Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Pei Yuming looked at him in displeasure, then admitted, “Yes, we did have some relationship problems a while back. We argued a few times, but we’ve made up recently.”

“Why did you argue?”

“We just had different opinions.”

“Are you sure?” Cao Lei refused to let him off, hinting, “Lao Pei, since I’m asking, that means the police have found something. I suggest you don’t hide anything.”

Pei Yuming drew in a deep breath and looked at Cao Lei resentfully. Only after a long while did he say quietly, “I saw her sending ambiguous messages to someone else.”

“Who was she sending them to?”

“I don’t know.” Since it had come to this, Pei Yuming more or less gave up trying to save face. “If I’d known, we wouldn’t have argued for so long.”

“She didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

This incident could be considered the biggest crisis the two of them had faced in their twenty-year marriage. Even now, when Pei Yuming thought about it, he still felt stifled and wronged.

He believed he had been devoted to Bai Xue all these years. Back then, for her sake, he had nearly ruined his bright future. Yet she had repaid him like this. Fortunately, she had only lost her head for a moment and hadn’t made an irreversible mistake. Otherwise, they might already be divorced by now.

“Then who did you suspect?” Cao Lei pressed on, seeming unusually interested in the matter.

Pei Yuming frowned in disgust, his tone turning hostile. “What does that have to do with what happened today?”

“Answer what you’re asked!” The male officer taking notes across from him suddenly slapped the table and roared, “This is a police station, not your home. If we’re asking, then there must be a reason!”

“Hey, Xiao Gu, calm down!” Cao Lei got up and went over to soothe his colleague. “No one feels good when something like this happens. Try to understand.”

“Hmph.” The officer called Xiao Gu glared at Pei Yuming before turning his attention back to the computer.

Cao Lei came back and sat down, then explained, “This is part of our investigative procedure. In most cases, homicides arise from conflict. I also know that no man wants something like this to happen to him, but since it has happened, you need to face it bravely. Lao Pei, did you kill anyone?”

“No, I didn’t!” Pei Yuming immediately shook his head in denial.

“Then answer me.” Cao Lei looked at him sincerely. “Did you suspect anyone?”

Suspect who? No specific person came to Pei Yuming’s mind. Bai Xue taught dance at a private arts school, and most of her colleagues were women. The only two male teachers there were also attracted to men. Unless it was one of the students’ parents, but that was obviously not a circle he had access to. He couldn’t even name anyone.

After thinking it over carefully, Pei Yuming shook his head and said, “No. I don’t know.”

“What? What did you say?” The older woman in the red dress lifted her eyes and stared straight at him, frightening Pei Yuming into taking a step back. He stepped directly onto the foot of the Man in Black Sportswear.

“Oh, sorry.” Pei Yuming apologized out of reflex. But when he saw who he had stepped on, he wished he could take the words back on the spot.

Perhaps sensing Pei Yuming’s hostility, or perhaps because he had a guilty conscience, the Man in Black not only didn’t make an issue of being stepped on, but even shifted to the side, opening up a patch of space in front of him.

Pei Yuming squeezed into it without ceremony. When he lowered his head, he saw the young girl cast him a grateful look.

No matter how slow he was, Pei Yuming had finally realized it. This wasn’t some dream at all. Everything happening right now was real, and what had happened in the interrogation room should also be real. Something that couldn’t be explained by ordinary logic had genuinely happened to him.

He tried searching through the meager physics knowledge in his head.

Relativity? Lorentz transformations? Warp drives? Quantum mechanics? Gödel’s universe?

None of them seemed able to explain his current situation.

He carefully recalled the scenes from the previous two times he had returned. It seemed that each time, just as he started telling Bai Xue he was canceling the dinner, he would Flashback to the interrogation room.

Could it be that the Flashback lasted too short a time?

That was possible.

Or perhaps the topic of “canceling the dinner” was a trigger condition.

Though the thing he had encountered was bizarre, Pei Yuming’s thinking was exceptionally clear.

He thought that this time, he couldn’t call Bai Xue directly like he had the first time. If the “topic” really was the cause, he would very likely be sent back immediately.

Although he didn’t know what he could change by staying here, when he thought of what had already happened tonight, at this moment, he very much wanted to spend a little more time with Bai Xue.

He clenched his fingers hard and decided that the moment he got off the subway, he would rush back as fast as he could.

The subway station was about eight hundred meters from the residential compound where Pei Yuming lived. This time, he was lucky and actually managed to hail a taxi.

To save time, Pei Yuming paid the fare as soon as he got in. When he got out, he glanced at his watch. Sure enough, he was two minutes earlier than before.

He hurriedly took the elevator upstairs, not even knowing why he was so excited.

After he got upstairs, just as he was using his key to unlock the door, the lock gave a click and opened by itself.