Ren Jie livestreamed almost every day, but today she had posted a notice saying she was taking the day off, and the secondhand bookstore was closed too. Fans who were used to listening to her share her thoughts about books every day asked in the group chat what had happened. She was offline, so they chatted among themselves.
Chen Zheng came to Lanwanba again and saw Ren Jie hurrying back to the courtyard with a bag in her hand, looking panicked. He followed and called out just as she was about to shut the gate. “Ren Jie.”
Ren Jie spun around in alarm and instinctively hid the bag behind her back. When she saw who it was, she grew even more nervous. “O-Officer Chen.”
“What’s wrong?” Chen Zheng glanced behind her. “Is someone chasing you?”
Ren Jie quickly shook her head. “Why are you here?”
Chen Zheng stepped closer. “We went to see Du Guangbao and found something new. I came to verify it with you.”
Ren Jie lowered her head and stammered, “What… what did you find?”
Chen Zheng asked, “What about you? What are you holding?”
Ren Jie stepped backward. Chen Zheng said, “Ren Jie, I’ll ask you one more time. Do you know Lou Xiaoguo?”
Ren Jie had just opened her mouth when Chen Zheng said, “You’re an important witness. You need to be responsible for what you say.”
“I…” Ren Jie bowed her head even lower. “I…”
Chen Zheng said, “All right. I’ll tell you what we found first. You lied last time. Not only do you know Lou Xiaoguo, you went with him to his mother’s esports hotel and painted there. He used to be a customer of Time Alley. Why didn’t you admit it?”
Tears suddenly shimmered in Ren Jie’s misty eyes. She looked utterly helpless. “I… I really don’t know how to explain it.”
Chen Zheng held out a hand to her. “Then come with me to the municipal bureau. You can take your time putting it into words. Of course, if you don’t want to go, we can talk right here.”
Ren Jie stood motionless, but the hands she had hidden behind her slowly moved to the front. The bag was black, so there was no way to see what was inside. She seemed to be struggling with herself. She lifted it as if to hand it to Chen Zheng, then lowered it again.
Chen Zheng touched the bag. When she did not resist, he took it from her. A damp, earthy smell rose from inside. At first glance, it seemed to be nothing but a bag of soil. But when Chen Zheng looked more closely, he realized the soil was not the important part. What mattered were the shards of glass buried in it.
“This is…”
Ren Jie suddenly crouched down, covered her face with both hands, and began to cry without making a sound.
Municipal bureau interview room.
Ren Jie remembered that she had never been brave. Growing up with parents who earned their living through sex work, she had watched them bow and scrape to other people despite how good-looking they both were. Only when she got a little older did she understand that those people were her parents’ “patrons.”
Her parents fell ill one after the other, their symptoms terrifying, and she became a child with no one to care for her. Whenever people saw her, they hurried away with looks of disgust and fear, terrified that she might pass the deadly disease on to them.
She and her parents lived in an urban village, where people died often enough that mourning tents were usually set up for several days and nights. But after her parents died, their bodies were taken straight to the crematorium. Half an hour later, living people had become a handful of ashes. No one wanted to touch those ashes, just as no one wanted to take her in.
She did not know what to do and vaguely understood that she might end up following in her parents’ footsteps.
A woman who had once found work for her mother came looking for her. She was the only person willing to help bury Ren Jie’s parents properly, on the condition that Ren Jie sell herself to her. Ren Jie agreed without much hesitation, no longer caring how other people looked at her. She was an orphan stranded far from home. Other than relying on this well-dressed woman, she had nowhere else to turn.
But just as the woman was about to take her away, Du Guangbao appeared. He pulled Ren Jie tightly into his arms and told her he was her uncle. “Uncle’s here now. You don’t have to be afraid of anything. Uncle will take you and Mom and Dad home together.”
Ren Jie cried. She had not cried when her parents’ bodies were taken away, but now she wept in the arms of an uncle she had never met before.
Du Guangbao had a huge fight with the woman. Not only did he wrest Ren Jie back from her, he somehow managed to recover money that had been withheld from her parents as well. The woman cursed him viciously in dialect, but Du Guangbao ignored her, carried Ren Jie into the car, and grinned until his eyes disappeared. “Come on. Go home with Uncle and live a good life!”
Were the days after she returned to Nanshan City really good days? Ren Jie thought they were. At least they were better than when she and her parents had been crammed into a room like a pigeonhole. Du Guangbao had a huge courtyard, and for the first time in her life, Ren Jie had a room of her own there. Of course, she only learned later that the courtyard had belonged to her all along, left to her by her mother, and that Du Guangbao had taken possession of it in the name of raising her.
People in Lanwanba thought she should fight to get the courtyard back, but deep down Ren Jie did not care very much. She was just a little girl. Why did she need such a huge courtyard?
As she lived with Du Guangbao, Ren Jie gradually came to understand what kind of man her uncle was. He did feel some familial affection for her, but not much. His mind was always full of business and money. As long as something could make money and was not too illegal, there was very little he would refuse to do.
Du Guangbao enrolled her in an ordinary middle school. Although she loved reading, her grades were average, and the moment numbers were involved she simply could not learn them. Even her teacher sighed and told Du Guangbao, “Your niece really isn’t cut out for academics. She’s too withdrawn and afraid of dealing with people. You’d be better off finding her a job where she doesn’t have to interact with anyone.”
Du Guangbao was a boss himself. How hard could finding her work be? After Ren Jie graduated from middle school, she became a warehouse clerk at Time Alley Stationery Factory, where all she had to do was move goods around and keep records.
Du Guangbao grew busier and busier, and more and more people came and went through the courtyard. Everyone seemed to be living colorful, exciting lives, while hers remained flavorless. Even so, it was better than the life she had lived with her parents, and for that she was deeply grateful to Du Guangbao.
She once thought she would honor and care for Du Guangbao all her life, and when he grew too old to get around, she would look after him and see him off when he died. But just when she thought she could muddle through life like this, Du Guangbao suddenly pushed her under countless pairs of eyes. He wanted her to pretend to be a man, introduce Time Alley’s products in front of a camera, please the fans, and say things she would never normally be able to force out of her mouth.
She was completely stunned. Facing the camera, she could not get out a single complete sentence. Bright lights shone on her face, her mind went blank, and her complexion turned deathly pale, yet viewers scrolling through the livestream erupted in delighted comments: Wow, a beautifully broken pretty boy!
Her appearance overturned the entire balance of Time Alley’s livestream room and made the streamers Du Guangbao had paid heavily to hire fade into the background. The fans only wanted to see her, and the profit-obsessed Du Guangbao naturally had no intention of letting her go. Those days were sheer torture for Ren Jie. Almost every night she dreamed she was surrounded by thousands upon thousands of cameras, only to wake in terror and find another camera sitting by her bed.
She cried and begged Du Guangbao, telling him she truly could not face the camera anymore. Du Guangbao alternated threats with coaxing. He frightened her by saying that if she refused to obey, he would throw her out and she would get neither the courtyard nor any money, then turned around and said, “Everything Uncle has will be yours someday. Just help Uncle this once. Only when Uncle’s business gets better can we live better too!”
Ren Jie was so accustomed to yielding that obedience felt like her only option. Gradually, she learned to complete an entire livestream by herself, but after going off-camera she often vomited until she was completely spent. Du Guangbao happily counted the money coming in, and when he was in a particularly good mood, he would personally cook her a bowl of sweet soup.
She knew perfectly well that she was being emotionally manipulated. But for someone like her, what other road was there except to accept it?
Ever since leaving school, Ren Jie had rarely left Lanwanba. The name made it sound like a single street, but it was actually large enough to form an entire residential community. Every day she streamed from evening until after midnight. Afterward she could not sleep, so sometimes she read and sometimes she stared into space until dawn. She slept through the morning, and between waking and the start of her next livestream, she would walk around Lanwanba’s commercial street.
One day, a voice called out to her. Ren Jie froze. In real life, people only called her Ren Jie or Brother Jie, but this voice called, “Ika.” It was the name Du Guangbao had given her for livestreaming, a name that could sound masculine or feminine and carried a faintly foreign flavor.
She turned in surprise and saw a man shorter than she was. He stood several steps away watching her with a frown, and what showed in his eyes was… concern?
“Who are you?” Because she was not facing a camera, she forgot that as “Ika” she was supposed to use a false voice. Her features were androgynous and her clothes gender-neutral, but the moment she spoke, her voice clearly sounded like a woman’s.
The man sighed. “So you really are pretending.”
Only then did Ren Jie understand. This man was a fan from her livestream. Her secret had been exposed. She began stammering in panic, thinking she had ruined everything. If he told anyone, Du Guangbao would be furious.
But the man only said, “Do you have time? Walk with me for a while.”
Ren Jie was frightened, but she did not dare refuse. She followed him out of Lanwanba. When they passed a milk-tea shop, the man glanced at her and bought her a taro-paste milk tea. She accepted it and awkwardly thanked him. He shook his head and kept walking.
West of Lanwanba stretched a large expanse of undeveloped land. Breathing the fresh air, Ren Jie suddenly felt less afraid. The milk tea warmed her hands, and the man did not seem hostile toward her. She could not help asking again, “Who are you?”
“A fan from your livestream.” There was no smile on the man’s face. “You can call me Xiao Lou. Lou as in ‘building.’”
Ren Jie nodded nervously. “Then today you…”
“I just wanted to confirm something I suspected,” Xiao Lou said.
“W-what did you suspect?”
“That you’re a woman. And that you’re a woman being forced to livestream.”
Ren Jie jolted so hard she almost dropped the milk tea. “Now that you know, what are you going to do?”
Xiao Lou looked at her. “You think I’m going to expose you and your boss?”
She shook her head, though that was exactly what she had thought.
“I’m not interested.” Xiao Lou gave a short laugh. “I just think life is very hard for ‘Ika.’”
Ren Jie froze. Slowly, tears welled in her eyes.
She had been streaming under the name “Ika” for so long and had spent countless nights suffering and unable to sleep, but no one had ever once acknowledged how hard things were for her. When Du Guangbao saw her haggard face, he had even exclaimed to the makeup artist in delight, “Is this what you people call that broken, fragile look?”
Xiao Lou walked closer and studied her. “Why are you crying?”
Ren Jie hurriedly wiped away her tears. “I’m not. It’s not hard.”
Xiao Lou gave her a mocking little smile. “You don’t even dare admit that you’re suffering.”
She took the tissue Xiao Lou handed her, and suddenly she could no longer hold herself back. Years of pent-up misery turned into an endless stream of tears. She poured everything out to Xiao Lou, beginning with how her parents had worked in the sex trade until both of them died, then telling him how Du Guangbao had taken her courtyard and forced her to livestream.
Xiao Lou listened quietly. Only after she calmed down did he ask, “You can’t change any of this?”
Her knuckles went white. “I don’t dare.”
After another moment, Xiao Lou said, “You’re a terrible actor. Do you really think nobody knows you’re a woman pretending to be a man?”
Ren Jie stared at him in shock. “It isn’t only you?”
“Plenty of people can tell. They just don’t expose you, because they enjoy watching you look this broken.” Xiao Lou looked up at the sky and said contemptuously, “That’s what people are like. None of them are any good.”
At the time, Ren Jie could not understand what Xiao Lou meant. She asked cautiously, “How could you tell?”
Xiao Lou did not answer directly. “I like men.”
Ren Jie opened her mouth blankly. “Huh?”
“I saw you while scrolling through videos. At first I thought I’d found exactly my type, but the longer I watched, the more something felt off, and I guessed you were a woman.” Xiao Lou gave a soft snort and looked at her meaningfully. “And one with no backbone.”
Ren Jie lowered her head in embarrassment, not knowing how to respond.
“You should go back and do your livestream.” Xiao Lou said, “Maybe you could try standing up to that uncle of yours.”
Ren Jie returned to the courtyard full of unease. The moment Du Guangbao saw how dazed she looked, he hurriedly pulled her into the livestream room and muttered, “Where did you go to end up looking like this? Hurry up and get your makeup on…”
After that, Xiao Lou and the things he had said often appeared in Ren Jie’s mind.
Stand up to Du Guangbao? How? She did not know. She had read many books and wondered whether she had developed Stockholm syndrome, but what difference did knowing make? She still did not have the courage to break free of this life.
Xiao Lou came again. This time, Ren Jie was no longer as frightened as she had been during their first meeting. Instead, he felt like an old friend. They went to a different milk-tea shop, and she bought him a drink. Xiao Lou asked, “You still haven’t found the courage to resist?”
Ren Jie sighed. “My mother’s blood runs in me. She was foolish and weak, and I’m the same. My uncle is the only family I have now.”
Xiao Lou neither agreed nor disagreed and started talking to her about painting. Only then did Ren Jie learn that he loved drawing and had first noticed her livestream because he was buying pigments and other art supplies. Slightly delighted, she said, “I guess fate really did bring us together.”
Xiao Lou’s smile turned a little cold. Ren Jie hurriedly apologized. “Sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” Xiao Lou asked.
“I…” She did not know how to explain it. Was someone like her not worthy of talking about fate? Had what she said sounded too presumptuous?
Xiao Lou left her with one sentence. “You’re really pitiful.”
Ren Jie felt dejected. In all these years she had never really thought of herself as pitiful. Her parents had died, her courtyard had been taken, and she had been turned into a puppet, but she still had food and clothes and lived better than people who could not even afford to eat. Was not knowing that she was pitiful the most pitiful thing of all? And if someone like her counted as pitiful, what about people who had it even worse?
The next time Xiao Lou appeared, he said he had taken a renovation job that involved painting walls. He had bought a large quantity of pigments from Time Alley and hoped she would come paint with him. It was the first time a friend had ever invited her anywhere. Even if he was asking her to do hard work, she was thrilled.
Du Guangbao was unhappy that she wanted a day off, but she had been streaming continuously for a long time and had been performing well lately, so he could find no reason to refuse. For the first time in ages, she took a bus into the city. Xiao Lou was waiting for her at the stop. They went together to a storefront, and Xiao Lou said it was going to become an internet café.
Ren Jie asked, “Is this your internet café?”
Xiao Lou said, “I told you, it’s a job I took.”
They painted together on the second floor, and Ren Jie was so happy that it felt like the first time she understood what relaxation was. Halfway through, an enthusiastic woman brought food up for them, apparently the owner of the future internet café. Xiao Lou chased the woman back downstairs, but she still winked at Ren Jie on her way out. Ren Jie instinctively felt that the woman must be someone Xiao Lou knew well, perhaps an older relative, but Xiao Lou insisted she was only the boss.
After returning to Lanwanba, something inside Ren Jie had changed. She looked forward to Xiao Lou coming to see her again, read even more books, and imagined that someday she might finally escape Du Guangbao’s control.
Time Alley’s business grew better and better, and Du Guangbao squeezed Ren Jie harder and harder. She wanted to talk with Xiao Lou for a while, but he stopped coming for a long time. She did not know whether something had happened to him and wanted to go to the internet café to ask the owner, but because of her indecisive nature, every possible action remained nothing more than a thought.
After livestreaming for so long, she was no longer a novice and gradually learned how fans behaved. If they could like her, of course they could like other streamers too. Some people sent gifts every day, then once the enthusiasm faded, some quietly disappeared while others turned around and attacked her. Xiao Lou was probably the same. He had lost interest in her, so he stopped appearing.
Although she felt disappointed, Ren Jie was still grateful to Xiao Lou. At least he had never loudly exposed the secret that she was a woman pretending to be a man.
Just when she thought she would never see Xiao Lou again, she actually saw him in the courtyard. More precisely, she saw someone who looked like Xiao Lou.
That night, after her livestream ended, Ren Jie suffered another bout of insomnia for the first time in a while and remained awake until five in the morning. The street was lined with businesses, and even the earliest did not open until noon. At five, the entire area was at its emptiest and quietest.
She quietly left her room and sat in the courtyard shadows, staring blankly at the moon hanging in the western sky. Then she heard a vehicle stop outside, followed by the sound of something being moved. A thief? Ren Jie held her breath in fear. Before long, something heavy dropped over the courtyard wall. One object first, then another several minutes later. She immediately hid herself deeper in the shadows until only her eyes showed.
Soon a silhouette appeared on top of the courtyard wall. Someone was climbing over it. Du Guangbao had installed shards of glass along the wall, yet someone still dared to climb across.
The person landed lightly, dragged the bags he had thrown over earlier into a corner, and approached a mountain of discarded packaging bags and boxes. Du Guangbao regularly had someone collect the recyclable waste, usually once every two weeks.
Ren Jie saw the intruder’s face and clapped a hand over her mouth in shock. It was Xiao Lou. What was he doing here?
Xiao Lou furtively shoved what he had thrown over the wall beneath the discarded packaging, covered it with a plastic sheet, looked around, then went to the gate, opened it, and left.
Ren Jie’s heart pounded almost out of her chest. She had no idea what Xiao Lou was doing.
Time crawled by, and dawn was approaching. Unable to suppress her unease any longer, Ren Jie ran to the wall, pulled away the plastic sheet, and opened the woven bag buried at the bottom. She was shaking with fear, a terrible premonition sending cold sweat down her body. A human hand suddenly appeared. Her breath caught, and she hurriedly cinched the woven bag shut again.
Her mind dissolved into chaos as she stared at the place where Xiao Lou had climbed in. Had Xiao Lou killed someone? Why? Xiao Lou was such a good person. Why would he dump bodies here? No, no. Xiao Lou would never kill anyone. Xiao Lou had only disposed of the bodies!
The more Ren Jie thought, the more frightened she became, instinctively inventing excuses for Xiao Lou. He must have had some difficulty, perhaps he had taken another job and was helping someone dispose of bodies. But why dump them here? Was he retaliating because she had pretended to be a man? No, impossible. Xiao Lou was not that kind of person. Was Xiao Lou helping her? The police would definitely investigate Du Guangbao. Du Guangbao had used many noncompliant materials to make money. Once police checked, they would discover everything, and maybe… maybe she would finally be free!
That had to be it. That had to be it. Xiao Lou thought she was too spineless, still living as a puppet after so long, and he had finally stepped in to help her.
Ren Jie kept trying to convince herself. She found a ladder and climbed up to the courtyard wall. She remembered that children used to climb in to steal stationery. Du Guangbao had installed the glass shards to stop them. One child had once cut his leg so badly it streamed blood, and after that no one dared come again. Ren Jie could not help wondering whether Xiao Lou had been cut too. If he had been…
Blood! She saw a faint smear of blood on one shard of glass. There was very little, as though it had only lightly scratched the skin.
Ren Jie read mystery novels too and had a rough idea of how police investigated cases. She immediately found a pair of pliers and snapped off the bloodstained shard. To avoid drawing attention, she broke off several other pieces as well.
By the time she finished, her clothes were soaked through and the first pale light of dawn had appeared on the horizon. She silently returned the ladder to its place and carried the shards back to her room. There was no possibility of sleep now. She stared at the glass until her head hurt.
What was she supposed to do with it? Hide it at home? No. Once the bodies were discovered, the police would definitely search the place. Throw it away? Yes. Throw it away and it would all be over.
Clunk. She dropped the shard into the trash can, but before long, as if compelled by something beyond reason, she picked it back out and muttered to herself, “Xiao Lou didn’t kill anyone. Xiao Lou didn’t kill anyone…”
She was brainwashing herself. Xiao Lou had only been forced to dispose of the bodies.
But what if Xiao Lou really had killed them? The terrifying thought would not leave her mind. She was timid and weak and had always regarded Xiao Lou as a good person who had helped and encouraged her. She was willing to keep his secret, just as Xiao Lou had never exposed the fact that she was a woman.
But if Xiao Lou was the killer, everything changed. No matter how biased she was in his favor, she could not accept him killing people.
Then this shard of glass was evidence.
Ren Jie tightly gripped the shard wrapped in cloth and hesitated until noon. Du Guangbao’s voice sounded from the courtyard, asking who had forgotten to lock the gate the night before. No one admitted it. Du Guangbao checked the surveillance cameras, discovered they had malfunctioned, cursed for a while, and after confirming nothing had been stolen, let the matter drop.
Ren Jie left with a canvas bag and went to the commercial street. She often went out in the afternoon, so no one paid attention. She bought a taro-paste milk tea and drained it in one breath as if gathering courage, then strode toward the wasteland west of Lanwanba.
With no one around, she dug a deep hole and buried the shards of glass.
Ren Jie looked at Chen Zheng through tear-filled eyes. “Xiao Lou… Lou Xiaoguo really is a murderer?”
The shards, almost indistinguishable from the dirt around them, had already been handed to the forensic team and were being tested. Chen Zheng said, “Thank you for giving us this lead.”
But Ren Jie could not stop crying. “I wronged him. He was trying to help me. If I’d just had a little more backbone…”
She could not stop thinking about it. Xiao Lou had encouraged her again and again to change, to leave Du Guangbao, but every time her cowardice had kept her from doing it. In the end Xiao Lou had been unable to keep watching and had forced a change to happen. After the bodies were discovered, her life had been turned upside down. She struggled for a while, but only after the old life broke apart could a new one begin. At last she no longer had to depend on Du Guangbao. At last she had become an independent person.
If anyone deserved her gratitude most, it was Xiao Lou. Yet she had handed evidence to the police and implicated her benefactor.
Ren Jie struck her own head, overwhelmed with pain, muttering again and again, “You coward!”