Criminal Investigation Notes

Starting from 10 o’clock, lightning and thunder began outside the window, signaling a restless night in the city.

Lu Junchi sat at his desk, sorting through the information he had gathered during the day.

By now, the unexpected homicide cases had finally formed a closed loop, and although they still hadn’t found the killer who had murdered Liumengying’s mother, Zhuang Xueyi, they had gradually locked in on the suspects of several other cases.

If they obtained a confession, they could make a breakthrough.

They had finally discovered the clues from those complicated cases, and although the composition of the case was different from what they had imagined, there were still several victims and a hidden killer…

This was definitely one of the major cases in Huadu in recent years.

Following the clues, they could always find the mastermind behind the scenes.

With the case coming to this point, Lu Junchi finally breathed a sigh of relief.

He turned his head to look at Su Hui sitting on the sofa, who was holding Aristotle in his arms with his fingers stroking its soft fur from time to time. Aristotle closed his eyes comfortably, and Su Hui was fully focused on the puzzle in front of him.

From this angle, Su Hui’s slender neck and fair skin looked delicate and clean, but also cold to the extreme.

Su Hui completed two puzzle pieces and coughed involuntarily. Lu Junchi immediately became nervous and turned to ask him, “Did you take your medicine?”

Su Hui replied, “Yes, I did.”

But he knew that the medicine only treated the symptoms, not the root cause. On rainy days, his chest felt even more suffocating, as if a stone was pressing down inside his body.

Lu Junchi got up and made himself a cup of instant coffee, and then heated a cup of milk to give to Su Hui. He asked him, “You seem to really like playing puzzles.”

Su Hui lowered his head and continued to look at the fragments in his hand. “I’m trying to restore the puzzle,” he replied.

Yang Yuqing had suggested that he play puzzles, and every time he completed one, he felt like his world had become a little more complete.

Lu Junchi took a closer look and noticed that the puzzle Su Hui was working on was completely different from the typical ones. Each puzzle piece was very small and similar in shape, with no picture on it, just a plain white surface.

He couldn’t help but ask curiously, “What kind of puzzle are you working on this time?”

He had seen many puzzles before, from famous paintings to cartoons, and last time he even saw a large puzzle of the moon here, but he had never seen this kind before.

The scattered puzzle pieces piled together looked like a snowfall on the table. The light shone on them, reflecting light and making Su Hui’s handsome face even whiter.

Su Hui picked up a small white piece and tried it out, fitting it together, extending the white area a little bit more.

“This is the pure white hell.”

It was the first time Lu Junchi had heard of white hell, and although it looked beautiful, it was actually an extremely cruel and difficult scene.

Just from the name, one could tell how difficult this puzzle was.

If someone had poor patience, they would be tormented by it to the point of going crazy.

Lu Junchi asked, “Why did you buy this?”

Su Hui said, “Because it’s difficult enough.”

He had also completed other puzzles, which he could solve quickly, but he wanted something more challenging, something that he could piece together slowly, like picking up his jumbled memories.

The pure white hell he bought was the 1000-piece one. Starting with this case, he worked on it a little bit every day and had been intermittently working on it for a week. Now, only one-eighth of it was left.

He would try to remember the shape of each piece in his mind, then patiently try again and again.

In Su Hui’s eyes, this complex white puzzle was like a living creature with a soul.

Lu Junchi was even more curious, “Without color or patterns, how do you distinguish them? Just by their shapes alone?”

But to him, each piece looked almost identical, with almost no difference in shape.

Su Hui said, “There are seven basic shapes in total, and each piece is different.”

Lu Junchi asked again, “What if you put a piece in the wrong place? Wouldn’t you have to start over from the beginning?”

Su Hui’s hands didn’t stop moving. “No matter how you piece it together, there’s only one puzzle piece that fits in each position. It’s unique. Maybe you don’t know where it goes before you start, but once you put it in place, you’ll know that’s where it belongs.”

He paused and added, “It’s just like the facts of those cases. There may seem to be countless possibilities, but in reality, there’s only one version of what really happened.”

Speaking of this, Su Hui recalled the case in front of him. 

While piecing together each puzzle, his mind was not idle and he was also thinking about this case. 

The entire case seemed to be coming to a close soon, but Su was a bit confused. He still had some questions that he hadn’t figured out, and there was something strange about the situation. 

He felt that everything might not be as simple as it seemed on the surface… 

After listening to Su’s words, Lu Junchi also felt a subtle feeling in his heart: “Each case only has one truth hidden within. Someone once told me something similar.” 

Su asked, “Really? Then he must be very talented.” 

Lu Junchi changed the subject and reminded him, “Your milk is getting cold.” 

Su then stopped his actions, picked up the cup, and took a sip. It was not too hot or too cold, the temperature was just right. 

Lu Junchi silently watched Su, the longer they spent time together, the better he understood Su. When he was not talking, he was like an iceberg that couldn’t be approached, giving off a sense of loneliness. 

During his daily life, he was like a cup of plain warm water, lazy, relaxed, and easygoing. 

But once he devoted himself to his work, analyzing those cases and facing those sins, his whole person would be sharp and brilliant, like a sharp sword reflecting light, making it hard for people to look away. 

At that time, he always reminded Lu Junchi of his little uncle, and that person… 

A loud thunder interrupted Lu Junchi’s memories. He turned to look at the balcony, “It seems like the rain is getting heavier.” 

Su Hui responded with an “Mm”, “The weather forecast says it will rain tonight until tomorrow morning.” He then remembered something, “Your umbrella is quite useful, where did you buy it from?” 

Last time when it rained, Lu Junchi went to pick him up and gave him a brief umbrella. Lu Junchi’s umbrella was dark blue, with a dark silver metal frame, and it was of good quality. 

He remembered that the umbrella’s umbrella top was large and sturdy, but it was very light and easy to carry. In the rain, such an umbrella gave him a wonderful sense of security. 

Lu Junchi got up to grab two umbrellas, one in his bag and the other on the table, “If you like it, I can give you this one.” 

Su Hui squinted his eyes and asked, “Do you have two identical umbrellas?” 

Lu Junchi looked at the umbrella in his hand, “Yeah, one was brought to me by my mom after she went abroad, and the other one I bought from a proxy.”

Su Hui was a little surprised and asked, “Why buy two umbrellas?”

Lu Junchi looked at the umbrella on the table and listened to the sound of rain outside the window. His gaze unconsciously softened. “I used to have a colleague who always forgot to bring an umbrella. One time, he borrowed my umbrella because he didn’t have one with him. I had planned to borrow it when the team leader returned from an outing, but I had to go out for an urgent matter in the rain. After my colleague found out, he felt very sorry. I was afraid that he would not dare to borrow my umbrella again, so I started bringing an extra umbrella each time, just in case I could lend it to him.”

Su Hui held a puzzle piece and asked, “But why didn’t your colleague remember to bring his own umbrella instead of borrowing from you?”

Lu Junchi replied, “Actually, I wanted to give it to him, but I was afraid that he would forget to bring his own umbrella even more after receiving mine.” He paused for a moment and added, “Also, this way, he would come to talk to me every time it rained, and he would return the umbrella when the weather cleared up.”

“Do you like her?” Su Hui asked absentmindedly, holding a puzzle piece tightly and frowning as he tried to fit it into place. “If you give it to me, what if our colleague needs to borrow it again…”

Lu Junchi paused and looked at him. “It’s not necessary anymore… That person is no longer here.”

“Thank you then,” Su Hui’s hand dropped down, and he managed to fit another puzzle piece.

The rain outside the window pattered on, interweaving with Lu Junchi’s pleasant voice. For a moment, Su Hui felt like the fragments of memories in his mind were slowly piecing together in Lu Junchi’s voice.

At some point in the past, he seemed to have been holding an umbrella like this, standing at the entrance of Building 3 of the Huadu City Bureau.

He remembered that it was raining heavily, and the sound of raindrops hitting the umbrella was clear. He pressed the umbrella handle low against his face, keeping a cold and cautious distance from others.

The umbrella was borrowed. He only casually asked, and the other person generously lent it to him.

He also asked, “Do you have an umbrella?”

The other person replied, “Don’t worry about me. My colleague has one here. We’ll walk together, and I have a car, so we only need to walk a short distance.”

He happily walked into the rain, surrounded by people with umbrellas and raincoats.

Without rain gear, he would have been soaked through in this heavy rain. He inadvertently looked up and saw a familiar figure running into the rain without an umbrella.

A liar…

He thought to himself at the time.

He wasn’t sure why this memory came back to him. It was so surreal that Su Hui couldn’t confirm if it was something he imagined after hearing Lu Junchi’s words or if it was a real experience.

The rain was too heavy, and he couldn’t see the person’s face clearly.

The night had never been so long. It felt like he was in the polar region, experiencing an eternal night, and the dense blackness swallowed up all the light.

The rain grew heavier and heavier. Fang Jiayue sat on a square chair, holding her knees with her hands. Her tears had dried up.

Although it was summer, she shivered from the cold. It seemed like all other feelings had disappeared, and she could only feel the cold.

This was a bus stop with an advertisement behind it, glowing with a soft white light.

It was the only place she could find that was clearly marked and sheltered from the rain.

Her phone was dead, and she wasn’t sure if anyone would come to pick her up.

The water on the road had accumulated into thick puddles. When cars passed by, they would split the water surface, making a splashing sound.

She felt like she was sitting on a lonely island, helpless and alone.

At that moment, she lifted her head and saw someone walking towards her through the rain with a black umbrella.

He was wearing a black jacket and black pants, and he wasn’t wearing glasses. His demeanor was different from when he was wearing his doctor’s coat during the day, and Fang Jiayue didn’t recognize him at first.

But in that moment, when Fang Jiayue looked up, he reached out a handsome hand to her. Under the glow of the advertisement light, he seemed to be enveloped in a faint light.

In that moment, in Fang Jiayue’s eyes, he was like a human angel, dispelling all the demons and monsters in the darkness.