Chapter 123: Clearing in One Life (1) |
"Yun, I saw you again today."
Zhang Shutong fell silent.
He could reflexively parse out the meaning of each word—for instance, this woman called "Yun" was Old Song's girlfriend's name. Or how this diary must have been written after his girlfriend passed away, since a rough guy like Old Song would never have the habit of keeping a diary. And also how Old Song said he "saw" her again... but did he really see her, rather than dream of her?
Zhang Shutong looked at the date at the end.
December 16, 2008.
"Just as I thought."
He muttered to himself.
When Zhang Shutong was getting his IV that evening, he had discussed with his friends what exactly Old Song had discovered that made him suddenly run out. Ruoping said it seemed like he'd seen someone, but he knew Old Song had no acquaintances on the island at all.
Only Zhang Shutong himself knew there was one person—and a dead person at that—who could make Old Song lose his composure like that.
So this terrifying conjecture had surfaced in his mind at the time, except Old Song had remained unconscious on his end, making it impossible to draw further conclusions.
The one thing he hadn't expected was that Old Song had seen his ex-girlfriend so early—calculating it out, exactly four years ago. Zhang Shutong's heart suddenly turned cold, because this meant the other party might have only just attended his girlfriend's funeral not long before.
Just how many years had this past affair been buried?
Things that had been somewhat blurry became clear in his mind at this moment. Let's make a simple deduction.
Old Song saw his deceased ex-girlfriend after lunch today.
Old Song chased after her, then got into a car accident.
Old Song knew he was protecting Gu Qiumian.
The first thing Old Song did after waking up was to have him pick up Gu Qiumian from the villa and confirm she was out of danger.
So then, who exactly was that killer?
Was there any connection to Gu Qiumian's murder?
Perhaps the answer went without saying.
The real clue had indeed been hidden in this small room all along.
Zhang Shutong rapidly flipped the notebook to the next page.
He urgently needed to confirm whether the woman Old Song saw was really his ex-girlfriend.
Because there had been a precedent—he had once seen a "fake Lu Qinglian" at the edge of the Forbidden Zone.
The second page of the diary had a photo pasted on it. You could tell the photo had yellowed and was quite blurry. He examined it carefully and found the photo had been taken secretly—the edge of the frame still showed part of a car's steering wheel, so it must have been taken from inside a car.
And in the photo was that short-haired woman, standing on a piece of wasteland overgrown with weeds. The date was January 1, 2009.
"Is it you?"
Old Song's inscription.
The third page.
Still a photo, but this one only showed a back view, also of a short-haired woman.
But you could clearly see this woman was dressed differently from the one in the previous photo. Zhang Shutong had no time to discern the differences in their height and build, because it seemed even Old Song himself hadn't distinguished between them—the entire page was just blank space.
The inscription was January 3.
The fourth page:
"I saw you again, but you were still the same as before, suddenly running far away."
This page didn't even have a photo—perhaps she had disappeared too suddenly to capture.
The fifth page:
"I went to report it to the police. I'm really going to be tortured to madness. Is that person you or not? How wonderful it would be if it were you. But I watched your body being buried with my own eyes... I hope everything goes smoothly."
January 4, 2009.
The sixth page:
"The search results came out. The police said I was grief-stricken and having hallucinations. I even thought about telling your parents, but they still refuse to see me. It's my fault—I didn't send you back that night."
January 11, 2009.
Zhang Shutong paused. He suddenly remembered that day at the police station, Old Song had been old acquaintances with an Officer Wang. Old Song had said "thanks for your trouble with that matter back then," and the officer had said not to take that matter too seriously, that one must eventually let go... Zhang Shutong hadn't understood what they were talking about before, but now he had the answer.
So Old Song had really filed a police report, searching for that ex-girlfriend who had already passed away.
The next page:
"I've already decided—I'm resigning from my job in the city and settling down on this island. My parents don't really understand, and the principal talked to me about it too, trying to persuade me to move on. But they have no idea what I saw. Of course, even if they saw it they wouldn't believe it. Heh, who would believe I saw someone who had already passed away?"
February 1, 2009.
The next page:
"Work handover is complete. This is where you grew up. You said your favorite thing was walking by the lake, and you mentioned there's a temple on the mountain. I haven't had a chance to go yet. These past days I've been driving around looking for you."
February 3.
Zhang Shutong turned another page. This time he finally gained something—on the yellowed paper was pasted a yellowed photo of a short-haired woman's profile, which he carefully examined. It seemed to have been taken in the urban district.
"My decision was right. Although I didn't catch up to you this time, someday I'll get to the bottom of this. You're still alive, waiting for me to find you, aren't you?"
February 10.
"I took the day off and drove around the island five times."
February 15.
"You seem to have suddenly disappeared, Yun."
February 20.
"I've already memorized every road on the island."
February 25.
"You've completely vanished from my life."
March 1.
"Maybe it really was a hallucination."
March 5.
"But I don't believe it."
March 10.
Zhang Shutong flipped faster and faster until he discovered a new photo.
The photo was blurry and unclear. He examined it carefully, only to discover the blur wasn't the environment being photographed, but the subject itself.
That woman also wasn't the short-haired woman from the previous photos, but had long hair. Supposedly Old Song wouldn't put an unrelated woman in his diary, yet his annotation was:
"Who. Are. You?"
April 4.
Zhang Shutong hurriedly flipped forward. This time there was no photo, just two sentences:
"I might be going crazy."
"But if I'm not crazy, who exactly are you?"
Zhang Shutong opened his mouth silently.
He flipped back to the previous page and looked at that woman again—just a profile.
A deceased woman had become another person. They were the same person...
He had no time to think more now, only followed his instinct to turn to the next page, urgently wanting to know when Old Song had last seen his girlfriend. However, the content of the new page was this:
"It's already been three years."
The inscription was December 12, 2010.
Zhang Shutong was somewhat surprised. He had thought this thick diary would continue year by year, but it jumped directly to 2010—meaning in that year and a half, the man had found nothing.
So what was the final outcome?
He simply stopped flipping through the middle content and instead used his fingertips to skim through page after page. He flipped rapidly and read rapidly, but aside from the man occasionally venting the bitterness in his heart, there were no discoveries.
That mysterious woman seemed to have vanished completely.
He even flipped to the last few pages. The dates on the last few pages were November 2012, just one month ago.
Zhang Shutong closed the diary. He digested the information within, thinking of the long-haired woman who had fought with Lu Qinglian, thinking of the footprints in the snow, thinking of that villa he had studied many times and considered impregnable.
The villa's perimeter was surrounded by a fence with an electric grid on top, over two meters high.
The main gate of the fence had a password and fingerprint lock, plus facial recognition.
Lu Qinglian had judged that with that woman's physical abilities, it was almost impossible for her to directly vault over the two-meter-high fence.
He had discovered the number 2004 on the stone monument outside the villa—that villa had been built at least eight years ago.
The housekeeper Auntie Wu said the gate's system only had the facial data of Gu Qiumian's family recorded.
But that killer had still entered silently. Clearly she couldn't fly or teleport, nor did she have special abilities like bone-shrinking techniques.
He immediately thought of Gu Qiumian's bizarre disappearance.
And thought of...
The long-haired woman he'd seen in the villa's family portrait.
The woman was beautiful, looking to be in her thirties, with eyes resembling Gu Qiumian's, though her face was oval-shaped.
Gu Qiumian's mother had long hair, smiling gently in the group photo, the kind of person who inspired goodwill at first glance.
And the family portrait had been taken in—
2006.
Zhang Shutong had never met that killer face-to-face, and the only one who had seen her was Lu Qinglian—but by the time the family portrait was hung, she had already returned to the sofa.
Who exactly had Old Song seen?
Was it really.
Really.
His ex-girlfriend?
Today was December 8, and the man had gotten into a car accident.
And just yesterday on December 7, the man had looked at that family portrait with a sigh, patting himself on the shoulder—that seemed to be the first time he'd seen Gu Qiumian's mother.
Zhang Shutong felt a chill run down his spine.
He suddenly understood everything.
He understood why Old Song wanted him to immediately pick up Gu Qiumian from the villa, why he always spoke vaguely when talking to Du Kang, and even why he had left the final choice to him.
He finally remembered the photo sent by his senior eight years later—the camera had captured a long-haired woman. Due to the angle, it only captured her long hair but not her clothes or face.
He hadn't thought much of it. Since he'd seen Lu Qinglian going to the villa, he assumed that was Lu Qinglian, whether real or fake. But Zhang Shutong had never considered that the long-haired woman captured in the early morning hours—
Was Gu Qiumian's mother.
He also knew Gu Qiumian had low blood sugar, that she never locked her door when sleeping, that she always wore that red scarf, viewing it as an important memento left by her mother, crying sadly when he even stepped on it.
Zhang Shutong finally understood what had happened in the early morning of December 9. He gently closed his eyes and could even reconstruct that cruel process—a girl awakened from her dreams, drowsy and not quite clearheaded, seeing that face she'd longed for in the darkness and moonlight. She might have reddened her eyes in excitement or confusion and rushed over, and then...
Zhang Shutong didn't want to imagine any more.
He only knew the girl's bright life had ended from that moment. She had seen her mother who had been gone for years, but would never see tomorrow again.
Zhang Shutong glanced at the time again. In the current December 8, at 11:40 PM, that woman was on her way to the villa.
No wonder she would go to the villa—only the villa was the best place to strike. What he had once viewed as an impregnable defense was just a sheet of thin paper in her eyes. In the original timeline, only Gu Qiumian and the housekeeper remained at the villa. In the cold-blooded route, there were two sleeping bodyguards.
But now.
Due to his influence, more protection had come to the villa. There were more bodyguards, armed and working day and night, keeping watch in the living room.
Yes, Lu Qinglian had said that woman would definitely be no match for so many bodyguards. Zhang Shutong believed her judgment.
Gu Qiumian wouldn't die.
But the question was...
Was this matter.
Really.
Really.
Truly over?
From eight years in the future, he had returned once again to this snowy night and finally seen clearly what was hidden behind this case spanning eight years.
No wonder Chairman Gu was unwilling to publicly reveal his daughter's killer, with all information sealed. Perhaps they hadn't found out, or perhaps they had found out... and discovered the killer wore a familiar face.
His own wife had killed his own daughter.
What an absurd truth.
Zhang Shutong unconsciously clenched his fists.
He had always thought protecting Gu Qiumian's life would complete his mission, but at this moment he realized that merely safeguarding her life was far from enough. What would happen if things continued to develop? The woman successfully broke into the villa, the bodyguards successfully subdued the killer—of course it might not go smoothly, there would have to be a fierce battle, perhaps severely injuring her, perhaps killing her—and then Chairman Gu, also at the villa under everyone's protection, approached the woman and saw her face clearly.
Actually, Zhang Shutong didn't really care about the big boss's romantic history and emotional journey. He first thought about what would happen if he told Chairman Gu about this in advance, then remembered that pistol and the bullet hole in the temple.
So that's how it was...
What would happen if he continued staying at the hospital? He would bring Gu Qiumian back to the villa at dawn, the two riding a bicycle together, breathing a sigh of relief at not being discovered—but how could they be discovered? It would be strange if they were, because everyone who cared about her had already left on this night.
"She hasn't had the easiest time these years."
Actually, it wasn't just "not the easiest," right? Perhaps in Gu Qiumian's eyes, if she hadn't chosen to believe him and sneak out of the house, none of this would have happened.
Zhang Shutong noticed the photos filling the room again. Regret was the most useless, most pitiful thing—you could hate heaven, hate earth, hate your enemies, but none of it was as powerless as hating yourself. You could only sit broken-hearted and dazed alone in the deep night.
She would have regrets too.
Logic told him he should tell Gu Qiumian about this right now, then have Gu Qiumian tell her father that a woman harboring murderous intent would break into the villa in a few dozen minutes. Then hope that Chairman Gu's heart was strong enough to clean up the scene and handle a corpse before Gu Qiumian returned.
But Zhang Shutong didn't dare gamble.
He had already used up one extra chance.
Who knew how many more such chances there were.
His head started getting dizzy again. Zhang Shutong sat on the bed, breathing shallowly.
He seemed to have an answer in his heart, but right now even walking was difficult, let alone running. So he still gave himself thirty seconds to steady his breathing.
Zhang Shutong suddenly thought of Old Song. At this moment, Zhang Shutong suddenly understood what Old Song had been struggling with—why he had resigned from his job to come to this small island, why he was always driving that Focus around aimlessly, why he had no acquaintances or friends on the island.
For a full four years, the man had measured this land with his wheels, the car keeping him company and cigarettes keeping him company, until the cabin was stained with a lingering smell of smoke that wouldn't dissipate.
He looked around this tidy room, wondering what the man had been doing during those countless nights. If you made the room messy, at least you'd have garbage scattered on the floor to keep you company. But if you cleaned everything up neatly, all that remained was loneliness.
Song Nanshan said he saw a shadow of his former self in him. He probably understood him, but Zhang Shutong had never truly understood him. Or rather, no one had ever truly understood him. In others' eyes, he was a promising young person who had fallen into depravity, a lunatic, a lovesick fool trapped in hallucinations caused by heartbreak. But only the man himself knew he had hidden a secret in his heart for four years, just to give himself closure.
Because no one would believe such things, so you could only hide it in your heart and wander the roads alone in your car.
Zhang Shutong subconsciously reached for his phone but pulled out a hard card instead. Taking a closer look, it turned out to be a gas station discount coupon. The car's glove box was stuffed full of these things. Who knew how much gas he'd burned through in four years? The man had also told him that over four years he had to leave behind something, so he hadn't thrown away these gas cards. Zhang Shutong had been puzzled before about how keeping a box of waste paper could be considered proof. Now, looking at the "3 yuan discount" printed on the card, he realized these were medals left behind by a man.
Even though he'd found nothing.
Zhang Shutong couldn't think any further. He only felt deeply exhausted. The countdown still had fifteen seconds left. He simply fell back on the bed and gently closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he happened to see a photo at the foot of the bed.
That photo was placed in a position that would definitely be seen before sleeping—a short-haired woman holding cotton candy at an amusement park.
Amusement park...
Zhang Shutong knew the woman had gotten into a car accident on the night after playing at the amusement park. The man hadn't sent her home, and thus missed out on a lifetime.
And what was he thinking each night when he looked at this photo?
From Wednesday to Saturday, he himself had struggled for four days and could barely hold on, yet this man had struggled for a full four years.
But now he had fallen. That car was also on the verge of being scrapped. Zhang Shutong had seen photos of the car's interior from the ambulance—all the airbags had deployed. That Bulbasaur naturally hadn't been spared, its head separated from its body. But Zhang Shutong still remembered Old Song saying that thing had been glued on by his girlfriend, and if it hadn't been stuck on so damn tight, he would have thrown it away long ago.
Actually, it was that woman he'd never met who was stuck too damn tight in his heart.
Zhang Shutong decided to spend an extra second doing something important. He picked up that diary again and flipped to the last page. He hadn't looked carefully earlier, but at this moment he desperately hoped to know what was written on it.
Before, he had vented the thoughts and bitterness in his heart on it:
"I took the day off and drove around the island five times."
"You seem to have suddenly disappeared."
"I've already memorized every road on the island."
"Maybe it really was a hallucination."
"But I don't believe it."
"I might be going crazy."
"But I'm still going to keep searching."
He had searched for four years, and what he left behind in the end was actually just this light, simple sentence:
"Yun, I'm already 28 years old this year."