The question, asked so abruptly, made Guan Zhiyan freeze for a beat. She shook her head at once. "Of course not. We're not police—we're here strictly for the money. When someone won't come out to meet us, of course we find other ways to find them."
Zhou Xun kept smoking. "Right. We intend to find her."
From Guan Zhiyan, Hu Yan couldn't extract a single gram of debt collector. But one look at Zhou Xun settled it: the cigarette, the unkempt stubble, the tangled hair—the whole picture was there.
"The last time I saw Qiu Ning was at the mall. We had a huge fight over a bag, and I haven't seen her since." Hu Yan said it plainly, honestly. Feeling warm, she reached over and switched on the fan.
The broken fan whirred up with an ugly rattling noise, and Hu Yan shrank back several steps as if she'd heard something dreadful—impossible to read—then quickly steadied herself.
Guan Zhiyan spotted the wrongness at once.
She asked, "The mall at the big plaza by Hujie, in Zhaoning District?"
Hu Yan came back to herself and nodded quickly. "That's the one. Bags there are cheaper—better suited for someone like me, new to the big city."
"Mm……" Zhou Xun had drifted aside to smoke. "You're on good terms with Qiu Ning then, surely? You go shopping together and all. Looks like we came to the right person for what we want to ask!"
He tapped the cigarette; ash dropped into the battered cardboard box.
The box held a little trash—he gathered they'd be throwing this stuff out soon enough.
Hu Yan said, "I don't know."
Zhou Xun clicked his tongue, his voice taking on an edge of pressure. "If you're already friends, how could you not know these things? Or are you hiding something!"
At that, Hu Yan deliberately raised her voice: "No! I don't know her! We only ran into each other at the mall!"
She wanted no part of any of it, and raised her voice again to drive it home: "And I have nothing—nothing—to do with Li Tan!"
Around them the air seemed to go abruptly still; her carrying voice had evidently drawn the neighbors' irritation, and quite a few tongue-clicks answered through the walls.
Hu Yan sniffled and dropped her gaze. "I say I don't know her, then I don't know her."
She resumed her soft, fragile tone, volunteered nothing further, and moved impatiently to shut the door.
When only a crack remained, a hand shot out and stopped it—and Guan Zhiyan, playing her part, produced her police credential and showed it to Hu Yan.
Hu Yan let out a long breath; the hand gripping the door dropped away at once. So that was why being questioned had felt like being grilled—they really were police.
Both hands balled into tight fists, she had no choice now but to let them in to question her.
"May we come in?" Guan Zhiyan still asked, deliberately polite.
Hu Yan nodded, and had to turn the light on first. The room was still rather dim, but you could make out faces.
She tidied the sofa and had the two of them sit down.
"So…… has something happened?" Hu Yan felt uneasy. She hesitated, then went on, "Or is there something else you want to know?"
Facing all this, Hu Yan was genuinely flustered and embarrassed—more than that, it truly frightened her a little. She had never been through anything like it.
Guan Zhiyan sat first: "We only want to ask about Li Tan."
Zhou Xun didn't sit. He simply shut the door and stood by it.
Hu Yan's face went calm, and she talked on and on: "After university I worked hard, year in, year out, never complained—only to find that no amount of diligence could beat the connected hires who strolled in halfway through. At the company I was a looked-down-on intern, and at home they said I wasn't trying hard enough……"
"This was the first place I rented. I thought it'd cost a little less. I never imagined most of the people here were no good—that they'd pounce on women like us. Every night shift, I had to watch my step."
Her whole body was drawn tight, her hands clenched hard.
Even the fan's breeze couldn't settle the room. Hu Yan paused deliberately, glancing at it. "Later, through Qiu Ning upstairs, I got to know people. She said she'd introduce me to a friend—and that friend was Li Tan. Li Tan showed me a great deal, and he even gave me a sum of money."
"I have never spent that money on anyone. Truthfully I don't understand what any of it was about. As for Qiu Ning and me, we weren't even close."
Guan Zhiyan had already taken out her voice recorder and set it on the table. She paused, then asked: "Has Qiu Ning gone missing?"
Hu Yan's eyes snapped back to her—then she only shook her head quickly. "I couldn't say. I haven't seen her in a while, that's all. Qiu Ning spent a lot of her time waiting outside her company anyway, so it could be anything."
"But…… when I messaged her on the app, she didn't reply. My first thought was still that she was at work."
Her head slowly sank, as if she were regretting something past all measuring—though no one could say what.
As if she had forgotten it all.
Guan Zhiyan had her phone out fast: "There's some security footage I want you to see. I believe this is you."
She froze the frame where the two figures appeared and showed it to Hu Yan. Hu Yan looked up at the screenshot at once. Her heart lurched, and her expression changed with it: "That…… that's me."
She admitted it fast.
"When we argued there, it was because we had discovered Li Tan was playing us both. The one he invited that day was me—only me…… and then Qiu Ning appeared out of nowhere."
"I thought Qiu Ning knew all about it. It turned out she had no idea what I was to Li Tan. She came skipping up all smiles—and in the end, I was the one who got hurt."
Guan Zhiyan felt no obligation to keep pulling on that thread, because in that arrangement the two of them had been victims and deceivers both.
Who could say whose fault it really was? One loose word from Li Tan and both would take the blame they deserved.
It was only a matter of time.
But she switched tracks quickly: "Was that the last time the two of you met?"
Hu Yan wavered, eyes darting and dodging, then nodded.
Guan Zhiyan rapped on the table. "Hu Yan, my advice is don't lie to us. We can pull the security footage; the technology now is better than you'd imagine. If we have to dig everything out ourselves, this won't be a friendly chat in your living room."
A pause, then she added, unhurried: "Tell it all—everything you know about this case—and we won't take you in to the station for questioning. It'll be easier on you."
Hu Yan was still strung up on her own doubt. Uneasy, she loosened her two clenched hands and finally folded them together on the table.
She asked, "Really?"
Guan Zhiyan nodded. "You have my word. And no one else will hear a word of it."
Hu Yan still had her doubts, but the whole story came pouring out: "The second time was half a month ago, at night. I wasn't working late that day—bought instant noodles and sausages nearby and went home early to eat and rest."
"It was raining hard that night. I'd just filled my kettle with hot water in the stairwell when Qiu Ning came rushing up. She was wearing the dress from the mall that day. I was furious to see it—but then she told me……"
"She said Li Tan was going to kill her! And that the dress was a curse—something evil!"
For her, at the time, it had been a strange kind of comfort. Looking back at that scene now was simply terrifying.
A night, rain……
and then someone comes rushing up to tell you the thing you've been longing for might cost you your life……
Her emotions began to churn.
Guan Zhiyan patted her shoulder, hoping to settle her. But Hu Yan only felt her scalp prickle—was saying all this going to land her in trouble too?
She rubbed her eyes. "I don't believe Li Tan could really kill anyone."
Guan Zhiyan had no wish to shatter the pretty picture. She only said, "Hu Yan, you should be a little stronger."
Hu Yan very much wanted to be. But with work going badly and these things genuinely possible, how was she supposed to simply calm all the way down?
She rubbed her hands together, more nervous still, and couldn't help a long sigh. "But Li Tan says he's meeting me again tonight."
"What?" Guan Zhiyan's surprise was genuine. "When? Where?"
Hu Yan pulled out her phone, scrolled to the chat log, and handed it over. The screen bore the marks of a drop; the first brush of one little shard against skin gave off the sharpest sting.
Guan Zhiyan, thankfully, had fast reflexes—otherwise that small shard, embedded as it nearly was, might have done no great harm, but it would certainly have rearranged who sat where.
She studied the messages carefully.
On this page it was Li Tan doing the inviting: first remarks about her figure, then—the dress, he'd bought a new one; wear it when we meet tonight and let me see.
Right from the opening comments about her body, Guan Zhiyan had already tagged Li Tan as a badly twisted pervert—some peculiar obsession with women's figures, most likely.
If this had been the first thing Li Tan ever said to her, she would never have kept chatting either.
She didn't say any of this.
She simply looked up at Zhou Xun and laid out the situation for him—skating lightly over the opening remarks about her body.
Zhou Xun's brows knotted, and a curse slipped out of him.
He stubbed out the cigarette. "Zhiyan—tonight is the perfect setup. We might take this man in the act."
Guan Zhiyan thought it over, handed the phone back to Hu Yan first, and let her collect herself for a moment; then she stood by the door and talked it through with Zhou Xun.
"A man like this is bound to be careful. But there's no way he should know we've already started investigating the case." She thought as she spoke.
Men this brazen do exist. They build up their own abilities inside their heads—nowhere near as formidable as they imagine, overconfident to the last. Even ones on the run long-term wouldn't dare keep operating this openly; sooner or later they'd think about toning it down.
Zhou Xun shook his head. "No. We only started moving on him today, but the invitation went out yesterday. Today he's still busy with other things—his mind isn't fully on it yet."
Guan Zhiyan: "Then do we need a stakeout?"
Zhou Xun thought they did. He called Xiao Wang at once: send a few people to the agreed spot, and above all nothing flashy—ordinary clothes would do. No need to request firearms for now.
He had finished every instruction and was about to hang up when Xiao Wang spoke up fast: "Boss, one more thing you should know."
"Spit it out or get lost!"
Xiao Wang snickered, then turned suddenly earnest: "This Li Tan is no rich man—and he's got a wife at home. He's done prison time too, for theft and murder—sentenced to three years. Now he's out, and where the money in his hands came from, nobody knows."
"Which precinct handled that case?"
"Chaoyang Precinct."
"Right. Send me the full file, that's all I need."
"You got it, Boss."