The Brain Science Case 60

Chapter 60: The Lonely Killer – 9

“Welcome.” The owner was a man in his late fifties with a beard. “What can I help you with?”

“Excuse me.” Zhou Jinglin showed her ID. “I’m a detective from the Criminal Investigation Division. Do you know a high school girl named Ou Anpo?” She also showed a photo on her phone.

“Ou Anpo? I don’t think I know her.”

“Then you must remember Teacher Wu Yingfan…”

Yingli took the opportunity to look around the shop. It was not large, and the walls and shelves were lined with all kinds of violins, but mostly violins. In the corner were a few unfinished violin heads, which showed that they probably also made violins here.

There was a pen on the counter, and next to the phone was a notebook with phone numbers, names, and so on, all in the same handwriting.

The owner finally heard the noise. “Miss, please don’t touch…”

“It’s not him.” She turned to Zhou Jinglin and showed her the page. “The handwriting is different.”

“W-What handwriting?”

“We learned that you are in charge of repairing Teacher Wu Yingfan’s and her students’ violins. Ou Anpo is her student, and she went missing recently. We found a love poem in her house, and the handwriting is exactly the same as the note in your shop.” Zhou Jinglin showed her the note. “Are there any other employees in the shop?”

“Let me see.” The moment he looked closely, his expression changed.

Yingli met Zhou Jinglin’s gaze and quickly asked, “Who wrote this?”

“This… is my son’s handwriting,” he stammered.

“Where is he?”

“He’s inside. But…” As the owner pointed inside, Yingli had already strode in. “Miss, wait.”

“Teacher.”

Contrary to the clean and tidy exterior, the interior was crowded and messy with all kinds of materials. The shelves were lined with naturally dried spruce and maple boards, each with a straight and beautiful wood grain.

Further in, planing tools were mixed with wood shavings, unopened violin strings, and semi-finished products. The air was filled with the smell of paint. The light was a little dim, and the craftsman hidden in it was focused on finely planing a piece of wood.

His right hand was bandaged, and his profile was obscured by the shadows, but his focused eyes shone like jewels.

Yingli nimbly stepped over the obstacles. “Do you know this girl?” The photo on her phone screen was of Ou Anpo in her performance costume.

“Don’t disturb him. Can’t you see he’s making a violin?”

“I can see that. He’s sanding the violin’s top plate. The curvature of the top plate has an absolute influence on the breadth and thickness of the sound, and it’s also one of the most delicate parts of the violin-making process.” She raised her voice. “But what I have to ask is far more important than making a violin.”

At her retort, the owner’s face instantly turned red.

“You’ve met recently, haven’t you?” she intervened forcefully, forcing him to stop his work. “Look closely.”

He sighed softly. “You’re blocking the light.”

“Ou Anpo is missing.” Yingli slammed her hand on the workbench and saw a piece of rosin with gold powder on it. “Right after she met you.” Her tone was certain, and she held up her phone.

“Junsheng, don’t answer her questions.” The owner called out to him and turned to Yingli and Zhou Jinglin. “I know Teacher Wu, but I’m in charge of all the repair work, including her students’ violins. My son couldn’t have known her students.”

But Gong Junsheng’s reaction gave him away. He trembled as if he were deeply affected, and took off his goggles, trying to see the person on the screen.

“He has Asperger’s.” The owner finally stood between him and Yingli. “He’s been bad at socializing since he was little. After graduating from high school, he started learning to make violins with me. It’s harder for him to talk to a girl than to make a good violin. He doesn’t know the person you’re looking for… Junsheng?”

Gong Junsheng stopped his father’s heated words with his injured right hand. He walked around his father and looked down at the screen.

“Amber came to see me yesterday,” he said sincerely, meeting Yingli’s eyes.

**

They had first met three years ago.

At that time, he was the only one in the shop. Wu Yingfan had brought her to the shop and had said with a smile that her most outstanding student needed a good violin, because her old one was no longer good enough.

“She’s very special,” Gong Junsheng pointed to the left side of his chin, “she has a very obvious mark here, the result of practicing every day… she’s the best violinist I’ve ever seen, her technique is excellent.”

When Ou Anpo had tried to play the violin, he had found that her ability to distinguish sounds was even better than Wu Yingfan’s. “She heard a flaw in the sound that Teacher Wu couldn’t hear… it’s probably because she’s young.” He smiled faintly. “So she easily picked my best work.”

“Because she’s young?” Wu Yingfan wasn’t old either.

“As you get older, the high-frequency response you can hear gradually decreases,” Yingli explained directly for him. “And then what? How did you get in touch?”

“Tutoring. She had tutoring nearby.”

Every Wednesday and Friday, they would meet for a very short time, twenty minutes at most. Because her parents knew when her tutoring ended, and if she was too late, her parents would get suspicious. She would always rush to the shop, and after saying less than five sentences, she would hurry to take the MRT home. But every meeting was very enjoyable for him.

They were both not good with words, but their personalities were surprisingly compatible. They connected through music and cherished each other.

“Are you… a couple?” Zhou Jinglin really wanted to know how far they had progressed.

But Gong Junsheng’s eyes widened, and he shook his head. “She just came to listen to music, try a new bow or rosin, or try my new work. Amber and I are not in that kind of relationship.”

Zhou Jinglin lowered her head and stuck out her tongue in embarrassment. “But I also felt that we were… slowly changing,” he added.

In high school, Ou Anpo’s academic pressure had clearly increased, and her practice time had also increased. At first, they still met at the appointed time, but that only lasted until the end of her first year. After she was re-sorted into the math and science gifted program, she had insisted on going, but had been forced to give up her “English tutoring” to increase her practice time—which was also equivalent to destroying their chances of meeting.

Gong Junsheng gritted his teeth slightly. “Even I could feel her pressure. On the last night of tutoring, she came to see me and cried. It was the first time I had seen her like that.”

“What about the poem? Did you give it to her then?”

“Which one?”

Yingli patiently repeated, “Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths…”

He had a sudden realization. “No, it was the last time Teacher Wu brought her violin to me to be tuned. I wrote it and put it in the violin case for her. I had accidentally injured myself before, so it was a little difficult to write… I was very worried her parents would find it, so I specifically asked Teacher Wu when she would touch the violin. When I heard she was going to her place for a lesson, I was relieved…”

“Did you often send them before? English poems.”

He nodded. “Reading poetry is my hobby. Amber seems to like it too.”

No wonder she went to such lengths to imitate his handwriting… to avoid being discovered by her parents, Ou Anpo had always been on guard.

“What did you talk about yesterday?” At this point, Yingli turned to the owner, as if to ask why he didn’t know.

“Amber always comes through the back door. When I’m making a violin, Dad usually doesn’t disturb me,” Gong Junsheng said, lowering his head. “I was shocked when she came to the shop. She was wearing… very beautiful clothes, and she said she had done it. As I had said, she had won the music competition with my violin.” He pursed his lips, and a silence followed.

“And then?” Zhou Jinglin couldn’t help but ask.

“Of course I was very happy. But I was varnishing another violin… when we met at night before, I had always deliberately set aside time. I didn’t expect her to come yesterday, so I asked her to wait and let me continue to focus. By noon, I was almost done, but…”

She was gone.

“She seemed to have said something, but I didn’t hear it clearly. I’m not even sure when she left or where she went.” He ran his hands through his hair and looked troubled. “She didn’t go home… right?”

Yingli’s eyes widened, and she approached with a terrifyingly high-pressure demeanor. “If she had gone home, I wouldn’t be here.”

On the verge of an outburst, she finally held it in. “To cover up the poem you sent, she imitated your handwriting. When I searched her house, she had this on her music stand.”

Yeats’s poem, in his own handwriting.

“Do you understand, Mr. Gong? I don’t care where you place her, but Ou Anpo saw this as your confession of love.”

It was a love poem, and at the same time, it was Gong Junsheng’s encouragement for the person he valued. Ou Anpo had taken the performance costume, dressed up for him, and had won the glory of the championship for him. She finally understood why Ou Anpo was dissatisfied with this performance costume, because she only wanted to be the person described in the poem—because that was her “The heavens’ embroidered cloths.”

But she, who was full of hope, had returned disappointed.

“With your Asperger’s, you couldn’t accurately perceive the emotions she was expressing, right? The activation of your dorsolateral prefrontal cortex makes you very precise in your plans and pace, but the function of your ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is to perceive emotions, has disappeared.”

“What… what did you say?”

Yingli was too angry to explain in detail. “Where else did you go on your dates?”

Gong Junsheng shook his head, looking a little flustered. “It was a very short time, so we were always here…”

“Great. The trail is cold.”

Her rose-colored lips were pressed into a thin line, and she angrily walked to the shop door.

“Teacher.” Zhou Jinglin called after her, but she walked away decisively. “Mr. Gong…” she chewed on her pen cap and wrote a string of numbers on his workbench, “if you remember anything else Ou Anpo said to you, or if you think of anywhere she might have gone, please contact me immediately.”

After watching Zhou Jinglin leave, Gong Junsheng blankly withdrew his gaze. “Junsheng…” He ignored his father’s call, only lightly touching the still-wet phone number with his finger.