Chapter 5

Chapter 5

I started looking into Chen Wanhe.

It was harder than I expected.

There were only three news reports from five years ago, and their content was almost identical: Chen Wanhe, a night-shift janitor, had fallen to her death in an office building’s fire escape. The police had initially ruled out foul play. There were few comments, and after three days, the topic vanished entirely.

I had to reach out to an old classmate who used to cover social news to get my hands on some old files.

Chen Wanhe was thirty-two, divorced, and had a daughter. She wasn’t a formal employee but a night-shift janitor hired through a property management outsourcing company. She earned 4,800 yuan a month with no social security. When the accident happened, the company only provided 80,000 yuan as a “condolence payment.”

Half a month before her death, she had gone to the police station to file a statement.

The statement said she suspected someone was filming secret videos in the women’s restrooms, nursing rooms, and the janitors’ breakroom. These videos were allegedly being used to blackmail the night-shift women, forcing them to stay silent, work unpaid overtime, and even accompany men for drinks.

That statement never turned into a formal case.

The reason given was insufficient evidence.

Following the address I found, I tracked down Chen Wanhe’s mother. The old woman lived in a dilapidated residential compound on the outskirts of the city; the apartment was so small it was a struggle just to turn around. The moment she heard me mention the office building, her expression shifted. She gripped the door handle, refusing to let me in.

“It’s been five years. What are you people still asking for?” Her voice trembled. “No one helped her while she was alive. Now that she’s dead, what’s the point of asking?”

I stood at the door, speechless for a long time.

Finally, a girl of seventeen or eighteen came out and pulled me inside. She was Chen Wanhe’s daughter, Chen Xiaoyu.

She placed a worn-out file folder on the table and said, “My mom left this behind before she died. My grandma wouldn’t let me touch it before, but now I think people should at least know she didn’t just trip and fall.”

Inside the folder were attendance records, screenshots of unpaid overtime wages, and a crumpled, handwritten list. It noted several floor numbers and the names of female employees, with notes beside them like “filmed,” “blackmailed,” and “afraid to speak.”

At the very bottom, a single name was written separately.

Han Zeqian.

Chen Xiaoyu grit her teeth and said, “A week before she died, my mom told me she managed to steal that person’s phone. She said there were a lot of things on it. She said that as long as she could get that phone out, she could make it so many people wouldn’t have to be afraid at night anymore.”

“Where is the phone?”

“It was never found.” Her eyes welled up. “The police said that when my mom fell, the phone might have dropped into a gap in the building’s structure. The property management cleared the scene overnight. Nothing was left.”

I looked at that piece of paper, my palms slick with sweat.

It wasn’t that Chen Wanhe hadn’t tried to call for help.

She was just too poor, too weak, and too insignificant.

So, everyone simply accepted that her death could be summarized in a single phrase: “an accidental fall.”

Before I left, Chen Xiaoyu stopped me. “Sister, do you work in that building too?”

I nodded.

She stared at me for a few seconds before suddenly saying, “Then be careful of that security guard who always smiles so politely. My mom used to say that the person quickest to offer you a tissue is often the one who knows exactly what you’re afraid of.”