Nine o’clock that evening.

The phone suddenly began to vibrate, as if someone had pressed a fully charged small motor inside it. It twisted frantically on the low table, making the entire house seem to shake and buzz. The caller’s urgency was evident. Yet no one answered. The man who had just finished his shower was nestled on the sofa, his wet hair tips still dripping with translucent water droplets, a gray towel hanging around his neck, holding the TV remote control and flipping through channels, as if he couldn’t hear a thing.

“You check your phone eight hundred times a day, and now when a call comes, you don’t answer. You’re asking for trouble.”

The old lady couldn’t stand it anymore. Grumbling, she rolled her wheelchair over, snatched up the phone from the table, and answered: “Hello, is this Ye Meng?”

There was a brief pause on the other end, followed quickly by: “Ah, yes, it’s me. Grandma, where’s Li Juyi?”

The old lady glanced at him with sly eyes and mumbled softly: “He’s angry.”

Li Juyi immediately sprang up from the sofa, reaching across the tea table to grab the phone, saying in a deadpan voice: “Give me the phone.”

“But you didn’t want to answer it!” The old lady refused to hand over the phone, sliding her wheelchair away while selling him out to Ye Meng. “Li Juyi has been sulking with someone these past few days. Poor Ping’an is nearly driven crazy, being walked seven or eight times a day.”

Ye Meng chuckled softly on the other end: “Please give him the phone.”

Only then did the old lady pass the phone to him.

Li Juyi, expressionless, with one hand in his pocket, took the phone and walked outside. The old lady called out in surprise behind him, “You’re going outside to talk?”

This was an old-style retirement community, where nine out of ten residents were elderly. There were over twenty buildings in total, each with a security door on the ground floor. Li Juyi’s family lived on the first floor, and after entering the security door, one had to climb four or five small steps. Li Juyi sat on those small steps to talk with Ye Meng.

The sensor light on the first floor had been broken for years, leaving everything pitch black around him. Moonlight slipped through the iron bars of the security door, smooth and traceless, like neatly arranged silver carpets laid out on the ground. Li Juyi sat on the stairs, one leg resting on a step, the other arrogantly stretching across several steps to reach the ground. His tall, broad figure completely blocked the entrance to the stairwell.

“Miss me?” The woman’s voice on the phone was tinged with laughter, sounding even more pleased with herself than the peach blossoms outside.

Li Juyi harbored an inexplicable anger. He pulled back his leg, placing both feet on the steps, and said coldly, “Feeling smug, aren’t you?”

“I’m not smug. On the contrary, I think I was wrong.”

“Wrong about what?”

“Wrong about everything. Making my boy miss me so much is a mistake.”

Li Juyi thought this woman was good at sweet talk. He remained silent, pretending to stare at the cold moonlight on the ground.

Ye Meng continued to coax him in a soft voice: “How about I take some time off this weekend to come back and be with you?”

Another trap. Taking time off this weekend meant she’d go back after the weekend, and who knows when she’d return.

“Baby?”

“Don’t call me baby,” Li Juyi said with a headache. “Your grandma called me baby this morning, and I heard her call my grandma baby too. My nerves are getting confused. I can’t live up to this hereditary baby title in your family.”

Ye Meng had just finished her shower and was standing wrapped in a towel on the scale, weighing herself. She continued to tease him: “Then what would you like me to call you? Brother or husband?”

Li Juyi felt an inexplicable tingling at the back of his neck. He lowered his head and coughed, “Have you finished investigating the matter?”

Ye Meng wiped herself a couple of times, then pulled off the towel, revealing smooth, tender skin. She had a great figure, with curves in all the right places, not an inch too much or too little. Except for not being fond of going to the gym and thus lacking deliberately trained abs, everywhere else was just right—a very mature and alluring female body.

She put on a strap nightdress and sighed: “There was a small accident. The Singaporean Chinese died. The police are still investigating. It might take some more time.”

“Where did he die?” Li Juyi asked casually.

“In an abandoned car factory in Guanshan District.”

Li Juyi put his foot back on the lowest step and lowered his head, and the towel around his neck swayed slightly. He responded with an emotionless “Oh.”

“Li Juyi, do you know Tai Mingxiao?” Ye Meng suddenly asked out of nowhere.

“…No, I don’t.”

“Alright,” Ye Meng didn’t pursue it further. “How’s Grandma doing recently?”

“Did she look unwell when she grabbed the phone just now?”

“What about you? Are you well?” she asked softly.

“Did you see the message I sent?”

“I did.”

He shifted his feet and said sarcastically: “So what do you think, am I well?”

Ye Meng sat on the sofa, taking occasional sips of red wine, only now realizing: “So that song was meant for me to see?”

Li Juyi tilted his head slightly, looking at the moon outside the bars, and sneered: “Keep pretending.”

Ye Meng laughed helplessly, “Baby, be reasonable. When I’m busy with work, I do lose track of things sometimes. I’m not as smart as you, able to multitask—studying for civil service exams while going crazy missing me.”

“Did Grandma tell you that?” Li Juyi was slightly surprised.

“Yes,” Ye Meng said. “She messaged me saying you want to take the civil service exam.”

That spy.

Li Juyi lit a cigarette to stay alert, blowing smoke for a while, filling the stairwell with haze, and said: “Don’t send anything too explicit on your phone. She likes to check my chat history.”

Hearing this, Ye Meng wanted to tease him again. She couldn’t resist, as if through the electric current, she scratched his heart hard from a distance: “What counts as explicit? Would wanting to use my mouth to play swing with my brother be considered explicit? Hmm?”

“…” Li Juyi bit his cigarette, leaning his head back against the wall, his sharp and clear Adam’s apple involuntarily bobbing. His pale skin was particularly noticeable in the moonlight, and his ears were completely red. “Besides teasing and bullying me, what else can you do?”

“Didn’t you say you were going crazy missing me?” Ye Meng laughed.

Li Juyi took a final drag of his cigarette, and sat back sideways, holding the phone with one hand, while his elbow rested lazily on his thigh. Carelessly, he extinguished the cigarette butt on the ground with his toe, stubbornly saying: “I was going crazy missing the dog.”

Ye Meng’s laughter on the other end was like silver bells. “How can you be so cute?”

Almost simultaneously, they both said: “Cut it out.” “Cut it out.”

Their tone was identical. Ye Meng, as if holding a “Li Juyi User Manual,” knew him inside out and said: “I knew you would say those two words. You seem to like saying those two words whenever you’re embarrassed.”

“Hanging up.”

“Embarrassed and angry?”

“I need to use the bathroom.”

“Can you livestream it? I want to see little Juyi, it’s been a long time.”

“…Shut up!”

Ye Meng could almost imagine how red his ears must be. After having her laugh, she finally got serious and stopped teasing him: “I’ll come back this weekend. Give my regards to Grandma. I’ll hang up now. I need to go to the car factory tomorrow.”

He gave a low “Mmm.”

Ye Meng laughed, “Baby, give me a kiss.”

Li Juyi couldn’t stay alert with just one cigarette. He stood up from the ground, leaning against the wall. After several days of tension, his nerves finally relaxed, and an overwhelming fatigue washed over him. He lazily and arrogantly rubbed his eyes, snickered, and drawled, “No way.”

Wang Xingsheng’s case caused a brief but intense stir online. Due to the bizarre manner of death, plus the media’s out-of-context reporting for clicks—weaving a half-true, half-false tragic love story for the pair—netizens eagerly shared and discussed it, generating heated public attention. Only after the police arrested several rumormongers as a warning did this inexplicably hot topic gradually cool down.

The next day, Ye Meng went with Tai Mingxiao to the car factory in Guanshan District. Guanshan was on the outskirts of the city, with a racing club nearby that had been operating for years. The L&N Racing Club was about one kilometer in a straight line from the car factory. Tai Mingxiao first took her around the club, “The owner is a professional F1 racing driver whose main job is drone photography. We used to hang out here when we had nothing to do, watching them race. You know Nine Gates Ridge behind here? The mountain road there is wide with few people—a racing paradise. This area is deserted. If you have any questions, you can ask this owner. He’s brother with my car factory friend’s brother. He knows more about this area.”

“Where is the owner? What should I call him?”

“The owner’s surname is Li, called Li Chen. We all call him Brother Chen or Boss Li is fine.”

Not long after, Li Chen came in carrying a helmet. Tai Mingxiao raised his hand in greeting: “Brother Chen!”

Li Chen instinctively turned around, placed the helmet on the bar counter by the entrance, gave a couple of instructions, and then walked toward them. Ye Meng could only say that this was the first man she had seen who was as handsome as Li Juyi—mature, steady, and witty in conversation.

“Changed careers to become detectives?” Li Chen joked with them. Though not much older than them, he treated them completely like children, saying regretfully, “Very unfortunately, I wasn’t open that night.”

“What about the surveillance cameras at the entrance? Can they see vehicles coming and going nearby?” Ye Meng asked. “They must have passed by your entrance to get to the car factory.”

Li Chen looked somewhat like Li Juyi, with clear features that gave off a bit of a player vibe, but his personality was not as likable as Li Juyi’s. He was a man who knew how to handle things: “Are you a police officer? Accessing surveillance footage requires going through the judicial department, little sister.”

“If you’re not forty, don’t call me little sister,” Ye Meng said. “I just want to confirm—they took such a roundabout route to come here to commit suicide, and they used an abandoned car from the factory. That means they didn’t drive here themselves. I’m curious how they got here. At that time, public buses had stopped running. If they took a taxi, maybe we could contact the driver.”

“I understand,” Li Chen said politely, vaguely gesturing towards the entrance. “But it’s truly unfortunate that a few days ago, we had a fight here, and the surveillance camera at the entrance was broken. I’ve been abroad these past few days and haven’t opened, so I haven’t had time to fix it. It’s not that I don’t want to show you, but even if the police came, I’d give them the same answer.”

Only then did Tai Mingxiao interject: “What a coincidence?”

“Yes, sometimes things in this world are coincidentally outrageous,” Li Chen pointed his chin at Ye Meng, asking Tai Mingxiao, “Your girlfriend?”

Tai Mingxiao hurriedly shook his head, “Colleague. I’m keeping the girlfriend position open for your sister.”

“Bullshit,” Li Chen laughed, knowing how he loved to joke and never spoke the truth. “Why are you two investigating this case? Wouldn’t it be better to leave it to the police uncles?”

Tai Mingxiao said: “The deceased was our client. Our boss is now being summoned for investigation and is prohibited from leaving the country, making all the employees anxious. Ye Meng has been following this client for a long time, and she has some personal matters she wants to ask him about, so we’re just seeing if there’s anything we can help with. By the way, are the surveillance cameras at the car factory still working?”

Li Chen shook his head with his arms folded, “You’ll have to ask the Li family’s second son about that. Logically, if the cameras haven’t been removed, they should still work.”

Tai Mingxiao revealed a bitter smile, “If I could contact him, would I be asking you?”

Li Chen smiled and suggested: “Why not try his mother?”

Tai Mingxiao cowardly shrank his neck, “Try your sister. I dare not provoke that woman. Just talking to her makes me feel like global warming will never happen and glaciers will never melt.”

After leaving Li Chen’s shop, they sat in the car smoking for a while, and the topic returned to yesterday’s continuation.

“After he withdrew from the competition, the school forum criticized him more fiercely. All the doubts about him seemed to emerge overnight, thinking he had conspired with those old men to scam money. Later, when they learned his family was wealthy, they reasonably suspected that his recommendation for university admission was also bought with money. Some students whose grades had always been suppressed by him even reported to the Education Bureau, demanding a strict investigation into whether his recommendation quota was fair. But actually, those who knew him all understood that his memory had been much better than ours since childhood. We always lost when playing cards with him; he could memorize hundreds of phone numbers after just one look. Later, his memory became more and more scene-based. You could randomly name a date, place, and time, and he could accurately tell you how many people passed by the bank entrance at that moment, what each person was wearing, and the license plate number of every passing car. It was exactly like surveillance footage. We were all incredibly shocked. Gou Kai was inspired by him and started from scratch.”

Ye Meng asked: “Then what?”

“Plus, my friend himself had depression.”

“He also had depression?” Ye Meng blurted out.

Tai Mingxiao was surprised, “Who else has it?”

Ye Meng instinctively denied, “No one, just a friend of mine.”

“This disease is quite common now. He had a bit of OCD, pursuing perfection in everything—a perfectionist personality,” Tai Mingxiao didn’t take it seriously and continued. “Anyway, that period was quite difficult. His brother had just died, and his relationship with his family was very poor. He was almost completely isolated, racing every day at Nine Gates Ridge behind here.”

Wang Xingsheng’s case remained unsolved. The police maintained a high level of vigilance about the case but were struggling to find evidence, hoping to question the secretary when she woke up from the ICU. Online speculation about the truth of the incident was rampant. Some believed the secretary had tricked Wang Xingsheng into committing suicide but had a change of heart—otherwise, why could the secretary still be rescued after so much time had passed? Even if the secretary woke up, it would only be her word, making the investigation difficult.

Netizens felt this theory didn’t hold up because suicide offered no benefit to the secretary. On the contrary, all of Wang Xingsheng’s assets would go to his wife—wouldn’t that be like sewing a wedding dress for someone else?

But the secretary still hadn’t woken up, making the case increasingly mysterious. Then on Friday, Tai Mingxiao rushed into Ye Meng’s office without even setting down his briefcase. Ye Meng had rarely worn an OL suit skirt, which seemed deliberately a size too small, hugging her exquisite figure, with her seaweed-like long hair flowing gently behind her. Half-leaning against the edge of the desk, she was casually sipping coffee. Tai Mingxiao, never stingy with his appreciation of beautiful women, even in such an urgent moment, unhurriedly let out a “wow” before mysteriously telling her: “I have good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?”

“It would be great if you had two mouths,” Ye Meng took a sip of coffee and said, “The good news.”

“You suspected your mother’s case might be related to this one, right? I’ve arranged for you to meet Officer Liang tomorrow night—the officer in charge of Wang Xingsheng’s case. He said he’s willing to hear your thoughts and might look at the two cases together to see if there’s a breakthrough.”

Ye Meng frowned, putting down her coffee, “That won’t work. I need to return to Ningsui today. I have a flight at 8 PM.”

Tai Mingxiao hadn’t expected this, “You didn’t say earlier. Listen to the bad news before deciding whether to go back. Due to the huge online pressure about Wang Xingsheng’s case, the higher-ups are pushing for it to be solved by next week.”

Ye Meng looked up at him, puzzled, “Isn’t that good news?”

Tai Mingxiao raised an eyebrow, seemingly surprised by her naivety, and abruptly reminded her: “But if they can’t find any evidence or clues by next week, the lower ranks might close the case as suicide just to complete their task. Doesn’t that sound like your mother’s case?”

“…”

Ye Meng wasn’t coming back.

Li Juyi was eating, but this time he wasn’t angry. Leaning back in his chair, he responded with a mild “Oh” and added: “Then take care of yourself.”

Ye Meng felt even more guilty seeing him so understanding. Her heart melted. “What are you doing now?”

Li Juyi glanced at Fang Ya’en across from him and said: “Having dinner with your friend.”

“Fang Ya’en?” Ye Meng pretended to be surprised. “You’re hitting on my friend, you little player.”

They were eating hot pot, separated by rising steam and thick mist. He could barely see whether Fang was square or round. Li Juyi put down his chopsticks, lowered his head, scooped up a chopstick of vegetables, stuffed them in his mouth, and said lazily and annoyingly: “Yeah, we’re even having a half-and-half pot. Jealous?”

Ye Meng was genuinely jealous and said pitifully: “I envy any woman who can have dinner with my husband.”

Li Juyi laughed, put the phone on the table, turned on the speaker, leaned back lazily in his chair, dipping tripe in the pot while teasing her: “Cut it out.”

Ye Meng had 100% trust in both of them but was still curious: “How did you two end up having dinner together?”

Li Juyi coughed, “We just happened to run into each other.”

“Coughing is a sign of hiding something, Li Juyi. You’re keeping something from me.”

Not for nothing was she the owner of the “Li Juyi User Manual.”

He fished out the tripe, coughed again, lowered his head to bite into it, and continued with his player talk: “…Anyway, we just happened to meet. Besides, even if I were two-timing and riding two boats, you’d have to come back to settle accounts with me.”