The first thing Major Crimes Unit team leader Tan Shiming said when he saw Zhou Jin was: “Have you heard about the service weapon?”

Zhou Jin nodded.

Tan Shiming said, “It’s been confirmed. It’s from the batch of service weapons that went missing five years ago in the ‘8·17 Case.'”

The colour drained from Zhou Jin’s face, little by little, until she had gone completely pale. The pitch of her voice rose with urgent, breathless excitement. “Seriously?!”

Tan Shiming rarely saw this kind of extreme emotion on Zhou Jin’s face — ashen, yet with a flame kindling in the ash.

He nodded again. “Your brother lost his life in the line of duty during that weapons transport five years ago. I know you’ve been investigating the whereabouts of those missing weapons ever since.”

On August 17th, five years ago, the Haizhou Special Police Unit had come under armed ambush by a criminal gang while transporting firearms. Two officers had been killed in the firefight, and all 24 service weapons had been lost.

Although the subsequent investigation had managed to recover 18 of them over time, the remaining weapons had never been located, and the mastermind behind the gang had remained a fugitive. The effort to crack the “8·17 Case” had been mired in stagnation from that day to this, with no progress to show for it.

Of the two officers who had died — one of them was Zhou Jin’s older brother, Zhou Chuan.

In the five years since, the missing weapons had never surfaced on the open market, their whereabouts a complete mystery. Now, because of an unidentified female body found on the riverbank of Haizhou City, these weapons had finally resurfaced.

To claim she wasn’t stirred would have been a lie. Zhou Jin was, in fact, almost feverishly elated.

But Tan Shiming’s next words hit her like a bucket of cold water straight over the head. “I think it would be best if you recused yourself from this one.”

Zhou Jin’s brow furrowed immediately. Her words came out rapid and sharp. “Why?! What reason do I have to recuse myself? My brother wasn’t a suspect — he was the one they shot dead!”

Tan Shiming snapped back, his voice firm: “Look at yourself right now — I say one word and you have ten lined up to throw back at me!”

“…”

Tan Shiming raised a hand and gave Zhou Jin a light tap on the forehead, then slowly eased his tone. “Zhou Jin. Professionally, as your team leader, it is my responsibility to ensure that every operation goes without a hitch. Personally, as your mentor — you need to listen to me.”

Zhou Jin braced her hands against the table behind her, her expression openly resistant. “I don’t understand.”

Was she supposed to become a liability in the operation, simply because she was Zhou Chuan’s younger sister?

“If you don’t understand, go outside and think until you do.” Tan Shiming’s tone brooked no argument, not even a crack. “Follow orders.”

Zhou Jin knew her mentor’s character well — more rigid than any old-school stickler, a man who said what he meant and meant what he said. She had absolutely no way of talking him around.

“Why does it have to be this way?”

All at once, the fight went out of her. She lowered her head, the rims of her eyes faintly red — yet she never let a single tear fall.

Seeing her like this, even Tan Shiming’s short temper couldn’t quite flare up. He waved a hand and let out a slow sigh. “Alright. Get out of here.”

After a long moment, Zhou Jin wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, raised her head to look at Tan Shiming, and pressed her lips together. There was a quiet resolve in her eyes.

“I won’t investigate the ‘8·17 Case.’ But investigating that girl’s death — that should be fine.”

Zhou Jin dropped those words and walked out of the conference room without once looking back.

Behind her, Tan Shiming called after her — “Hey — hey—” — and got no response.

Zhou Jin dropped into her chair, still quietly seething.

Yu Dan was beside her, rushing to finish writing up a case report. She glanced up, caught the look on Zhou Jin’s face, and rolled her chair over to hand her a cup of water.

“What happened?” she asked. “In all the time I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you this close to crying.”

Zhou Jin shook her head. “It’s nothing.”

Yu Dan said, “If it’s really nothing, then pull yourself together and go find Xiao Yang to look through the surveillance footage.”

The remaining tapes all covered the intersections along the only routes leading to the riverbank. A careful review might allow them to piece together the victim’s movements on the day in question.

Zhou Jin couldn’t sit still regardless. She steadied herself, took a breath, and said, “Alright. I’m going now.”

She was just about to head to the monitoring room when someone walked through the door. The usual controlled chaos of the Major Crimes Unit fell into a brief, odd silence. Two or three seconds passed before someone finally spoke up: “Can I help you?”

“My surname is Jiang. I’m here to see someone.”

Beside her, Yu Dan let out a soft sound of surprise and instinctively grabbed Zhou Jin’s arm, giving it a small, rapid shake. “Isn’t that — isn’t that the one—”

Zhou Jin looked up and found herself caught directly in the other person’s gaze. She stared for a moment, then blurted out before she could stop herself: “What are you doing here?”

It was Jiang Hansheng.

He appeared to have stopped home again before coming — his suit was immaculate, his bearing effortlessly refined, his features striking. Standing there in the doorway of the Major Crimes Unit, which resembled nothing so much as an overgrown thicket, Zhou Jin had the distinct sensation that his presence had somehow elevated the entire place.

He spotted Zhou Jin and walked straight toward her. His eyes moved over her face. “Why are your eyes red?”

“Me?” Zhou Jin reflexively rubbed at her eyes.

Yu Dan, standing nearby, was visibly taken aback. She looked at Jiang Hansheng, then at Zhou Jin. “You two know each other?”

Jiang Hansheng had clearly caught the question. A faint furrow appeared between his brows, and his gaze shifted to Zhou Jin with a look that quietly demanded an explanation.

Zhou Jin felt her scalp prickle. She could sense something beneath Jiang Hansheng’s wordless silence — a low, restrained anger. The kind that came from being looked past, treated as though he didn’t exist.

She wanted to explain but couldn’t find an angle to begin.

Between the case keeping her occupied and one thing and another, Zhou Jin hadn’t yet found the opportunity to tell her colleagues that she was married.

On top of that, the two of them had agreed beforehand not to hold a wedding ceremony, which meant that beyond their respective families, hardly anyone else knew.

There was reasonable explanation for it, but under the weight of Jiang Hansheng’s gaze, Zhou Jin felt unaccountably guilty.

Just as she was floundering in the chaos of her own thoughts, a voice from behind her cut through everything — Tan Shiming’s.

“Professor Jiang. So you did come after all.”

No emotion crossed Jiang Hansheng’s face. His gaze shifted away from Zhou Jin, and he looked toward Tan Shiming with composure. “Team Leader Tan.”

“Good that you came.”

Tan Shiming invited him into the conference room.

Now it was Zhou Jin’s turn to be completely lost.

Jiang Hansheng raised his hand, briefly pressed it to Zhou Jin’s shoulder, and said, “Wait for me.”

Zhou Jin: “Huh?”

Before she could ask anything, Jiang Hansheng had already stepped past her and walked straight into the conference room.

Zhou Jin stood in a fog of bewilderment until Yu Dan elbowed her, snapping her back to attention.

Yu Dan asked with undisguised curiosity, “How do you know Professor Jiang?”

“Well, it’s a long story, not really the moment for it…” Zhou Jin said, then turned it around. “You know him?”

“Of course I do.” Yu Dan gave her an odd, sideways look. “You know my cousin works in the East District Firearms Suppression Unit, right? Our team used to go head-to-head with them on case closure rates, and they won every single time. You know why?”

She tilted her chin toward the conference room and added: “Because they had that anchor to keep them steady.”

Zhou Jin: “…”

She quietly drifted toward the conference room doorway. Yu Dan crept after her to eavesdrop as well.

Inside, Tan Shiming was smiling as he introduced Jiang Hansheng to the unit’s detectives.

“Veteran members will have heard of him by now. This is Jiang Hansheng.”

A few people in the room laughed.

Back when they used to compete against the East District Firearms Suppression Unit, there had been no shortage of ribbing on both sides — the Major Crimes Unit accused the Firearms Unit of bringing in outside talent, the Firearms Unit accused the Major Crimes Unit of being sour grapes about it.

“Don’t let his age fool you. He worked at the Provincial Department’s Criminal Research Division, and is the star pupil personally trained by Director Wang Pengzhe. He’s now a professor at the University of Science and Technology. This time, he’s joining the Major Crimes Unit as an external specialist consultant to assist with the next phase of our investigation. Let’s give him a warm welcome!”

A round of enthusiastic applause followed. When it faded, Jiang Hansheng felt compelled to offer a quiet correction: “Associate professor.”

Tan Shiming blinked, mildly surprised that he was taking that so seriously, and broke into a laugh. “Full professor, associate professor — any professor who helps us close cases is a good professor.”

Another wave of laughter rippled through the room. Once Jiang Hansheng took his seat, the meeting got underway quickly, and the atmosphere gradually grew serious.

Outside the conference room, Zhou Jin: “…………”

“And my cousin actually had the nerve to say he’s just as good-looking as Jiang Hansheng.” Yu Dan clicked her tongue over her tea, shaking her head in fond exasperation. “Hey, Zhou Jin — do you know what the female colleagues over in the East District nicknamed him?”

Zhou Jin shook her head. She had no idea. She genuinely knew very little about Jiang Hansheng.

When their respective elders had arranged for the two of them to meet, all she had been told was that he taught at the University of Science and Technology.

Zhou Jin had always assumed Jiang Hansheng was simply an ordinary university lecturer. Given their respective circumstances, her focus during those early conversations had been almost entirely on explaining the particular demands of her own work.

Once he learned she was in the Major Crimes Unit, Jiang Hansheng had said he didn’t mind — and had offered her his full understanding and support.

Thinking back on it now, she realised she should have noticed long ago. The criminology texts on Jiang Hansheng’s bookshelves. The phrases visible on his laptop screen — “illegal firearms,” “steel pellet ammunition,” scattered through his analysis reports…

She had seen them. She simply hadn’t paid attention.

If Zhou Jin had ever spared even the smallest fraction of thought toward understanding who Jiang Hansheng actually was, she would have noticed long ago that his work was far from ordinary.

Zhou Jin breathed out slowly. She and Jiang Hansheng didn’t share deep emotional ties, but being so thoroughly inadequate as a wife — something she could only call guilt — was quietly, persistently needling at her.

She decided to ask. “What’s the nickname?”

Yu Dan stifled a grin.

Through the glass, the outline of Jiang Hansheng’s back was visible — and even just that was enough to make him stand out, in the way that only exceptional bearing paired with exceptional looks could.

Yu Dan’s smile turned even more mischievous: “The Nation’s Little Rose.”