Overly Intense [Criminal Investigation] 9

Chapter 9: After It’s Too Intense, Add Some Water

Qin Luo didn’t like to be late, so she arrived early.

But the moment she parked her car at the entrance of the police station, she was shooed away by the officer on duty.

“This is a government agency. No parking.”

So Qin Luo was forced to circle the entire public security building back and forth, finally snagging a spot on the curb.

She opened her phone, thinking of sending Shen Yiyi a message to say she was here to pick her up, but she didn’t know what to call her.

Teacher Shen…

She typed it and deleted it. Too deliberate.

Dr. Shen…

That would create distance before the meal even started.

Forget it. She’d just use the old name.

“Yiyi, I’m handling something near the station, so it’s on my way. I’ll come pick you up.”

She sent it and tapped her fingers on the steering wheel, waiting. In less than two minutes, Shen Yiyi replied.

“Okay, but you can’t park near the public security building. Give me your license plate number, and I’ll call the colleague on duty at the gate to let you in.”

Qin Luo sent Shen Yiyi her license plate number.

A minute later, the other woman replied:

“I’m not off work yet. Please wait for me downstairs for a bit.”

Qin Luo pulled out of the tight parking spot and drove openly toward the police station. But this time, she was stopped by the officer on duty again.

“Hello, please fill out the entry and exit registration.”

Qin Luo took the pen and filled in her name and ID number on the form. In the final column for the purpose of the visit, she wrote two large characters:

Picking up.

She closed the car window. The words “picking up” put her in a great mood. There was a secret sense of belonging to it, a little word game that was all hers. She smugly crossed her legs in her mind, waiting for the person being picked up to take the passenger seat.

Qin Luo’s car was parked directly in front of the criminal investigation building. She glanced up at the top of the building.

It was impressively tall, with a strong sense of technology from its reflective glass. It was imposing and solemn, a good match for Dr. Shen’s temperament.

Bored while waiting in the car, she randomly put on a podcast she had produced last week. The episode was about the subtle violence in couples’ sex lives.

Qin Luo listened for a few sentences, then scrolled through the comments and feedback. She thought the quality was pretty good, the perspective novel, so she shared the podcast on her Moments feed.

Just then, Shen Yiyi walked out of the building.

Qin Luo didn’t even have time to write a caption before she pressed send.

She looked up. Shen Yiyi was walking toward her with a colleague, wearing a pure white t-shirt.

Shen Yiyi was smiling at her colleague.

Qin Luo had forgotten what Shen Yiyi’s smile used to look like.

High school was too long ago for someone in their thirties, but Qin Luo was sure her smile hadn’t looked like this back then.

In Qin Luo’s memory, Shen Yiyi didn’t smile much.

Perhaps it was due to her OCD and mysophobia. Shen Yiyi never liked physical contact with people. There always seemed to be a transparent film around her. Her desk only ever had books and pens on it. She didn’t have the smell of dust on her, not the kind of sweaty smell from being in a crowd. She seemed to never be in a hurry.

She was as ethereal as a dense fog; no one wanted to linger around her.

Liu Jia’s impression of Shen Yiyi was probably the same. Otherwise, why would she have asked on the phone if Dr. Shen was still as cold as she used to be?

But now…

The Shen Yiyi opposite her had a very down-to-earth smile. Her hand rested naturally on her colleague’s shoulder as they chatted enthusiastically about something.

So that day at the table read, the tone Shen Yiyi used to say her name was nothing special. She was no different from those colleagues. Qin Luo thought this, raised an eyebrow, and casually lowered her car window.

Qin Luo didn’t say anything, just stuck her hand out and waved at the distance. She was signaling that she was here, that she could see her every move clearly from across the way.

But the first person to see Qin Luo’s wave wasn’t Dr. Shen, but the sharp-eyed Lu Shimao.

Lu Shimao was Shen Yiyi’s rarely-seen roommate and also a colleague from the criminal tech department.

They had just been talking about a criminal case they had taken on together in mid-June. Lu Shimao was urging Dr. Shen to issue the pathology report quickly so she could finalize the evidence procedures. But as they talked, they went off-topic and started gossiping about Director Hong behind his back.

The waving hand snatched Lu Shimao’s attention. She nudged her roommate’s arm with her elbow. “Isn’t that your friend who’s here to pick you up? She’s waving at you.”

Shen Yiyi checked the license plate number carefully. After confirming it was correct, she waved back.

“So are you going to the funeral home to deal with 702 after dinner tonight?” Lu Shimao asked as they walked.

“Yes, and I have to take the student Old Geng stuck me with to do the autopsy…”

Shen Yiyi sighed. “I have a feeling I’ll be working late into the night. And I have a meeting tomorrow morning, so I won’t be coming back. It’s too much of a hassle to go back and forth, and it’ll disturb your rest.”

“It’s no problem for me. I sleep like a log, can’t hear a thing.”

Lu Shimao stole a glance at her roommate’s face. She looked exhausted. “You, on the other hand, ever since you took over Old Geng’s position, you’ve been staying out all night every day.”

“Not as much as you. I’ve just been a bit busy this month.”

As they talked, they got closer and closer to Qin Luo’s car. Qin Luo could hear their conversation more and more clearly. Even when they reached her, the two showed no signs of parting ways.

“Are you working overtime tomorrow night too? Do you need me to bring you a change of clothes?” Lu Shimao asked with concern.

Shen Yiyi nodded. “Sure. Bring a few white ones; they don’t fade as easily when bleached.”

The two of them stood right in front of Qin Luo’s car. Lu Shimao walked toward Qin Luo’s passenger side first. “The stack on the left side of your closet, right?”

“Right.”

The hell… what’s going on? They live together?!

Qin Luo heard the conversation clearly and didn’t react for a moment.

Her gaze was fixed on Lu Shimao, scanning her from head to toe.

This person looked so gay, the type that older sisters would love. Qin Luo’s gaydar went off the charts, and her heart sank.

She watched as Lu Shimao squeezed into the space next to the passenger door, then pulled open the driver’s door of the big G-Wagon next to her. The woman even smiled at her and knocked on her window.

So Qin Luo lowered the passenger side window as well.

“Hi, um…”

Lu Shimao smiled politely at Qin Luo. “Excuse me, you’re a little too close to me. I can’t open my car door.”

Officer Lu had heard of Qin Luo and had witnessed her reputation online. She had previously handled a case of a university professor who had molested female students, which Qin Luo had exposed in a long article.

Moreover, Qin Luo’s aid society and the police department’s care committee had once jointly promoted free psychological counseling. And the aid and counseling for underage individuals involved in court cases was also being advanced by the psychological counseling institution under her company…

Although Qin Luo had a strong sense of public morality, her parking was too aggressive!!

The parking spaces at the police station were already narrow, and she had parked over the line… Lu Shimao had to suck in her stomach and still couldn’t squeeze in.

Seeing that Qin Luo was just staring at her without reacting, Lu Shimao pointed ahead and suggested, “Why don’t you pull out first?”

Qin Luo snapped back to her senses and immediately nodded in apology. “Sorry, I’ll move right away.”

Then she started the car and drove it in front of Shen Yiyi. Qin Luo smiled at her but couldn’t say a word.

Shen Yiyi opened the car door and got in. The first thing she said was, “That was my roommate.”

Oh, a roommate.

Qin Luo secretly let out a huge sigh of relief and turned her head, probing with a half-joking tone, “I thought that was your girlfriend.”

“She has a girlfriend,” Shen Yiyi said flatly.

Qin Luo smiled again. “True. She has the face of someone who would have a girlfriend.”

Shen Yiyi didn’t take the bait, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. “Turn right out of the station, then go straight through two traffic lights. There’s a parking lot there. It’s convenient for parking and close to the restaurant.”

For some reason, Qin Luo found herself losing the upper hand again. She followed her instructions and turned the steering wheel to the right.

The car was quiet. Sixteen years of separation had left them in a state of unfamiliarity.

At a red light, Qin Luo took the initiative to speak. “Are you staying in Shanghai now?”

“Yes. What about you?”

Qin Luo thought for a long time before finally answering, “Me too.”

There were still thirty seconds left on the red light, but the conversation was about to die here. Qin Luo found it amusing and turned her head to look out the window, changing the subject. “Are you still in touch with Guo Rui?”

Hearing the familiar name, Shen Yiyi’s body trembled slightly. She shook her head. “Not since she transferred.”

Qin Luo seemed to be filling in the ending of a story lost from their school days. “She’s a teacher now.”

“Really? Where is she teaching?”

Qin Luo could hear the happiness in her voice. “At our old high school.”

“She went back to Jiangfeng High?”

Shen Yiyi’s voice rose, an irrepressible anticipation bubbling up. She leaned slightly toward Qin Luo, unconsciously asking, “What subject does she teach?”

“Politics. She’s a head teacher. A couple of days ago, she was complaining to me about how stressful it is to teach the senior class.”

Shen Yiyi was very interested in this topic. “Mm, and then?”

Qin Luo switched to driving with one hand, resting her other elbow on the window and propping up her head, deliberately pretending not to understand. “And then what?”

“How is she doing?”

Qin Luo knew what Shen Yiyi wanted to hear. “Her salary isn’t high, she lives alone…”

Shen Yiyi was silent, listening quietly as Qin Luo spoke.

“Last time, she brought a girl from her class from Fengjiang to Shanghai to see me. She said the girl had suffered some psychological trauma and needed my help. But she came and went in a hurry, so I didn’t get to ask about the details. Later, I asked the counselors at the institution and found out that the girl she brought had encountered the same problem she did back then. We talked on the phone later, and she mentioned that the kids these days are much worse than we were. Those boys not only stuff condoms into the girls’ desks, but they also draw sketches of genitals in their textbooks every day. She’s dealt with many students like that.”

Qin Luo drove slowly. “Although these things still happen, she said that as long as she sees it, she can stop it. After all, she’s a teacher now. Even though it’s the kind of teacher she hated the most back then, she’s no longer a teacher who turns a blind eye, who pretends to be deaf and dumb.”

She smiled, as if she were speaking to their past selves.

“You ask me if she’s doing well. I haven’t asked her, but I think she’s living a life where she can redeem herself, so it should be pretty good.”

“Mm, that’s good.”

“By the way, Guo Rui asked me last time if I was still in touch with you.” Qin Luo glanced sideways, looking at the person in the passenger seat in the fading evening light. “I said no. And then do you know what she asked me?”

Shen Yiyi guessed the answer. She didn’t dare to speak.

“She asked me why you and I didn’t end up together.”