“She’ll be here soon.” I told Zhang Yunhu. “You can stay and wait for her.” Zhang Yunfu nodded and said nothing else. He sat there quietly. Psychologically speaking, Zhang Yunfu didn’t fidget or do anything else, that proved a clean conscience. Furthermore, he was in a relationship with Liu Fei’er, he had no motive to do this. We waited like that for an hour before Hou Yao finally arrived. Hou Yao strode into the room like she owned the place. I took a look at Hou Yao and felt like I was transported back to my own high school days. At the time, the mainstream was the non-mainstream. You could see every color under the sun on people’s heads. One of my classmates even came with an afro, at the time, these outcasts were the shot callers. I was sucked into the fashion of the day and dyed a head of rainbow-colored hair. When my prison master father saw me, he shaved my head instantly. From then on, my status at school plummeted, no one cared to even come talk to me anymore. Seeing Hou Yao, it reminded me of my younger days.
Hou Yao had shoulder-length hair but she had colored strands of them into different colors. This was a variation of my old rainbow-colored hair. She had on smoky eyes and had that Goth look. Her clothes had one unified color scheme—black. She also had a pierced nose. “What’s up?” Hou Yao planted herself right on the couch across from us and gave us a side-eye. “I was busy too, you know? You’re the cops? You don’t look older than me. Are you the interns?”
Zhang Yunhu gasped in shock. “Hou Yao, what happened to you?”
Hou Yao cursed. “Fuck, what does it have to do with you? Let me tell you, I don’t like you anymore, do whatever or whoever you want. And you people, hurry up. My time is precious.” Looks like this Hou Yao had a fiery personality, I could imagine her drugging someone just to make him her boyfriend, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe that someone like this could come up with a cautious and flawless kidnapping. Unless of course, this whole thing was a front but Hou Yao didn’t look like a good actor to me.
“Okay. Not too long ago, you swore to make Liu Fei’er disappear forever, is that true?” I cleared my throat to ask.
“I did.” Hou Yao admitted it easily.
I nodded. “So what did you do about it?”
Hou Yao grumbled. “The hell?! I was just saying that for fun. You know? I was angry at the moment and I soon forgot about what I said. Furthermore, I have already found out the truth from a little birdie. Zhang Yunfu, it was indeed me who drugged you and then raped you. Did you call the police on me? Is this why I’m here? Stop being such a pussy.”
Zhang Yunfu looked at us and then at Hao Yao, he shook his head helplessly.
“Is she always this impertinent?” I turned to Department Head Wang. The man’s face was dark. After a long time, he sighed, “Yes, she’s always been like this. Such a headache.”
“Okay then, you can go now.” I shook my head. “If she’s the one, the whole world would have known about it already. Sorry for wasting your time.”
Hou Yao cursed and then paused to look at me. “You know what. Mr. Policeman, you are quite handsome. Care to play with me after work?”
I shook my head again and said, “But if you have any clues, I don’t mind hearing them.” Hou Yao shrugged, stood up and headed to the exit. She was about to exit when she turned back in again. “Actually, speaking of clues, I do have one.” Hou Yao leaned against the door and pointed her chin at Zhang Yunfu. She began, “Do you know who was the person who helped me drug you last time? It’s your roommate, Song Ze. I later found out, he was not just helping me for the money.”
“Song Ze?” Zhang Yunfu stood up and he said shakingly, “He has always been my best bro, there’s no way he’d do something like that.”
Hou Yao toyed with her hair. “He might be your best bro, but he also likes Liu Fei’er. Furthermore, he didn’t really lose anything by kicking you out as competition. However, when I went to find him that one time, I accidentally glossed through his diary. Let’s just say, there’s one particular entry that opened my eyes. You’ll understand when you see it yourself.” Then Hou Yao turned and walked away.
Song Ze’s diary?
“Who is this Song Ze?” I turned to ask Zhang Yunfu. The young man’s brows were locked together. “No, Song Ze would never do anything like this. I rented a place outside of campus, I was bored living alone so I asked him to be my roommate. Song Ze came from the countryside, he doesn’t have a rich family, he wasn’t able to afford the hostel accommodation fee. And I was doing it out of kindness. I didn’t think…” It was clear the shock of betrayal was heavy on Zhang Yunfu. Then again we hadn’t really understood what exactly Song Ze had done, Hou Yao didn’t go into details. I asked Zhang Yunfu, “Do you know if your roommate has the habit of keeping a diary or not? If he does, can you help us find that diary?”
Zhang Yunhu nodded. “I should be able to. My rental has 3 bedrooms and 1 living room. The diary should be hidden in his bedroom, he’d have nowhere else to hide it.” Zhang Yunfu’s rental was not far from the campus, it only took 10 minutes of driving. Zhang Yunfu opened the door and strode in. Since it was afternoon, Song Ze was in class. Zhang Yunfu didn’t say anything and pushed open the door to Song Ze’s bedroom. Standing at the door and looking in, Song Ze’s room was neat. The bed was well-made, there was no trash at all. Looks like this Song Ze took care of his room. I wondered where he’d put his diary. Thankfully, the room wasn’t that big. With the closet, bed and study table, there was already no space for anything else.
“You set up all these things for him?” I turned around to ask Zhang Yunhu.
Zhang Yunhu nodded and uttered softly, “Yes. It’s nothing much. The only worthwhile thing is the computer, we’ll sometimes play games on it. Honestly, at our hostel, other than Song Ze, the other kids are all quite well-off. They spent their free time smoking and playing mahjong, it was not an environment conducive for studying.” I shook my head. I didn’t expect to find such a saintly character in Zhang Yunhu.
Soon we found Song Ze’s diary, it was a very old and thick diary, it was hidden under his bed. From the thickness of the book, I believed Song Ze had been writing in it since high school. But we were only interested in his life after he entered university. From the diary entries, it was clear that Song Ze did have a crush on Liu Fei’er. The last entry was written a few days ago, at the time, Liu Fei’er still hadn’t been kidnapped.
The entry was as such:
‘Today in class, Liu Fei’er sat in front of me. I couldn’t believe it, the Goddess decided to sit so close to me. I wanted to have a conversation with her but I didn’t know what to say. She is still so beautiful and gorgeous. There is a fragrance about her that is very irresistible. To have a further interaction with her, I purposely dropped my pen to the floor. My Goddess is as kind as I thought. She helped me pick it up again and again. She even smiled and asked whether I was suffering from the onset of Parkinson, since I couldn’t even hold a pen firmly. Her smile, her expression, I would sacrifice my whole life to protect her. I love you, Goddess Fei’er, I will protect you forever.’
Most of the diary was filled with his interaction with the goddess, like Liu Fei’er had smiled at him in passing and so on. There were also entries where he was disappointed because he didn’t encounter his Goddess that day. The diary spoke of a hopeless love.
The other part of the diary was about his family situation back home. For example, this one, ‘Today, mother called again. She told me everything is fine at home and told me not to worry. Through the phone, I could hear her catching her breath. She must have just finished working. My parents have worked so hard to send me to this university, therefore I have to work hard to repay them. I need to make something of myself, then I will build the biggest house back home so that no one would dare look down on us anymore.
It was clear that Song Ze suffered from an inferiority complex, so much so that he didn’t even dare to speak to the girl he liked. He only dared to use small tricks to interact with her. However, Song Ze was a filial son, he cared about his parents. 2/3 of Song Ze’s coursemates were rich second-generation, which wouldn’t have been good for his inferiority complex.
That was proven when we found more than one occasion in his diary where he lambasted these rich second-generation. He berated them for wasting their lives and money simply because they could. If he had half of their resources, he would work extra hard and focus more on his studies. I sighed, the environment had slowly demented Song Ze’s mind and heart.
But these were not that shocking until one of the entries appeared. I finally understood why Hou Yao said she was shocked when she saw it because I was shocked as well. I took several deep breaths before I could calm down. Seeing this, Guan Zhenglin asked, “What is it?” I handed the diary over to her and pointed at the particular offending page. The entry wasn’t long but each of the characters was impactful and heavy.
Guan Zhenglin’s face shifted. I looked at Zhang Yunfu and then at Guan Zhenglin, I announced, “Even though Song Ze doesn’t have the means to hire the kidnappers, we need to look further into this man. This is too much. After Liu Fei’er disappeared, he stopped writing in his diary. Why is that? Is it because he knows something?”
Zhang Yunfu was made intensely curious by my announcement, he asked in a small voice, “Can, can I take a look?”
I nodded. “Of course, you are involved in it as well, but I’d advise you not to. Sometimes, the more you know, the more unhappy you’ll be. I just need to remind you of that fact.”
After hearing that, Zhang Yunfu was even more curious.
He took over the diary and moments later, his face turned green and purple. “The fuck…”
1 comment:
What?
Post a Comment