The Yu Brothers’ Case Book

He could hear the sound of water.

The sound was like the one in his memory that would often come from that darkness. Sometimes it would calm him, but most of the time it would carry an unbearable sense of unease.

Yu turned around but only saw a bunch of new classmates with their heads buried as they took notes. The rain droplets slid down the window, making a noise. After the rainfall, the air was still as humid as before, making it feel like every breath contained water. It was both cold and familiar.

His transfer exam results had surpassed everyone’s expectations. The school board had originally assumed he would be an ordinary transfer student. But upon seeing his nearly perfect exam scores, they immediately changed their original plans so that he could transfer into a class with extremely strong focus on studies and grades. After Yu reported in, they had even specifically emphasised that if he could maintain his grades and stay in the top three in the entire year, he could definitely earn quite a few scholarships, and they could also introduce him to attend special seminars and such. He wasn’t sure if this was the reason or not, but although he had not yet attended many classes on his first day, he discovered that all his classmates were studying even after class. They were always preparing for the quiz in their next class or constantly reviewing the contents of the previous class, inwardly afraid of forgetting a sentence, a vocabulary term, or a formula. The fun and games outside the classroom had no relation to them. The only thing they cared about was whether or not they could obtain grades that the adults would praise them for.

This class was too quiet. Even the sounds of water dripping down outside were louder than sounds of people breathing.

“Student, please don’t let your gaze wander during the test.” Even if it was his first day as a new student, the female teacher would not easily loosen her reins. When she noticed him turning around to survey his classmates and the room, she gave him a warning.

Everyone was still quiet. Even the teacher’s voice had not interrupted them from their test writing.

Yu picked up his test paper and looked at her through his glasses.

“You’re finished?” She stared at him in shock for a moment. It had only been five minutes since the test had started. Although it was really just a quiz, she felt that the questions were pretty complicated. After all, she was teaching students that aimed to get into tier one universities. The class’s original ability level was higher than the others.

Yu nodded and handed over the quiz paper before taking out a book to read.

Luckily, he had just borrowed some new books from the library so that it could kill some time.

The teacher gave him a doubtful look but took the paper and walked back to her desk to correct it. Soon, her expression shifted. She quickly wrote the grade down on the paper with a happy smile.

About ten minutes later, the rest of the students submitted their test papers as well and she began to teach the dull and tedious lesson.

The pitter-patter of the rain outside was not very heavy but showed no signs of stopping. The rain striking the windows outside was the only noise to be heard aside from the teacher’s voice in the classroom.

In addition, he seemed to very faintly hear some whispers. When he looked out the window from his seat, he saw a few students that seemed to be skipping class, sneakily disappearing around the other corner of the small garden.

“Those are the infamously bad students in this school.” The girl sitting next to him had noticed his actions, and wrote these words down on her notebook to pass over to him. “If you see them in or out of school, do not ever give them any attention. Apparently, some people from class had random stuff forcefully sold to them before.”

Yu read the words and nodded before shifting his gaze back onto his textbook.

Bad students, huh…

After the class dismissal bell went off, he ignored the classmates that tried to express their goodwill to him and hurriedly left the classroom after collecting his belongings.

He glanced up at the gloomy sky that was still drizzling before treading over the small garden, following the footsteps in the mud. He ended up in a more remote corner of the school grounds. It was a bit dark here, and just happened to be in a blind spot that the surveillance cameras could not capture, an uninhabited area between school buildings. Every school had such places. The cement hanging over the building blocked the droplets falling down from the sky. There was still the faint scent of smoke around the area, but no people were present. The only things remaining were footprints that had not yet dried up, and some bent cigarette butts scattered all over the ground.

He narrowed his eyes and bent down to pick one of the cigarettes up to look at it more closely. It did not have a filtered mouth, and the residual traces of smoke emitted an odd, sweet scent. The body was thin and long, and did not have any brand labels, making it identical to the cigarette butt.

What shocked him was not the smoke, but the scent it gave off.

He felt like he had encountered this scent before, a long, long time ago. It had an exotic, sweet aroma of wood lavender, a unique scent that was hard to forget.

“What are you doing here?”

The voice that came out of nowhere made Yu start. He then quickly closed his fist around the cigarette and turned around to see a tall boy with dyed-blonde hair glaring at him in an extremely unfriendly manner, aggressive enough to potentially punch him at any moment. “Who said you could come here!”

Yu reflexively took a step back and shook his head. Just as he was about to circle around, the other person quickly blocked where he stood, with a fierce and imposing air that implied he would not easily let Yu leave.

Yu used small movements to make sure he did not provoke the other’s anger to take out the pen and paper he was carrying and wrote: “Entered by mistake”, as well as some words of apology. He passed it over for the other person to see, who looked like a wild beast that had its territory invaded and was about to pounce and bite him.

Children at this age were easily provoked, regardless of time or place.

The golden-haired boy gave a mocking sneer when he saw the written words. After eyeing the name tag on Yu’s uniform, he closed his fingers to crumple the paper up. “Oh, a good student that cannot speak? Wandering around and touching everything here because you wanted to look for some fun?”

Xiao Yu noticed that this guy had absolutely no intentions of letting him go easily.

Yu carefully stowed his pen and paper away and looked around. After confirming nobody was in the vicinity, he lowered his shaded glasses to narrow his violet eyes slightly with a trace of frigidness that was hard to detect.

“Fuck, do you people who study until your brains rot think this is very funny?” Just as the boy was about to say something more, he abruptly went quiet and turned around to look to his side.

Without being detected, someone had patted the golden-haired boy’s shoulder, interrupting his actions.

“What are you doing? Didn’t you say you were looking for your leader?”

That voice was too familiar. Xiao Yu completely froze in place with widened eyes, a rare expression of astonishment on his face as a figure appeared in his line of vision.

“This dumb brat blindly ran into our territory,” the youth told his newly arrived companion, not noticing the person he had just been threatening was now showing extreme shock.

“Who cares…” When the second person that had arrived saw exactly who was standing before him, his eyes also widened.

Xiao Yu took a step back and pointed at him, completely shaken.

“You’re forbidden from telling Ah Yin!”

***

He seemed to have terrible luck recently.

Ever since he drew the marked lot, Yu Xia had felt certain of one thing – that brat, Yu Yin, had definitely given him bad luck. He had originally thought that he could deceive his way through and hadn’t imagined that he would possibly bump into his family’s child in this kind of place. Yu Xia, who had snuck into the school to investigate the disappearances, was also pretty shocked.

After blurting out the warning, he immediately realised suddenly that there was still a fish standing next to him that he had spent over two hours catching onto his hook.

“You know each other?” The dyed-blonde named Ren Wang Hong was suspicious. He looked back and forth between the two people that didn’t look like they could possibly have any sort of crossing relationship no matter how he tried to think about it.

“Eh…he’s the child of my relative. We’ve met a few times, and he lives nearby.” Yu Xia quickly blocked off the other’s questioning and chuckled a bit to cover up the unnatural embarrassment from earlier. “His name’s Ah Yu, he’s somewhere from my uncle-in-law’s side or something. I had pretty much forgotten him.”

“Oh, I see.” Ren Wang Hong nodded, not noticing anything particularly amiss. “If you know each other, then it’s fine. Just make sure he doesn’t randomly run his mouth on us. Let’s just go look for Big Camel first.”

“Wait a minute, let me make sure he doesn’t blab around.” Yu Xia laughed and quickly dragged the still shell-shocked Xiao Yu away from the other’s line of sight. After they turned around into the building’s perimeter, he stopped at an empty flowerbed.

Yu just barely managed to recover his brain functions and scanned the person he was extremely familiar with a few times. His usual jeans and shirt had been changed into a messy uniform. Someone had used gel to style his hair so that it stuck out at all angles and had even added traces of brown dye.

“Stop looking, that damn bastard Jiu Shen did this. The colour can be washed out.” He flicked the forehead of the child currently surveying him. Yu Xia had been in a bad mood ever since he had first gotten the uniform, and he scratched his hair. He wasn’t sure what that guy had used to style his hair, but his scalp felt unbearably itchy…those damn colleagues of his had all been way too excited after seeing him pull the bad stick. Each and every one of them had even magnanimously used their own money to help buy him disguise gear. When he went back, he would definitely make them all pay, especially Jiu Shen, who had been trembling in happiness while styling his hair.

“We’re investigating the case of the disappearances. That person just now had interactions with the first three missing students, so I need to catch in on what they’re saying. You should keep your distance; there have been reports saying that they often injure other students. They’re trash that shouldn’t be associated with.”

After receiving the reports from the school and the juvenile crimes group, they could more or less understand how much pain the teaches went through because of these students. If it weren’t for the fourth disappearance, the school board probably would not have taken the initiative to request for a police investigation.

Yu lightly coughed and nodded to show his understanding. He then wrote on a piece of paper and showed it to Yu Xia.

“Regulations? Eh…I know it’s against regulations, but the school board was the one that requested our help. It’s not like I’m going in to take classes either, I’m just wandering around outside with a uniform on. It won’t disrupt the other students. As for you, you had better behave – you cannot tell Yu Yin about this!” Yu Xia sternly warned. He had a feeling that he would be teased about it for a year if it happened.

When they had first received the request for assistance, they had decided to draw lots which actually included everything from acting as a teacher to acting as a student. Yet he had just happened to be unfortunate enough to get the marked stick, resulting in all his damn colleagues to dupe him into being a student. Even Yu Tong had taken part to frame him…Hmph, those guys had best brace themselves.

Yu nodded once more before taking his cellphone.

He recalled that it had the ability to take photos…

“Don’t even think about it!” Yu Xia swiped out to grab the cellphone before its owner could press the capture button, and then stuffed it back into his hands. “Anyways, I’m only going to stay here for a few days. Just don’t say anything no matter what anyone asks you, got it?”

Then, Yu Xia continued to finish up with telling him to obediently go to class before turning around and blazing off towards the direction they had come from earlier.

Because he was so rushed, Yu Xia did not notice the faint smile on the face of the person he left behind. and would naturally never know about it either. He quickly returned to his original location, where the youth from earlier was still standing and waiting for him.

“I dealt with him.”

He Wang Hong eyed Yu Xia and gave an odd smile. “Actually, asking your relative to go to the warehouse with us isn’t a big deal. Don’t good students like him have a lot of interest in strange things? Maybe he would find it super exciting.”

“Stop joking around. If he joined, would we still be able to mess around? Let’s just go.”

Yu Xia controlled his fluctuating mood and quickly fell back into executing his original plans.

When the fourth person had disappeared, the school board had immediately sensed that the situation was not so simple, and the groups that the other three had been involved with had not provided any answers. It seemed like everyone had their own version of events, and none of them could be linked together.

They were lying; that was the only explanation. None of them wanted the adults to know about the situation.

Thus, after the school board reported to the police, they privately requested for their assistance so that they could get some answers out of these groups the children had been in. This was also precisely the reason why Yu Xia had been communally set up by the station.

Based on the data the school board provided them, the target group this time should have over a dozen people. It was even possible that there were people from outside the school, so the exact member count was hard to confirm. However, there were eight that often gathered together. After three disappeared, there were still five left.

Since early morning, Yu Xia had been wandering around the locations that the school board had given him. As expected, one of the people he ran into was He Wang Hong. After explaining that he was a newcomer and wanted to look for someplace to kill time, the other magnanimously said he would bring Yu Xia to their place to kill time.

Although Yu Xia knew that Xiao Yu would also start school today, bumping into each other was outside of his calculations.

He had always assumed that Xiao Yu would stay inside the classroom and get to know his new classmates, at most maybe going to the library during break hours. But he had never imagined Yu wandering off to a gathering place like here that was clearly deserted and not in proximity.

After the images of those evil grins belonging to Yan Si and his colleagues popped up in his brain, Yu Xia once again suppressed his urge to go back and show them all a piece of his mind. He continued to follow behind the boy that was leading them left and right, circling out of the campus and turning into an alley.

“That’s right, Ah Xia, where were you wandering around originally?” The person in front was leading them further and further away. A large amount of old military buildings had appeared in their surroundings. Most of them had were now empty, although a few still had residents shooting the occasional suspicious glance and were met with He Wang Hong’s response of “Fuck, what are you looking at?”.

“In the south. It got to the point where the others told me to hurry up and scram.” Yu Xia pulled out some chewing gum from his pocket and tossed it into his mouth. He crumpled up the wrapper as he continued, “If it wasn’t for my dad making me finish high school, I really wouldn’t have come here.”

“Hah.” Since He Wang Hong had probably just been making idle chat, he didn’t have any interest in asking further.

A few minutes later, they stopped. Standing before them was a building that no longer had any residents. The walls on the outside had all kinds of scrawls on it, and the entire area was full of weeds. However, because there were constantly people walking through, there was a path in the weeds, and one could faintly see many bugs crawling about inside.

Because people moved around here, there was also a decent amount of garbage and some objects.

Some children that didn’t want to be restrained by adults had assumed this place as their playground. There were discarded aluminum cans that had either been bent in half or squashed down, and some dirty bottles filled with liquid. The contents that had already changed color seemed to even have something swimming inside.

The building did not have windows. There was just a piece of wood casually blocking off the wind and rain from reaching inside the dark room. There was a set of old and broken table and chairs, as well as two boys and a girl. One of the boys had a tattoo. The girl had a nose piercing, and her colored nails were currently ripping open a bag of snacks. The last person was playing a game console he had brought himself, occasionally calling his companions over to say something. Some bug repellant incense was burning to make sure the bugs and mosquitoes outside would not get near the area.

Upon noticing the people outside the building, everyone stopped what they were doing.

“Ah Wang, who’s he?” The girl asked as she bit down on her cracker. She blinked her eyes sporting blue contact lenses and looked straight at the stranger.

“Met him at school. He was originally messing around in the south, but was forced out to come here instead.” He Wang Hong clapped a hand on Yu Xia’s shoulder and pushed him inside. “He didn’t have anywhere to go, so I brought him over here.”

“Oh? A newbie?” The boy playing games raised his head up from the screen to survey him. “Name?”

“Gao Xia, my friends just call me Ah Xia.”

Yu Xia leaned against the door frame and lazily replied the other’s question with another question. “And who are you guys?”

The girl stood up from her seat and spun around with an odd smile on her face. “I’m Yin Yin. Try a stick, you’re only allowed inside afterwards.” She pulled out a long cigarette from her skirt and passed it forwards.

Yu Xia accepted the cigarette and inspected it briefly. It did not have a filtered mouth, and it looked like a self-made cigarette. It was sealed up very carefully, and the tobacco distribution was average. It seemed like it hadn’t been made by hand, but rather a machine. But it didn’t have an identifying logos…a personal cigarette?

He hadn’t seen this kind of personal cigarette appear in any of the current cases recently.

“Don’t have a lighter.” Yu Xia spat out his gum and twirled the cigarette, eyeing all the others inside the room provocatively.

An orange flame carrying odd hints of green lit up in front of him. The girl holding up the wooden lighter used her other hand to point at the burning flame. “You’ve got some guts. You can take this.” She clicked her tongue in acknowledgment and tossed the lighter at him.

After catching the lighter from the air, Yu Xia lit the cigarette in his hand before narrowing his eyes at the person that had led him here. “I recall you saying the leader was here.”

“Where’s Big Camel?” He Wang Hong asked the others after looking around the room.

“Went out to get materials, he’ll be back later.” The girl sat back down and continued stuffing her mouth with snacks. “But no idea how long he’ll be…recently some people from the university in front have been looking for trouble with us. Big Camel said he’d find some people to discuss how to deal with the university people.”

Yu Xia took the cigarette that had nearly burned out to its end and directly used his bare hands to pinch the flame out. “You guys are going up against the university across?” He needed to remember to go back and tell that brat Ah Yin to not get involved in any funny business.

He Wang Hong gestured at the newcomer to sit down anywhere, and grabbed two cans of drinks from what seemed like the kitchen. He tossed one of the cans over to Yu Xia. “Yep, Big Camel has always wanted to expand our territory, but there are some guys over at the university that are hard to deal with. We might need to go up against them a bit now. Leave behind your phone or mobile number later, we’ll contact you when we need help.”

“Blocking people off then?”

As soon as Yu Xia said this, he immediately sensed a cold wind slamming straight towards him. Without turning around, he maintained his original position and grabbed hold of the chair swinging down at his back with a single movement. “If this is how you guys treat newcomers, I won’t hold back either.” He tossed the chair to one side before throwing his drink can backwards towards the person standing behind him.

The boy sidestepped to dodge the can and shrugged. “Ok, you’ve passed this one. I’m An He, Big Camel’s brother.”

“If you’ve gotten past Yin Yin and An He, I don’t have any objections.” The boy who had been playing his console the entire time finally shifted his attention to look straight at Yu Xia. “Everyone calls me Kai Lun. All of us here are Big Camel’s people.”

Eight people, minus the three that had disappeared, meant five remained.

Yu Xia looked at the four people in front of him. After adding the leader, everyone would be gathered together. It looked like his luck had shifted for better after an extreme bout of misfortune. He had managed to pretty much meet all of them on his first day.

“This place isn’t as relaxed as you think it is. If you don’t have enough guts, better hurry up and scram.” After tossing out these words, Kai Lun returned to burying his head in his game.

An He and Yin Yin sniggered in a way that made him feel uneasy.

“Do you guys mess around big time?” Yu Xia asked while staring at the gaming boy who seemed to be in a pretty high position. He might have been mistaken, but he felt like this child playing his console was a bit mature, both in appearance and personality. He wasn’t wearing a uniform either. Could he be a university student?

“Not too big individually, it depends on Big Camel’s mood and decision.” Kai Lun gave a very vague answer and did not elaborate further.

“We all listen to Big Camel.” He Wang Hong passed him a new drink. “Big Camel is very generous. As long as you help him do his stuff, everyone benefits.”

“Mhm, he even gives me money to get my nails done.” Yin Yin raised her diversely colorful nails and languidly drawled, “Now that there’s three people gone, we have more money to spend.”

“Yin Yin!” He Wang Hong shouted a warning and glared at her.

Yin Yin shorted and turned around to continue snacking.

“Three people?” Yu Xia looked over at the person who had lead him here, raising his brows at He Wang Hong.

“I’ll tell you if Big Camel decides to keep you here.” Although he had talked about a bunch of minor things, He Wang Hong did not seem to have any intents on telling anything major to a person he had just met that day.

As expected, it looked like they knew of the three disappearances.

Yu Xia noticed that Yin Yin, He Wang Hong, and An He were all sporting somewhat unnatural expressions. Only Kai Lun, who was still gaming, did not show any noticeable change.

There was probably something from behind the scenes.

Yu Xia resolved to slowly unearth it.

***

The surroundings were abnormally quiet.

The air’s noise seemed to freeze together with the sound of the air conditioning.

Class had already started. Yu Yin first tossed aside the weird feeling he had gotten from the shadow and went inside the library, opening the laptop and sweeping his fingers across the keyboard to start searching the web.

He entered the time frame he remembered, the odd surname, and some general terms related to what had happened, and read through each search result. There was a lot more information than he had expected, but some of the search terms came up with absolutely nothing. He had just eliminated quite a few pages for some, but almost nothing related to the surname popped up.

What kind of damn surname is this! It can’t even be searched up?

Yu Yin had a feeling that he would probably spend the entire morning researching. He was beginning to regret not having circled around to the coffee place after ditching class. At least there he could get some food to eat, and he would be less likely to fall asleep.

While considering this, his cellphone that he had put on silent made a faint sound.

“Yu Yin.” He glanced around; although there were not many people in the morning, he still lowered his voice.

“Yo, student that was ganged up on, are you free to meet up right now?”

As soon as Yu Yin heard the infuriating nickname, he reflexively furrowed his brows. “Yan-dàgē?” He lowered his phone to glance at the caller ID. “Isn’t this Mr. Li’s cellphone number?” He had used the business card to enter the number into his phone before. Why was this number showing on his screen?

“He’s sleeping next to me. We’re about to head over to somewhere around your school to look for you. When would be convenient for you to come out?” Yan Si asked. He seemed to be sitting in the driver’s seat of the car right now.

“Is something the matter?” The fact that they were asking him meant it had to be regarding something important. Yu Yin glanced back down at the screen and began to suspect that skipping all of today’s classes would be fastest.

I don’t think any of today’s classes are important…ah, the one in the afternoon will take attendance. Have I already used up all my absences from skipping? If I have, I’ll get marked down on the next test.

“My roommate has something he wants to ask you privately regarding the fourth floor case…hey, hey, don’t just take it…”

After a bunch of quarreling noise from the other end, Yu Yin heard another voice that did not belong to Yan Si. “I have a matter I would like to ask you in private. If the situation is even graver than how I think it is, I may also have to consider asking Officer Yu to come over depending on the circumstances.”

If it was already to that point, Yu Yin was definitely certain that the matter was a very major one. “I’ll immediately head out. There’s a shop called Okaya next to our school, let’s meet there.”

“Alright, we will arrive in another ten minutes.”

Yu Yin hung up, feeling worse than a mere headache now.

Just as he was about to stow away the laptop, he heard another strange noise. There was an unnatural whir from inside the laptop’s keyboard, and then the monitor suddenly flickered.

In that second, he saw something on the laptop’s LCD black screen. But since it was just that brief second, he hadn’t been able to see what exactly had changed on the dark display before it had instantly returned to its normal state.

…It didn’t trip a circuit or anything, right?

Yu Yin stared at the completely normal laptop and moved the mouse around a bit to confirm that it hadn’t broken down.

If it malfunctioned, the person I borrowed it from would probably scream.

While rejoicing in the moment, Yu Yin’s gaze stopped on the list on search results. He hadn’t noticed it earlier, but just as he was about to turn off the computer, he saw a weird item on the search results.

How to die in a cool way – Anonymous version.

Curiosity killed the cat; Yu Yin clicked the link and discovered that it was a private forum that had not been locked so that any unregistered viewer could go in to read. Just like its subject, it was a forum that allowed for anonymous posts. Yu Yin had heard some of the girls in his class discuss types of forums like this before, but he had never personally looked into such things. He was like his uncle in that way – he just never felt there was anything that needed to be discussed anonymously.

He read through the page. It seemed that it was a site to discuss death and how to die, which included all topics ranging from abstaining to suicide.

He seemed to recall a similar website had existed in the past, but it had already been shut down. It seemed like this kind of website would never cease to exist in the online community. As long as single person supported it, the site would rise up again.

The post that had drawn him into the forum was a standalone post of someone writing how their friend’s entire family had been murdered and had been brought away by the police with unknown whereabouts.

This is a true story that I thought was really cool, so I wanted to share it with everyone.

I used to have a classmate whose family seemed to have issues. Apparently their family would often fight to the point where the neighbours were driven mad. He rarely participated in anything, but he wasn’t particularly difficult to associate with. He was pretty smart and often earned scholarships. The most unique part of him was that he seemed to be a mixed blood – his eyes were an extremely beautiful violet, so he was pretty popular.

But a while ago, I heard that his entire family had been murdered. His dad had gone crazy or something and killed everyone. My classmate had been locked up in the bathroom and was rescued out by the police. He was brought away by them and has already transferred out. Nobody knows what happened to him since.

I heard that his family members had all been killed in inhuman ways; their hearts had been dug out, intestines spilling out all over the ground. The police all threw up the instant the walked in. It’s all pretty insane. It’s a pity that the newspapers didn’t have anything about it. Maybe the police closed off all information, like they do in movies?

I’m super curious – I really wish I could have personally seen what the killed family members looked like. It definitely would have been interesting.

That was how the post went. Some responses below asked him to stop concealing so much. Since nothing was on the news, they wanted him to describe the situation in more detail.

Even more senseless was the fact that there were several people that suggested this kind of method wasn’t cruel enough, and how to make it even better.

“What is wrong with kids these days…” Yu Yin stared at the dark website. He really felt that current society was defect. He then copied the contents of the post and the website and sent it to his own email before shutting off the computer.

The moment he closed the lid, he suddenly noticed someone was standing next to him. Nearly instantly, he whipped around to look, but all he caught was a black shadow.

The vacant library was absolutely silent.

“Who’s there?” Because he had been afraid of disturbing others with the laptop, he had purposely chosen a place on the second floor literature and history section where very few people would go to in the early morning. Who would be bored enough to scare others by standing behind them?

More seconds passed. The space was still completely quiet. The books were all nearly on their shelves, and not a single trace of wind was blowing down from above.

Yu Yin felt his eye twitch as he suddenly felt his skin crawl.

Because just when he turned around, he immediately sensed someone standing behind him again, on the table he had just placed the laptop on. Someone was staring down at his head. The ice-cold gaze was bizarrely way too close to be real.

It felt as if someone was sizing up the back of his head and wanted to try seeing through his very pores.

Yu Yin jerked around, but still could not s