NOS Chapter 6
by VolareAt first, Yu Chunming only saw a blurry figure in the distance. As he got closer, he realized it was Guan Yao.
Guan Yao was standing beneath the ruins of a wall that had been burned down by a fire, staring blankly at the debris of bricks and tiles. He was completely unaware of the person approaching from behind. When Yu Chunming’s voice rang out, he was startled and almost jumped.
“You, what are you doing here?” Guan Yao involuntarily took a step back.
Yu Chunming cleared his throat twice and turned his gaze to the charred wall in the distance. He didn’t ask Guan Yao why he was there, but answered, “I came to see what Za Mu Er, District 11, Number 35, looks like.”
Guan Yao’s eyebrows twitched slightly.
Yu Chunming walked past him and went to the base of the wall. He first squatted down to look at the weeds beside the drainpipe, and then stood up and looked up at the fire-blackened wall.
“How big was the fire back then?” Yu Chunming asked.
Guan Yao tilted his head: “What did you say?”
Yu Chunming twitched the corner of his mouth and repeated patiently: “How big was the fire back then? I remember that in the year of the 9.24 fire, Officer Guan should have been… just four years old.”
Guan Yao narrowed his eyes slightly, looking at Yu Chunming without saying a word.
Yu Chunming, as if he didn’t understand that he didn’t want to mention the events of that year, continued, “I checked the information. The Za Mu Er 9.24 fire occurred on the evening of September 24th, thirty-three years ago. The cause was improper operation by the factory worker Li Ying while guarding the warehouse, which caused the machine to catch fire. In the end, almost half of the factory was burned down.”
“My dad, my mom, and my uncle all died in that fire,” Guan Yao suddenly said.
Yu Chunming turned his head and looked at him quietly.
There was a light rain in Za Mu Er during the day. At night, the rain froze into ice on the ground, reflecting the moon that appeared intermittently in the corner of the sky.
Tonight, the moonlight was dim, and the streetlights along the road were also dim and unclear. Reflected on Yu Chunming’s face, it made him look haggard and pale. But it was this haggard and pale face that made Guan Yao feel for a moment that he seemed to have… seen this person somewhere before.
He suddenly froze.
“You…”
“Sorry,” Yu Chunming lowered his eyes, “I… didn’t know about your family.”
“It’s, it’s okay,” Guan Yao quickly retracted his gaze from Yu Chunming’s face. He awkwardly said politely, “It’s all in the past. You also said that I was only four years old back then.”
“Four years old is also an age for remembering things,” Yu Chunming said softly.
Guan Yao’s breathing trembled, and he couldn’t help but turn his gaze to Yu Chunming’s face again.
This was a very handsome man. Guan Yao remembered that on the first day he came to the station to report, Shu Wen and the female police officers at the household registration desk rushed to their office on the second floor to admire the handsome man.
At that time, Guan Yao was worried about Guan Ning skipping school again and didn’t notice Yu Chunming’s gaze that had been fixed on him, or the hand he had proactively extended.
He said, “Hello, my name is Yu Chunming.”
Now that Guan Yao thought about it, he felt that Yu Chunming’s tone seemed to contain a bit of expectation and enthusiasm when he first spoke. It was a pity that this expectation and enthusiasm gradually disappeared after Guan Yao’s hasty and perfunctory response.
He had returned to being the stern, taciturn person. At the same time, he would launch a aggressive rebuttal when Guan Yao criticized his way of doing things and his behavior.
“He’s really a difficult Buddha to serve.” Guan, who was usually very mindful of his words and never talked about people behind their backs, said one day when he could no longer bear it.
At that time, Meng Changqing replied, “Master, I always feel that Officer Yu only has an opinion on you.”
“What?” Guan Yao never delved into his own behavioral logic, “He dares to have an opinion on me?”
And now, when he looked at Yu Chunming again, he instantly realized that Yu Chunming seemed to indeed only have an opinion on him.
After all, although he didn’t like to talk, it wasn’t that he didn’t like to interact with people. When those little girls at the household registration desk gathered around to give him gifts, he would politely decline. When Meng Changqing, Fang Wang, and others asked curiously, he would answer them in detail.
However, except for himself.
Thinking of this, Guan Yao only felt a belly full of anger.
Why? he shouted in his heart.
Yu Chunming had been walking back and forth in the abandoned factory for three times. It seemed that in the few months since he was transferred to Za Mu Er, he had come here many times. It was just a pity that he had returned empty-handed every time.
Guan Yao couldn’t help but ask, “Why would someone use a marker to write this address on the surface of a dismembered corpse?”
Yu Chunming was studying a logging machine that had been scrapped for many years. After hearing this question, he raised his head and replied, “It’s hard to say why. Maybe the deceased wanted to remind the police that there was a problem with this place, or maybe he wanted to remind his accomplices not to approach this place. In any case, this is an important piece of information that cannot be ignored. But the criminal police from the Songlan City Bureau came here many times to investigate and found nothing.”
“So… last year’s case is still an unsolved case?” Guan Yao pondered.
Yu Chunming looked at him: “Yes, that case is still an unsolved case.”
“Is this the reason why you were transferred to Za Mu Er?” Guan Yao asked directly.
Yu Chunming thought for a while and replied, “Yes, and no.”
What an ambiguous answer, Guan Yao chuckled.
He watched Yu Chunming skillfully walk through the vast wasteland according to the original factory layout, and suddenly had a flash of inspiration, and asked, “Have you been in Za Mu Er before?”
Yu Chunming paused and stood still.
He seemed very interested in the row of round wood transport rails left on the ground, so he had been facing away from Guan Yao from beginning to end. Guan Yao couldn’t see his face, but could only hear the muffled voice of this person.
He said: “I did live here for a while.”
“I see…” Guan Yao touched his nose and mentioned very deliberately but seemingly nonchalantly, “I heard, cough, that kid Changqing said that your home is also in One Zero Three, so…”
“How long did that fire burn back then?” Yu Chunming didn’t know if he had heard the question clearly, because before Guan Yao could finish speaking, he turned around and asked with a serious face.
Guan Yao opened his mouth, somewhat laboriously swallowing back what he originally wanted to say. He replied, “It burned all night, and was only extinguished the next morning.”
Yu Chunming nodded thoughtfully and said nothing more.
Guan Yao beckoned: “Okay, you can’t see anything more even if you keep looking. It’s already late at night, let’s go.”
“Okay.” Yu Chunming replied, but still stood there without moving.
Guan Yao looked at him. As if possessed by a sudden impulse, he asked, “Have you had dinner? Why don’t you come to my house for a midnight snack?”
The lights in the factory area were extremely dim, but Yu Chunming’s eyes lit up at this moment. Surprisingly, he didn’t directly refuse as Guan Yao had expected, but instead asked, “It’s so late, won’t it disturb the others at home?”
Guan Yao laughed: “Disturb who? There’s only me at my house, oh right, my eldest niece is back for practice these days, she’s there too. But that girl is on night shift today, working as a nurse at the Municipal Hospital.”
“Municipal Hospital?” Yu Chunming was obviously surprised.
Guan Yao didn’t notice, and while pulling the car door, he said, “That girl is really not an easy one to deal with. She’s been mischievous since she was a kid, always causing trouble at school. Now that she’s grown up a bit, she’s not so naughty, but her grades are too bad, she couldn’t even get into high school. So, I sent her to He Cheng Medical School’s nursing school, but after studying for two years, she’s now saying she doesn’t want to do it anymore.”
Yu Chunming seemed to hesitate for a moment, but still asked, “What about her mother?”
Guan Yao’s hand, which was turning the key to start the car, paused, and then he sighed softly, and replied, “She’s dead. She just wouldn’t listen to me back then and insisted on going south to work. After working for half a year, she came back with a big belly. At that time, I was serving as a soldier on the border and couldn’t take care of her. As a result, after the child was born, I don’t know what happened, she cried every day. My grandma didn’t keep an eye on her for a few days, and she jumped into the river outside the city. By the time she was rescued, she was already dead.”
Yu Chunming sat straight in the passenger seat, without saying a word.
He knew that Guan Yao’s sister was named Guan Na, and she was a very beautiful girl.
“Let’s go,” Guan Yao exhaled lightly. He smiled and said, “My house is in the Linchang Staff Family Compound, I don’t know… if you’ve ever been there.”
The Linchang Staff Family Compound was separated from the old site of the No. 2 Timber Factory by three main roads. Guan Yao drove his car, which could handle off-road conditions even if it wasn’t a mountain, “bumping up and down” all the way, and took Yu Chunming into the gate of the Family Compound.
It was late at night, and the already deserted compound was even more empty.
Guan Yao parked the car and turned back to call Yu Chunming, but he saw that this person was standing downstairs, looking up, and actually focusing his gaze precisely on the window of his house on the fifth floor.
Guan Yao couldn’t help but blurt out, “Do you know I live there?”
Yu Chunming paused briefly, and then answered with a natural expression, “There are three bags of soda hanging on the burglar bars of that house.”
“Oh…” Guan Yao smiled, “That’s my house, my refrigerator’s freezer broke a few days ago.”
Yu Chunming raised an eyebrow, he didn’t say much, got up and followed Guan Yao, and entered this gray little building.
There was only one voice-activated light left in the small building, and it went out with a “pop” before the two of them reached the door.
Guan Yao lowered his head and fumbled for the key in the dark. He cleared his throat from time to time, trying to wake up the not-so-bright overhead light, while Yu Chunming turned around to look at his neighbor across the hall.
It was already past midnight, and the Linchang Staff Family Compound was so deserted that only cats were left calling, but for some reason, the neighbor across the hall still had their lights on. The orange light leaked faintly from the top window, reflecting the tall figures of the two people crowded in the corridor and the “Home of Glory” gold plaque hanging on the door of Guan Yao’s house.
“Someone is singing,” Yu Chunming said.
Click! The door opened, Guan Yao pulled Yu Chunming, pushed him into the living room, and said in a low voice, “The little aunt next door was traumatized when she was young and is not in good mental health. Her son is a local rogue, and doesn’t care about her, wandering outside all day long.”
After hearing this, Yu Chunming didn’t ask any more questions, and Guan Yao naturally didn’t say anything more either.
The singing was intermittent, sometimes like the dying struggle of a person on their deathbed, and sometimes beautiful and pleasant to listen to, as if it were a singer from a cultural troupe.
Yu Chunming watched the door close behind him and suddenly felt a terrible headache.
Guan Yao’s house was not big. The dining table was directly opposite the shoe cabinet, and the kitchen was separated from the dining table by a half-section of a small window.
As soon as he entered the door, Guan Yao took off his coat and went into the kitchen. He washed his hands and asked, “I have instant noodles, and dumplings that Auntie Wang downstairs wrapped last week. Which one do you want to eat? Or… some of the soda I hung outside the window?”
Yu Chunming didn’t want to eat anything. Although he hadn’t had a drop of water all day, he just wanted to light a cigarette at the moment.
But although Guan Yao’s house was cramped and old, it was clean and tidy. There was also a faint smell of soap in the air, especially the girls’ cosmetics placed on the small coffee table, which forced Yu Chunming to suppress the impulse that had just surged up.
“I’m asking you a question,” Guan Yao poked half of his head out of the kitchen.
Yu Chunming frowned and pressed his neck, raised his head and replied, “Anything is fine.”
“Anything is fine,” Guan Yao tsked.
If he hadn’t seen this person’s picky appearance at noon, he might have reluctantly praised him as “easy to feed.”
“The dumplings are sauerkraut and pork filling, without celery and green onions,” Guan Yao added.
Yu Chunming lightly “hmm”ed, and under Guan Yao’s gaze, he very kindly helped him prop up a photo frame that was upside down on the dining table.
Guan Yao’s figure froze.
“Is this you?” Yu Chunming asked calmly.
Guan Yao stood motionless in place, as if something was stuck in his throat, preventing him from saying a word at the moment.
“You look so much like you did when you were a kid, you haven’t changed at all,” Yu Chunming said, propping his chin up and commenting, “If someone saw you when you were a kid, they would definitely recognize you at a glance when you grew up.”
“Is that so?” Guan Yao’s voice was a little cold. He walked forward and relentlessly pressed down on the photo with one hand.
Bang! The photo frame fell over again. Yu Chunming couldn’t help but dodge backward, and then asked, “Who is the other child in the group photo?”
This was the most annoying thing about Yu Chunming, Guan Yao thought in his heart.
This person was not stupid, and could even be described as clever, but he always insisted on pursuing the matter when he clearly saw that he was already showing displeasure or unwilling to talk about it anymore. He seemed to completely lack understanding of social interactions, or he liked to deliberately hurt people’s feelings, liked to see Guan Yao get angry because of it, liked to argue with him over trivial matters.
What was wrong with him? Was he doing this just because he hated himself?
Facts proved that maybe that was really the case.
Because, Yu Chunming very inconsiderately propped up the photo frame again, and then leaned closer to look at the line of words marked under the photo frame.
“Guan Yao, Jiang Xin.” Yu Chunming raised his handsome face and looked at Guan Yao, “Who is Jiang Xin?”
Guan Yao took a deep breath, opened his mouth and wanted to ask this person to mind his own business.
But unexpectedly, Yu Chunming continued to ask, “Why did you put this photo upside down on the table?”
“Is it any of your business?” Guan Yao frowned and said coldly.
Yu Chunming raised the corners of his mouth, folded his arms and leaned back, “No, I’m just curious.”
“Was Officer Yu also this curious when he solved big cases in Songlan?” Guan Yao retorted.
And this time, after he finished speaking, Yu Chunming surprisingly didn’t retort. He sat quietly, and after a long while, he said, “I don’t want to eat dumplings, make some noodles.”
“Eat it or don’t,” Guan Yao turned around and walked into the kitchen, refusing to communicate with Yu Chunming any further.
But Yu Chunming refused to give up. He raised his voice and asked, “Can I go to your bathroom to smoke a cigarette?”
Guan Yao couldn’t bear it any longer and walked out of the kitchen, wanting to open the door for him and then ask this Buddha he had invited to leave.
However, at this moment, the door seemed to “realize” Guan Yao’s thoughts and actually opened by itself with a “click”.
Yu Chunming stood up suddenly.
“Who is it?”
“Uncle!”
Guan Yao and Guan Ning’s voices rang out at the same time, exploding so loudly that the voice-activated light in the corridor, which was about to completely break, instantly brightened. The two faced each other, revealing a sudden realization along with the flickering of the light.
“Are you skipping work again?”
“You’re not working overtime tonight?”
Guan Yao and Guan Ning spoke again at the same time.
Seeing that her “action” had been seen through by her uncle, Guan Ning touched her head embarrassedly. She explained in a small voice, “We don’t have many patients tonight, so, so I asked my teaching teacher for leave, saying I wasn’t feeling well and wanted to go home and lie down…”
Guan Yao frowned and looked at Guan Ning without saying a word.
And Guan Ning, at this time, noticed the other person in the house. She poked her head out and looked at Yu Chunming somewhat shyly: “This is…”
“This is my colleague, he came to my house…”
“I’ve seen you!” Before Guan Yao could finish speaking, Guan Ning exclaimed with joy, “Have you been coming to our hospital often these past two days?”