by Lei Mi
Fang Mu swam over, grabbed her clothing, and pulled as hard as he could, but she didn't move at all. Looking down, he saw that her ankles were tied to the drain with a piece of thick rope. This was why the girl had looked like she was standing up at the bottom of the pool.
Fang Mu swam back to the surface and dug wildly through his pockets. When he found the dagger, he put it between his teeth, took another deep breath, and swam back down.
As soon as he reached the bottom, he used all his strength to hack the rope in half. At once the girl's feet lifted off the bottom. Grabbing her clothing, he struggled to swim her back to the surface.
At last, using his final bit of strength, he heaved the girl onto the side of the pool. There she lay, eyes closed, not moving at all. With no time to rest, Fang Mu slapped the girl back and forth across the face, trying to wake her up. He head lolled, but her eyes did not open.
Wake up, please wake up! I'm begging you!
Lifting the girl's upper torso, he desperately shook her back and forth. The movement caused some water to trickle from her mouth. Seeing this, Fang Mu quickly hoisted her onto his shoulder and ran like madman back and forth beside the pool.
A few students who were walking by the pool caught sight of this frightening scene and ran to get a closer look. Dumbstruck, they watched as a man, who appeared to be a lunatic, sprinted about with a corpse held over his shoulder.
Fang Mu's hair had already frozen solid and his pant legs and shirt sleeves were stiff from the cold. Shivering all over, he continued to run rigidly back and forth, carrying the girl all the while.
More and more people continued to surround him. Some called the police, some whispered to each other, some cried softly, and some screamed aloud.
Fang Mu wasn't aware of any of this. His mind blank, he ran mechanically, repeating the same thing over and over to himself.
Wake up, wake up, I'm begging you…
At last, his strength gone, his legs went limp and he collapsed to the ground. The girl fell beside him.
Panting for breath, he crawled over, laced his hands over her chest and pushed down forcefully. After doing this several times, he pinched her nose closed and breathed deeply into her mouth.
Wake up! Wake up…
He repeated this several times, but the girl still didn't show any response. Still he gritted his teeth and continued on, hot tears rolling down his face.
Wake up, please wake up!
Fang Mu felt a pair of hands on his shoulders. It was Du Yu.
"Enough, Fang Mu, give it up. She's dead."
Fang Mu pushed his hands away and again placed his mouth over the girl's.
Taking hold of Fang Mu, Du Yu pulled him away from the girl. But as he did, Fang Mu reached out and, unwilling to give up, grabbed onto her hair.
The two of them fell to the ground. In Fang Mu's hand was a blonde wig.
The dead girl's hair was short and black.
Du Yu sat on the ground and stared at the corpse, his eyes wide. After several seconds he suddenly cried out: "Yaoyao?"
Fang Mu's heart sank. He clambered toward the girl and looked at her face.
Sure enough, despite the heavy makeup, she was Zhang Yao all right.
In an instant, everything around Fang Mu seemed to go silent.
He saw Du Yu kneeling over Zhang Yao's body, holding her and rocking her back and forth, calling out her name.
He saw all the people around them looking around and whispering to one another.
He saw police cars outside the pool area, their lights flashing.
He saw policemen rushing inside, yelling at the crowd to get out of the way.
But he didn't hear a sound. It was as if everything around him had become pure chaos.
Something sickly-sweet was churning in the pit of his stomach. Suddenly, he felt like he was about to explode.
"Aghh!" A howl loud enough to raise the dead roared out of Fang Mu. "Why? Why? If you want to kill me, then come and do it! Why do you have to kill so many people? Come on, kill me! Kill me!"
At once all the faces turned toward him. His features were distorted by anger and anguish, the sounds around him difficult to distinguish.
For a moment, Du Yu stared blankly at Fang Mu. Then he leapt on him and grabbed his collar. "What the hell was going on?" he demanded, shouting. At a loss, Fang Mu just looked away. He saw Deng Linyue staring at him from the crowd, her expression terrified.
Two police officers pulled Du Yu off of Fang Mu, and then someone else hauled Fang Mu to his feet and pushed him toward the exit.
The crowd automatically parted to let them through. All the faces were turned towards them, their expressions suspicious or panic-stricken or both. Fang Mu walked stiffly, a dull look in his eyes as the person behind him pushed him through the crowd and out of the gate. After they had walked for some ways, Fang Mu struggled to look back. It took him a long time to recognize that the man behind him was Tai Wei.
"Let's get you back to your dorm," Tai Wei said, his voice unusually gentle, almost soft, as he held tightly to Fang Mu's shoulders.
When they reached Fang Mu's dorm room, Tai Wei maneuvered the soaking, shivering student onto his bed and wrapped him in his blanket. He tossed him a towel, but Fang Mu just let it fall to the floor.
Sighing to himself, Tai Wei opened Fang Mu's dresser.
"Where do you put your clothes?"
As soon as the words left Tai Wei's mouth, Fang Mu threw off his blanket, staggered to his feet, and tried to run out the door.
Tai Wei quickly stopped him. "Where do you think you're going?"
"I'm…I'm going back there…" Fang Mu mumbled, pushing Tai Wei away from him.
"Oh, yeah, and what are you gonna do?"
"Search the scene!" said Fang Mu, the past hour's defeat suddenly exploding out of him. "Bastard! Bastard! I swear I'll get you!"
Tears welled and fell from his bloodshot eyes. His lips were pale and shaking.
Tai Wei grabbed hold of him firmly. "Let us take care of this."
Struggling with all his might, Fang Mu threw Tai Wei off him. When he flung open the door he ran smack into Du Yu.
Du Yu didn't say a word, just shoved Fang Mu backwards.
Unprepared, Fang Mu fell to his back on the floor of their room.
Before he could get up, Du Yu pounced on him and grabbed his collar.
"Fang Mu, who the hell are you?" The normally cheerful Du Yu instantly changed, his actions those of a man-eating lion, his tear-streaked face twitching with rage.
Fang Mu could only stare back. "What are you talking about?"
"I said who the hell are you?" Du Yu demanded and wrapped his hands around Fang Mu's neck and viciously shook him back and forth. "Just now you said that that person wants to kill you! What's that supposed to mean? That time when your old roommate visited, he said that a bunch of people died in your old dorm room. Why is all this happening? Now I'll ask you again; who the hell are you? Tell me now!"
Du Yu's hands closed tighter and tighter around Fang Mu's neck. Fang Mu could barely breathe, his face turning purplish-red.
Tai Wei intervened and quickly pulled Du Yu off of Fang Mu. Struggling, Du Yu wouldn't give up. "I want to hear it!" he roared. "Who the hell are you?"
Fang Mu sat up weakly, his body racked by a fit of coughing. Eventually he began to retch, spouting a thin strand of saliva that trailed from his mouth and to his chest. Tai Wei held tightly onto Du Yu, who continued to struggle, still yelling. "If you have something to say, then say it! No more fighting!" Tai Wei warned. "Otherwise I'm gonna stop being so polite!"
"All right!" said Du Yu, making a show of putting his hands up. "I'll stop. Now let him talk!"
Fang Mu slowly climbed to his feet, wiped the corners of his mouth and then took several deep breaths. "That's right. The killer is after me." He gasped for air. He's…testing me…I'm sorry…"
Du Yu glared at him, his jaw clenched. "So you're saying that everyone who was hurt or killed –
Deng Linyue, Liu Jianjun, Meng Fanzhe, and…" he choked back a sob, "and Yaoyao... It was all because of you?"
Fang Mu said nothing, just returned Du Yu's stare. He quickly hung his head, nodding.
Du Yu pointed at Fang Mu, his arm shaking. "In other words, you've known for a long time that he was going to kill people," he said through trembling lips, "and probably people close to you. Is that correct?"
Tears fell from Fang Mu's eyes. "I'm sorry…"
Du Yu's pain suddenly burst open again. "Then why didn't you say something sooner? Why didn't you warn everyone? Why did you let so many people die?"
Shaking all over, Fang Mu just mumbled, "I'm sorry…I'm sorry…"
Du Yu rushed forward and grabbed Fang Mu's hair. He struck Fang Mu wildly across the face. "Speak! Speak up, goddamn you…!"
Tai Wei immediately reached for Du Yu, but before he got close, Du Yu abruptly shrunk back.
The dagger was in Fang Mu's hands.
There was a long tear across the front of Du Yu's jacket. He stared dumbstruck at the tear, and then at Fang Mu, who was bleeding from one corner of his mouth.
Du Yu laughed through his misery. "You want to kill me, too, huh? Then do it! Save the killer the effort. Come on!"
"No!" yelled Fang Mu, his voice hoarse. "It wasn't like that. I wasn't intentionally hiding it from all of you… I…"
"Give me the knife," said Tai Wei, stepping between them. "And you," he said, pointing at Du Yu, "do me a favor and get out of here!"
Du Yu glared viciously at Fang Mu, and then turned and left.
At once the room was quiet, the only sound Fang Mu's ragged breathing.
Fang Mu let the blade clatter to the floor and sunk to his heels. He squatted down and began to scream, pulling at his hair as the tears rolled down his face. The only sound was his angry, mournful wailing cry. "Aghh...!"
Tai Wei had never seen Fang Mu cry before, much less sob with the kind of extreme grief he now witnessed. Not knowing what to do, he just stood there, completely at a loss.
Fang Mu cried for a long time, the pent-up emotions releasing. When he had calmed down a little, Tai Wei helped him onto his bed, wrapped him in his blanket and poured him a cup of hot water. After thinking about it, he passed him a cigarette.
His face covered with tears, Fang Mu sat there expressionlessly, taking a drag every now and then from his cigarette. The cup of water he just held. He didn't sip it once.
"You need to change out of your wet clothes, otherwise you're gonna get sick." Tai Wei dug through Fang Mu's drawers and tossed him several pairs of clean clothes.
With much effort, he helped Fang Mu change into dry clothes. Fang Mu's spirits improved slightly after the change of attire and he no longer shivered so badly.
"I was wondering," said Tai Wei tactfully, pulling Fang Mu's chair over beside his bed, "that thing Du Yu just said about your old roommates dying. What was he talking about?"
Fang Mu took several deep drags from his cigarette and was silent for a long time. "When I was in college," he said slowly, "one of my roommates had an illicit relationship with one of the building attendants. Later she became pregnant and wrote him a letter to tell him. My roommate then mistakenly believed that he had placed this letter in one of the books that he had returned to the library. And because of some unkind treatment he received soon after, he suspected that someone must have read the letter and told people what it said."
"Then what happened?"
"He was the seventh person to have checked out the book," Fang Mu relayed. "To avenge himself, he decided to kill every person who checked it out after him. By the time he discovered that no one had actually read the letter, he had already begun to enjoy the feeling of control he found by ending other people's lives. I later discovered that check-out card and realized that someone was going down the list of readers, killing one after another. The victims included one of my other roommates, as well as the first girl I ever loved… I was the only survivor."
"Is this that murder case that happened at Changhong City Teacher's College? I heard that in the end the killer also died."
"That's right." Fang Mu trembled. "He was burned to death. I was…there at the time."
Tai Wei was silent for a moment. "That's when you became really interested in criminal profiling, correct? Everything you've done, all those cases you've cracked – it was all because of this experience, wasn't it?"
Fang Mu tossed away his cigarette. He grabbed his hair with both hands and tried to smooth it down. "I don't know the best way to say this. I've been having nightmares for the past two years. I'm scared of hallways, scared of the smell of roasting meat. I don't dare get close to other people. Only by ceaselessly investigating cases and ceaselessly helping the dead find justice am I able to get a measure of peace… Because," Fang Mu paused, and then his voice suddenly dropped, "in the final analysis, the deaths of all those people – they were because of me."
Tai Wei nodded. Out of all of the human senses, smell stayed in the memory longest. At last he now understood why Fang Mu was such an unusual person, and also why the pain he felt this time, with the killer challenging him by murdering all these people, was so unimaginably severe. "The victim was Du Yu's girlfriend?"
Fang Mu nodded.
"Are you certain that it's the same killer?"
Fang Mu shook his head, smiling wryly. "You still don't believe me." He stared at the floor. "It's definitely him. He understands me extremely well; he knows how important Du Yu's friendship is to me. This was number six. Regardless of whether or not I'm seven, he's trying to destroy me psychologically, bit by bit."
Tai Wei hesitated for a moment, and then said, "When I was at the scene just now, I noticed that the place where the victim had been tied underwater was at the end of lane six."
Fang Mu stared at Tai Wei for several seconds, and then threw off the cover and got out of bed. "Come on," he said. "Let's go to the scene."
The body had already been taken away, but the crowd remained. Fang Mu was surprised to see Professor Qiao among them; he was looking at the pool and frowning. Seeing Fang Mu, he didn't even wave; just turned and left.
The police had placed a filter over the drain to collect any suspicious objects as they emptied the pool. Zhao Yonggui was standing beside the pool, staring at the slowly draining water with his arms crossed and a very dark look on his face.
Tai Wei walked over and patted him on the shoulder. "Find anything, Old Zhao?"
Zhao Yonggui looked at Tai Wei and then at Fang Mu. He shook his head. "Nothing."
His answer didn't surprise Fang Mu in the least. As he watched the cops searching carefully through the waist-deep water, he really wanted to tell them that it was pointless, that the killer wouldn't have left any stray clues behind.
Looking at Fang Mu's red, puffy eyes, Zhao Yonggui said, "You were the first to discover the body, correct?"
"Yes."
"Did you notice anything unusual at the time?"
Fang Mu thought about it and then said, "No, nothing."
"Then how did you know that someone would be in the pool?"
"I heard two girls talking about how the outdoor pool was unexpectedly filled with water. Also, while at Meng Fanzhe's house, I saw two symbols on the window –"
"Enough!" Cutting Fang Mu off, Zhao Yonggui glanced over at Tai Wei. "Are you still insisting that we caught the wrong person?"
For a moment, Fang Mu was speechless, and then as he was about to argue with Zhao Yonggui, he saw Tai Wei nod at him to keep quiet.
"In a little while we're going to take you back to the station to get your statement," Zhao Yonggui said. Without another word, he walked over to the other side of the pool.
On the way to the city bureau, Fang Mu couldn't resist asking Tai Wei, "Why does Zhao Yonggui always act like that towards me?"
Tai Wei hesitated for a moment. "You need to understand his perspective. Although the Meng Fanzhe case was closed without a trial, the bureau commended Zhao Y
onggui and me. There's no way he's going to be able to accept your telling him that we made a mistake. Also, I don't think he really trusts in your methods."
Fang Mu considered this for a moment. "In that case, do you trust me?"
Tai Wei was silent for a long time. "We'll see."
It was already afternoon by the time Fang Mu got back from the police headquarters. Standing in front of his door, key in hand, he felt a weighty hesitation. If Du Yu was in the room, he didn't know what he should say to him.
He opened the door. The room was empty. Seeing Du Yu's new Nikes still sitting neatly beside his bed, Fang Mu felt a catch in his throat.
One day ago, he would have been more than happy to list all of Zhang Yao's many faults. But at that moment, all he could think of were her positive qualities.
If only I could open the door right now and see Du Yu and Zhang Yao quickly leap off his bed as if they hadn't just been hooking up, Fang Mu thought, for that I would trade anything.
The room was eerily quiet. Fang Mu found himself desperately wishing Du Yu would appear before him. He felt there was so much he wanted to say to him.
And yet, if Du Yu really did appear, what was he supposed to say?
Should he apologize? But that seemed so pointless. It wouldn't change a thing.
With his thoughts in conflict, he sat there in silence. The sun went down and the moon rose, and then the first rays of dawn lit the morning sky. Fang Mu never moved or said a word. People kept knocking on the door, but he ignored them. All he wanted to hear was the sound of a key sliding into the lock and opening the door. Yet at the same time, he was worried that in that moment he would be so frightened that he would hide.
That whole night Du Yu never returned.
Fang Mu didn't move until, after a day and a night of sitting there and not eating, his stomach began hurting him worse than he could endure. He finally got up and went to the dining hall.
The hall was packed. The recent murder had not affected people's appetites in the least. The victim was someone else; their bodies were their own. So as before, what they cared about most was whether the steamed buns were a day old, whether the soup had cockroaches in it. To them, those were the things that mattered.