The people who knew the nickname “A’bai” and had connections with both him and Rong Wanqing, apart from me, were only that group of international students studying abroad.

“Do you still remember those people?” I asked.

“I forgot long ago.”

He seemed to be in pain from his wound and adjusted his sitting position, which made me afraid to move as well. 

“They were just a bunch of rich second-generation and officials’ second-generation kids who idled away their time doing nothing productive all day, young masters and misses from wealthy families. The only one I have any impression of was a princess from a small West Asian country—a real princess—who fled overseas with her father seeking political asylum. She studied during the day and worked part-time at a club at night, wearing leather and pissing on men’s faces.”

“…You saw it with your own eyes?”

“Yes—no! I did see it, but I don’t have that kind of fetish, baby, don’t misunderstand!”

“It’s fine even if you do. Everyone’s sexual preferences are their own freedom. I respect you…”

In a certain moment, the noise in my ears receded like a tide, and my bodily sensations were amplified, covering the intrusions from the outside world. 

A faint weariness—even what could be called a fulfilling sense of satisfaction—washed over me, like warm sunlight soaking into me. 

The freshly washed clothes hanging on the balcony swayed in the breeze, and my lost-and-found lover was embracing me, as if he had never left, as if he hadn’t aimed his gun at me at that blood-stained Halloween ball.

“Run faster, escape from me.”

He drank down the entire glass of “Devil’s Spring” in one gulp, smashed the glass on the ground, punched through the glass of the fire cabinet, pulled out the red axe from inside, and shouted at me:

“I will love you until I die.”

I pushed away his arms and stood up.

“Your judgment is that the culprit has determined you and Rong Wanqing belong to the same camp, that there’s a common interest relationship, and that the people involved in this chain also include me, so the next one who might meet with disaster is me. But there are two loopholes here. First, one of the clues we know must be superfluous, a red herring the culprit used to confuse our vision; otherwise, it’s impossible that there’s always one item among time, place, and target that doesn’t make sense or doesn’t hold up.

“Second, the people who came looking for you the day before yesterday and yesterday might not be the same group. You’d better think back carefully—has there been anyone you’ve offended recently? Previous ones count too,” I said. “After all, hatred lasts longer than love.”

“Is that so?”

He lifted his face to look at me. “Then you should just hate me—the lifelong kind.”

“Stop dreaming.”

The phone on the coffee table buzzed and vibrated. I stared at the numbers flashing on the screen and said, “You won’t have the chance to shoot me a second time.”

***

“Hello?”

I answered the phone, and on the other end was actually Rong Wanqing’s father, Rong Zheng himself.

“Come to my place, as soon as possible.”

***

Despite my strong attempts to dissuade him, Yu Baijin went like some kind of lord to the home of the target he had once unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate, and spoke freely and confidently to the man’s own father: “Hello! I see you on TV all the time!”

Rong Zheng was over fifty, with slightly graying temples, his physique still upright, but anxiety and irritation overflowed from his expression. 

The perfect image he always maintained before the media and microphones now showed several cracks. His eyes sized us up suspiciously: “And this person is?”

“I—”

Under the table, my hand viciously pinched Yu Baijin’s thigh.

“Wanqing’s classmate. We were exchange students together in Country S at the time.” I explained for him.

Rong Zheng nodded, but that suspicion still remained on his face. From his reaction, Rong Wanqing obviously hadn’t told him that the person who attacked her was this harmless-looking young man sitting before him—that foolish girl. I couldn’t help but grumble internally.

She absolutely shouldn’t have, under any circumstances, treated someone like Yu Baijin as a friend.

***

After dinner, I watched Rong Wanqing see her friends out through the villa’s main gate one by one, return to the garden, and simply clean up the dishes and chopsticks on the table under the reflection of the pool’s rippling light and colorful decorative string lights, then come upstairs to find me. 

I extinguished my cigarette—I never smoked in front of her—holding in my hand half a glass of soda that no longer had much fizz, and asked her: “That person called Abai, is he also your classmate?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. 

The wind was strong at night, and she wore a bathrobe-style loungewear. 

Like magic, she pulled out two hair rollers from her pocket, rolled up her bangs, tied her long hair into a ponytail, and shook it freely with relief.

“From the film academy. He didn’t attend classes on the same campus as us, but we wrote papers together in the library. You know, in a foreign land, compatriots easily get to know each other.”

“Oh.”

Very rarely, I was a bit distracted and licked my inexplicably dry lips.

“He doesn’t look like an ordinary person.”

“You guessed wrong.”

She smiled cunningly, her dimples barely visible at the corners of her mouth, her nose bridge wrinkling into playful fine lines, as if mocking the fact that even I could misjudge someone.

“He’s actually the most ordinary one among our group.”

Yu Baijin, a young man my age, had a decent family background but both parents were deceased. 

Every day after school, he had to go home to care for his bedridden grandfather. 

His uncles and aunts all acted as hands-off managers, unwilling to contribute even the slightest effort, only coveting the house and inheritance under the old man’s name. 

In consideration of the fact that his grandfather paid for his university education, he shouldered the responsibility alone, supporting the old man until his death.

When the funeral was held, he adamantly refused to go, saying he didn’t want to see that heartless group of relatives. 

He dragged Rong Wanqing and me along to go back to the old house to sort through the deceased’s belongings. 

It was a rainy autumn day, the entire city seemed to have caught a cold, every gust of wind was like labored breathing, feebly knocking against the fragile window frames. 

The three of us wore formal attire, uniformly black, each silently organizing the room’s furnishings and bedding without speaking.

Under the dim daylight, a dust-covered photo album slipped out from between the bed frame’s gaps. 

I picked it up and flipped through it. 

The photos inside ranged from black and white to full color, from single portraits to group photos, but not a single one contained Yu Baijin’s face.

He wasn’t a member of this family at all.

Like being pricked by a needle hidden in cotton, I looked up in shock. 

A shadow like a dark cloud covered me. 

He bent down and, without showing any emotion, pulled the photo album from my hands, then quietly winked at me.

His pupils were so deep, like a trap.

The autopsy report said the old man’s cause of death was suicide. 

His son and daughter divided up his enormous inheritance, and afterward complained that Yu Baijin was “nothing special, ‘the strongest killer in the industry.’ Couldn’t even handle a disabled old man—what, doing charity? Insisting on letting the old man live a few more months, saying there was some other use.”

Rong Wanqing didn’t know any of this.

“You’re saying you were the one who discovered that Qingqing was missing?”

Rong Zheng’s expression changed. 

He raised his hand to stop the secretary who had repeatedly entered the room to relay messages, and also called off the security personnel who were conducting routine body searches on Yu Baijin and me, asking all the unnecessary people to leave the reception room.

“Yes. The rounds nurse can testify.”

The unarmed Yu Baijin lowered his eyes to stare at the five-figure-priced antique porcelain tea set on the table, his fingertips unconsciously caressing the sharp, slender handle of the teaspoon. 

“Afterward, I was hunted down too.”

“The culprit definitely hadn’t gone far at that time…”

As a public figure, this was the first time I had seen Rong Zheng so flustered. 

“What is it now? Didn’t I tell you to turn away all visitors? I’m not seeing anyone!” 

He raised his voice at the secretary who was once again knocking on the door to request instructions.

“But sir,” the secretary struggled to restrain himself, sweat rolling down his cheeks, “Mr. Duan insists on seeing you.”

Rong Zheng’s jaw tightened.

“…Let him in.”