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Shen Yi receives the call late enough in the evening that he’s at home, putting out seeds for the birds who like to frequent his windowsill. Seeing the name on the display, he picks up without hesitation.
“Lei-dui? You’re looking for me?”
Captain Lei’s voice comes through the phone speaker, steady and solid as a mountain. “Good evening, Xiao Shen. Are you free right now?”
Shen Yi sets the seeds aside. “Is there a case?”
“When isn’t there,” Captain Lei says, weariness tinged with a hint of mocking lightness in his voice. “This one is a little different, however, and not one I ask you to get involved with lightly. I want you to think it over well.”
Shen Yi’s eyebrows twitch upwards. He decides to meet that edge of humour with his own. “Is that why you’re calling and not Du Cheng?”
Captain Lei huffs out a laugh. “He’s a good lad, but he can be a bit enthusiastic at times. I have hope that you’ll give me some face when I ask you to think carefully before you say yes.”
“If you already know I’ll say yes, then why the detour?” Shen Yi asks, amused at the circuitousness. Why not just cut straight to the heart of the issue?
But Captain Lei’s voice turns notably serious. “Because it’s important, Xiao Shen. What I’ll ask you I would hate to ask of anyone and you’re still in school.”
Shen Yi bites back a scathing comment about how he’s only still in school because he had to switch majors and if they’re measuring by maturity, he pretty much outdoes all the other students in his classes. He doesn’t want to start an argument with Captain Lei – don’t get him wrong, he enjoys a good argument occasionally, the leave to let his tongue run wild, but he does try to pick his moments and interlocutors carefully. In truth, he only ever really lets go when he’s around Lin Min, because he knows her and she knows him and they ruin neither themselves nor their relationship by it. Captain Lei, on the other hand, not only gives the impression of being infernally hard to win an argument against, he also exudes a kind of aura that makes others not want to start one in the first place.
It doesn’t at all have anything to do with the way he decided to call Shen Yi ‘Xiao Shen’ at first meeting, with just a hint of warmth, and has never called him anything else since. It’s not a strange nickname at all, for an elder to use uninvited, but it still feels... different.
So he bites his tongue and merely says, a little short, “Tell me.”
“A diver bumped into a corpse near the marina,” Captain Lei says, brisk now. “The body has clearly been in the water for a few days, it’s quite a grisly sight.”
Ah. Yes, Shen Yi can see why Captain Lei would’ve been reluctant to get him involved. He thinks his tolerance for gruesome sights is pretty high, but it’s not something one just shoves someone else into without adequate warning.
He makes an acknowledging noise and Captain Lei continues.
“How far have you reached in your training – have you already started covering how to reconstruct portraits from disfigured faces?”
“We’ve covered the theoretical angle,” Shen Yi says, though the theoretical angle had been a bare handful of books on the subject. It’s not exactly a common topic. “And I’ve had a few practical sessions on it. Those were rather more useful. We reconstructed the face of one burn victim, one drowning victim, and one who’d been violently disfigured with a knife.”
They had been instructive seminars, for all that they’d taken place through video calls. He’s the only one in Beijiang who is studying this particular area of criminology, and there’d be no one here qualified to teach him regardless – if the police academy has any experts they’re keeping it quiet. He’s lucky that advances in technology mean that he can have a teacher in Beijing without uprooting his entire life to move to the capital.
“How did it go?”
“Full marks,” Shen Yi says, not bothering to hide a certain smugness. He’s good at what he does, after all, and doesn’t think there’s a problem with that being acknowledged.
Captain Lei sighs, but Shen Yi can hear the smile in his voice. “Of course. In that case, I presume you don’t want to think about it further? Working from photos isn’t quite the same as the impact of having the body in front of you, even in the morgue.”
Shen Yi shifts the phone in his grip so he can sling his shoulder bag over his arm. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
-
In fact, it takes him closer to twenty-five minutes because traffic is unusually bad for this time of night, even on a bike, but within half an hour he’s being led to the morgue, visitor pass once again clipped to his chest. His consultant status is, he was informed a few weeks ago, still under review – something about how it would be much easier to justify the fees once he officially has his degree and can work as a sketch artist aboveboard. (Shen Yi doesn’t quite understand the fees argument, since they are supposed to be paying him for his time right now, but has decided not to argue with the entire thing – if Captain Lei isn’t someone he wants to pick a fight with, then that goes doubly so for police bureaucracy.)
Captain Lei takes one look at him, sighs, and very obviously decides against warning Shen Yi one last time. Shen Yi appreciates it – he doesn’t enjoy being patronised, nor his decisions being second- and third-guessed – and while he can try and see it as the genuine concern it probably is, his reflex would be to bristle.
“A diving welder stumbled across the body while fixing one of the ships in the harbour,” Captain Lei tells him as the elevator drops downward. “Sheer dumb luck, the body had been weighed down with a bag of stones so it wouldn’t float – though the poor diver probably wouldn’t call it that.”
Shen Yi imagines the scene, diving in the murky water of Beijiang harbour and being confronted with a dead body out of nowhere, and a cold shiver runs down his spine. It’s the kind of scene one would expect to find in a horror movie, not real life.
The elevator dings. Shen Yi pushes away the thoughts of dark water.
“You haven’t been able to identify the body using DNA?”
Captain Lei shakes his head, holding out his arm to stall the elevator doors and let Shen Yi go out first. “The facial features and fingertips are too badly water-logged. Our genetic databank isn’t extensive enough to be likely to find a match.”
They pause outside the door to the morgue. Captain Lei’s gaze is serious, focused. “Currently our investigation is stalled. If you are able to reconstruct the face it would be a great help.”
Nodding, Shen Yi moves to enter. Stops, when Captain Lei puts a restraining hand on his shoulder. Remains still, as the touch settles. Captain Lei lets his hand linger a moment longer before pulling it back.
“No one will blame you if you can’t, Xiao Shen. I’m not even sure an expert could manage it and you’re still learning.”
This, Captain Lei would be aware if he knew Shen Yi better, is the wrong tack to take with him; Shen Yi has been hailed as a painting genius since his mid-teens – the word ‘expert’ doesn’t intimidate him.
“Let me do my work and I won’t disappoint you,” he says and turns to go before he can see Captain Lei’s no doubt exasperated expression. He duly ignores Captain Lei’s sigh when he follows.
The only person in the morgue is He Rongyue, who Shen Yi has met a couple of times and quite likes. He smiles at her, waving subtly with his fingers. Her eyes crinkle above the mask.
“Shen Yi – you’re here to try and reconstruct her face?”
Shen Yi steps closer to the body under the white sheet. Even in the cold and well-ventilated morgue, there’s a bit of a smell emanating from the corpse; it truly must be in bad condition. “Her?”
“Female, estimated to have been in her late twenties to early thirties, has recently given birth,” He Rongyue rattles off without even glancing at the clipboard which probably shows the same information. “Cause of death was likely strangulation, but the condition of the body makes it hard to be certain. She’s been in the water for about a week.”
A week, down there in the dark and dirty water. Shen Yi’s lips press together and he takes out his clipboard, complete with fresh and snowy-white page of paper, and a pencil.
“Let me start,” he says and ignores the look He Rongyue and Captain Lei trade above his head.
“Keep an eye on him,” Captain Lei instructs, to which He Rongyye says ‘en’ and Shen Yi manfully doesn’t roll his eyes. “And you, Xiao Shen – remember to take breaks when you need them.”
Shen Yi waves him off. Captain Lei sighs again but does finally leave the morgue.
He Rongyue gives him another penetrating look, but only says, “Ready?”
Nodding, Shen Yi steps a little closer to the autopsy table. He Rongyue grips the ends of the white cloth and draws it away from the face. The nausea that rises at the sight of the bloated face lying deadly stiff on the cold metal is entirely reflexive and Shen Yi forces himself to breathe through it. That’s a human face, despite the off-putting shape and colouring – a human face that’s waiting for him to uncover their identity so they can bring her justice. The remains on the table won’t care, but perhaps, somewhere, her soul will.
The first step is estimating the original face size and shape from what he can see. The degree of bloating depends on several factors, the most important of which is the time spent in the water. A week in the fairly warm saline water of Beijiang harbour, even in the slightly cooler strata at the bottom, is more than enough for putrefaction to set in and gasses to bloat tissue. Unfortunately for Shen Yi and forensic examiners everywhere, the face is also a favoured target of marine scavengers, so he needs to mentally both reduce the bloating and fill in areas that were particularly attacked.
It’s gruesome work, even in the privacy of his own mind, and he’s glad of his prior practice in the course. Without those benchmarks he likely would’ve had to experiment with different degrees of bloating regression, slowing down the investigation.
He sets pencil to paper.
The outline of a face appears on the page, a fairly round face, framed by chin-length straight hair. The bones underneath provide an intact scaffold from which he can keep building, cheek, jaw, temple.
Shen Yi is drawing in the curve of the nose when a sense of familiarity starts niggling at his consciousness. That brow, that nose, that –
The tip of his pencil halts.
It couldn’t be, surely it couldn’t be. This wasn’t.
He doesn’t notice how his face has paled, all blood rushing to coagulate in his heart like a leaden weight, nor how his grip on the pencil has gone from controlled and effortless to over-tight, knuckles turning white.
He Hong?
But perhaps his recognition, his intuition is wrong. Clenching his jaw, he keeps sketching, finishes the nose and adds in the plump curve of lip until only the eyes are left and no amount of denial can uphold the lie.
He has to keep breathing, he has to finish the sketch so the police can find the killer, he has to not lose it in a station full of strangers.
“Shen Yi?” He Rongyue speaks quietly, barely audible over the rushing in his ears. The note of concern in her voice wriggles into his stomach, sits there acidic and burning.
“Almost,” he manages to press out. It’s only sheer force of will that keeps the pencil steady enough to roughly sketch in the eyes, completing a portrait that he would have been ashamed of in any other circumstance. It will do.
He turns, muscles feeling leaden as gorge rises; reaches out to drop the clipboard on He Rongyue’s desk; makes it out the door and into the nearest toilet cubicle before the thundering pulse in his ears brings him to his knees and he’s violently sick into the toilet hole on the ground.
As he heaves, tears springing into his eyes with the sheer vertigo of his overloading system, Shen Yi’s mind is stuck on one sentence: I don’t understand.
Why are his body and mind rebelling now? He hadn’t known He Hong, not really, beyond that one moment of shared misery, reaching out to each other in spite of it. Then she had disappeared, and Shen Yi had been too busy trying to survive himself to worry about her again until everyone else was rescued.
He had spent weeks finding his way back to a Shen Yi who wasn’t wary of strangers, who didn’t habitually track everyone within a certain radius of himself, who could walk into a warehouse and not shudder. But he’d done it. He’d put himself back together again, left those two months behind – and if he didn’t quite feel like the recent graduate from before, he wasn’t so very different aside from his choice to devote part of his time to policework.
With a shaky hand, he reaches out to flush the bile. It’s one of those pedals meant for your foot, but he can’t quite fathom standing up yet.
He Rongyue’s clinical voice echoes in his thoughts. Has recently given birth.
Does her baby still live? Will they grow up without their mother, never to know what happened to her, never to know her at all?
An angry shout sits lodged in Shen Yi’s throat, nestling right next to the uncomfortable raw burn that follows throwing up. He grits his teeth to keep it quiet, to not shred his throat further, but the anger lingers because the world is unfair and it keeps shoving that fact down his throat and he can’t –
He Hong’s death isn’t his fault. All the women Shen Yi implicated when he was biding his time and waiting for a chance were rescued – all of them marked in mind if not in body, but safe and given as much support as the system can give to heal and return to their lives. They aren’t his burden to bear, not truly. There would always have been victims, with or without his involvement. He shouldn’t linger on this.
Yet his heart is still beating forcefully, there’s a fuzzy feeling in his head and somehow sketching He Hong’s face from that horrible, bloated corpse has hit him far worse than anything else.
He doesn’t understand it.
With a noise as sudden and loud as a gunshot, the door to the washroom opens. Footsteps enter.
“Shen Yi?” Du Cheng’s voice says, and Shen Yi bites down on a gasp.
He doesn’t want Du Cheng to see him like this. He doesn’t want anyone to see him like this, but especially not Du Cheng, the police officer’s police officer who appears goofy sometimes but would never lose his head like this. So he stays silent, flattens his breathing, doesn’t shift even though one of his legs is starting to cramp from kneeling on the tiles for too long. If Du Cheng looks underneath the stalls, he’ll see him. If Du Cheng waits long enough, Shen Yi will give himself away.
Du Cheng does neither of these things. He merely huffs quietly and leaves again, the door falling shut with a quiet thud that releases some of the sick tension coiling into Shen Yi’s shoulders. He staggers upright, steadying himself on the plywood wall of the cubicle with one arm. His fingers have stopped shaking, at least. That’s good. If there’s one thing he needs in life it’s steady fingers.
It takes him another handful of minutes to pull himself together enough to shuffle out of the stall, rinse his mouth while being careful not to swallow, wash his hands and face at the basin, and then wipe away stubborn droplets with some dabbing of paper towels from the dispenser. At the end of it, the mirror informs him that he looks almost normal again, merely a certain redness around the eyes and slight pallor serving as signals for the eagle-eyed. Nothing he can do about that within a short time.
His heartbeat has finally slowed down again, breathing following suit.
There’s nothing more he can do for He Hong now except to help find her killer, whether it be M or someone else from that wretched organisation.
Shen Yi straightens his shirt and exits the washroom.
He Rongyue isn’t obviously waiting for him to return, but she also hasn’t seemed to touch the drawing Shen Yi left behind in his haste. He Hong’s body is gone, back into that wall of drawers. It’s maybe a little pathetic how grateful he is for that.
“I was just going to head up to pass over my findings,” He Rongyue says, and if there’s a hint of compassion in her gaze then at least it’s subtle. She picks up the clipboard and holds it out to him.
Shen Yi takes it. “I’ll come with you.”
“Of course.” She heads for the door. “You’ll have to tell them that you know the deceased, after all.”
His lips twist, wry. He hadn’t expected her not to notice; if his reaction had been due to revulsion at the state of the body, it wouldn’t have taken so long for it to happen.
“I know her name,” he says quietly, unseeingly gazing at the lit-up elevator button. “Nothing more.”
He Rongyue looks at him. “Being named is already a gift, for bodies like these.”
He can’t argue with that. Doesn’t want to, either.
They ride the elevator up in silence.
Irritatingly, Captain Lei takes one look at them – or, more likely, at Shen Yi – and waves them into the privacy of his office, eyes sharp. Shen Yi’s expression is already as schooled as it can be, so he can only follow silently, overly aware of Du Cheng’s gaze on his back, and take the grace offered.
“What did you find?” Captain Lei asks, once the door is closed.
Shen Yi hands him the sketch and his hand is shaking. His hand is shaking and anything but unnatural flatness is suddenly out of reach. “Her name is He Hong.”
Captain Lei blinks in surprise and reaches out a beat late to take the paper. “You know her?”
“She was on the ship M brought me onto, that first night after they took me.” Shen Yi sticks his hands in his pockets to avoid fidgeting. “She was taken away separately from everyone else. I don’t know where.”
He Rongyue casts him a sidelong glance. “Was she pregnant at the time?”
“Yes.” Shen Yi isn’t very familiar with stages of pregnancy, so he gets out a fresh piece of paper and quickly sketches the dimensions of her stomach, as he’d briefly seen it when He Hong was pulled up onto the deck. He stares down at the curve, dry-eyed. “Fairly far along. She was... trying to bargain with them, to save her child.”
He Rongyue studies the sketch and nods. “She would’ve been due in two months, perhaps a month-and-a-half.” She hands over her report to Captain Lei. “Autopsy showed that she’s given birth before and was recently nursing.”
Inside his pocket, Shen Yi’s hand clenches. Captain Lei takes a moment to skim through the autopsy report, then refocuses on Shen Yi.
“Xiao Shen,” he says, tone gentling. “I’m sorry you were... surprised like this. I wouldn’t have asked you to do the reconstruction if I had known.”
“It saved you quite a bit of time.” Shen Yi shrugs, not, of course, unaffected, but he doesn’t regret having come in to help identify this body, time spent losing the entire contents of his stomach in a toilet stall and all.
“Yes, it did.” Captain Lei sighs. “And now I’ll have to ask you to recount everything you know about the victim.”
Instinctively, and instinctively sharp, Shen Yi corrects, “He Hong.”
Captain Lei pauses in setting up a recorder.
“He Hong,” Shen Yi says again, still sharp, still brittle, his voice briefly wavering.
It doesn’t matter that he knows that it’s normal police procedure, to leave some distance between themselves and victims and perpetrators by not always using their names. Also, oftentimes, names aren’t known for a while, so it probably feels natural to police officers to just use placeholders like ‘victim’ and ‘suspect’.
That distance is impossible for him right now. They know her name; it deserves to be remembered. It has to. He doesn’t want to anything to do with this if it won’t be.
The silence stretches a moment longer, and maybe Shen Yi should stop insisting on being a consultant, should stop being entangled if the police if they – but then Captain Lei smiles gently, taps the recorder, and says, “Tell me what you know about He Hong.”
Shen Yi breathes out, fingers uncurling.
He Rongyue goes to sit on one of the empty chairs, remaining a quiet presence. Shen Yi's throat is dry.
“Not much. She was in the hold of the ship, along with several other kidnapped women, when M brought me there from the abandoned yacht club.” His mind flashes back to that dark interior, the hard wood, the quiet sounds of frightened people trying to be silent. “She was the one who reached out to me, who untied my hands. She introduced herself to me, I told her my name in return. We didn’t say anything else.” He pauses, feels the rough fibre of his jeans with his fingers. He remembers the cheerful floral summer dress He Hong was wearing. Her white canvas shoes, dangling into the hold when they took her. “A few hours later two men came to drag her up onto the deck. M was there. He Hong begged them to let her go because she was pregnant. M sat down next to her. I couldn’t see what she was doing. He Hong was taken away and I didn’t see her again. One of the men asked whether M felt sorry for her. She answered that if she had been like that back then, she would’ve been dumped in the ocean long ago.”
“Hmm,” Captain Lei says, low and sympathetic. There’s a pause while, he presumably, thinks over what Shen Yi said and Shen Yi stares out the window. “Was there anything that set He Hong apart from the other kidnapping victims, aside from her pregnancy?”
Shen Yi shakes his head. “Nothing I noticed. But it was only a few hours.”
If it had been the pregnancy that had made them take He Hong away, then perhaps she had succeeded, at the last, in guaranteeing her child’s life. Perhaps.
“Thank you, Shen Yi.”
Captain Lei turns off the recorder. “I’ll have someone drive you back.”
“No need,” Shen Yi says, because he may feel a little shaky but he can certainly still ride his bike and the thought of being in a car right now is nauseating. “I want to help find her killer. She deserves that much.”
“Xiao Shen.” Captain Lei’s voice is terribly gentle. “There’s nothing else you can help with, for now. You already helped us with your expertise, take a rest now.”
He doesn’t say ‘you shouldn’t be involved in this case anyway’, though Shen Yi suspects that he’s thinking it.
“I know M better than anyone here,” he points out, mouth setting stubbornly. “I can help.”
But Captain Lei, for all his gentle demeanour, can be as unyielding as a sea wall. “Not now. We’ll call, if there’s anything we need you for. Now, let me call Du Cheng to drive you.”
“No need,” Shen Yi repeats, out of avenues to rebel except this one. “I’ll cycle back.”
Captain Lei can clearly identify a fight it would be more effective to lose, so five minutes later Shen Yi is on his bicycle.
-
With the investigation proceeding without him, Shen Yi throws himself into other work. It’s easy to keep busy – his schedule has been drowning under the weight of various responsibilities for months, after all. Right now, he has a last essay for his criminal psychology seminar due in a week, he needs to sharpen up his proposal for his master’s dissertation, he’s halfway through a painting trying out a new technique that’s turned out to be quite fiddly, and Lin Min has been haranguing him for days about a joint exhibition with an artist famous enough to give even Shen Yi pause.
The only reason, Shen Yi had to admit to himself a month ago when he’d had to ask to defer two essay deadlines while helping out on a case, that he’s been managing this schedule at all is his tendency to insomnia. That, and the focus he can bring to bear on whatever he’s doing at a given time, as long as it interests him enough. He’s efficient in doing his tasks once he gets going.
He is tired.
It’s worth it, but he’s tired.
He messages Lin Min back with a time and the address of a café that’s cheaper and more comfortable than her usual choices. Weighs essay work and painting, and settles on the latter when He Hong’s face flashes in his mind.
Three hours later he emerges from a creative haze to find that the painting has completely changed course, reds turning into blues and lines into waves.
He squints at it.
Well. It’s not bad.
-
“It would be good for you,” is the first thing Lin Min says upon turning up at his table with a mug of coffee approximately the size of her head cradled between her hands.
Shen Yi gives her a faintly ironic look. “Good for me or good for my career?”
“Can’t it be both?” In front of Shen Yi, Lin Min’s exquisite manners – so very useful for making connections at fancy dinners and shady networking events – are rarely in evidence. She takes a massive gulp of her latte, foam clinging to the bright red of her lipstick. She continues, unbothered. “You need to get out, relax a bit. Your life is just work work work and what inspiration are you going to find from that? Besides, Su An’s reputation is very good – you might actually like her.”
And you could do with more friends, she doesn’t say, but Shen Yi can read the thought from the challenge in her gaze.
She isn’t, he hates to admit, altogether wrong. He’s not so bothered about making friends – he barely has the time for the people he already knows, let alone nurturing anything new – but it’s true that the trajectory of his life is a little... flat, right now. Being convinced one’s course is right doesn’t mean that he can’t tell that there are other things he could also benefit from.
“What would I need for the joint exhibition?” he thus asks and catches Lin Min’s shoulders relax a fraction.
“No rules. Su An wants to meet you and discuss what would work best for the both of you.”
Shen Yi’s eyebrows jump. That’s unusually considerate for a senior in the industry. No wonder she has a good reputation.
“Fine,” he says and tries not to feel like he lost a fight when Lin Min grins, distinctly smug. “Give me her contact details.”
-
He messages Du Cheng about He Hong’s case every other day. Going by the subtext of his replies, Du Cheng goes from baffled to awkwardly sympathetic to guilty that there isn’t anything much he can report to Shen Yi. The police are busy questioning people at the harbour and combing security camera footage, but Du Cheng is frank in his assessment that it’s a long shot – they discovered the crime too late and those involved are clearly not amateurs at hiding their tracks.
Shen Yi stares down at the latest message.
There’s no concrete evidence that it was M – that she was even involved at all – but he can’t help the sick certainty in the pit of his stomach.
What she wants with a newborn baby, if indeed that baby still lives, Shen Yi can neither understand nor guess – but then he has never really understood M, and doesn’t really want to.
Tell me if there’s anything I can do, he types out, like he does every time his conversation with Du Cheng trudges to an end.
Du Cheng, also consistency itself, sends back a thumbs up emoji.
-
Su An turns out to be in Beijiang for a visit anyway. Shen Yi tries not to find that suspicious because what exactly is there to be suspicious about and he’d rather not turn into someone who’s paranoid beyond rational bounds.
She asks to meet by the sea. Shen Yi doesn’t have very good recent associations with the sea but sees no real reason to refuse. The meeting spot is a popular tourist destination, not far from where Cao Yunhua took him for bubble tea months ago. They certainly won’t be alone.
The woman waiting for him is slight of figure, wearing sensible trousers and a blouse in a silver colour that offsets the few streaks of grey in her hair. From her features, Shen Yi would estimate her to be in her mid to late fifties, which matches how long the art world has been talking of her.
Seeing him approach, she smiles. “Shen Yi?”
He nods. “Hello, Su-laoshi.”
Much as Lin Min complains, he does know when to be courteous and showing respect for someone like Su An, whose paintings – whether one likes her style, all disrupted delicacy, or not – make nearly anyone who sees them think, is easy.
“Just call me Su An.” The skin around her eyes crinkles further as her smile deepens. “I’m not much one for such formalities.”
It’s quite an infectious smile and he doesn’t smother the urge to return it. “As you wish.”
“Let us walk a little,” she suggests, gesturing towards the path along the sea. There’s a playful yet sardonic edge to her smile. “Young bones like yours should be nimble enough, no?”
Exhaling a noisily amused breath at her deliberately needling phrasing, Shen Yi falls into step beside her. “Enough for a walk by the sea, certainly.”
For a while they walk quietly, and Shen Yi listens to the sound of the wind and the noises it carries through the air. He’s aware of Su An’s scrutiny, but the gaze doesn’t bother him – his instincts categorise it as honest curiosity rather than those eyes that weigh, judge, covet, or threaten.
Eventually, Shen Yi says, “Why do you want to do a show with me? I’m hardly on your level.”
Su An huffs out a light breath, a gust of wind carrying away the strangely elegant derisiveness. “We both know that what the art world claims rarely corresponds to our own judgment.”
Shen Yi nods agreement but remains silent. That wasn’t yet the answer to his question.
“I have actually been following your work for a while.” Su An smiles, face tilting up to look at a gull winging past. “I have a connection to Beijiang, and when I heard there was a promising young painter at the art academy, I paid attention. Your paintings have always been... evocative. Interesting. But it was your last exhibition that made me reach out.”
His stride hitched, brief but perhaps not brief enough to escape notice.
“It is very rare for a painter as young as you to show such a sudden shift in expression; new techniques, yes, even quite different subject matter sometimes. But not such a deep change in the emotions behind the painting, as I saw them. It made me curious.”
Shen Yi doesn’t evade her gaze now, nor tries to veil the sharpness in his own. “Is it curiosity or prurience?”
“A fine line, isn’t it, for an artist.” Su An’s lips quirk. “I have no intention to monetise our encounter, nor use it to fuel my own art, beyond that which is always inevitable as part of the tapestry of our experiences. I merely thought you might be an interesting person to get to know – those near you say that you keep to yourself. The choice of whether to agree or not is yours.”
Perhaps it’s because his last year has been so busy that Shen Yi’s first thought is that she seems to have a lot of time on her hands, if she can travel halfway across the country just to meet him. Then his rational brain catches up – she’d said she has a connection to Beijiang; it’s unlikely she’s here just for him.
And he likes her honesty in this. He wouldn’t give anyone approaching him under false pretences or with the kind of sycophantic interest that makes his hair stand on end the time of day, but her seeking of a connection is so natural and matter of fact that he finds himself disinclined to reject it outright.
“I’m not uninterested in collaborating,” he says, stepping around a puddle on the path. “But painting isn’t my only concern currently and my schedule is unpredictable. It’ll be a thankless task to try to arrange deadlines with me.”
Su An shrugs. The motion dislodges one end of her emerald green shawl, immediately claimed by the wind. She doesn’t bother tugging it back in, seeming to enjoy it flapping around her body. “I’m in no hurry. For a collaboration between both of us, everyone will wait as long as they need to.”
That sounds arrogant, but Shen Yi is pretty sure that she’s correct. Su An is a household name, and while Shen Yi is nowhere near as famous, in Beijiang he too is well known.
He holds out a hand. “In that case, pleased to work with you.”
Su An’s eyes sparkle as she shakes it. “May we create something unforgettable.”
They just might, Shen Yi thinks, watching the emerald scarf flapping in the corner of his vision like a banner.
-
Shen Yi wakes from a nightmare with a gasp, sweat dotting his hairline. He breathes out into the quiet darkness of his bedroom, blanket bunching under his fingers. Roughly, he reaches up and wipes his face with the sleeve of his pyjama top.
It’s the third time this week he’s dreamed of He Hong, her dirty but alive face morphing into the horrible, bloated mess of her corpse. Her eyes always remain the same, staring at Shen Yi out of the destroyed face. His dream-self experiences the stare as accusing, but when he wakes up and his heart and breathing calm, he finds that his memory shades it plaintive, pleading, regretful instead.
He had never used real models in his painting before – in art (rather than police sketching) he isn’t interested in visages that exist but in those that emerge only in his imagination. He doesn’t want to paint He Hong’s face, either; finds the thought repulsive even.
Yet those eyes haunt him, and when he stands in front of the canvas, still in his pyjamas, hair mussed and eyes hurting from lack of sleep, the brush in his hand draws their curves onto the canvas, their light before it was extinguished, their precise shade of iris. He doesn’t add anything else of her face, even obscures parts of the eyes again with streaks of dark colour smearing through that gaze until only that stubborn, persistent light remains.
The painting that slowly takes shapes isn’t beautiful in any conventional sense, too dark, too blurred, too questioning. On impulse, he adds a streak of gold along one edge, diffusing downwards.
Putting the brush down, Shen Yi takes a step back and quietly looks at the painting. His breath reverberates loudly in his ears. Eventually, he shakes his head a little and uses his phone to take a picture, which he sends to Su An without hesitation.
Su An, who defies generational stereotypes and seems to delight in communicating solely via emojis, sends back a pair of eyes and a cheering emoji. Shen Yi’s lips curl into a small smile.
-
“So what is it you didn’t want to tell me over the phone?” Shen Yi asks, eyeing the barbecue stall near the police station Du Cheng has dragged him to. It isn’t that Shen Yi doesn’t eat meat, but he’s of the general opinion that there should be some other ingredients involved in a meal – apparently both Du Cheng and the owner of this stall disagree with that notion, as the options consist of meat skewers, meat skewers with marginally different seasoning, and more meat skewers. Those who wish for variety have to make do with seafood skewers.
Du Cheng hands him one of the skewers from the platter set between them on the table. Shen Yi takes it automatically and starts nibbling at the fragrant meat. Du Cheng finishes a whole skewer before Shen Yi is even a fourth through his, takes a sip of beer, and then finally answers the question.
“You do realise that technically I’m not even supposed to tell you anything about an ongoing case, right?” he points out, twitching a second skewer in Shen Yi’s direction.
Shen Yi gives him a look. “I’m a consultant.”
Du Cheng waves that off. “Only when you’re actively working with us.”
Before Shen Yi can point out that he would be if only they hadn’t fobbed him off with the excuse that there was nothing else to do for a sketch artist for the time being, he continues, “But Captain Lei agrees that you deserve to know – and anyway, there isn’t much to say.”
Shen Yi swallows his latest morsel of meat with some difficulty. “No progress at all?”
Even Du Cheng’s chewing looks grumpy. “It’s an old harbour, lots of nooks and crannies and not well-surveilled. There’re some security cameras, but whoever dumped the body clearly knew where they were and avoided them. We didn’t get anything useful, and none of the harbour employees remember noticing anything either. We’re widening our search to see if we can catch a glimpse of He Hong or M in the days prior, but...”
He doesn’t need to spell out how long a shot that is. Shen Yi takes a depressed sip of coke, the bubbles accompanying disappointment down his throat.
“So there’s nothing.”
“He Rongyue confirmed that He Hong died from strangulation prior to being dropped into the water. Pretty much every other useful clue was washed away.”
Almost nothing, then.
Du Cheng looks like he wants to reach out and pat Shen Yi’s shoulder, but instead he holds out another skewer, even though Shen Yi hasn’t finished the first one. “Sometimes that’s how it goes. No clues, trail gone cold... Shifu says that any police officer has to learn to live with that.”
But I’m not a police officer. Shen Yi swallows the words back down. It doesn’t really change the reality, and he certainly doesn’t have the means to pursue this case any further or better than the police. Also, Du Cheng hardly sounds convinced either, so at least there’ll be two of them still thinking about He Hong in future.
“But what happened to her baby,” Shen Yi says quietly, more to himself than to Du Cheng, and catches a flash of Du Cheng’s pained expression over the rim of the coke can.
They’re both silent as Du Cheng finishes a third and fourth skewer, and Shen Yi finally makes it through his first one. Du Cheng is chewing with almost stubborn intensity, sneaking glances at Shen Yi with increasing frequency. It’s clear he wants to say something else, in absence of any useful things to say about the missing baby, though Shen Yi has no way to guess why he’s having such a hard time actually opening his mouth to say whatever it is.
So Shen Yi waits.
“There’s...” Du Cheng hesitates, then forges on. “There’s an interdepartmental basketball game at the station on Friday. You could come and watch.”
Shen Yi stares at him. He doesn’t know what angle Du Cheng is pursuing here, whether he thinks Shen Yi is pitiful and needs distraction, or still feels a lingering connection from the time when he was Shen Yi’s only line to a world outside the grimness of a trafficking organisation. He doesn’t know what could possibly have given Du Cheng the idea that he’s interested in watching a bunch of guys throw a ball around, either.
“I’m quite busy,” he says, frostily polite. “Please keep me updated on the case, if anything comes up.”
He doesn’t stick around to see if Du Cheng looks disappointed. Doesn’t know why his heart is beating with an edge of panic either. It was a friendly overture; even if Du Cheng does have some ulterior motives, it’s nothing sinister. And yet Shen Yi finds himself retreating, mentally, emotionally.
He can’t quite decide whether that’s something he should fight against. Whether it’s true freedom that allows him to be himself, unfettered by anything or anyone, or something he merely clings to in order to appease his fears.
-
Shen Yi has trouble focusing in class that week. Too tired from lack of sleep. Too preoccupied with painting ideas. Too bored with sitting among the rows of students either listening attentively or surreptitiously playing on their phones.
(He can tell that the lectruers know, but few of them seem to have the energy to scold the endless parade of inattentive students when they can focus on teaching those who’re actually paying attention instead.)
He finishes his coursework just before the deadline and knows, with a strange mixture of nausea and apathy, that it’s not his best work. He stares at scribbled options for his master’s thesis and fails to make any decision about which one to pursue. Three days later he remembers that he has a supervisor and goes to see her.
Professor Li looks over his list, expression placid.
“Most students are relieved to use the topic provided by the department,” she says eventually, tapping an entirely unmanicured finger onto the first item on the list.
Shen Yi meets her gaze. He may have cut his hair and stopped wearing so much beat-up denim, but that doesn’t mean the rebellious streak in him has disappeared.
“I could write my thesis on the criminal psychology of the Three Counties serial murder case, as suggested.” He resists the urge to brush aside strands of hair that no longer frame his face. “But so could anybody else.”
Professor Li huffs a laugh. “You’re not wrong about that. So, which of these do you find most promising?”
Shen Yi hesitates briefly, having spent another near sleepless night distracting himself from other issues with that very question, then points to the longest note. “Depiction of crime in art and how it can distort or uncover the truth.”
“Sell me on it.” Professor Li leans back in her chair, eyes intent.
“It’s not an area explored by Chinese academia so far, perhaps because of the unusual intersection of topics.” Shen Yi meets her gaze head-on, and despite the sleepless nights involved in this entire business, he finds that same warm glow of enthusiasm stirring that he usually only falls into when he’s painting. “But given the fact that today, being a sketch artist is a profession, and the way it developed from its antecedents from ancient times – in, say, wanted posters, that kind of thing – there’s an evocative juxtaposition with fine art, and how it approaches crime and criminal justice.”
Seeing her curious yet uncomprehending look, that teacherly ‘I don’t know what you’re on about but you’re being interesting so keep going’, he goes on. “Take Jacques-Louis David’s painting The Death of Marat. It fictionalises the crime, adding text based on David’s understanding and political leanings. And it also beautifies the corpse, bending the audience’s own sympathies and perspectives. Art has the potential to greatly impact sentiment, even in criminal contexts, and there’s absolutely merit in studying that.”
Once it’s clear he has finished speaking, Professor Li smiles. “Very well, Shen Yi. It sounds like an interesting study – just remember the word limit; this is a potentially quite sweeping topic. I recommend you keep track of thoughts and research that you end up leaving aside; you clearly do well in an academic environment, you could develop your ideas further in a PhD.”
Shen Yi stares at her, appalled. “I don’t have time to do a PhD.”
She waves that off. “Just keep it in mind.”
The undertone being, quite clearly, ‘I still have a few months to convince you’. Shen Yi is pretty sure he won’t be convinced, having very little drive to become an academic and what else would he need a PhD for, but sees little point in reiterating that now.
As he cycles back home from campus, he starts to pull together a list of paintings that depict crimes.
Halfway to sleep that night, it occurs to him that most of his recent paintings also depict crimes – cryptically, circuitously, and not recognisably so, to outside eyes, but the influence is undeniable.
That night, he paints a still life of one of the succulents on his windowsill. It doesn’t really make him feel better because there’s a reason that he’s never tended towards still lifes and their intrinsically static boredom, but the cheerful colours and vibrancy do relax a little knot in his soul.
-
He’s still not sleeping enough, so when he walks out of the little unlit alley in the morning, intending to head to a grocery store, and finds a black limousine parked prominently across the opening, he merely blinks, distantly irritated, and starts to make his way around the rear end of the car.
Before he’s managed to squeeze through, a man in a nondescript black suit that screams ‘chauffeur’ steps out of the car and opens one of the rear passenger doors.
“Sir, please get in.”
Shen Yi’s muscles coil into sudden tension. Like hell is he getting into a strange car – getting kidnapped once in his life is quite enough. The chauffeur looks fit but Shen Yi can probably outrun him. He eases back into the mouth of the alley and is just about to make for the opposite direction – while his mind snags on whoever this is clearly knowing his address – when the other rear door opens and a woman steps out. For a brief moment, his panicked brain believes, unshakeably, that this is M, it must be M. Then the woman turns, large, floppy hat revealing a different face.
It immediately feels distantly familiar. Shen Yi pauses, eyes darting from nose to mouth to eyebrows, overlaying faces that he knows until he realises who it is she looks like.
“Don’t take the abruptness to heart,” says the woman who must be Du Cheng’s sister, for she’s too young to be his mother. “I merely want a word with you.”
Fear turns to relief, turns to prickly irritation. “Why should I oblige you when your method is stalking me at my home?”
She doesn’t deny the accusation. Between the limousine, the high-end clothing, and the entitlement flowing off the entire situation like sticky syrup, it’s clear that she comes from money.
Shen Yi hadn’t known that Du Cheng has such a background and feels vaguely irritated by that too.
“How else can I go about it?” Her tone remains relaxed. “We’re not acquainted yet, after all.”
There are, quite obviously, many saner ways. What signal she’s trying to send with this display is the real question. Why does Du Cheng’s sister feel the need to intimidate him?
“You could have asked your brother for my contact details.”
Surprise flashes across her expression. “You know who I am?”
“You and Du Cheng look quite alike.” Shen Yi’s voice is cool. “Does he know you’re here?”
The slant of her mouth does something he can’t quite interpret. “He does not. Will you come?”
Which is how Shen Yi finds out that he apparently trusts Du Cheng enough to extend that trust to his immediate relatives – to a degree. First, he pulls out his phone and sends a message to Du Cheng: why is your sister accosting me outside my home?
Then he sits in the limousine.
The car pulls out into the road, the engine so quiet Shen Yi can barely hear it. Rich people do live differently, it turns out.
“Why did you seek me out?” Shen Yi asks, not bothering with any further beating around the bush.
Du Cheng’s sister seems unfazed by the direct question and offers an annoyingly indirect answer. “You may have heard of the Du Corporation? It has the largest holdings of any company in Beijiang. You probably didn’t know, though, that Du Cheng is the son of the company founder. That brat never acknowledges his family.”
Shen Yi remains silent. It’s true that he hadn’t known, but is that really so surprising? It could be said that he and Du Cheng have a connection, but they aren’t friends. What he knows about the other man is limited to his work with the police and general temperament. He couldn’t say what hobbies Du Cheng has either, what food he likes, what season is his favourite or whether he would like to raise a pet if he weren’t so busy.
You know that he plays basketball and likes meat skewers, a voice whispers in his head, but he shuts it down. Those are small details anyone in Du Cheng’s company could’ve observed. It doesn’t mean anything.
“He has insisted,” Du Cheng’s sister goes on, “on becoming a police officer. Risking his life outside every day instead of staying with his family and handling business. As stubborn as a mule.”
Shen Yi thinks wryly that that seems to run in the family.
“This has nothing to do with me,” he says, cold and calm.
Du Cheng’s sister makes a tsking sound. “You’re the first friend he’s made outside the police force since school.”
He doesn’t try to keep his eyebrows from twitching towards his hairline because the implications of that statement are many and not ones he particularly likes. Quite aside from him not actually being Du Cheng’s friend, as such, the fact that she knows about their connection – which has largely played out first undercover and then at the police station – and about Du Cheng’s friendships since school...
He doesn’t voice any of that. The dynamics of the Du family aren’t his to judge, just to avoid.
So he says, “And?”
She smiles thinly. “And I hope you can help me persuade Du Cheng to give up policework.”
“We’re not that familiar.” Shen Yi wants to look out the window but feels it would be a bad idea to take his gaze off her. “And even if we were – what makes you think I would help you? Du Cheng clearly enjoys his job, derives meaning from it.”
“If you are his friend, surely you would want him to be safe.” Her voice remains light, but for the first time, he can detect a hint of genuine concern that makes him think this perhaps isn’t solely about Du Cheng going against the wishes of the family. “If you’re not, then I can offer you more money than you make in a year.”
Shen Yi makes more money in a year than most people would expect, given his youth; his paintings sell well. He’s never much cared about that – what he desires in life, money can’t buy.
Still, he should draw a clear line. He has no intention of being accosted by this woman again, nor of being emotionally manipulated by her.
“If Du Cheng weren’t a police officer,” he says, icily deliberate, “then I would likely not be alive right now. Find someone else.”
To the driver up front, he adds, “Please drop me off at Huasheng Grocery Market.”
Then he pretends not to see the driver casting a quick glance at Du Cheng’s sister, who nods.
They must have been turning in circles, for it takes barely five minutes for the car to come to a stop outside the grocery store.
Shen Yi opens the door, slides out of the seat, and can’t quite help a parting jab. “I don’t suppose it’s ever occurred to you to respect your brother’s choice.”
The door falls shut with a satisfying thwack before she can say anything in reply and Shen Yi buys a matcha-flavoured packet of oreos because his tongue suddenly wants something cloyingly sweet.
His phone rings just as he’s opening his front door. It’s Du Cheng, of course.
Shen Yi sets the keys aside, takes off his shoes, and answers.
“What do you mean my sister is accosting you outside your home?!”
“Driver, black limousine, floppy hat,” Shen Yi says and heads for the kitchen, bag of groceries in hand. It’s nothing elaborate – he doesn’t like to cook; he just also doesn’t like ordering out all the time or, worse, having to go out to find food when he’s in a creative mood.
A muffled curse from the other end of the line perversely makes Shen Yi’s mood perkier.
“Don’t pay her any mind.” Du Cheng still sounds helpless and annoyed about it. “She keeps doing this – finding my friends and recruiting them for her spy network. It’s ridiculous.”
Rather than the pretty outrageous use of ‘spy network’, Shen Yi’s mind snags on something else. “We are... friends?”
Well...” Du Cheng coughs lightly, pauses. “Uh. Aren’t we? Couldn’t we be?”
Aren’t and couldn’t really aren’t the same thing. Shen Yi stares at the oranges he’s just taken out of the bag. What is he supposed to do with any of this?
“Why would you want to?” he asks, and doesn’t even know if this is being ruthless to himself or to Du Cheng. “Do you stay in contact with all the victims you’ve helped as a police officer?”
“No!” Du Cheng yelps, flustered yet convincing enough that Shen Yi’s lips quirk. “You are... different.”
Shen Yi isn’t at all sure he’s ready to hear what makes him so, in Du Cheng’s eyes.
“I told her she should respect your choice,” he says, almost harshly abrupt. “My frozen dumplings are melting – call me if you find anything about He Hong, please.”
This time he waits for Du Cheng’s acknowledging hum before he hangs up.
-
For someone who’s perhaps received a handful of actual phone calls in several years, Shen Yi is getting used to the new frequency at which his mobile phone has started ringing.
This time, a whole week after he identified He Hong’s body, it’s finally good news. Or at least, Bureau Chief Zhang tells him to come to the bureau, which she definitely wouldn’t do if there had been no progress. Why she called, rather than Captain Lei or Du Cheng, only becomes clear once he has knocked on her office door – he may be a little wild around the edges but he has manners, and also it makes Du Cheng, who seems to have a distinct tendency to just barge into any room including his various superiors’ when in the midst of a breakthrough in a case, look bad so that’s a bonus – and is being looked at very seriously across her wooden desk.
“Following your help last week, your permanent consultant status was approved,” she tells him, which once again proves that skill truly does speak loudest. She gestures at the table in front of him, where a police lanyard with an ID is coiled. He picks it up. The photo was taken shortly after the trafficking organisation was dismantled, his cheeks still a little more sunken than they are now.
Bureau Chief Zhang begins to speak again and he looks up, fingers curling around the plastic tag. “It gives you access to this building without needing to be verified every time, though there are areas that remain off-limits for you unless accompanied by a full police officer. That said, this is meant to facilitate your help with cases we’ve called you to consult on, so it’s not a carte blanche to turn up whenever you want – your access logs will be under greater scrutiny than an employee’s. Understood?”
Shen Yi nods. He strongly suspects that in practice no one would really stop him if he started spending more of his time and energy on police work, but he has other things to do, regardless. So many other things, a voice whispers at the back of his mind and for the briefest of moments the lanyard in his grip feels heavier than a rock. What is he doing? Why did he want this so much? Isn’t freedom what he wants? He swallows past a sudden, panicked lump in his throat.
It’s fine. Everything is fine. He can always say no if it becomes too much.
Bureau Chief Zhang is watching him, eyes discomfortingly keen, but if she noticed his little freakout she doesn’t comment on it. Instead she continues, tone severe, “Keep in mind that if you show this ID, you’re acting in a capacity officially linked to the police – your actions will reflect on us and we thus expect impeccable standards.”
The answer to that doesn’t require formulating. “Yes, Zhang-ju.”
Her strict expression collapses into a smile. “Welcome officially aboard, Shen Yi. Beijiang Branch is glad to have your help.”
He likely won’t get a better segue and there’s impatience fizzling in his veins, so he smiles back and asks, “Has there been progress in He Hong’s case?”
“There has,” she says, a little wry. “Go bother Lei-dui about it.”
Captain Lei doesn’t immediately enlighten Shen Yi either, but he does wave him into one of the smaller rooms with a row of computers.
“This morning,” Captain Lei says quietly, “Xiao Liu here found a trace of what we think is He Hong’s face on a security camera in Beihong District.”
Shen Yi leans in, looking at the grainy bit of footage playing on the computer screen – grainy, but just about clear enough to parse. “It’s her.”
The tech, presumably Xiao Liu, clears his throat. “The problem is... that footage is from five days ago. When I set the search parameters, I only bounded the start date, not the end date. This is the first hit we got.”
In the space of a few heartbeats, Shen Yi swallows shock as his mind races through the implications. This is clearly, definitely He Hong’s face. The evidence is right in front of his eyes. Does that mean he had drawn it wrong, last week? Could He Hong actually still be alive?
Instinct rebels. No, he had been certain then and he’s still certain now. His skills wouldn’t let him down like this. He’d had no reason at all to suspect He Hong in that corpse, no reason for his mind to distort the process of reconstructing the face.
Which leaves...
“Full face plastic surgery,” he murmurs, eyes still glued to the screen.
On screen, He Hong’s face looks up and back before her steps quicken. She might’ve spotted the security camera.
There’s a frown in Captain Lei’s voice. “Is that possible?”
“There have been a few cases.” Shen Yi turns away from the screen and meets Captain Lei’s gaze, tries to detach himself and not show how viscerally sick the thought of M wandering around with her victim’s face makes him. “Over time, the differences become clearer as the face is locked to a particular age. And He Hong was... young. Her face shape wouldn’t have completely settled yet.”
Captain Lei looks grim. “So you think this is M?”
“She’s the one woman we’re aware of who had access to He Hong before she died.” His voice has gone flat and he knows it, but there’s still a cold horror curdling in his gut and he can’t bring himself to pretend.
“We’ll look into it,” Captain Lei says, exchanging a glance with Xiao Liu that Shen Yi pretends not to see.
And that, apparently, he has to be satisfied with.
When he gets back home, lanyard stuffed away in his shoulder bag, he ignores the half-finished painting of a hazy face in a mirror sitting on one easel, and pulls out the smallest canvas size he currently has lying around, barely more than a hand’s length. Working at such a scale, it takes a degree of meticulousness to keep the painting crisp, to draw in every eyelash, every small frown line, that it entirely consumes his attention and hour after hour slips away.
This painting, he already knows, won’t go into any exhibition, the grotesque flow of one pretty woman’s face into another’s too much of a hurt burrowing into his lungs. He just can’t leave it alone, that thought of He Hong’s face, so intrinsically hers, being stolen alongside her dignity, freedom, and eventually life. That’s a human darkness he’d never before had to consider, and distantly wishes he weren’t considering now.
He misses his lecture the next morning, but he’s already read ahead anyway.
-
His phone buzzes just as Shen Yi is locking his bike in the alley outside his flat. He straightens, pockets the key, and reaches into his other pocket for the phone.
The text message is from an unknown number and he almost deletes it without looking at it. But the little preview he can see without opening it says ‘Little painter, meet me at’ and a cold chill runs down his spine.
He taps on the message.
Reads.
Little painter, meet me at the place of our first encounter, 5pm. I know you’ve been searching for me. Come alone.
It could be spam. A hoax. But Shen Yi knows, certainty pouring along his bones, that this is M. That 小画家 mocks him, taunts him, the lazy derision in her voice echoing in his ears.
He doesn’t know how she got his number. How she knows that they’re searching for her. Why she thinks that he’ll come, alone, into what is almost certainly a trap.
Except he does know why. Can he not go, and risk her disappearing again? Risk never finding He Hong’s child? Can he go with police protection and risk the same?
He doesn’t want to see M again, doesn’t want to feel fear in the face of someone he knows would murder him in a heartbeat again.
He wants even less to be haunted by He Hong’s eyes for all his life.
With numb fingers he unlocks the bike again. It’s 4pm now, he has an hour to get to the abandoned yacht club and it would take him at least 50 minutes. Before he starts pedalling, he pauses and opens Baidu maps on his phone – in current traffic, it would take a car fifteen minutes to get there from the police station.
Forty minutes later, and five minutes of cycling away from the yacht club, he halts at the side of the last busy road before the abandoned area of harbour that’s still waiting for redevelopment. After a brief hesitation, he decides to dial Captain Lei rather than Du Cheng.
To his relief, Captain Lei picks up the phone immediately.
“Xiao Shen?”
“M asked to meet me, alone,” he says quickly, not pausing to allow Captain Lei to get a word in edgewise. “5pm at the abandoned yacht club where I was kidnapped last year. I’m nearly there.”
Then he hangs up before Captain Lei can start trying to talk him out of it. He has faith that Captain Lei will understand his reasons, and if anyone has enough experience to pull off a rescue without startling M into untimely flight, it would be him.
He would trust Du Cheng to come rescue him, too, but he doesn’t trust him to keep his head and make sure they catch M at the same time.
Heart beating heavily in his chest, he gets back on the bike and follows the path he’s cycled so many times already, to a place where graffiti he hadn’t maintained is slowly flaking in the sea breeze.
His phone buzzes in his pocket. He ignores it. Once he reaches the abandoned yacht club, he takes it out, glances at the three missed calls from Du Cheng on the screen, and turns off the sound before putting the phone in his canvas bag. Then he dials Du Cheng back. He doesn’t know whether they’ll be able to hear anything through the canvas, but he might as well try.
The call connects.
“Shen Yi – ”
“I’m there,” he says, ruthlessly cutting across Du Cheng’s anxiety. “Leave the call running, I’ll mute the speakers.”
Phone silenced and recording, he puts it back in his bag. Then he heads up the stairs to his old haunt.
M isn’t there when he arrives, which doesn’t surprise him. She’d naturally check if he actually came alone before showing herself. He can only hope that she didn’t witness his call. That he calculated the time it would take the police to arrive correctly. That she won’t just shoot him on sight.
Seconds tick by agonisingly slowly. Doubt wants to displace reckless courage. He’s untrained, out of his depth, foolish. He’s the only one who can do this. M could snap him like a twig. But He Hong is dead and M stole her face and he has to do this.
To distract himself he casts a critical eye over his graffiti, mentally mapping new designs into empty spaces or across older images he now doesn’t appreciate as much as he used to.
This time, there’s no sound of high heels on concrete, just quiet footsteps and the swish of a dress. Shen Yi turns to the entrance.
His heart skips a painful beat. Even knowing that M wouldn’t look like the M he knew, being confronted with the face of a woman he’d last seen dead on an autopsy table sends a jolt of lightning through him, a visceral shock that leaves disgust in its wake.
Disgust that washes away fear.
“Some lines shouldn’t be crossed,” he says, and he must sound angry for M smiles, a little mocking, a little... he can’t tell what the other emotion is.
“So you already knew.” Her tone is conversational, as if they’re actually just meeting for a nice seaside stroll. “It really was a mistake to let you go.”
“Is that why you took the risk of messaging me?” Anger is still roiling in his gut, sickening and viscous. “Tying up a loose end?”
She shrugs. Takes another step forward, until a bare two meters separate them and even her quiet voice carries. “You never would’ve let me disappear forever. If you had any sense, you wouldn’t have come.”
M smiles again, with He Hong’s lips, lighting up the lovely round face.
“Xiao Huajia, you are smart but your heart isn’t cold enough for this game.”
It’s not a game, he wants to hiss, but he knows that would just prove her point.
“It’s nothing personal,” she says, her voice strangely gentle, and then she moves, so fast that Shen Yi is still in the process of taking a step back when her foot collides with his chest with enough force to push him over the edge of the platform.
As he falls, heart screaming and arms flailing through the air uselessly, he thinks he hears the sound of police sirens, but it might just be the wind whistling past his ears.
-
Shen Yi drifts, never quite awake enough to open his eyes, to wonder where he is, to take stock of his situation; just aware enough to know he’s alive, hear a rushing in his ears that isn’t water, feel an oppressive tightness in his chest before he submerges again.
The first time he truly wakes, he finds distant pain inching closer and two people glaring at each other over the top of his hospital bed. There’s a cannula stuck in his nose, puffing a gentle stream of oxygen into already dry sinuses, and the blanket he’s lying under feels stiff and starchy. The people on either side of the bed are so preoccupied with each other that they don’t even notice he’s awake.
A faint urge to laugh ignites somewhere in his chest, but he still feels too distant from his body to make it a reality.
The staring contest continues. Shen Yi isn’t sure his water-logged brain can cope with Lin Min and Du Cheng having some kind of territorial spat over his hospital bed. He closes his eyes again.
The next time he wakes, his head feels much clearer and Captain Lei is sitting by his bedside. Unlike his previous visitors, he notices immediately that Shen Yi has awoken and thoughtfully hands him a bottle of water with a straw inserted.
The cool liquid sliding down his throat brings immediate relief.
“How are you feeling, Xiao Shen?”
“Fine,” Shen Yi says, which is true only if one takes ‘fine’ to mean ‘surprisingly still alive’. “How... did I survive?”
Captain Lei takes the bottle back, expression going wry. “Du Cheng fished you out of the sea. You calculated the times quite accurately, for someone foolish enough to meet with a dangerous criminal alone.”
Right. Yes. He had done that. A face flashes in his mind. “Did you catch M?”
There’s a complicated look on Captain Lei’s face, that Shen Yi is too muzzy-headed to manage to interpret. Finally, he smiles, though there’s still an edge to it. “We did. She didn’t fight once surrounded.”
Shen Yi lets himself sag deeper into the pillow. “Good.”
“I should ream you out,” Captain Lei says, tone deceptively conversational. “But I don’t like wasting words on those who aren’t listening. Besides, you’ve suffered enough.”
He looks tired, Shen Yi thinks, with a distant stab of guilt.
He wants to lighten that tiredness, or at least shift it, so he makes his sore throat move. “And I’m not one of your officers.”
Captain Lei ignores that rebuttal.
“You know, your Xu-laoshi came to see me, not long after your kidnapping.”
Shen Yi winces. He can’t imagine Teacher Xu had anything nice to say.
“He said I’d bitten off more than I could chew, that keeping you safe was going to run into your stubborn nature and crash into a wall. I didn’t take him seriously enough at the time.”
“He said that?”
“It seems he knows you well.” Captain Lei smiles, dry. “And is worried about you.”
Teacher Xu hasn’t really said as much to Shen Yi, largely because Shen Yi has been avoiding him and his disappointment. It’s not, he thinks with another muted stab of guilt, that he doesn’t understand the disappointment, from his teacher’s point of view, but he just... can’t quite be the Shen Yi his teacher is still expecting him to be. Not anymore. Not after those two months.
“And,” he says, tongue leaden in ways he can’t blame on the recent near-drowning because his heart is even more so, “that you should encourage me to focus on art?”
That’s definitely sympathy he sees on Captain Lei’s face now. “That too.”
Silence descends. Suddenly hyperaware of the fiery, scratchy feeling in his throat, Shen Yi tries not to swallow. Fails. Tries to distract himself.
“He Hong’s child...”
Because he is kind, Captain Lei doesn’t make him ask the full question. “A baby girl. M told us where she was; social services have found an aunt who might take her in.”
The last stone falls from Shen Yi’s lungs, sailing into clear water with a plop that barely stirs any ripples.
-
Du Cheng comes again. This time, Shen Yi is awake and conscious enough to be amused by the way the man somehow manages to look both grumpy and awkward.
Because some things do need to be said – even when he’s feeling a little awkward himself, though he’s definitely not as obvious about it as Du Cheng – Shen Yi begins with, “Lei-dui told me you were the one who rescued me. Thank you.”
Du Cheng, interestingly, goes red.
“It’s fine,” he says, wooden, and Shen Yi starts to wonder if maybe, in his illustrious police career, Du Cheng had never saved someone’s life so directly before. “Anyone would’ve done the same.”
That is very clearly untrue, but Shen Yi lets it go, mostly because he also doesn’t want to linger on the topic.
Except, now that this topic has run its course, he isn’t sure what else to say. It’s not like he normally chats with Du Cheng.
“How is M’s pre-trial going?”
Du Cheng latches onto the topic gratefully, and Shen Yi learns in short order that M is managing to be both cooperative and obstructive at the same time, in that she freely admits to everything they already know and has given more information on the organisation as a whole, but is cleverly dodging implicating herself in any further crimes. There’s no evidence of her involvement in He Hong’s murder and she isn’t falling into any traps laid for her even after many hours of interrogation. It won’t make too much of a difference to her going to prison, given the amount of evidence they do have of other wrongdoing – including but not limited to attempted murder and conspiracy to kidnap – but it will probably save her from the death sentence.
Shen Yi can’t say he’s surprised. M is nothing if not smart.
“It’s not normally done,” Du Cheng says finally, “but shifu said that if you want to talk to her, we’ll make it happen. She might be less on her guard with you.”
He hasn’t phrased it as a question – which is good, because Shen Yi has no idea how he would answer if he had. A significant part of him doesn’t want to see M and her stolen face ever again. But the prospect of being able to ask her questions, which she might or might not answer...
He has to think about that.
-
Bureau Chief Zhang sends him a basket of apples. Lin Min sends him a card with a doodle she clearly drew herself, that says ‘hope you recover from your bad choices soon’.
-
By the time Teacher Xu arrives, Shen Yi is starting to wonder if his hospital room has a revolving door. He’s crabby and in pain and feels a twinge of shame looking at Teacher Xu now, which isn’t a good combination. Teacher Xu is the one person in the world he absolutely won’t allow himself to have an argument with – he owes him too much of what he is now.
His mentor’s disquiet is clear the moment he enters the room, brows furrowing silently as he takes in Shen Yi in the hospital bed. Shen Yi tries not to fidget under the gaze because that would just make him look guiltier.
Teacher Xu sets aside the insulated lunchbox he’s carrying and sits in the sole visitor’s chair, still silent.
Finally, he says, “Is this what you had in mind when you started working with the police?”
Worry and disappointment is just as terrible a mixture as crabbiness and shame because Shen Yi doesn’t really know how to deal with either. It’s why he’s been avoiding going back to the Xus’ in the first place.
“I can’t just forget it,” Shen Yi says quietly, still, even now, too proud to plead but biting back hope that this time he might be understood. “Those two months. I can’t.”
“Then paint it!” Teacher Xu leans forward, voice as intent as his bearing, honing in on Shen Yi like a missile its target. “Share it with the world through your talent! You don’t need this.”
The irony is that Shen Yi wouldn’t judge anyone else for making that choice, for burrowing further into their art and not getting entangled with anything else.
It’s laughable that he, who prides himself on knowing himself so well, can’t quite articulate why he needs this. Why the sketch artist position calls to him so. If it’s neither atonement nor genuine belief in the positive power of policework, then what is left?
Just the heavy weight in his chest, that lightens every time he paints a portrait that helps someone in need.
Next to him, Teacher Xu sighs quietly. Shen Yi’s eyes refocus on him just in time to see his shoulders slump. “You will do as you will, of course. Here, eat some of this broth. Your shiniang made it, she says it’s very nourishing.”
Shen Yi takes the warmed metal, inhaling the familiar smell of shiniang’s signature bone broth, with chicken and ginger and carrot.
“Thank her for me,” he says, lips curving into a genuine smile, and Teacher Xu nods, the lines around his eyes softening. “Will you come to the joint exhibition with Su An?”
Teacher Xu rises. “Of course. Recuperate well, Shen Yi.”
Even after his figure has left the room, the warmth of the broth lingers, overshadowing that niggling sense of shame.
-
A few hours before the earliest they would allow him to discharge himself without a whole lot of arguing with doctors, Su An knocks on the doorjamb.
(Shen Yi had thought to wonder who was paying for this private hospital room, but since he can afford to pay if the fee comes down on his own head in the end and appreciates the quiet, he decided not to worry about it.)
“Come in.”
He’s a little surprised she’s here; they’ve only met a couple of times, after all. He’s even more surprised that she’s waving a small rubber duck at him.
“Heard you might be in need,” she says, dropping the duck onto his blanket-covered stomach.
Shen Yi picks it up, lips curling upwards as he discovers that the duck is wearing a beret, has a moustache painted on, and carries a paintbrush on one side and a paint palette on the other. It’s probably supposed to be some famous French artist, though it doesn’t seem quite specific enough to guess which one.
“Next time someone tries to drown me, I’ll have painter duck take the fall,” he agrees, mock-solemn, and she laughs.
“That’s the spirit.”
-
Shen Yi goes home. His throat and chest still hurt, but his head feels better and he’s had enough of lying around in the hospital when he has paintings to paint and work to do.
There’s too much pent up inside him, and he throws himself into finishing his run of paintings for the show with Su An, ignoring the way he can’t yet breathe deeply and his body hurts when he stays in front of the easel for too long. It’ll pass.
People come by with food, though he’s strangely reluctant to open the door even to his teacher, Lin Min, and, bafflingly, He Rongyue (who may or may not have been badgered into going by someone else but keeps mum on the subject beyond a tart observation that she at least can judge whether he’s taking care of his health or not, and he better start eating more if he wants to avoid ending up on her autopsy table). It’s... probably a good thing that they do, because Shen Yi realises that he’s a little too close to sliding back into his bad post-kidnapping food habits.
He doesn’t want to be that thin and weak again, so he makes himself eat what they bring.
Shen Yi doesn’t consciously decide that it wouldn’t help anything to go see M, that she wouldn’t answer his questions anyway (not truthfully) and he doesn’t actually have any questions he thinks an answer to would bring him more peace than he’s already clawed back for himself. But when Du Cheng lets him know that she’s been transferred to a detention centre and that window has, thus, very much closed, he doesn’t find himself regretful.
He spends the following weeks buried in his dissertation when he isn’t painting, and doesn’t do anything related to the police at all.
-
The joint exhibition with Su An opens its doors four weeks after Shen Yi was pushed into the water. It’s a good location, one of the smaller wings of the Museum of Modern Art in Beijiang – which he could never have dreamed of entering so soon if not for Su An’s influence – and as he wanders along the rows of paintings, his and hers intermingled in a deceptively chaotic arrangement that blooms into something greater the longer one pays attention, he finds an old excitement that had been worn down over the last year stir back to life in his chest.
Shen Yi genuinely likes Su An’s art, is the thing. Looking at one’s own art can be boring; he already spends so much time with it during the creation process that he knows it too well by the end, and it’s too easy, afterward, to only see the flaws, the ‘I would’ve have done it differently now’s. But her clustered, delicate, tiny brushstrokes, so different to the sweeps and blocks Shen Yi favours, are a delight to examine, analyse, interpret. There’s always something more to find in her work, the second, third, fourth time one comes to a stop in front of it, and if there’s anything he wants to take away from this collaboration it’s that density of interest.
“It’s pretty good, isn’t?” Su An says into the silent hall, stepping next to him. The museum workers who had helped arrange and light the exhibit have left, leaving only the two of them and one bored-looking security guard left in the echoing space.
Shen Yi smiles. “Yes. Yes it is.”
Opening night is the usual blur of lights and people in expensive clothes wearing facial expressions that are more mask-like than any one could wear outright –
until he spots the group of plainclothes police officers milling uncertainly around the reception, caught in various states of awkwardness. Du Cheng sticks out like a sore thumb in a beige suit that doesn’t suit him at all and strains across the shoulders – the average time he spends looking at a painting is under twenty seconds, and the fact that he’s here even though he clearly isn’t interested in art at all, does something strange to Shen Yi’s insides. Something unpredictable.
Captain Lei looks much more at ease, having somehow managed to start chatting with Lin Min of all people, who – wonder of wonders – doesn’t even look impatient and/or angry. Lao Yan seems to be spending his time seriously studying each picture for quite a while before moving on to the next one, though he looks a little bereft without the bottle of tea in his hand. He Rongyue gives him a subtle wave when she catches him looking, and winks. The fifth person, who’s sticking to Du Cheng’s side like glue and thus also not taking in any of the art, Shen Yi doesn’t know; the guy doesn’t look any older than Shen Yi himself, probably fresh out of the academy, with a straightforwardly innocent face and easy laughter.
Shen Yi doesn’t go over to introduce himself, not when so many eyes are currently tracking his and Su An’s every move, and Teacher Xu is hovering near his elbow.
He does, however, make sure to acknowledge each of them in stolen quieter moments, because they didn’t need to come.
It is, perhaps, the gentlest first collision these two areas of his life could’ve managed. Suppressing a wild laugh at the sudden mental image of exhibiting his paintings in the police station, Shen Yi decides that he really should make sure to brighten up their drab fourth floor at the earliest opportunity.
--