Chapter 1

I had lived in that house for eight years, and the landlord had never charged me a cent in rent.

Tonight, he suddenly sent me a bill.

[Two thousand a month. One hundred ninety-two thousand for eight years. Pay in full within three days.]

[If you can’t pay, move out and leave the keys.]

I had just returned from a business trip, my suitcase still stuck in the doorway.

Thinking the old man had picked up another prank from some video, I called him back and laughed, addressing him as “the great landlord.”

But the man on the phone didn’t laugh.

“Stop trying to cozy up to me. I let you live rent-free for eight years. That’s enough.”

The smile on my face slowly froze.

Keys jingled downstairs. The call cut off at once.

I locked the door and crouched inside my room, my fingers trembling as I misdialed several times.

“I want to report a crime. I think my landlord has killed someone.”

The dispatcher asked why I thought that.

I bit down hard on my trembling lip.

“My landlord would never ask me to pay rent. Because he’s my father.”

1

“What is your father’s name? When was the last time you saw him?”

“Xu Jianping. Five days ago, before I left for training, he saw me into a taxi.”

I braced myself against the shoe cabinet and tried to get the words out clearly.

“Afterward, he messaged me on WeChat and said he’d booked a tour for seniors. But the man on the phone just now didn’t even know who I was!”

“Don’t go downstairs yet. We’ve sent officers over.”

I crouched with the phone clutched in my hand.

Through the floor, I heard a chair scrape.

Before he retired, my father had spent half his life repairing clocks and watches. His hearing was sharp, and he hated the sound of chair legs scraping across the floor, so he’d wrapped every leg in a little wool sock.

The sound came once, then again.

My palms were slick with sweat.

By the time the police arrived, no one was downstairs.

I went down to let them in, calling for Dad as I followed them.

The kitchen, the bedroom, the little shop facing the street—one room after another lit up.

The blanket on the bed was neatly folded.

There was warm water in the kettle.

Half-eaten takeout sat beside the table.

But no one answered me.

An officer surnamed Chen took charge of the questioning. I learned later that he was the captain of the criminal investigation team, called in after the unusual report came through.

“Xu Ning, did you see anyone injured, or hear anyone calling for help?”

I shook my head, then quickly looked up.

“But he really was acting strangely! My father calls me Ningning. He’s never called me by my full name!”

“We’ll look for him. But what you’ve told us so far isn’t enough to establish that a murder has occurred.”

Captain Chen half-closed his notebook.

A shout suddenly rang out from the stairwell.

“Xu Ning! What’s all this commotion?”

I turned around.

A man stood in the doorway, carrying a plastic bag. He wore a gray jacket, his temples threaded with silver, a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose.

My father’s jacket.

My father’s glasses.

Even the way he wrinkled his nose when he spoke was the same.

I took a step toward him, but the word “Dad” caught in my throat and wouldn’t come out.

Impatiently, he brushed my hand aside and went straight to the officers.

“This building belongs to me. The deed is right in the cabinet. I went out to buy a bottle of vinegar, and when I came home, the police had barged into my house. What kind of nonsense is this?”

Captain Chen asked for his name and national ID number.

The man answered at once. He even pulled his ID from his breast pocket and slapped it down on the table.

Xu Jianping.

The photo on the card and the face in front of me were almost indistinguishable.

“She says I killed someone?”

The man pointed at me and burst out laughing.

“Killed who? Her own father, because he won’t keep supporting her?”

I watched his mouth open and close.

I had looked at that face for thirty years.

When I had a fever in the middle of the night as a child, I’d been carried to the hospital on those shoulders.

But now, when he raised a hand to shove me aside, he didn’t hesitate for even a moment.

“What happened to the tour?” I asked.

“I canceled it. I’m not going.”

“Why didn’t you answer my video call?”

“My phone broke! Do I have to report everything to you?”

His voice grew louder and louder. People began peeking in from the doorway.

Captain Chen separated us and asked the man to account for his whereabouts over the past five days.

Instead, the man held up the rent bill on his phone.

“Officer, look at this. She’s thirty and still living in my house. What law says I can’t charge her a little rent?”

“Eight years living for free, and the minute I ask for money, she curses her own father dead!”

He pointed straight at me.

“Xu Ning, have you no conscience?”

2

More and more people crowded outside the door.

Auntie Wang, who ran the breakfast shop next door, stuck her head in wearing her pajamas. First, she let out a sigh of relief.

“Old Xu is right here? You gave me such a scare.”

The man immediately rubbed at the corners of his eyes.

“Her mother died young. I raised her all by myself. All these years, I couldn’t bear to let her suffer the slightest hardship, and this is the resentment I get in return.”

“I just wanted to save a little for my retirement, and she wants to send me to prison!”

Auntie Wang’s expression toward me changed.

“Ningning, your father hasn’t had an easy life. The house is his. You can’t freeload off him forever.”

“I’m not freeloading!”

The words had barely left my mouth before I realized he’d dragged me onto the wrong ground.

I took a deep breath and turned back to Captain Chen.

“I’m not arguing with him about money. This man isn’t my father. Please investigate him!”

“How can he not be? You don’t even recognize your own father now?”

A man outside the door scoffed.

“No wonder people say there’s no point raising sons or daughters these days.”

I clenched my fist, my nails digging into my palm.

Eight years earlier, after I graduated from college, I couldn’t even afford to rent a room in a shared apartment in the city.

My father had cleaned up the second floor and told me the “great landlord” had taken a liking to me and would let me pay later.

When I got a raise, I sent him money every month. Every time, he sent it right back, down to the last cent.

“Save up for a down payment. This building leaks, too, but I patched your room the best. It’d be a shame not to live there.”

He wouldn’t even turn off the light I used to find my way home when I worked late.

How could he suddenly demand that I move out in three days?

“Search the place,” the man said, spreading his arms. “She says someone died. Well, there has to be a dead person, doesn’t there?”

The police had already searched every place in the building where someone might be hidden.

Captain Chen crouched until he was level with me.

“First, list when you last saw him and what messages you received in the days since. A change in mood or the way someone addresses you can’t, on its own, prove that he’s been replaced.”

“Then check his fingerprints.” I seized on that. “Check him!”

The man froze for a moment, then abruptly sprang to his feet.

“Check them! Check them right now!”

He went to the courtyard gate, pulled it shut, and pressed his thumb to the sensor.

Beep.

The lock opened.

The machine announced clearly, “Welcome home, Xu Jianping.”

He gestured at me.

“This lock belongs to me, too. Even it recognizes me. You’re the only one who doesn’t!”

Auntie Wang frowned and shook her head.

“His ID says it’s him, and the fingerprint lock recognizes him. Ningning, you’ve gone too far.”

I stared at the lit-up screen, my throat feeling as if it were clogged with cotton.

Captain Chen called over a colleague.

“Being able to open the door doesn’t verify his identity. Take his fingerprints and compare them with the original records.”

The man’s smile faltered a little, but he still forced himself to say he would cooperate.

After his fingerprints were taken, he sat back down at the table and tore open a pair of disposable chopsticks.

“She’s made my dinner go cold.”

He poured vinegar into the takeout box, picked up a glossy green leaf with his chopsticks, and shoved it into his mouth.

My breath caught.

That slender red root, that pointed leaf mixed in with the glass noodles—

It was spinach.

“Don’t eat that!”

The words burst from me instinctively.

He jumped, his chopsticks clattering against the edge of the container.

“Do I need your approval to eat my dinner?”

As if deliberately provoking me, he picked up another big bite.

I stood there and watched him swallow.

The last time my father accidentally ate spinach, a large red rash had quickly spread behind his ears and across his neck.

I was the one who took him to the hospital that night.

But this man was perfectly fine.

I stopped looking at the door lock.

I stared at the man in front of me and asked, each word deliberate:

“Do you know my father is allergic to spinach?”