Chapter 125

Chapter 125

“Ding-dong.”

Qin Song heard a crisp chime in his dream and slowly opened his eyes.

Huahua was holding a small bell. Standing by the bed, she said softly, “You’re awake?”

Qin Song rubbed his eyes. “Mm…”

Huahua said, “You were sleeping really deeply. I rang the bell three times before you woke up.”

As Qin Song reached for his phone, he asked, “How long was I asleep?”

“An hour and a half.”

Qin Song scratched his head and took a deep breath. “That felt amazing.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Qin Song said, “Comfortable from the inside out, from head to toe… Even my mood’s gotten a lot better. I even feel kind of hungry. Not hungry, exactly. More like I’m craving something. I want to eat.”

Huahua tidied the essential oil bottles on the rack as she said, “The stomach and intestines are emotional organs. When your mood improves, your appetite naturally improves too.”

That afternoon, Qin Song did not go back to the hotel for work. He asked for leave and went home.

When he took out his keys to open the door, his phone received a text message. He only glanced at it, and the keys in his hand fell to the floor.

The text was from an Unknown Number. It contained only a few words:

“Did you like that letter?”

Cold sweat began to bead on Qin Song’s forehead. He opened the door, rushed into the living room, and sank heavily onto the sofa.

He called the number back, but no matter what he tried, the call would not go through.

With no other choice, he sent a text to that number:

“You have the wrong person.”

There was no response.

Qin Song felt as if thousands upon thousands of insects were crawling through his body. He stood up and paced endlessly around the living room.

After a long while, the other party replied:

“Oh, sorry. I should have sent it to Qin Song. I accidentally sent it to Wang Hai.”

Qin Song was about to lose his mind. He cursed loudly, “Fuck,” snatched up his phone, and stabbed at the screen in a frenzy:

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He stared at that line for a long time, then deleted it character by character.

He typed again:

“What do you want?”

The other party replied instantly: “I haven’t decided yet.”

All the strength drained out of Qin Song’s body. In that moment, he truly felt like he had become a puppet on strings.

Another message came in. Qin Song glanced at it. It was a string of words.

“Qin Song 302 Iceberg Ashtray woman white woven bag Fuyuan Road Construction Site overseas Wang Hai.”

Qin Song read that string of words over and over again.

He noticed something: every word in it was specific.

The hotel was specific down to the room number. The ashtray was specific down to its shape. The woven bag was specific down to its color. The construction site was specific down to the road.

It was as if this person was telling him: I know every detail of your crime. You can’t lie. You have nowhere to run.

Yet only the second-to-last word was vague: overseas.

Qin Song felt as if this person were a wandering ghost trailing behind him, only to lose him after he arrived in Singapore.

He replied:

“Where overseas?”

The other party said, “That doesn’t stop me from putting pressure on you.”

It was the blunt truth, and Qin Song found he had no way to refute it.

Qin Song asked, “What do you want?”

Qin Song had already made up his mind. If there was really no other way, he would solve it with money. At noon, Huahua had said that when she had once been threatened, she had dealt with it using money.

But the other party said, “Right now, I don’t want anything. Later, though, who knows? I have something on you. I can make you do anything, anytime, anywhere.”
The word “leverage” snapped Qin Song back to his senses.

He had been so badly startled just now that his brain had stopped working properly, causing him to overlook one crucial question: did the other party really have evidence?

As if they could see exactly what was going through his mind, they sent over a picture. “The evidence is inside this ashtray.”

Qin Song opened it and saw the ashtray Huang Yuanrui had bought for him.

Immediately after, he received a video.

He had not even tapped it open yet, but from the thumbnail, he could already make out the layout of 302.

Qin Song’s heart nearly leaped out of his chest. Trembling, he opened the video.

The footage was shot from above. It looked like someone had installed a pinhole camera in the corner of the wall.

In the video, Huang Yuanrui was yanking Qin Song’s hair like a madwoman, then picked up an eyebrow razor from the table.

Qin Song bent down, grabbed an ashtray with his right hand, and smashed it hard against Huang Yuanrui’s forehead.

…

Qin Song hurled his phone away and started screaming in the living room like a lunatic.

Only after he had screamed himself hoarse did he pick the phone up from the floor and delete the video with shaking hands.

The other party asked patiently, “Do you believe me now?”

Qin Song: “Who the hell are you?”

The other party: “My surname is He.”

That night, Qin Song did not eat at home. He went to a quiet bar.

The essential oil massage Qin Song had gotten at Huahua’s place might as well have been for nothing. He felt as if every cell in his body was about to explode.

He ordered two different kinds of alcohol and drank while thinking back over that terrifying conversation from the afternoon.

The other party said their surname was He. The first person Qin Song thought of was He Qian.

But by the time of their divorce, He Qian had already known about Qin Song’s affair. As compensation, Qin Song had given her all his savings and the house.

Whether she had truly made peace with Qin Song in her heart or not, at the very least, she had calmly accepted that form of compensation. And the last time Qin Song saw her, she had even applied lip balm to his cracked lips.

All of that was enough to prove one thing: perhaps He Qian had once hated Qin Song, but in the end, she had let it go.

If He Qian really had evidence that he had killed someone, why would she not call the police? Why would she wait until now to threaten him?

The simplest logic was this: if it were her, there would be no need to use an unfamiliar number and then tell him, “My surname is He.”

That was as pointless as taking off your pants just to fart.

Qin Song could feel it. Whoever had sent those texts definitely was not a stranger.

They were not doing this for money or profit. They only wanted to toy with him, which meant they were filled with malice and hatred toward Qin Song.

Qin Song truly could not remember when he had offended such a petty, vicious person. Worse, this person knew his movements like the back of their hand.

There was something else he could not make sense of – the other party had said the evidence was inside the ashtray.

The ashtray was the murder weapon. That was a fact.

But the other party’s emphasis did not seem to be on the ashtray’s role as the murder weapon. They had not said, “Your fingerprints are on the ashtray,” nor had they said, “That woman’s blood is on the ashtray.”

They had said the evidence was “inside” the ashtray.

Qin Song understood that to mean there was a camera inside the ashtray.

But judging from the angle of the video, the camera had clearly been placed up high. It was more like a pinhole camera.

Even if there had been a camera on the ashtray, it should have been sitting on the table. How could it have been mounted high up on the wall?

No matter how Qin Song thought about it, he could not figure it out.