Overly Intense [Criminal Investigation] 163

Chapter 163: The End (Part 3)

Another summer.

Shen Yiyi had only walked five steps after getting out of the nanny van when she was covered in sweat.

Wang Xi was rubbing her hands and waiting at the entrance of the theater. Seeing Shen Yiyi and the two elders with her, she immediately held up an umbrella to greet them, greeting them respectfully.

“Sister Shen, Auntie, Uncle.”

Shen Yiyi was unwilling to trouble Qin Luo’s assistant and took the umbrella from her hand. “Please take them in. I’m going to wash my hands.”

Ah…

Wang Xi knew that this was Shen Yiyi’s habit. In the past year and a half, they had often gone on business trips together. Every time they arrived at a station, Sister Shen would always be the first to look for a restroom. At first, she had thought that Sister Shen had a problem with her urinary system, but later she had heard that she had a serious case of mysophobia.

“Don’t worry.”

Wang Xi stepped aside to lead the way, taking Shen Qinwen and Jiang Yan toward the venue.

She hadn’t seen Qin Luo in a month. After the final cut of Her Kill, Qin Luo had almost been living in Beijing. Now, the melon was finally ripe, and it was time for the first screening.

Shen Yiyi had just come out of the hotel and had been taken to the venue by the driver. Only then had she made an excuse to shake off Wang Xi, preparing to find a flower shop to buy a bouquet of flowers for the great screenwriter to congratulate her.

She had chosen a low-key bouquet of white eustomas. The shop owner had said that this represented that her efforts could be seen. Just as Shen Yiyi was about to take out her phone to pay, Liu Jia’s call had come in.

“Where are you?”

Shen Yiyi had to hold her phone and take out her wallet. “I’m buying flowers.”

“What’s the point of a couple buying flowers? Hurry up, it’s about to start. Qin Luo is anxious to find you.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Remember to wear a mask. Don’t be photographed by passersby again.”

Shen Yiyi rolled her eyes. “You’re crazy.”

Beep beep beep, Liu Jia had hung up before Shen Yiyi could curse her.

When she had just been discharged from the hospital, Liu Jia had actively participated in language rehabilitation training, but it had not been very effective. She had originally planned to give up, but after the filming of Her Kill had resumed, Qin Luo had been too busy to get away, and had had to have Liu Jia go back to Logos to hold the fort. In this year and a half, Liu Jia, with her love of work meetings, had recovered a lot of her language in her bickering with her employees. Although her brain would occasionally short-circuit, and she would stammer and be unable to speak, she could basically handle daily conversations.

Shen Yiyi shook her head in confusion. “Why does your speech speed up when you talk to me?”

“Ah… you’re that internet celebrity forensic pathologist…” The boss had looked at Shen Yiyi a couple more times when he was getting the change. In a daze, he had recognized her and had clapped his hands in excitement. “I was just watching your video yesterday!!”

“Really?” Shen Yiyi seemed to have gotten used to the internet celebrity life and forced a smile. “Thank you for your attention.”

“Ahhhhhh, can we take a picture together?”
“Of course.”

Shen Yiyi generously held up the white eustomas from the flower shop and smiled naturally at the camera.

Click—

A photo was thus lying in her phone’s photo album.

“I hope you find the killer soon. You should update more in the future!”

Shen Yiyi had heard too many well-intentioned blessings and replied with a smile, “Thank you.”

With that, she pushed open the door and walked toward the theater.

The screening of Her Kill was very low-key, but it could not stop the enthusiasm of the media, especially since the week before the film adaptation conference, it had just happened to be the day of Zhan Luo’s first trial.

The news of Zhan Luo’s death sentence had once again detonated the entire network. The tags “live stream trial,” “disguised murder,” and “savior and demon” had taken turns on the trending topics. The mysterious connection between Her Kill and the real case had also been brought to the table by the public again, and the discussion about Logos was endless.

Some had called Zhan Luo a madman who was obsessed with the text, and some had bluntly said that he was a backlash of sexism.

And as the original author and screenwriter of the movie, Qin Luo, and as the investor of the movie, Logos, had also been forced to stand in the gap between “public opinion guidance” and “capital manipulation.”

[The remarks of the artists under Logos have always been very hostile. After all, they make a living from emotions.]
[Is Her Kill a protest against the survival situation of women, or an endorsement of violent justice?]
[What’s wrong with the scumbags that Zhan Luo killed?]
[Is Qin Luo brainwashing the netizens through this method?]

These voices were pervasive. From the end of filming to the approval of the review, the discussion had never stopped.

It had even spread to the corners of the red carpet of the screening. Even the main creative team was often interviewed by the media about these issues, which had forced the production to come out and respond many times: “The work is not related to the case, and the boundary between art and reality still needs to be clarified.”

Shen Yiyi had seen the crowd from a distance.

It could be seen that although the security at the venue had been quietly strengthened, and the organizer had repeatedly suppressed the exposure, there were still many entertainment cattle and horses squatting outside the venue.

Shen Yiyi remembered Liu Jia’s words and immediately took out a mask and a hat from her bag. But the flowers she was holding were too conspicuous, and she was recognized after just a few steps.

“It’s that female internet celebrity.”
“That’s right, it’s the forensic pathologist who caught Zhan Luo!!”
“It’s Qin Luo’s girlfriend.”
“Was that old man we saw just now her dad?”

Hey…

Hearing the paparazzi’s words, Shen Yiyi was full of impatience.
—Qin Luo’s girlfriend?

Shen Yiyi couldn’t help but sigh in her heart: when had she, Shen Yiyi, become an appendage of Qin Luo?

She had been invited to the screening openly and honestly.
She was now a “police representative,” a “forensic science popularization blogger,” with her own fans and moral halo! At this thought, Shen Yiyi held her head high and stood up straight, and walked toward the venue with a firm gaze.

“You’re finally here!”

Wang Xi looked down at her watch, and when she looked up, she saw that Sister Shen was both anxious and happy. She quickly put the work pass around her neck and pushed Shen Yiyi into the theater.

“Third row.”

The hall was pitch black, and the classic dragon head logo had already appeared on the screen. Wang Xi bent down and pointed to a seat for Shen Yiyi. “Do you see President Liu? You can sit next to her, in the middle.”

Shen Yiyi looked around. The theater was full, and there were no empty seats.
But she had been looking for a long time and had not found Qin Luo.

Wang Xi naturally understood her boss’s wife’s meaning and explained, “You can go in and watch first. Director Qin will come on stage to speak after the event.”

This unscreened, uncut version was more than three hours long. It was the first time it had met with the audience. The theater was very quiet the whole time, and all the viewers were on the edge of their seats with the plot, and had even shed tears at the ending. Shen Yiyi, as a police officer, was very numb to it and was still not satisfied with the details. In contrast, Liu Jia, who was sitting next to her, was curled up in her seat, holding a tissue and sobbing.

When the credits rolled, the lights in the theater came on, and only then did Shen Yiyi see Qin Luo’s back.

Qin Luo was also wearing a camisole today, a light purple, tight-fitting camisole. She rarely wore such a bright color, which separated her from the crowd.

And the small scar on her shoulder…

Shen Yiyi was distracted by the scar. She remembered that last month, when Qin Luo had come home, she had angrily bitten that scar when they were in bed… But at this moment, Qin Luo was enveloped in the spotlight, and the bite mark she had left on her body was so dazzling.

There was no host. The audience below the stage was still wiping their tears. Qin Luo stood at the bottom of the steps with a microphone in her hand.

She had not yet gone on stage and had already started to speak:

“Women are often the background, the victims, the silent objects, not the narrators. We see them being deeply loved by men, being abandoned, being praised by their sons, and being pushed onto a great hall in various texts, but we have never seen them write about themselves.”

“So in high school, I began to fantasize if I could write something.”
“Write about menstruation, write about friendship, write about sex and love, write about loneliness and depression. In ‘writing something,’ literature gradually became a weapon against historical deletion.”
“After I graduated from college, I seemed to have a stronger desire to express myself. I gradually became intense and advocated for writing about scars, about the pain left on me, about the injustice engraved in the fate of women, from personal experience to political expression.”

There was no viewer filling out a form, no producer giving thanks, no Q&A session with the production. Qin Luo’s opening was lonely, but it made people concentrate.

Qin Luo walked up the steps, one by one. The light was on her shoulder, and she was particularly beautiful today.

“But after I’ve heard so many stories, I’ve finally realized that what I write is not important.”
“What’s important is that more and more girls are starting to join in the writing.”
“They write about being abandoned, they write about the family disputes that are not understood, they write about their reproductive choices, they write about their mental collapse, they write about the anxiety of being submerged at any time in a modern city.”

The audience became quieter and quieter.

She stood in the very center of the stage, the microphone in her hand hanging down, as if she were speaking softly to a group of friends she had not seen in many years.

She suddenly looked in Shen Yiyi’s direction and smiled, waving her hand.

Then she slowly opened her mouth and said,

“We have to write about the life that has not been recorded in history.”

This is a new and undeveloped era.
“We write about those moments that have been simplified, that have been drowned out by the narrator.”
“Literature is never the end.”
—It is the way we begin to speak.

When the power narrative of history has a pause, literature begins to grow wildly.
“When the tip of the pen draws the overly intense fragments of life, the chapters of life are truly read.”
“When great history cannot explain the freedom of life, literature, especially female literature, begins to bear the responsibility of writing the truth.”

Qin Luo remembered that her literature professor had asked them in class: why does literature spare no effort to describe the pain of childbirth, why does literature show her due to femininity whenever it has a chance, what is the stubborn disease of literature?

These questions had disappeared from the classroom.
When she was leaving after class, she had said with a smile, “If you want to know the answer, then go and write.”

Qin Luo looked around the audience, her gaze on the audience. She now understood the professor’s answer.

“The end of history is the beginning of literature.”

The old era will be slowly replaced. Even if it is full of war and opposition, even if there is no answer, but we know that that ordinary new world will always come. As long as we do not use others’ eyes, do not act as others’ muses.

As long as we write about ourselves, it doesn’t matter if it’s too intense.

Qin Luo’s eyes were wet. She thought of how it had finally made it to the big screen and had met the world, thought of how it would also become history, thought of how it had bestowed a difficult fate…

“The story is finally over.”

She looked at Shen Yiyi holding up that bouquet of flowers, swaying it at her, as if she couldn’t wait for her to come off the stage and hug her.

“For these stories to be seen by you.”
“I feel particularly honored.”

[Overly Intense [Criminal Investigation] – Main Story End]