Overly Intense [Criminal Investigation] 180

Chapter 180: Flying to Altay

“In my first year of graduate school, I ran into the central flood. The casualties were severe. My master had received a task to take us to identify the bodies. For seven or eight days in a row, I didn’t get enough sleep. Every day, besides the rescue work, I was at the identification scene, checking the condition of the bodies.

I was mechanically moving the soaked blocks of tofu like this. Even through several layers of gloves, my fingers could still feel the viscosity of the flesh and bones separating. I was like I was tearing at rotten mashed potatoes, mixed with the smell of decay and mud, a long-uncleaned water tank, so stuffy that I couldn’t breathe. It was the first time I had thought that “ferocious” could not only be used to describe a deathly appearance, but could even be a punishment of life, a punishment of a sudden stop, a punishment for the living to always be thinking of the unknown after death.

At first, I would still distinguish their faces and compare their appearances before they had died in the system, wanting to know their fearful expressions before they had died, whether they had been desperate, whether they had been glad that death was also a kind of relief. But a few days later, I had lost my interest in fantasizing.

This was the first time I had begun to question the rationality of human existence, whether the meaning of a person’s existence could only be highlighted after death.

I hate being left behind.

So later, I no longer observed them carefully and only checked their severed fingers, the birthmarks on their bodies, and confirmed their teeth and the stitching of their clothes.

One life after another was disassembled into conditions for identification, and their names were replaced by victim numbers. And so I had become numb.

Perhaps my numbness had made me look like the calmest in the group. My supervisor had been very appreciative of my work attitude. He had thought that I was very suitable for this job.

But actually, I didn’t like it very much.

I hated blood, and I hated using a knife. Every time I went into the dissection room, I was like I was defusing a bomb, with three layers of latex gloves inside and out, and even alcohol cotton balls in the gaps of my fingers. Sometimes I even had to wrap my cuffs tightly with tape. I didn’t want even a single bit of my skin to be exposed to the air.

After class, my gloves would be full of sweat, and the stench of the corpse would be everywhere. Even with lye and alcohol, it couldn’t be removed. I could only keep washing my hands, or cover them with a stronger smell.

I never thought that these details were the romance of the profession. They were my safe distance from this job. In all my years of studying, I had been thinking about why I had to study medicine. Maybe I should have listened to you back then and had gone to Beijing with you to study finance or mathematics. That way, I would have made more money.”

But I have to walk the path of seeking the truth myself. Only by becoming a forensic pathologist with enough professional experience can I be qualified to open the difficult questions he left behind, and have the possibility of solving them. Before that, I will turn a blind eye to everything, endure the smell, endure the touch, endure every moment that makes me nauseous, including happiness and other things.

You will affirm me, right?

Just like you love writing, you affirm that a character will have her goals and motives. What a writer creates is a life that has not died, a fictional life, but meaning is constantly being given. A dialogue, an encounter, a struggle, can all become a reason for life to exist. Thinking about it this way, I am very envious of writers. You have the ability to give meaning.”

“What are you looking at?”

She had only read the second page of the letter. Shen Yiyi was wrapped in a bath towel she had brought from home and quietly approached Qin Luo’s bedside. It was clear that she had already discovered that her girlfriend was reading the letter.

The person involved was a little embarrassed, so she turned and walked away as if she had not seen anything.

The sun had set in Hemu at eight. Outside the floor-to-ceiling window, it was like a thin layer of orange jam had been added to a thousand layers of snow. Qin Luo stretched. She was a little hungry, so she folded the letter and placed it on the bedside table.

Shen Yiyi had not yet dried her hair. Qin Luo stood behind her and put one arm around her waist.

“I’ll blow it for you.”

Qin Luo naturally took the hairdryer. The bathroom mirror was covered in a thin layer of mist from the hot air. In the mirror, there were only two blurry human figures. She deliberately blew the hot air behind her ear, and her hair was parted. The skin on the side of her neck was flushed.

Qin Luo turned off the hairdryer, slowly bent down, her breath fell first, and then her lips touched in between. A very light kiss, as if to confirm whether the other would push her away.

Shen Yiyi’s shoulders tensed slightly, but she did not dodge.

So Qin Luo’s movements probed in. Her lips slowly moved down from under her ear along her neckline. When she looked up again, her gaze met hers through the mirror. There was only the sound of panting in the air. Qin Luo gently held Shen Yiyi’s chin with her hand, forcing her to look at her sideways. Her lips paused for a second at the moment they were almost touching, and then they directly covered them.

Blowing hot air had turned into a hot kiss.

Shen Yiyi was at a loss from the surprise attack. How could she have thought that a single letter would have given Qin Luo such an interest? What kind of literary obsession was this? As she was thinking, the tightly wrapped bath towel fell to the ground, her skin exposed. Shen Yiyi supported herself on the sink behind her to maintain her balance. She was so kissed that her thoughts were disconnected, like a kitten that had been kneaded into a ball, and had inexplicably turned over its belly.

Qin Luo had not lied. Helping her blow was helping her blow. Anyway, she had not said whether it was blowing her hair or something else… As she was kissing, she reached out and grabbed her own bath towel, and thoughtfully spread it on the sink. She would not feel bad even if it got dirty. She was not as picky as Shen Yiyi and could accept using the hotel’s bath towel.

The sky in Hemu was already completely dark, and the ski resort was also closed. The nearby tourists were scattered, wading through the snow back to their camps. The wooden cabin was as quiet as if it had been abandoned by the world. Besides the howling of the wind, you could not hear a single sound.

But it was different inside. People were already enveloped in the firelight.

The hand on her lower abdomen was scorching hot. Shen Yiyi could not judge if Qin Luo had a fever from her illness. She leaned back, wanting to make some space, but before she could come back to her senses, her ankle was held, and a cold sensation climbed up her ankle bone step by step, the arc of the force stopping at the back of her knee.

“Why didn’t you answer the phone?”

Jiang Yan was still worried about her daughter’s cold. When she had gone down the mountain, she had specially bought a few apples from the villagers, thinking that since Shen Yiyi could not buy medicine, it would be good to supplement some vitamins. But she had called several times, and neither of her daughters had answered the phone, which had made her very anxious. Seeing that she had two apples in her hand and no knife to peel them, she had simply given up.

The Shen Yiyi who had not answered the phone was even more fragile than an apple.

She did not need Qin Luo’s effort. Her legs were easily separated, and her smooth skin was left with the other’s indentation. A single strand of hair brushing against the plain had started a great fire.

When she had just gone down the mountain, she was alone. The snow was almost twice her height, and the scenery on both sides was buried in the snow. When she looked up, she could only see the treetops. The road to find a pharmacy was lonely and long. Shen Yiyi had been walking quietly, and Qin Luo’s face had suddenly appeared in her mind, and she had thought of her mediocre past from thirty years ago.

—The last winter vacation before she had been recommended for graduate school, she had not gone home. She had stayed in the library for ten hours until her stomach ached before she had gotten up. To get some hot water, she had had to pass by the poster in front of the lobby. This winter vacation, she had walked back and forth in front of the poster several times, and every time, she had turned a blind eye. That night, the library had turned off the lights, and the whole hall was dim, which had made the poster also look gray, especially since the person on the poster seemed to have lost their color, which had made her stop in her tracks as if possessed.

Qin Luo was holding her new book in the poster, so dazzling that she seemed to be out of reach. But she had fantasized about another cold winter, when they would wake up in the same bed, hold hands under a bridge, and sit on the bumper cars she had wanted to try so much, and would be bumped until she was dizzy, and she would bump into Qin Luo’s arms and laugh out loud.

But the reason why people are people is that they have more fantasies than animals. Fantasizing that she had not been born, fantasizing that she was not the Shen family’s daughter, fantasizing that she had not worn headphones that day, fantasizing that she and Qin Luo had not gone their separate ways. But the meaning of a fantasy is not whether it will be realized, but its glorious decline before it is about to collapse. The one who opens their eyes first enters the cage first. She could not jump over the dragon’s gate, so she could only stand in front of the poster and burn that dream, and accept the mediocrity that came with her choice.

The light in the dim corridor that night was dark, and it was close to the dusk she had seen when she had returned to the wooden cabin. Shen Yiyi had thought all the way and had finally understood why she had stopped in front of the poster.

Shen Yiyi touched Qin Luo’s ear, glad that she was still by her side, that they had flown to see the snow mountain together, and not far away from each other. She took the initiative to say she loved her.

Qin Luo tilted her head. To hear this sentence clearly, she had stopped her movements.

“I love you.”

Shen Yiyi had specially repeated it for her.

A few short letters might not be able to introduce herself to Qin Luo. The boring her had no other fun, did not like musical instruments, did not like to watch dramas, and the ways to secrete dopamine were very few. Making love with Qin Luo was currently at the top of her list. The narrow her could not tolerate an intruder, could not accept a destroyer, but she had gradually been invaded by Qin Luo, and had even accepted her knuckles and the tip of her tongue. And there were many other strange her, and she could not introduce them one by one. She just hoped that Qin Luo could unravel them in the future.

Qin Luo had been so coaxed by Shen Yiyi that she was no longer human-shaped. In the mirror, she saw her chuckle, and she held her back with one hand and helped her blow with the other.

The hairdryer had been unknowingly knocked to the ground by the two of them, so Qin Luo had also squatted on the ground. When she had gotten up, she had even specially rinsed her mouth before she had kissed her. She knew that Shen Yiyi did not like a sticky kiss, and a few times she had forgotten to rinse her mouth and had almost gotten angry with her. Qin Luo did not want to ruin the happy mood of their travel night.

It was almost two in the morning when the room service had delivered the meal.

Qin Luo had finally finished her shower. She had opened the door with high spirits. The room service had placed the dinner plate on the coffee table, neatly arranged.

Qin Luo had looked at the food. The late-night snack service here was very average, with only a few butter cookies and nuts. How could this little bit of food fill Shen Yiyi? She had just used up too much energy and had to eat something with a taste.

“Is there any noodles in the kitchen now? Can you get me another bowl of noodles?”

The waiter had taken a note and had asked if there was anything else she needed.

The almost-asleep Shen Yiyi had asked softly if the hotel had any cold medicine and a thermometer. She was still thinking about the few sneezes that Qin Luo had made in the car. After just having a toss, she was very afraid that she would also catch a cold.

“No need to send the cold medicine.” Qin Luo was full of confidence. She was sure that she was not sick. “But you can send me a few bath towels, and also clothes…”

Qin Luo had looked at the pajamas on the sofa and had shaken her head. The part of her waist that had been sprayed wet could not be sent to the dry cleaner either. She could only wait until tomorrow to secretly go to the self-service laundry.

Qin Luo was in a good mood and smiled at the waiter.

“Just the bath towels will be fine.”

Overly Intense [Criminal Investigation] – End