Chapter 2

Officer Zhou leaned forward, his gaze bearing down on me.

“You said you only went out for food that evening. Why bring a suitcase?”

His finger tapped the photograph repeatedly.

“Was Yu Yue’s body in there?”

The interrogation room fell utterly silent. Even the recording clerk’s pen stopped.

The figure in the footage was so blurred that I doubted it could identify me.

“The camera below your dorm shows you didn’t return until the early hours. Explain that.”

“A coincidence. I told you I went out for dinner. If I didn’t come back until morning, let’s say I took my time eating.”

None of this was direct evidence. I made no effort to answer seriously.

Officer Zhou remained patient. He took out another file.

“Your father, Li Jianguo, is professionally qualified in ice sculpture and belongs to the municipal Ice Sculpture Association.”

“Last winter, his construction team took part in the initial framework and some technical supervision for both the Ice and Snow Wonders exhibition and your university’s Snow Goddess.”

He leaned closer again.

“He had every opportunity to see the detailed plans for the goddess.”

He paused. Each word landed heavily.

“A roommate dead inside a snow sculpture. A father familiar with its internal structure and cold preservation. You, dragging a large suitcase along a key route at a sensitive time… Isn’t that rather a lot of coincidences, Li Yunyue?”

Under the harsh white lights, I met his searching eyes.

For a moment, I said nothing.

Then I smiled faintly. Almost gently.

“Yes.”

My voice was hoarse, with a strange sense of release.

“You found out after all.”

7

The day Yu Yue was found, news of her reached the national trending lists.

Articles about her were shared nearly ten thousand times.

The case became a provincial priority. As its suspect, I became the focus of everyone’s attention.

Outside the interrogation room, who knew how many senior officials were waiting for my answer?

I leaned back and settled more comfortably.

“I’ll tell you everything I know.”

Officer Zhou’s gaze sharpened. He signaled the clerk to get ready.

“Lin Muhai and I were secretly dating. Nobody knew. His father sponsors the university, and he didn’t want publicity causing trouble. I understood.”

“But he fell for someone else.”

I lowered my eyes to the cold reflection on the table.

“A girl his father sponsored. My roommate, Yu Yue.”

“You’ve investigated him. He must have said he didn’t know me. That I’d imagined the whole thing. That I was crazy.”

I forced an ugly smile.

“But on December seventh, the day of the first snow this year, we had a candlelit dinner in the rooftop private room at Desert Queen. He gave me a snowflake necklace. He said I was as pure as the first snow.”

I drew the necklace from beneath my collar.

“How can he say we had nothing to do with each other?”

Officer Zhou made a note. “Desert Queen. We’ll check.”

“Go ahead.”

I took a deep breath and continued.

“When did things change? When he began using his father’s sponsorship as an excuse to send a car for Yu Yue every week! Supposedly he was looking after a poor but outstanding student, broadening her horizons. She refused every time at first. Then what? She came back later and later, reeking of alcohol.”

“I secretly looked through Lin Muhai’s phone.”

My voice began to shake.

“It was full of videos of the two of them. In cars. In hotel rooms.”

Officer Zhou interrupted.

“So you killed her?”

Without warning, tears blurred my vision.

“Lin Muhai killed her. I only hid the body.”

8

He watched me coldly, using silence as pressure.

I exhaled, as though coming to a decision.

“All right. I’ll talk.”

“I found out about Lin Muhai and Yu Yue because someone deliberately showed me.”

I looked up, fear mingling in my gaze.

“His name is Yu Xiang. Yu Yue’s younger brother.”

“Brother?” Officer Zhou frowned and exchanged a look with the clerk. “Our investigation shows both her parents are dead. There are no siblings in her household registration.”

“I didn’t know she had a brother either.”

“He came to me and immediately started calling her shameless. Said she was a toy for the Lins, that she disgusted him and disgraced him. Then he showed me a video on his phone.”

Officer Zhou’s pen stopped. He leaned forward a little.

“What did he want?”

“To blackmail them.”

“He wanted my help using videos of his sister to get money out of Lin Muhai.”

I paused and gazed into the distance, as though remembering.

“I told Lin Muhai about it at Desert Queen, on the day of the first snow. He apologized for involving me.”

“He said he would get rid of the videos involving Yu Xiang and Yu Yue.”

I looked at the officer, my voice firm.

“He was the one who asked her out the night she disappeared! Check their chats. He must have had a way to contact her. And… and he called me that night too.”

“What did he say?”

“That Yu Yue was dead. That I should hide her body.”

Officer Zhou’s brows drew together.

“Why ask you? By your account, he didn’t want to cause you trouble.”

I shook my head.

“Rather than asking me to hide her, it was more like appeasing me. Letting me do whatever I wanted with her.”

“I put her inside the snow sculpture so everyone could see that shameless woman. I threw her bag and coat into a hole in the ice on the artificial lake.”

9

Because of my statement, the police reviewed possible ways Yu Yue and Lin Muhai had communicated. They also concentrated their search on the place where I said I had hidden her belongings.

Three days later, I was back in the interrogation room.

Officer Zhou looked at me with a complicated expression. The sharp scrutiny had given way to a weightier search for understanding.

“At first, we found no regular direct contact between Yu Yue and Lin Muhai,” he said slowly.

“But in the lake you identified, we recovered a wallet and a phone inside a waterproof bag.”

My heart missed a beat. I kept my face calm.

“It was the phone she used specifically to contact him.”

Officer Zhou continued.

“There are extensive chat records with Lin Muhai, and…”

He paused, his voice deepening.

“Videos. Not evidence of the affair you suggested earlier. In them, he controls her with extremely obscene language and threats. The footage shows she was being coerced.”

“Yu Yue was not a willing participant.”

He took a stack of photographs from the file.

“Which of these boys is Yu Xiang?”

I stared. My already trembling body became harder to control.

After a long while, he gathered the photographs and spoke gravely.

“You’ve never actually met Yu Xiang.”

He placed another photograph gently on the table.

A boy in a dress, sitting in a wheelchair.

“This is Yu Xiang.”

“He had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. He was another child sponsored by the Lins. Yu Yue’s father took him in before his death, but he was never entered in the household register.”

Officer Zhou looked up.

“We also found that over the past year, Yu Yue took out several high-value personal accident policies on her own life. Every one named Yu Xiang as beneficiary.”

The room was so quiet I could hear the faint electrical hum.

After a long silence, I asked softly, “Have you found Yu Xiang?”

He did not answer at once. He studied me carefully, suspicion and scrutiny mixed in his eyes.

10

“Li Yunyue.”

He put down his pen and leaned back, his posture less confrontational.

“I have a feeling. A very strange feeling. Have you been trying to steer our investigation all along?”

I said nothing.

“When rumors spread that Yu Yue was a rich man’s mistress, most people isolated and shunned her. You were the only one close to her. Her good friend, even. Then, a little over a month before she disappeared, you suddenly became distant.”

“Why?”

“Because of the rumors. And because… she really did start getting into Lin Muhai’s car.”

My explanation still sounded sufficient.

He watched me, then suddenly asked, “Would you like to hear his account?”

I nodded.

“He says he only knew you because you were Yu Yue’s close friend. He invited you to Desert Queen to ask you to persuade her to accept his advances.”

“He admits using improper means and coercing her. He cannot deny the videos on his phone. But he firmly denies killing her.”

“In fact, he has a complete alibi from the time she left the dorm until the footage of you dragging the suitcase. Witnesses and surveillance.”

He paused to observe me.

“He is also adamant that you were never romantically involved. That dinner was simply a request for help and an ordinary discussion.”

“You only went out together once. You knew we could find the footage there. You deliberately led us toward it so we would establish a relationship between you.”

I listened without any notable change in expression.

Only when he finished did I look up and ask a seemingly unrelated question.

“What about Yu Xiang? How does Lin Muhai explain him?”

Officer Zhou’s gaze sharpened abruptly.

“You show no curiosity or anger at the defense offered by your supposed boyfriend, Li Yunyue. The only person you keep asking about is Yu Xiang.”

11

I avoided his piercing gaze and changed the subject.

“I’m only wondering…”

“Could Lin Muhai have sent someone else? A man like him doesn’t necessarily need to do it himself. But he really did call me. Otherwise, how would I have known where Yu Yue died? Why would I have taken such a risk to hide her that way?”

I looked at him, my insistence almost desperate.

“Have you checked that call? The night she disappeared, the only outside call I received was from Lin Muhai. I remember the time clearly. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

He exhaled deeply.

“You would rather face a charge of concealing a body than let him stay out of this.”

I said nothing. My eyes reddened despite myself.

With each side telling a different story, the investigation seemed deadlocked. A crucial link in the evidence chain was still missing.

I was formally detained on suspicion of concealing a body, fabricating evidence, giving false statements, and other offenses.

A week later, handcuffed, I sat in an even worse interrogation room.

Officer Zhou looked different. Less forceful. More somber.

“The final forensic report is in.”

He gently pushed a file toward me.

“Although Yu Yue’s body was moved and kept frozen, thorough examination and pathological analysis found no fatal external injury, defensive wounds, restraint marks, internal bleeding, or ruptured organs. Toxicology was negative.”

“All findings are consistent with death from cold. Homicide has been ruled out.”

His voice was gentler than I had ever heard it.

“Based on reconstruction of the scene and the condition of the body, the inference is that she entered the wasteland herself, hypothermic and confused, and ultimately died when her core temperature fell too low.”

I looked down at the cold lettering on the report cover.

“You disguised a suicide as a sensational murder.”

His voice was quiet, but every word was clear.

“All this trouble. Involving yourself. Steering us toward Lin Muhai. It was about the insurance money she left behind, wasn’t it?”

“You wanted the money she paid for with her life to reach Yu Xiang.”

I sat in silence, as though all my strength had gone.

He rose and came to stand before me.

He did not press. He only watched me as though he could see through everything.

After a long time, he spoke again, almost whispering.

“There is something else.”

“We found Yu Xiang.”

My heart clenched. I looked up at once.

Watching my face go white, he slowly said the final words.

“He’s dead.”

13

“We obtained a warrant to search the Lin house. Many of the disadvantaged children they sponsored were victims too.”

Pain showed in his eyes. His voice was no longer quite steady.

“In concealed locations, we found a large quantity of appalling videos and photographs, and messages used to threaten the victims.”

“A girl who often stayed at Lin Shuanglong’s house witnessed everything. She led us to a remote slope behind the villa… where we found Yu Xiang.”

“The preliminary time of death is also December twenty-fifth. The same day as Yu Yue.”

He took a notebook in an evidence bag from the file and gently laid it on the table. Its cover was a little worn.

“His diary.”

He did not open the bag. He only looked at it.

Quietly, he recounted—or recited from memory—the key passages. His voice echoed through the silent room.

“December twenty-fourth. Christmas Eve. Overcast.”

“As long as I’m alive, my sister will never be free. Those two Lin animals will always use me to torment her, to force her to do those things.

“Sis, I’m sorry. Every cruel thing I said to you today was a lie. You aren’t dirty. You aren’t disgusting at all. You are the purest, most beautiful person in the world.

“When I’m gone, live well. Leave this place. Never come back.”

A long, almost suffocating silence filled the room.

He looked up at me.

My cheeks were cold. I had not realized I was crying.

“The day before it happened,” he said, a faint roughness in his voice.

“After Yu Yue was brought to the villa, she finally saw him. In front of everyone, he cursed her in the cruelest language. Called her a whore. Said she disgraced him. Told her to get out.”

He paused, looking at my shaking shoulders.

“But we both know why he did it.”

I answered, my own voice hoarse.