Chapter 2

I shook my head and spoke slowly.

“First, I know 803 has a connection to Tiểu Vịnh.”

“Second, he works for a government agency. He wouldn’t admit his relationship with her, because it could affect his career.”

“Third, because of his job, before I could prove my account, you were more willing to believe him.”

“It has to be him. That’s the only way it makes sense.”

The officer’s furrowed brow eased.

I quickly added:

“But if he lied, shouldn’t you investigate him first?”

“Did he explain why?”

The officer looked at me seriously.

“His instinct told him it was you.”

“You had the closest connection to the dead woman.”

“Even the security guard can confirm you sometimes went out together.”

I did not deny it.

“If you know or suspect anything, say it,” he added.

“The police aren’t fools.”

“We’ve found out more than you think.”

I still hesitated.

Had they discovered how the remains entered the apartments?

That mattered enormously.

After a moment, I asked:

“If I’m right, the people who received them were in 404, 803, 1201, 1203, and my apartment?”

He nodded, frowning more deeply.

“Why?”

“How did you know?”

I hesitated.

“Although we aren’t close, we share a secret.”

“That secret is precisely why the man in 803 lied to implicate me.”

He nodded again.

“Then tell me.”

I drew a deep breath, ready to reveal everything.

It was a shocking secret.

Without 803 trying to frame me, I would never have mentioned it.

We all belonged to the same club.

A discreet, secretive club.

If it merely offered special services, there would be little to discuss.

More importantly, it offered something called:

“The Near-Death Experience.”

The name meant exactly what it said.

Put simply, during the service, equipment could be used to bring one participant close to death, producing an unprecedented sensation of pleasure.

As a paying member, you could choose which person would be placed in that state.

Yourself.

Or the person serving you.

The officer understood.

“Now I see what you meant by sleeping with her. She worked there?”

Rather than merely answer, I asked:

“Could Tiểu Vịnh have died accidentally while serving a client?”

He frowned and spoke quietly through his Bluetooth earpiece.

“You all heard that? Ask the others.”

Then he stopped talking and thought.

I knew what he was considering.

If one of us had accidentally caused her death, what explained everything afterward?

An ordinary person might hide the body.

But this perpetrator had gone to the trouble of dismembering it and hiding the parts in separate neighbors’ homes.

Then openly taunted and threatened the police.

If her death were that simple, the later actions made no sense.

There had to be more.

Another purpose.

8

After a long time, he looked up.

“Where exactly is this club? Give me the person in charge’s contact details. I’ll have someone check.”

Opening my phone, I answered:

“This is the internet age. There’s no physical address. It all runs through a private platform. Just an app.”

I handed him my phone.

He took screenshots, presumably sending them to colleagues.

“Can you trace whoever’s behind it?” I asked cautiously. “They should be held responsible too, shouldn’t they?”

He nodded.

“That isn’t your concern. Just help me establish what happened and find the perpetrator.”

Before I could answer, he fixed his eyes on me.

“The other four all deny this club exists!”

I laughed.

Participating in that kind of thing was illegal. Who would want to admit it?

But it also gave me an opening.

“Could that be exactly what the perpetrator wanted?”

“What do you mean?” He frowned again.

I organized my thoughts.

“Someone must be responsible for Tiểu Vịnh’s death. But afterward, the club refused to clean up for him. So he made a spectacle of it to expose the club and drag everyone down together. Could that be it?”

His expression seemed to relax.

But he was no fool.

He immediately looked at me sharply.

“By your reasoning, you’re the perpetrator. The other four won’t reveal the club, or even admit their relationship with her. Only you will. They’re trying to clear themselves of murder. You keep interfering with my investigation and steering me toward this club. Correct?”

I sighed.

I had considered that he might see straight through me.

More precisely, I had deliberately let him.

In the short time since mentioning the club, I had twice tried to steer him toward investigating it.

But something else lay within that exchange.

Unconsciously, he had accepted that such a club existed.

All he had seen was an app.

There was no other evidence.

Yet he believed.

That step of my plan had succeeded.

Of course, it was only one step.

There were more.

At last, I could reveal the earlier clue about 305.

It concerned the club.

First, naturally, I had to explain:

“I’m not the perpetrator. If I were, I wouldn’t sit here talking so much.”

Then I gave him the crucial information.

“I did hide something before. There’s no need now. 305 isn’t an apartment. It’s a locker number. Locker 305, section D, at XX Bath Center.”

He tapped his phone and spoke into the earpiece.

“You heard? Go there immediately.”

Then he looked at me.

“How did you know? Why didn’t you say so earlier?”

I had my answer ready.

“I didn’t remember. I know because I talked to Tiểu Vịnh a lot. She mentioned it.”

Naturally, suspicion covered his face.

It would only intensify with time.

I was prepared.

Fortunately, he did not challenge me directly.

He lowered his head, thinking.

Or perhaps listening to a colleague through his earpiece.

Because when he looked up, he said:

“The preliminary autopsy results are in. There was a large amount of drug residue in her stomach. Apart from that, no injuries, and no sign of sexual activity before death. Do you know what that means?”

This time, I frowned.

I paused, looking bewildered.

“You mean… she killed herself?”

He nodded seriously.

“If she killed herself, there was no murderer, correct? Then who did all this? Dismembering her, putting the remains in people’s homes by some extraordinarily difficult means, taunting you, promising more killings… It couldn’t all be a joke.”

He did not answer.

He stared at me.

“That’s what I’d like to ask you.”

“How would I know? Who am I supposed to ask?”

He grew impatient and roared:

“I told you not to treat the police as fools! We’ve checked! The five people who received the remains all know each other! What are you doing?”

Now I understood.

His earpiece had delivered more than the autopsy findings.

I hadn’t expected the police to work so quickly.

Still, I feigned confusion.

“We’re neighbors. Isn’t knowing each other normal?”

“Nonsense!”

He slammed a hand on the coffee table.

“We found that all five of you attended the same high school! Old schoolmates! Good friends, aren’t you? What are you hiding?”

I kept arguing.

“A high school has so many students. It’s normal not to know everyone.”

He stared a while longer.

Gradually, he suppressed his anger.

“Even if she killed herself, whoever staged this won’t escape prison. You must know that. I can’t understand what kind of mindset produces this. Terrifying a whole complex. Wasting enormous police resources. Why?”

I shook my head hurriedly.

“I don’t know either. Getting angry at me won’t help. But perhaps I know who did it. Want to hear?”

He restrained his temper.

“Go on. But if I catch you lying again, I’ll find a way to put you inside for a few days.”

I nodded without objection.

“Tiểu Vịnh once told me she came from a terrible family…”

Her family had been extremely poor.

Her father was a lazy, greedy village thug, violent and quick-tempered.

Her mother was a rural woman with no will of her own.

Worse, she had a younger brother.

Throughout childhood, Tiểu Vịnh faced endless farmwork and housework.

School was barely possible. She dropped out in middle school.

She wanted to earn a living in a factory.

Her father wanted to sell her.

Yes.

Actually sell her.

She was fairly attractive, so he had negotiated a bride price of over a hundred thousand yuan to marry her to a single middle-aged man.

He had been married before.

His wife left because he drank and beat her.

He had lived alone since.

Her mother, as usual, had no opinion and could not protect her.

Only her five-year-old brother loved her.

What could a five-year-old do to save his sister?

She knew that marriage would destroy every hope.

She would become a machine for bearing children.

Even if beaten, she could not run home.

Her family would already have taken the money.

So she fled.

But she was too young.

What could she do?

With no other path, she met girls at society’s bottom like herself and learned to sell sex to survive.

With her earnings, she obtained new identity papers and a new household registration.

Became someone else.

She survived.

And lived far better than in the village under her parents’ oppression.

She cut off all contact with them, but kept in touch with her brother.

He was the only person who had ever loved her.

She continued selling sex, gradually moving into more exclusive circles.

Eventually, she joined that club.

Her earnings supported her brother’s education and living costs, helping him reach university.

The officer interrupted impatiently.

“You mean her brother? Do you know him? There’s no trace of him in her household records…”

I nodded.

“Of course.”

“His name is Tiểu Liễu.”

I retrieved my phone from the table, found his contact details, and handed it back.

The officer photographed the screen with his own phone, presumably sending someone to find him.

Then he looked up.

“Do you realize how many holes are appearing in your story? If you only slept with her, why do you have her brother’s contact details?”

I smiled.

“Can’t people sleep together enough times to develop feelings?”

Before he could get angry, I continued.

“If she really killed herself, doesn’t it make sense that her brother did this?”

He did not immediately follow.

“How?”

I took a deep breath and analyzed it slowly.

“Suppose everything I said is true. She’d grown accustomed to that life. Why kill herself?”

“I can think of only one reason. Her brother was in his final university year, about to graduate and support himself.”

“She wanted to leave the club, escape her painful past, and begin again.”

“But would the club let a money-maker walk away?”

“They must have threatened her. Made her feel she could never escape. That she’d spend her whole life in the mud…”

“With no way out, she chose death.”

“What would her brother think when he learned?”

The officer unconsciously supplied the answer.

“He’d make the case big enough to force us to investigate the club.”

Then doubt returned.

“No. That’s too extreme…”

“It isn’t. Imagine she’d been found dead at home. Even with a suicide note accusing some club…”

“Would you have investigated?”

He stopped.

That reaction said enough.

They would not.