Overly Intense [Criminal Investigation] 91

Chapter 91: What Does She Love About Qin Luo

Shen Yiyi lay in bed.

This was the small bed where they had kissed. Shen Yiyi turned over and hugged the blanket into a ball.

If Qin Luo were here, she would allow herself to hug her like this.

“We didn’t date, but we kissed.”

The words that had made her ears go numb from Qin Luo’s kiss echoed in her mind. Shen Yiyi closed her eyes, and in front of her were the moments of biting and kissing with Qin Luo. She could even smell Qin Luo’s sweet breath.

When she opened her eyes again, the cool bubbles between her lips and teeth, and the soft scent on her neck were all gone.

In their place were new imaginations.

Qin Luo and You Ning…

So she hadn’t been deliberate.

The imagination turned into fear. When it became concrete, Shen Yiyi got up in the middle of the night and changed to a new set of bedsheets and the T-shirt on her body. She had tossed and turned for a long time before she was willing to go to sleep.

She had no dreams and had slept intermittently until four in the morning.

In these past few years of working at her desk, she would spend five or six hours on an autopsy. Her lower back was severely strained, and the small bed at home was too soft. With the catalysis of the rainy weather, Shen Yiyi woke up with a sore back and had to sit on the edge of the bed for a long time to recover.

It was not yet light, and the streets were wet.

“I like her, but she kissed someone else!”
…
“You clearly said you were going to pick her up from the troupe that day. Why didn’t you go!”

The shadow kept repeating beside her…

Shen Yiyi lowered her head and rubbed her face. When a person goes crazy, there are only emotions. Afterward, when they calm down, there is only regret and nervousness.

She had really gone too crazy last night.

The expression on Shen Qinwen’s face from last night appeared before her eyes — an anger she had never seen before. Sigh, her refined father must have been truly furious. He hadn’t even called her to dinner after going back to his room.

Well, he must have fainted from anger.

Shen Yiyi sighed. She planned to sneak back to Shanghai before Shen Qinwen woke up, to leave some distance for them to digest. She believed that her dad would figure it out after a while.

As she was thinking this, she stood up and pushed open the door.

Who knew that the lights in the living room were on, and a dejected figure was on the sofa, leaning back, tired and sleepy, as if she were resting with her eyes closed. The coffee table was a mess. Besides a stack of newspapers on the left, there were also several thick notebooks, and on top of the notebooks was a pair of reading glasses she had never seen before.

“Are you awake?”

Shen Yiyi said, “Yes.”

“If you’re hungry, you can eat first. If you’re not hungry, you can come and sit down.”

Her father’s words were stern, the tone he would use when she had made a mistake as a child.

Shen Yiyi had never been afraid of Shen Qinwen since she was a child. She thought her father was just a paper tiger. She didn’t even have to coax him. As long as she showed him her report card and kept her personal hygiene in order, the father and daughter could be at peace. Even when she had stabbed Han Cheng, she had not hesitated for a second because of her father.

She was always reckless when it came to Shen Qinwen.

But at this moment, Shen Yiyi looked at his closed eyes and suddenly felt nervous. She slowly walked to the opposite of Shen Qinwen and sat down. “Did you not sleep last night?”

As she asked this, she felt guilty in her heart.

Shen Yiyi paused for a long time and then said, “Dad, I’m sorry about last night.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. How things are with Qin Luo is your own business in the end.”

Shen Qinwen finally opened his eyes. His expression was gloomy, his face haggard, and even his voice was hoarse. He had thought all night, using all his life’s experience and knowledge, and had finally had to compromise with this fact.

He had even smelled a hint of luck in his panic.

Lucky that she still had hope for feelings, that she expected someone to accompany her through her life.

Shen Qinwen raised his hand and pointed to the thick stack on the table. “This is all the reports about your mom, including newspapers, magazines, and digests.”

Shen Yiyi picked up the pile of newspapers. The paper was clean and had no folded corners. They were neatly arranged in chronological order. The newspaper at the bottom was older than her, as if it were a report from before she was born.

“Those are your mother’s work notes, diaries, and your educational records.”

Educational records?

Shen Yiyi followed her father’s finger and looked at the notebook. She had never heard Shen Qinwen mention it before. In her impression, the only written traces her mother had left were the corrections on her homework.

She immediately picked it up and flipped through a couple of pages.

The first few pages were left by her mother after she had given birth. The neat handwriting was a plan and expectation for her daughter’s future, from early education courses to diet and sleep. Everything was in order and very detailed every day. She flipped through them, but she felt a sense of unfamiliarity with the handwriting, as if she were peeking at a strange life on the other side of the ocean. She had only been with her mother for nine years, and the details and habits that had long been gone made it difficult for her to get close to the font for a moment.

“And the family’s passbook. Inside is what your mom and I have left for you. Plus your own savings, it should be enough for a down payment in Shanghai. You can take it.”

“Dad…”

Shen Yiyi’s breathing was short. She had a hard time looking at her father and just stared at the diary on her lap. “I lost control of my emotions last night. I just…”

She just wanted to escape this shackle for a short time, even if it was just for a moment.

But she had never wanted to put it on her father.

Shen Qinwen sighed. “I’m already old. I might go and reunite with your mom one day. Everything in the family will be yours sooner or later.”

Shen Yiyi felt annoyed. “You’re still young. Why are you talking about these things?”

“This is a very natural replacement of life.”

He was already in his seventies. His eyesight was failing. After staying up all night, he couldn’t even see his daughter clearly. When his daughter was born, he had never expected that he would one day talk to her about his own death like this. Even when his wife had passed away, he had not dared to mention it. Even when his daughter had become a forensic pathologist, he had never asked. The living always shy away from such things.

“You’re a forensic pathologist. You clearly understand these principles better than I do. I will die one day.”

To be like a father, Shen Qinwen had to put on his glasses. It was probably a parent’s instinct, to always want to establish their authority.

“Your mom had a big fight with your grandfather to be with me. She told me at that time that although her parents had given her life, it was life that had given her other things. Whether life is bitter or sweet depends on how you choose. I agreed with her, so I’m telling you now.”

“Don’t be overly obsessed with those other things that are beyond your control, and don’t reverse the cause and effect.”

He said softly, even though the father and daughter would feel heartbroken because of their guilt, he did not want the burden to fall on her alone. Last night, he had been woken up by the thunder and had seen that his daughter’s eyes were still full of hope.

Her jealousy of her peers, her possessiveness of Qin Luo, and her hatred and pain for herself were the sensitivity that had disappeared in her adolescence, the new life that he had hoped she could have.

So Shen Qinwen felt that he was not compromising, but was lucky.

“Compared to you not remembering the killer’s—”

“Dad!”

Shen Yiyi closed the notebook and frowned. “Don’t say it.”

Shen Qinwen had to say it. He knew that the shadow had not left his daughter. It was well hidden by his daughter. He could no longer listen to the psychologist’s nonsense and let Shen Yiyi escape, interrupting or avoiding this topic every time.

“Compared to you not remembering the killer’s face, my responsibility is indeed greater. If I hadn’t had something to do that day and had been delayed in picking you and your mom up, nothing would have happened.”

If he hadn’t indulged his daughter and had gone to the restaurant to celebrate, he wouldn’t have asked for leave from the tutor, and Shen Yiyi wouldn’t have been at home at that time. If he had picked up his wife at the theater that day, she wouldn’t have been followed home.

So instead of saying that his daughter had lost her memory due to the pain, which had allowed the killer to escape, it was better to blame him for negotiating with the leaders for a promotion, which had led to this disaster for the whole family.

His daughter forgetting the killer was just a turning point in the case, and he might have been the one who had helped the gears turn.

There was no reversal of cause and effect here.

But that year, he was not nine, but forty.

He already had the ability to deceive himself, the bad habit of shirking the cause and effect in his pain, and he understood the principle that fate will always hit a stubborn rock.

The other things in his life had already flowed through his body. He had given up the bitter and had chosen the sweet, had chosen to easily climb over that big mountain and look forward.

And his ten-year-old daughter did not understand those principles.

“It was my fault.”

Shen Qinwen said in a muffled voice, tears hesitating in his eyes for a long time, and finally, he couldn’t help but cry. He covered his desolate and aging face with his hands and sobbed, “I don’t know how to persuade you to let yourself go.”

But it was surprisingly simple when he had let go.

It was like a drowsy sleep, a great dream that had dissipated. In the ashes were the unburned corners of his marriage—the Shen Yiyi she had left for him.

Shen Qinwen had never asked his daughter all these years if Xu Meng had ever appeared in her dreams, if she had said anything about her regrets in her dreams, or if she had blamed him for not taking good care of their daughter, for making her unable to forget these fears.

He did not dare to ask, because Xu Meng had never come to him in his dreams.

“If liking Qin Luo can make you let go of the past, then I’m willing to accept it. If buying a house can make you live in peace, then I can sell the house and go to live in my grandfather’s old house.”

He had already grown old in this suffering, but his daughter was still young. He wanted her to stop.

“If you have to find the killer to be able to stop, then I’ll work with you to end the nightmare in my lifetime.” Shen Qinwen was almost pleading. “A person cannot be resurrected after they die. You’re only in your thirties. I… I just beg you not to torture yourself anymore.”

“I know.” Shen Yiyi’s eyes were full of tears. She held the notebook in her hand tightly. “Don’t worry. I haven’t tortured myself much.”

Although Shen Yiyi said she was not torturing herself, she had cried for half an hour in the car before she had returned, her eyes swollen, and she had driven back to Shanghai on a rainy day. In name, it was indeed very torturous.

Fortunately, she cherished her life and never got distracted while driving.

When she got to the office and was asked by Lin Puping why her eyes were swollen, she was in a daze and recalled the conversation between her and her father. There was no sense of relief, no sudden enlightenment. She calmly looked at the handbag she had brought back.

—Compared to tears and repentance, clues are the most important, aren’t they?

Little Wang happened to knock on her door at that moment. “Sister, there’s an analysis meeting in room 301 on the second floor. They said there’s a clue in the Qi Yingjun case.”

***

The conference room was crowded with people. Shen Yiyi, as the director of the identification department and the main examiner of the victim’s body, sat on the right of the person in charge of the case. The director of the criminal tech department was also sitting next to her.

The evidence was too new, and the police officers had not yet had time to make a PPT. And this kind of encrypted report had a risk of being leaked, so everyone had to rely on their own notebooks and pens to take notes.

“This victim has 3 lawsuits against him. We’ve reviewed the court documents and learned that this Qi Yingjun was a medical beauty salesperson in Hangzhou for a while before he became a host.”

The one who spoke was Piao Zheng, the person in charge of the case.

He said, “This kind of sales is similar to a pyramid scheme. A nose job costs 80,000, but if you bring a friend to do it, you can get a 10,000 yuan discount. The commission for a single order is very high. As long as the customer has the surgery, he can get nearly 3,000 yuan. The commission price is different for different types of surgery.”

“Little Li went to Hangzhou yesterday and learned about the hospital he had worked at. He had worked there for three years and had earned more than 800,000 yuan.”

Seven or eight years ago, the live stream industry had grown rapidly, and all kinds of internet celebrities had begun to pursue beauty. All kinds of illegal beauty salons and plastic surgery hospitals had sprung up in the Yangtze River Delta, which had led to a surge in the number of medical malpractice cases received by the police.

For the sake of market stability, the Yangtze River Delta had conducted joint law enforcement many times. The police, the market supervision bureau, and the customs had also cracked down on the smuggling of illegal brand instruments and improper publicity.

Shen Yiyi was in the provincial department at that time and had also participated in the identification reform, and had discussed the relevant identification issues of medical beauty disfigurement with experts.

“There are many customer complaints about him, most of which are false advertising, resulting in the surgery not meeting expectations. And the lawsuit is because after the surgery, there were functional problems. One of them had empty nose syndrome due to the reduction of the nasal turbinates and had eventually committed suicide. The family had sued the hospital and him.”

For a person’s vision, the judgment of aesthetic appearance is given by society. But from an identification perspective, beauty is useless to a person. The standard of disfigurement is only judged by the area of the scar and the functional impairment, at most with an assessment of the psychological damage.

For example, Qi Yingjun. Although Shen Yiyi had not cut his face, from the damaged skin tissue on the body’s surface, he had spent a lot of money on his face. And he was not satisfied with the current situation and had gone to the hospital again and again to repair and adjust it.

Shen Yiyi nudged the director of the criminal tech department and asked in a low voice, “Old Feng, what does his girlfriend look like?”

“Tsk tsk, she’s quite ugly.” Old Feng clicked his tongue, took out his phone, and started to search in the group chat. Then he clicked on an ID photo. “Look, isn’t she not good-looking?”

The “so-so” in his mouth was a girl with a ponytail, no facial deformities, and no obvious scars. It was probably the slightly too long distance between her eyes that made her look a little awkward from the middle.

In Shen Yiyi’s eyes, this was an ordinary girl, but in Old Feng’s eyes, she was described as “quite ugly.”

Then for the Qi Yingjun who had extremely high requirements for his appearance, what did he love about this girl?

What did he love about her?

Thinking of love, her thoughts inexplicably surged, and she stared blankly at the blank paper.

Right, what did she love about Qin Luo?