Kiss (2)

The kiss that night was obscure and bitter.

Zhao Yu turned her head, gripping Liu Huisheng’s shoulders with both hands to push her away.

Her piercing eyes turned to ice under the moonlight.

“Liu Huisheng, I have standards too,” she said.

“Mhm.”

Liu Huisheng froze for a moment.

A flash of bitterness brushed past her lips, and she tilted her chin up slightly—an image that overlapped perfectly with the defiant woman in Zhao Yu’s memory.

“That night… who did you mistake me for?”

Clouds surged in front of the moon, rolling like ocean waves into shapes of wind-swept remnants and dragons roaring from the abyss.

Burst after burst, layer after layer, they shrieked as they swallowed the moon whole.

Only then did the wind and clouds finally settle.

They parted on bad terms.

Love probably has no need for dignity.

It is leaning alone against a twisted old locust tree, casting oneself into the dust, and breathlessly begging for a scrap of response from the other person.

But she was Liu Huisheng.

The name “Liu Huisheng” was like a pendant carved from the finest, most lustrous Hetian jade.

She was enshrined on a high platform filled with snow lotuses, looking down at the common people from a cold snowy peak, accepting their love and reverence.

No one imagined that she herself could also love.

Her love was born proud.

Like a flower blooming at the highest point of a cold, snowy night—beautiful, lonely, and aloof, yet solitary.

The one who pushed her onto that high platform was Zhao Yu.

The one who abandoned her on that high platform was also Zhao Yu.

But Zhao Yu, do you know? My pride can only support one proactive kiss.

**********************************************

The “Kindergarten Arson Case” was solved, and the sub-bureau finally breathed a sigh of relief.

All that remained was to organize the relevant evidence and submit it to the prosecution for public charges.

Zhao Yu was the same as ever.

Her medium-length hair was habitually tied back; she was always either in her police uniform or a crisp shirt.

Her eyes were bright and spirited, with lashes so thick they made people wonder if she was wearing eyeliner.

Yet, she disliked talking and disliked smiling, always keeping a stiff face that kept people a thousand miles away.

Liu Huisheng, however, smiled at everyone.

Although she had explained the concept of professional fake smiles and her colleagues knew she wasn’t necessarily happy from the heart, beautiful things are pleasant to look at when they smile, so everyone enjoyed seeing it.

One smiling, one stiff; one gentle, one cold.

It seemed as if nothing had changed.

Yet no one noticed that the night they parted on bad terms had erected a high wall in both their hearts.

At the station, they spoke neither of feelings nor of love, tacitly pretending as if nothing had happened.

“Everyone, gather in Meeting Room 3 in ten minutes. The Deputy Chief is holding a commendation meeting with our team.”

Because of the meeting, everyone wore their police uniforms.

Since Liu Huisheng’s position was as a criminal investigation consultant and not on the official staff, she wore a black uniform instead.

Chen Doudou hurriedly looked up from her screen. “Huh? Ten minutes? I definitely won’t make it. I haven’t finished the closing statement, and the photos aren’t done yet!”

As she spoke, she frantically tapped out text for the closing report.

Liu Huisheng’s workstation was next to hers. “How do you need the photos handled? I’ll help you.”

Chen Doudou felt as if she had been granted a grand amnesty. “Sister Sheng, you’re so kind! The photos will be done as long as you promise to let me be your apprentice.”

“Then I’m going to the meeting.”

“Wait, wait, wait! Fine, then help me with the photos. Just take the photos of the crime scene, related persons, key witnesses, and the suspect’s residence, and put them into the folder on the shared network drive.”

“Okay.”

Liu Huisheng had a good pair of eyes.

It wasn’t just that they were beautiful; they possessed a high-precision resolution comparable to a computer.

Harvard had once held a “King of Eyesight” competition where black and white pigments were mixed and arranged into a gradient of one hundred shades.

Liu Huisheng had rearranged those one hundred shades by naked eye without a single mistake.

Her talent allowed her to see micro-expressions clearly during confrontations with suspects.

Similarly, in a thumbnail-sized photo, she could accurately capture details that others ignored.

It was a photo of the area under Jiang Feng’s bed.

In a pit in the concrete floor, there were containers of fuel used for the arson, rubber-soled shoes for climbing pipes, and rubber gloves—seemingly just tools of the crime.

But on the concrete surface at the bottom of the pit, in the upper right corner, there was a row of tiny words carved with a knife.

Chen Doudou finished the statement and compressed the files into a package.

While waiting for the progress bar, she babbled:

“This case is finally over. Even though Jiang Feng was pitiful as a child, that’s no excuse for him to kill children. But honestly, he really looks so weak and honest. If he hadn’t confessed personally, I would have thought he was being used by someone else. It’s been pretty peaceful these past two days with nothing to do. This is good; it means the world is at peace. Sister Sheng, why don’t you consider again taking me as an apprentice? Sister Sheng? Sister—”

Seeing no reaction from Liu Huisheng, she turned her head, and her pupils froze—

Liu Huisheng sat blankly at her desk.

Her beautiful eyes were wide and round, her pupils trembling as if they had been struck.

Her unadorned face was deathly pale.

Her neck leaned forward and her spine was hunched; she looked exactly like a withered corpse that had its tendons and bones ripped out, leaving only an empty, shriveled skin.

Liu Huisheng, who had been glamorous from her first day at the station, had never shown such a wretched expression.

Chen Doudou had seen that expression before—back when she was at the police academy interning at a court, a prisoner who had been sentenced to death on the spot had that same look.

The expression of someone falling from the human world into hell, being torn by tens of thousands of fierce ghosts into a deeper abyss where they would never see the light of day.

“Sheng… Sister Sheng…” Chen Doudou’s heart constricted. “Sister Sheng, what’s wrong!”

Liu Huisheng’s body jolted violently.

She snapped out of it, but her soul was still in that dark abyss.

Mechanically relying on a shred of logic, she stood up and ran outside in a panicked daze:

“I’m going out for a moment.”

A cold night wind blew out the candle; the broken-winged butterfly disappeared at the doorway.

On the computer screen, the dark-toned photo lay there quietly.

Chen Doudou looked left and right, but besides the gasoline bottle, the rubber-soled shoes, and the rubber gloves, she saw nothing else.

At the other end of the office, Zhao Yu had intended to pretend she saw nothing.

But when Liu Huisheng ran out, she caught a fleeting glimpse of her—and that single glance felt like the heavens and earth were collapsing.

It didn’t make sense.

Liu Huisheng’s emotions were always stable.

Whether it was when her thesis—which she had spent half a year on—was stolen, or when she broke off ties to be worlds apart from Zhao Yu, or even when she confessed years ago about the cigarette burns on her collarbone… she was always calm and soft, like a river that would never make a sound as it flowed.

Zhao Yu clicked on the photo to enlarge it.

In the image, there were still only those three old items.

But in the reflection of the camera flash on the glass bottle, jumping out from the objects themselves, a mark in the upper right corner appeared faintly.

She scrolled the mouse wheel to zoom in, and then zoomed in again.

Those twisted marks finally connected into two complete words—

“Hi, Angel”

A buzzing rang in her ears, like an iron drill boring into a rusted steel frame—that sharp, ear-piercing, brain-penetrating sound of clashing metal.

Amidst the clashing, previous words vaguely echoed:

“There was a serial killer in America. After kidnapping people, she would skin the victims’ backs alive—the entire piece. Then she would sew each victim’s skin together to use as bedsheets, sleeping on them every day. Thirteen people died at her hands. The police gave her a nickname: Thanatos, the name of the God of Death in Greek mythology. She was finally caught because a victim managed to send a message to the police, and she was caught red-handed. That victim was saved because of it. The police also gave her a nickname…”

“They called her ‘Angel’.”

‘Liu Huisheng, how did the scar on your back get there?’