When Zhu Qing returned to the police academy dormitory, it was already very late.
Her dorm application had been pending for a long time, and the daily three-hour commute left her exhausted.
Now, lying on the faded and peeling metal bunk bed, the harsh fluorescent light above her stung her eyes, while the old fan beside her buzzed noisily.
Butler Cui's words still lingered in her mind.
Through the window, she noticed the video rental shop by the police academy's side gate was still lit.
An idea flashed through her mind. Zhu Qing abruptly sat up and hurried toward the campus exit.
About ten minutes later, she returned clutching a rented old DVD and tentatively knocked on the dorm supervisor's door.
"Can I borrow the TV?"
The dorm supervisor adjusted her reading glasses, her face breaking into a kindly smile as she recognized Zhu Qing. "Oh, it's you."
This student had left a deep impression.
Back then, she had set multiple records in the final graduation exams—some might even call her a legend of their batch.
The supervisor invited her in, slowly opening a drawer to retrieve a remote control with worn-out buttons.
"You haven't eaten yet, have you? The canteen closed long ago." The auntie handed her half a char siu bao. "Here, have something to fill your stomach."
Zhu Qing thanked her, stuffed the bun into her mouth, and bent down to examine the VCD player intently.
The machine had been issued by the logistics department just last year, but no one ever used it, leaving a thin layer of dust. Only when Zhu Qing crouched did she notice the red, yellow, and white cables were haphazardly plugged into the TV ports. She reconnected them properly and pressed the power button.
"I kept pressing buttons, but nothing happened—" Before the supervisor could finish, the TV suddenly flickered to life with a blue glow.
"It's working—it's working!" the auntie exclaimed excitedly. "We can watch now!"
A former police academy student turned police inspector, and she could even fix electronics on the side.
As the VCD player whirred to life, the supervisor imagined future night shifts with movies to pass the time and grinned from ear to ear.
The images on the screen gradually sharpened.
It was a drama from over a decade ago, starring Sheng Peishan, a former top-three Miss Hong Kong finalist.
In a narrow alley, Sheng Peishan, clad in a qipao and holding an umbrella, glided through a misty drizzle.
The camera zoomed in as she suddenly turned, tears glistening in her eyes, portraying sorrow with heartbreaking perfection.
The supervisor unwound a ball of yarn, her eyes glued to the screen. "Crying on cue—actors really are something else."
...
By dawn the next day, as the sky paled at the horizon, Zhu Qing was already on an early bus to Kwun Tong.
In the quiet, desolate back alleys of Kwun Tong, she found the newsstand run by the parents of the deceased He Jia'er.
The tin kiosk was lit with a dim yellow glow. Father He was organizing the morning papers, while Mother He picked up discarded beer cans from the night before with a long grabber—scrap metal they could sell for money.
Hearing Zhu Qing's purpose, Mother He set down the cans, wiped her hands repeatedly on her clothes, and led her through narrow lanes to their home.
Public housing was allocated by lottery, and Mother He still remembered the sleepless night when they had won this flat.
The cramped unit was old and cluttered, every inch packed with belongings, forcing them to weave around obstacles just to move.
The slightly larger inner room had been He Jia'er's. No clutter was ever stored there, and even after ten years, it remained spotless, preserved exactly as it had been.
"Her clothes, shoes, and handbags are all here," Mother He said, opening the wardrobe. Her voice had grown hoarser in just a few days. "The other officers already looked at them last time."
Well-tailored dresses, gleaming designer heels, and supple leather handbags hung inside the shabby wardrobe—utterly out of place.
Yet they were impeccably neat, every wrinkle smoothed out.
Many still had their tags attached.
"Why did that man have to kill her?" Mother He suddenly choked up. "Jia'er was a good girl. Even if she was stubborn, she’d never have harassed him..."
Zhu Qing's gaze drifted past the expensive clothes to the stained wall.
Peeling certificates of merit, earned by He Jia'er from childhood onward, were pasted on the mold-speckled surface.
"These—" She stepped forward. "I need to take them back to the station."
...
Meanwhile, at the Sheng residence, Sheng Peishan paused her wheelchair outside the children's room.
The maid, Marysa, stood behind her, answering the young mistress's earlier question respectfully. "The young master didn’t throw a tantrum. He just... hasn’t spoken at all."
The door was slightly ajar. Sheng Peishan peered past Marysa’s plump figure into the room.
She glanced down at the cup of warm milk in her hand.
Truthfully, she wasn’t close to her younger brother, nor was she good at comforting children.
Once, Young Master Sheng had been spoiled and willful, a true little tyrant. But with his cherubic face—his pout alone could melt hearts—no one ever held it against him.
Yet after the deaths of Sheng Wenchang and Qin Lizhu, everything changed. Bodyguards no longer shadowed him, servants grew lax, and within months, even when Sheng Fang acted out, adults would simply ignore him, cleaning up his messes mechanically without reprimand...
Slowly, all his usual tricks lost their power. Sheng Peishan wondered—did this little boy now doubt himself?
"Miss, should we call the inspector?" Marysa suggested timidly. "The young master likes her very much. He even called the station to chat with her the other day."
On the bay window, the small figure was curled up.
Sheng Fang faced away, clutching an Iron Man action figure, motionless and eerily quiet.
"Inspector Zhu does seem to get along well with him," Sheng Peishan murmured. "What did they talk about?"
"I heard... the young master say, 'So not all parents protect their children until they grow up.'"
"Apparently, the inspector told him—"
Sheng Peishan: "She doesn’t have parents either."
"Miss, how did you know?" Marysa gasped. "The young master said on the phone—the inspector was an orphan!"
Sheng Peishan didn’t respond, handing the warm milk to Marysa instead.
"You take it to him," she said. "I’m tired."
Aunt Liu stepped forward, wheeling the young mistress back to her bedroom.
Just before the door closed, Sheng Peishan spoke again.
"Don’t let anyone in."
"I’m waiting for a call."
...
Zhu Qing returned to the station just in time for the morning briefing.
The whiteboard for the skeletal remains case still displayed its web of arrows and photos.
At Mo Zhenbang’s nod, she added new details to the board.
Sheng Peishan had once postponed moving due to feng shui concerns—could that be connected to Chen Chaosheng halting night shifts at the construction site?
And Sheng Peishan’s car accident had also occurred during the villa’s construction phase.
"Wait—are you suggesting Sheng Peishan might not be as innocent as she seems?"
"She’s thirty-seven," Uncle Li said. "Even at seventeen, growing up in the Sheng family and navigating the cutthroat entertainment industry—how naive could she be?"
Had this been said just days earlier, Zeng Yongshan would have leapt to Sheng Peishan’s defense.
But now, with all those contradictory testimonies tangled together, even she was confused.
"Do you remember..." Zeng Yongshan recalled, "that day when the second son-in-law committed suicide, during Second Miss's statement, she said if she had wanted to end her life, she should have done it over a decade ago."
"That completely contradicts Butler Cui's account," Zhu Qing said. "The 'feng shui' of the hillside mansion was off, so even after three days and nights of rituals, they couldn’t escape that terrible car crash—which happened ten years ago."
"Could it be—" Xu Jiale frowned, "that she was deliberately obscuring the timeline of the accident?"
Zhu Qing's eyes sharpened abruptly.
She reopened the case file, flipping through the statements from the nightclub girls.
"This 'Ah May' mentioned that the last time she saw He Jia'er, someone in a luxury car came to pick her up, the trunk stuffed full of designer shopping bags."
Zhu Qing: "From start to finish, no one actually saw clearly whether the person in that car was a man or a woman."
"What?" Zeng Yongshan looked stunned before suddenly realizing, "Right... Who said the driver of a luxury car had to be a man?"
They had been misled by deep-rooted assumptions.
In truth, the one behind the wheel back then was the Sheng family’s Second Miss—before her disability.
But why would she do such a thing?
