Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The police arrived quickly.

Jiang Huaixu was the detective on duty.

He was two years older than me. Three years ago, he had come to the funeral home because of a dispute over a body, and I still remembered him. He was a man of few words with a steady gaze. In the winter, he always wore a black windbreaker with cuffs that had faded to white from washing.

He glanced at me first as he entered the Morgue.

“You’re the one who found her?”

“Yes.”

“Did you touch the body?”

My throat tightened, but I nodded. “I touched her wrist when I was verifying her identity.”

He didn’t press further, simply gesturing for the forensics team to take photos first.

The body was soon wheeled out. The medical examiner’s preliminary assessment was death by mechanical asphyxiation, with the time of death occurring no more than two hours ago. Even stranger was that she carried no identification, not even a cell phone. There was only a layer of grayish-white paper ash stuck to the soles of her shoes and a faded Red Rope wrapped around her ankle.

When the crime scene investigator cut the Red Rope off, an old auxiliary officer nearby cursed under his breath, “What bad luck.”

“Again?”

Jiang Huaixu looked up. “Again?”

The old officer frowned. “Ten years ago, in the Wanghe Five Women Disappearance Case, one of these ropes was found hanging at the door of the last victim’s house. People were saying some pretty eerie things back then-that it was a Life-Replacement Rope for the living.”

My heart constricted.

I was all too familiar with the Wanghe Five Women Disappearance Case.

Because among those who vanished that year, the person eventually pushed to the center of the public outcry wasn’t the killer-it was my sister, Shen Zhiyao.

She was eighteen. Three days after the disappearances began, she suddenly vanished. Some said she was close to those girls and had lured them out; others said she was the sixth victim, but her body had never been found.

After my mother moved us away from Wanghe Town, she didn’t mention her again for ten whole years.

It was as if this person had never existed.

Jiang Huaixu had clearly made the connection as well. He stared at the Red Rope for a few seconds before turning to me. “Is the note still here?”

I handed him the evidence bag.

Seeing those two words through the plastic, his brow furrowed instantly.

“Have you been in contact with any strangers lately? Or has anyone mentioned your sister?”

“No.” I paused. “At least, not openly.”

He nodded, his tone remaining flat. “From now on, don’t go anywhere alone. Until we get to the bottom of this case, don’t touch any items of unknown origin in the funeral home.”

I gave a word of affirmation, but my mind couldn’t settle.

Because I hadn’t told him that in the last seven seconds of that woman’s life, she had mentioned my sister.

Even more, I hadn’t told him about another detail I’d seen.

When she was crawling forward, her right index finger had clearly shoved something into the vent as she passed it.

That vent was located directly beneath Cabinet No. 6.

By the time the police finished sealing the scene, dawn was breaking.

Before Jiang Huaixu and his team left, they placed a seal on Cabinet No. 6 as well. Standing at the end of the hallway, I looked at the row of small ventilation holes at the bottom of the freezer. My heart was pounding like someone was knocking on a door inside me.

I knew I should wait.

But I knew even better that if there really was something in there, it was something a dying person had used their last breath to hide.

Some leads can’t afford to wait.