardly connected, with no visible trace of what had been done. His control of force was exact. On a pain scale from one to one hundred, whatever mark you asked to experience was precisely the level he could give you. Yan Xiaodao possessed none of that finesse. One small movement of his fingers had applied far too much force. He could only hope that once the ankle was reset, there would be no permanent damage.
He reset the other ankle as well. Both beautifully structured lower legs were now swollen almost beyond recognition.
He ran upstairs and downstairs twice more, bringing ice packs, gauze, and medicinal ointment for bone and joint injuries. After the cold compress, Ling He finally received some relief from the depth of the pain. Before that, he had been nearly fainting from exhaustion.
The line of blood on Ling He’s lip had come from biting through it to suppress every cry of pain. Yan Xiaodao suddenly leaned down and, miserable, quickly kissed the bleeding mouth once, barely touching it, then pressed his lips heavily against Ling He’s sweat-drenched forehead.
Ling He no longer had the strength for another eruption or even another verbal battle. Clouds and rain moved deep in his eyes as he spat faintly bloodstained saliva between his teeth. “Yan Xiaodao, you bastard.”
“Yes. I’m a bastard.” Yan Xiaodao touched his nose to Ling He’s and quietly admitted fault.
Yan Xiaodao thought he had brought today’s suffering upon himself. He had been the one to hurt Ling He; then he was the one whose heart hurt afterward; in the end, he still had to run around applying medicine and tending Mr. Ling’s injuries. Bear Two and Third Lady, that pair of shameless attendants, crept back to the doorway and stood one on either side with tongues hanging wildly, mocking their idiotic human master. Domestic violence is fun, huh? You make a mess, then you’re the one cleaning it all up and kneeling at the bedside afterward to apologize!
Ling He forced his exhausted, unfocused gaze back into clarity and stared meaningfully into Yan’s face. “Yan Xiaodao, what happened today is private between you and me. It has nothing to do with any outsider or any dead man. Mai Yunliang was nothing. He wasn’t worth occupying my mind…. But I will never forgive you.”
“Mr. Yan, wait for it. Everything I suffered today, I’ll return to you in full someday.”
“Fine. I’ll wait.” Yan Xiaodao smoothed Ling He’s damp, disordered hair and rose without expression.
＊
The overturned furniture still had not been put upright. Yan Xiaodao moved the cracked, nearly shattered coffee table toward the doorway so somebody could carry it downstairs and sell it as scrap. Then he hauled the long sofa upright with force. A small matte ivory object finally found its opportunity when the sofa turned over: it slipped from a crack, rolled rapidly toward the wall, and traveled quite a distance before stopping.
Yan Xiaodao froze briefly. After a moment, he realized—was that what Ling He had been trying to “hide” earlier?
He picked up the tile and rubbed it repeatedly between his fingers, immediately noticing how unusually rounded its corners felt. Somebody had worn all eight edges dull. Memories flashed through his mind: Ling He lying helplessly across a gambling table, smiling seductively at him. The image remained as fresh as though it had happened yesterday.
This man had actually changed enormously over these days, little by little and almost invisibly. He was practically a different person from the one Yan first met. Yet because they had lived together from morning to night, they had overlooked countless details that should have mattered…. An immense tangle of emotions surged violently through Yan Xiaodao. He shot upright and stared at the unmoving person on the bed.
Ling He.
Can you tell me one truth?
The “feeling” that made you keep this tile all this time and secretly take it out to look at it—is it the same “feeling” I think it is?