Chapter Twenty-Nine: Thrill

“Who was threatening you? About what? Tell us exactly what happened,” Yan Xue urged her.

“I have to start from the beginning, otherwise I won’t be able to explain it clearly,” Lin Zhen said irritably, running a hand through her hair. “I had a boyfriend before, the one I mentioned to you last time, that baby-faced younger guy…”

Yan Xue and Kang Ge exchanged a silent glance. They both knew exactly that Lin Zhen meant Li Jialong. They had not only confirmed his identity before, they had met him and spoken with him. But given Lin Zhen’s unstable emotional state, it was obviously unwise to admit at once that they had already seen him. If she suddenly felt the police had already dug into her life from top to bottom, her pride might take a hit, and then she could flare up and refuse to cooperate properly.

Lin Zhen did not notice that the two of them were pretending not to understand. She went on at her own pace. “That little boyfriend of mine was four or five years younger than me, I think. At first it felt pretty sweet, but after a while I couldn’t stand how clingy he was, especially because he was always asking me for things every few days, wanting me to buy him this and that.

“How should I put it? My parents gave me pocket money, and I didn’t exactly have that many places to spend it anyway. And that AirBB thing did bring in some income, too. If he had just asked for a little now and then and everyone was happy, I honestly wouldn’t have minded much.

“But my ex got a little too immature later on! It wasn’t just that he kept asking me for things; his tastes got more and more demanding. At first it was sneakers, then sunglasses, and after that he started asking for trend brands, collaborations, reissues, limited editions!

“None of that stuff is cheap, okay? If it had just been one or two things now and then, I would have bought them. But for him to set the bar that high from the start, why would I be happy about that? I was willing to spend a little on him for two reasons: first, I wasn’t short of money, and second, because I liked him. I liked the way he’d sweet-talk me and keep me happy when we were together. To put it bluntly, I was rewarding him, do you understand?”

“Yes, I think we get the general idea,” Kang Ge said with a nod.

“So you can imagine how annoying he got later on!” Lin Zhen went on. “Back when I used to watch TV dramas, I’d only ever seen women portrayed like that, always asking for this and that, throwing tantrums if they didn’t get it. Only then did I realize men can be just the same!

“When I didn’t buy him the stuff he wanted, he’d put on a face and speak in that sarcastic, passive-aggressive way. And whenever he had nothing to do, he liked to bury himself in games. If I wanted him to take me along, he’d think I was bad at it and refuse to play with me. So tell me, what was I even getting out of it?

“So I got angry and broke up with him. I told him to get as far away from me as possible. At first he wouldn’t agree, and it was like he was glued to me. But I was trying to be kind. I figured that since we’d liked each other once, since we’d been together, if it came to calling the police and having him kicked out, that would be too awkward. So I let him keep living at my place.

“Anyway, my house is huge, and there are so many rooms. I just treated it like I still had a tenant, only this one didn’t pay. I accepted it. I figured he’d leave on his own when he got bored.”

“So what you’re saying is, your ex-boyfriend threatened you because he didn’t want to break up?” Yan Xue followed Lin Zhen’s story and immediately made the kind of connection that came from years of professional habit.

“No, no, it had nothing to do with him!” Lin Zhen said quickly, waving her hands to clear things up. “One thing is one thing, another thing is another. He was annoying as hell, impossible to shake off, like a piece of chewing gum stuck to your shoe, but he never did anything to me. The person who threatened me should have been someone else!”

“Then tell us about someone else. Why have you been talking about all this other stuff for so long?” Yan Xue said, a little impatient.

Lin Zhen still had a bellyful of grievances. “What’s wrong with that? Don’t all things happen because of something that came before them? What happened with that previous boyfriend and what happened later are cause and effect! Why can’t I talk about it?”

“Fine, you’re right. Go on,” Kang Ge said, trying to smooth things over and signaling for her to continue.

Lin Zhen pouted. “Later on, when I was out having fun, I met a really handsome guy. He was nothing like the little puppy from before. He was tall and good-looking, and cool whether it was his personality or the way he dressed. And he was older than me. Being with him, I finally felt like I was dating a man. Before that, it was like I was just coaxing a child.”

At last Lin Zhen mentioned the boyfriend she had been so evasive about before, the one she had deliberately concealed and not spoken of even once.

“After the two of us got together, I was honestly super happy, because I finally got to experience what it feels like to date a cool guy, you know? That overbearing, domineering CEO kind of vibe, do you get me?” When Lin Zhen spoke of him, the carefree side of her personality surfaced again. “Not just a domineering CEO, either, but with a bit of that big-brother aura, too! You know what I mean, right? The kind of guy who’s been around the block, super imposing, super handsome!”

Yan Xue looked at Lin Zhen helplessly. Lin Zhen was clasping her hands to her chest, and the eyes visible through the holes in her face mask looked as if little stars were about to fly out of them.

That so-called “been around the block” “big-brother” kind of cool and handsome image was something Yan Xue really had trouble understanding. For her, that old Shanghai-style aura only existed in films and television. Perhaps it had once been real in some particular historical period, but in the present day, what Lin Zhen was talking about was clearly just the effect of emotional idealization.

From her internship until now, over the past few years, Yan Xue had dealt with plenty of those so-called cool tough guys who had “been around the block.” In general, whenever something serious actually happened, their supposed coolness would very quickly turn into cowardice. It was both anticlimactic and revolting.

Still, as long as Lin Zhen laid everything bare regarding what she was actually afraid of, then on matters of subjective feeling, Lin Zhen could say whatever she wanted.

“What was this cool guy’s name? Was he also from W City?” Kang Ge asked.

“Oh, his name was Zhang Dong. He should have been from W City, I think…” Lin Zhen hesitated slightly. “I don’t actually know where he was from originally. From the way he spoke, he didn’t seem like someone born and raised in W City, but I don’t really know where he came from.”

“You’d already confirmed that you were in a relationship with him, and you still didn’t plan to learn more about each other?” Kang Ge asked.

“What was there to learn more about? I just happened to like him during that period, so I dated him. It’s not like I was planning to marry him. As long as he had that face and that personality, wasn’t that enough? Where his family was from, what they did for a living, what did that have to do with me? If I stopped liking him after a while, then he could be from anywhere for all I cared.

“When Zhang Dong and I first got together, I was really happy, not just because he was cool, but because I felt like if anything happened, I could count on him and rely on him. When I was with the puppy-boy before, even the tiniest thing had to be handled by me. That wasn’t the case with Zhang Dong. He felt like he was the one covering for me.

“After I broke up with the puppy-boy, he still wouldn’t leave my place, right? Zhang Dong went over there later. I didn’t even have to show up myself. He kicked down the bedroom door, threw all his things out, and told him to get lost.

“At first the puppy-boy wasn’t happy about it either, but once he saw Zhang Dong fully in control like that, he realized he was no match for him and actually moved out obediently. I was practically worshipping Zhang Dong at the time, thinking this boyfriend I’d found was absolutely perfect!”

This time Yan Xue caught on to something. “You thought he was admirable and perfect then. Not anymore?”

At her question, Lin Zhen seemed to be stirred up by some painful memory all at once. She twisted around and flopped face-first onto the bed, howling in distress. Only after falling over did she realize something was wrong. She still had the face mask on. Now, with her face buried downward, the mask cloth crumpled to one side. Irritated, she sat up again, yanked the mask off her face, and tossed it carelessly onto the floor beside the bed.

“I regret it so much I could die! That day I was supposed to go shopping and see a movie, but Zhang Dong kept insisting, insisting on going clubbing. I couldn’t beat him, so I went with him! I keep feeling that if I hadn’t listened to him that day, maybe none of what happened afterward would have happened. The more I think about it now, the more annoyed I get. I could just about chew my own intestines in regret!”

“It was only going clubbing, though. Don’t a lot of young people like that kind of thing?” Yan Xue said.

“If it had just been clubbing, nothing would have happened! I really wanted something romantic that day, a movie, a meal, a stroll around, but he dragged me off there, so I was already a bit listless from the start. Zhang Dong said I lacked passion. I said I really just thought it was boring. Then he asked if I wanted to try something more interesting, something that would help me get high.”

When Lin Zhen said that, both Yan Xue and Kang Ge felt their hearts drop. Once that prelude appeared, they already had a fairly clear sense of where the rest of the story was headed.

If their guess was right, then Lin Zhen certainly had reason to be frightened out of her wits. After all, people who commit crimes of that kind are widely considered the most inhuman and the most brutal.

And if that was really the case, then the nature of this case would be affected very seriously. It might even require further coordination and deployment with other departments. Just thinking about it gave one a pounding in the temples.

“So did you try it later?” Yan Xue asked.

Lin Zhen nodded. “I’m regretting it because of exactly this thing, aren’t I? No, that’s not right. Actually, all the things I regret started from there! I wasn’t thinking that much at the time, so I agreed. Zhang Dong didn’t avoid me either. He took me with him to find one of the people inside, some guy called Squarehead or something like that. I heard Zhang Dong and that Squarehead talking about coffee fruit or something, and not long after they came back with two pieces of fruit candy, one for him and one for me.

“After I ate it, I really did feel like my mood got a lot better. I was especially excited, like my whole body was full of energy. That night the two of us had a wild time there until pretty late, and we drank quite a bit too. The next morning I woke up with a headache, and I asked him what that coffee fruit from the night before was supposed to be. He said it was a candy containing the equivalent of several times the caffeine in coffee.

“I didn’t suspect him at all. Whatever he said, I believed. I even asked him whether there was anything to worry about, and he said there was nothing at all, and asked me if I hadn’t felt anything wrong after eating it the night before. I thought about it and realized there really wasn’t anything, except for the headache, and that went away after I took a painkiller.”

“So the threat you received was caused by this matter?”

“If you put it that way, there’s nothing wrong with it…” Lin Zhen muttered, a little uncertainly. “Back then I really trusted Zhang Dong. I thought he was the kind of person who liked to play around, trendy and cool, and that he must know some new, interesting things. I didn’t make the slightest connection to anything else.

“Later on… I went out to have fun with some other friends, and they talked about going abroad, about skydiving being especially exciting and all that. My parents were fine with everything else, but they wouldn’t let me go abroad alone because they said they were worried that with my head and my bad English, I’d be easy to sell off once I got there. But they were both busy all the time and didn’t have time to take me. When I heard my friends talk about the outside world, I got this feeling like I was some country bumpkin. Anyway, I was just incredibly, incredibly unhappy.

“So I wracked my brains trying to find something new and interesting, something I could mention that would make the others think I was pretty cool too, so they’d see I was trendy and not treat me like some hick.

“After thinking it over and over, I really didn’t have anything especially worth mentioning around that time, so I talked about going to nightclubs with Zhang Dong. The thing about him buying that coffee fruit struck me as new and kind of interesting, so I told them about it. After they heard it, they thought it was pretty fresh too, and seemed quite interested, asking me all kinds of questions. I felt like I finally had something worth showing off to my friends, so after I told them, I forgot all about it.”

“Was it because you told your friends about this and caused some kind of trouble afterward?” Yan Xue asked.

“I was just mentioning it casually, thinking they’d hear it and that would be the end of it. I never expected those people to be such big-mouths. After I told them, they went around telling other people all mysteriously, and somehow the whole thing spread!

“Then Zhang Dong suddenly came looking for me, shouting and carrying on, having a huge fit. He asked if I’d been running my mouth outside and saying things. I’d never seen him get that angry before. The way his eyes were bulging, it looked like his eyeballs were about to fly right out of their sockets. He scared me half to death. I asked him what the hell his problem was, and he said it was all my big mouth’s fault, because the guy called Squarehead had been taken in!

“At first I was still completely baffled. If Squarehead had gotten into trouble outside and been taken in, what did that have to do with me? I didn’t even know him. I’d only met him once. What right did he have to lose his temper at me?

“Then… then Zhang Dong asked me whether I had told anyone else about the coffee fruit… When I heard that, I knew something was wrong. Later I asked him whether there was something wrong with the coffee fruit, but he didn’t dare answer me directly. I got furious, and we had a huge fight.”