The Yu Brothers’ Case Book

“Don’t you think it smells super suspicious or whatever?”

After the uproar, the plans to go out had been cancelled and Ah Guan had dropped by. He excitedly grabbed Yu Yin, who was still looking through records, and said, “Think about it. Don’t these kinds of bizarre things often appear in murder cases! Wine bottles appearing out of nowhere, designed schemes, and the guesthouse! On the oceanside! Looks like something will happen on this group trip—”

“Something, my ass. Did the last group trip incident not teach you a lesson!” That had been more terrible and severe than now. A single mistake could have made today any of their death anniversaries; of course Ah Guan had failed to properly learn his lesson and was now talking about things going wrong here. Yu Yin seriously wanted to punch the guy’s face and see if it would wake him up a bit more.

“But don’t you think encountering it a second time is really OP? I doubt many university students would land in this twice in a row. This kind of luck is comparable to winning the lottery…speaking of which, why don’t we go out and buy a few lottery tickets tonight? If we win, we’ll split it.” Ah Guan was quite optimistic about the past, believing that one was bound for good fortune after surviving a great disaster. After that incident, he had used the story to catch quite a few chicks, which he had been smug about for a while.

Moreover, honestly speaking, he did not really have much memory of the past matters. There was a part of it that he still remembered as being very similar to a horror movie, and then he had woken up in the hospital. He had only heard about the middle parts from others. Thinking about it now, it did not feel very realistic at all.

Because it had been so beyond common sense, it was easy to deliberately forget about it.

“Like hell you’ll win.”

Yu Yin muttered a curse in a response. He really did want to give his friend a proper painful beating…Wait no, this is already Ah Guan’s third time running into this!

Yu Yin realised with a shock that this bastard had encountered such things during the leopard cat incident too!

Why the hell doesn’t he get any kind of mental trauma!

Yu Yin curled his hands into fists. He was deeply convinced that he did not deserve all his recent vexations and entanglements…and he had the strong urge to throw two punches at his horrible friend’s face.

“Oh right, what do you think about Jia Jia? The girl that Wei Jun brought from his class, Wang Hui Jia.” Ah Guan watched the girl walk pass the window and he jabbed his friend next to him. “I want to go after her, and she seems to have something for me too. She’s tried to entice me a bunch of times already.”

“Just hurry up and go for her, don’t waste your youth.” Yu Yin kept his eyes locked onto the screen. Having already somewhat given up on his friend, his tone was flat as he intoned, “Good luck.”

“Fuck you!” Ah Guan whacked the back of Yu Yin’s head, but he really did straighten up his clothes and leave the room.

Yu Yin glanced out the window to spot his friend walking over to the girl and strike up a conversation. The latter bashfully chatted and laughed with him, and the two seemed to get along quite well.

That’s a good thing too.

Yu Yin shifted his attention back onto the computer. After reading a ton of complaints, Yu Yin had gradually reached the stranger parts that followed.

July 23

It’s that woman again.

I’m already hiding in this kind of place, how did I run into her again?

How can life be this fucking unlucky?

And she actually didn’t recognise me?

What a damn joke.

July 24

She came again, and it was still the same.

What’s so amazing about having some money.

Damn it, I have a headache from all this.

That woman that woman that woman—

“Have you read your fill?”

Yu Yin started as he saw words that shouldn’t have been there suddenly pop up on the screen.

Have you read your fill?

Have you read your fill?

Have you read your fill?

Have you read your fill?

Have you read your fill?

Have you read your fill?

Yu Yin jumped onto his feet as he watched the flickering words repeat endlessly and swiftly fill the screen.

Before he could react, the window right across from him let out a bang. The fairly loud noise made him flinch strongly.

“Oi, Ah Yin, Jia Jia seems to be more interested in you.” Ah Guan was leaning against the window’s metal frame while knocking on the glass.

I seriously want to strangle Ah Guan right now…

Yu Yin lowered his gaze. The words just now had already vanished, but the computer seemed to have crashed, frozen with a bunch of random data on display. It did not budge even after he pressed the restart button several times. As he wondered about how he might be beaten to death by Xiao Zhong, he shut off the power source to try rebooting it that way.

“Want to come out?” Ah Guan clearly had not noticed the issue inside from where he was sprawled as he asked this in high spirits.

Yu Yin moved aside to let Yu handle the laptop as he opened the door and whacked Ah Guan’s head. “Don’t come and disturb me. Shoo shoo shoo!”

“Fucking hell, this is why you won’t get any chicks!”

After shooing Ah Guan away, Yu Yin turned his head to spot Dong Feng walking out of the bathroom dripping wet.

“How’s your reading?” Dong Feng dried his hair as he glanced at the darkening sky outside.

“The computer crashed, but I should be done soon.” Before that damned Ah Guan had interrupted him, Yu Yin had definitely been over two thirds through. He also got the clear impression that this person had encountered many frustrating events.

“Yu’s tablet has a copy; continue reading.” Dong Feng pointed his chin at the charging tablet on the bed, then walked over to handle the laptop that was still filled with random data after rebooting.

“I think this really is the direction we’re looking for.” Yu Yin went over to the bed to pick up the similarly frozen tablet that could not be read. It appeared that something did not wish for them to continue reading.

“No, regardless of whether it’s the [right] direction or not, it’s best to finish looking through it all. If the computer isn’t fixed later, I’ll write it from memory for you guys. Yu probably hasn’t finished yet either?”

He turned to look at Yu, who gestured that there was just a tiny bit left.

“Then let’s continue after eating.” Seeing that people had started piling bricks and grills, Yu Yin remembered that they would have to tidy their luggage later too. They would be checking out tomorrow and transferring to the next lodging. While they had encountered a few strange matters, this was ultimately a group trip after all; they could not delay the others’ pacing.

“I’m going out for another walk.” Dong Feng placed down the towel. He wanted to check the sea again before leaving. It gave him a worrying feeling, though he could not pinpoint the reason.

Or rather, I can’t do anything anyways…I don’t know what I should be doing.

“Ah, wait.” Yu Yin grabbed the large coat hanging next to him, as well as a hat and scarf and directly dressed the other person. “Before your hair is finished drying, you should at least wear a bit more before going out.”

“So fussy!”

“If I don’t fuss, you won’t wear it!”

***

“Boss.”

With materials in his hands, Ah Liu opened the door in search of Yu Xia, only to suddenly spot the latter walking out of the elevator while closing his cellphone. “What’s wrong?” He asked suspiciously, noticing the other’s expression was off.

“Nothing. My person reported back that there seemed to be students on Ah Yin’s side doing malicious pranks, so I told him to be a bit more alert.” Yu Xia had clicked his tongue upon receiving the regular report and being informed about the bottles and bugs. He hadn’t imagined that type of unsavoury person to be in the group of students. “Results?”

“I was just bringing them to you. It’s these.” Ah Liu passed over the folder. The two of them entered the office and shut the door, cutting off the scattered noise outside. “Although it’s not with 100% certainty, after the analysis, I think it should be a tattoo. Moreover, it’s one we’ve seen before.” Since Jiu Shen had not dared to get close at all, Ah Liu had been forced to concede and do it himself. But after doing the comparison analysis, Ah Liu had definitely felt a bit achieved—the sense of achievement that made the escaped Jiu Shen grumble regrets for a very long time.

Yu Xia raised a brow at the image on the paper.

Ah Liu had given him an extracted trace from the symbols on the guns: the weird mark on the organisation’s firearms that they had already seen countless times.

Yu Xia flipped to the next page to see the extracted tattoo trace from the arm. While there was only a third of it, it matched the gun mark exactly.

“Originally, I was wondering if such a coincidence was possible. Then I later asked Yan Si to find Lin Zi Lei’s body, and it turned out that she also had this tattoo on her thigh. However, she had gotten a scorpion tattoo to hide it; this mark was within the scorpion’s body.”

“Mn. Having the same tattoos within an organisation is nothing new.” Yu Xia had handled many similar cases. To make identification easier, these organisations would have their own methods to distinguish themselves. He had previously caught a group who all had tongue piercings.

“No, no, there’s more. Ah Si later said that he seemed to have seen a similar circle recently, so he went to check the files that went through him, and he discovered that Song Jie Han…you still remember him right? The husband from that married couple who sexually abused the female student next door that was later murdered—that Song Jie Han had one on his abdomen as well. At the time, the person in charge had assumed it was an unfinished tattoo. Then I asked friends to confirm that Kang Zhe Chang had it too. Don’t you think that when you guys started hunting down the people from these cases, they were clearly fleeing to a specific location, as though waiting for someone?” Adding on the blonde and Lin Zi Lei from the bike-racing gang, these people’s actions had been scarily similar in hindsight.

Yu Xia frowned at Ah Liu’s words. He had indeed found these cases strange, but he hadn’t thought of this type of connection.

Then that means when Song Jie Han pushed me down without hesitation to prevent me from finding the hard disk back then, it might not have been because he didn’t want me to find proof of abusing those girls, but rather a more important reason that forced him to act.

His memory instantly flashed back to that moment when Song Jie Han had stared fixedly at him from behind, waiting for the timing to push him down. The instant Yu Xia’s vision had turned upside down, he had not thought of too much, nothing like a flash of scenes one had before dying. He had very instinctively grabbed onto the only thing he could and looked down at the air he was suspended in.

That moment and what had followed afterwards had deepened their beliefs that Song Jie Han had wanted to shake off the abuse case. The search through the computer had been focused in that direction as well; they had never considered other possibilities.

Did his wife turn herself in after because she wanted to cut off the support channels so that the police could not find out?

“Re-examine all the computer data from Song Jie Han.”

He immediately reported these findings to Li Zi Hong and Yu Tong while having someone investigate those five damn brats. Yu Xia then turned to see Ah Liu’s screen still set on that arm. “I’ll have someone go investigate the situation at the guesthouse.”

“Speaking of which, I analysed that video clip and found that…” Ah Liu had removed the sound from the clip. Because the background had originally been quiet, it hadn’t taken much effort to separate it from the background noise. “You’ll understand once you hear it.”

Yu Xia increased the volume and heard something that sounded very much like a moan. However, it sounded like it was from a woman, not from Dong Feng lying off to the side. After a while, he heard the meaningless noise continue before vanishing in the middle of the clip.

Even just watching the clip made one feel the eerie atmosphere that had been in the room.

“At first, it just sounded like weird noises. But horror movies always show there being something wrong with sounds, so I tried to speed up and slow down the file. In the end, I got it by speeding it up.” Ah Liu set the speed faster and then compressed it before replaying it.

…Leave…leave…quick…leave…leave…leave…

Despite the disjointedness, the meaning was evident.

Yu Xia narrowed his eyes. Right as he was about to voice a question, a sudden scream came from behind.

“Ahhh! You guys are still fiddling with that unscientific thing!”

Jiu Shen had pushed open the door to drop off a file, and had nearly shot backwards.

“You…”

Before Ah Liu could kindly say something to his colleague, the track abruptly turned ear-piercing, like a sharp object scratching against [a hard surface]. It lasted for two seconds before being followed by a woman’s shrill scream.

Yu Xia immediately switched off the track and kicked the stumbling and yelling Jiu Shen into the room. He slammed the door to break off the curious gazes that had run out in alarm from the noise.

“Let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out—” Jiu Shen crashed into the wall and curled up in the corner in terror.

Yu Xia ignored the shaking person in the corner and turned to look at the clearly frightened Ah Liu. “Was that sound there before?”

“N-No.” Ah Liu had taken quite the scare, and it took him a few seconds to return to his senses. “Weird…” He replayed the track, but both the piercing noise and the scream had vanished, disappearing as though it had merely been a hallucination.

“Tch!”

***

“Ah, you really are here again.”

Xiang Zhen Rong kicked off his sandals and stepped onto the somewhat prickling pebbles to eventually enter the shallow ocean. An icy sensation immediately spread through his entire body as his flashlight beam shone on the jacket of the person crouching. “I thought you were Ah Yin at first and was about to ask why Xiao Yu wasn’t with you.” That jacket was a bit eye-catching, so it was very possible to assume the wrong person at first glance, especially since Dong Feng was wearing the same hat and scarf. “You seriously love coming to the sea, huh.”

“Hmph.” Dong Feng let go of the little boat and hugged his jacket closer as he stood. As expected, it felt chilly to come out before his hair had dried. Fortunately, this jacket was thick enough.

“It’s almost time to eat; come in once you’re done. Do you want the flashlight?” Xiang Zhen Rong waved the light source in his hand as he strode closer and asked, “After this afternoon’s incident, you need to be careful while walking. It would be bad if you got injured. It’s a good thing Pin Si only had minor cuts that were fine after disinfecting and applying ointment.”

Dong Feng shot the young man a sideways glance and replied in slight annoyance, “No need, I remember the way.” To be accurate, he remembered everything on the way. As long as there were no significant changes, walking back in the dark wouldn’t be a problem.

“I’m saying for you to watch out for abnormalities. Who knows if there will be bottles again. Take it.” Xiang Zhen Rong did not feel at ease by those overly self-confident words at all. He noticed that the other’s scarf was a bit loose and smoothly reached out to fix it. Actually, putting aside how Yu Yin liked dressing how young people nowadays did, he was pretty good at choosing material quality. Even this knit scarf felt warm to the touch.

“I’ll pass, stop annoying me.” Dong Feng really wanted to take a train back home right now. He was seriously tired of this damn group lifestyle. There was no knowing how many times he had felt regret about agreeing to come along; he would never do such a stupid thing a second time.

“Sigh, how about this then? I’ll come back out in ten minutes to get you.” Seeing that the other person’s bag had no more boats, Xiang Zhen Rong guessed that Dong Feng would soon be returning to the guesthouse.

“…”

“Since you didn’t respond, it’s settled.”

Dong Feng listened to the young man leave the shore, muttering to himself while searching for his sandals and then walking back along the rocks.

Dong Feng loosened the slightly tight scarf and faintly heard Xiang Zhen Rong seemingly bump into someone, followed by the sound of chatting. He could tell that it was talking about going back to help prepare for barbeque and such.

Soon, all that remained was the sound of waves.

Dong Feng shot a sideways look at the nearby anglers and sighed.

He honestly had no idea what he was doing.

As he took two steps backwards, he vaguely spotted what appeared to be strands of something in the ocean. However, it was quickly washed away by the waves, making it impossible to discern.

His frame of mind shifted. I should think about those journal entries.

If my conclusion is right, then that woman is very likely…

A light switched on once more.

Before Dong Feng could open his mouth to lash out at the backtracking Xiang Zhen Rong, he suddenly felt a constriction around his neck. Then someone pressed down on him from behind and forcefully wrung the scarf so that he could not even utter a sound.

It’s not Xiang Zhen Rong.

Dong Feng used one hand to grab onto the scarf that continued tightening around his neck while he closed his eyes and threw his body backwards with his entire strength, causing both himself and the stranger behind him to crash into the rocky shore. Because of the impact, the latter dropped their flashlight and it rolled into the incoming waves with a plop. The sole source of light quickly vanished.

After obtaining a moment to breathe, Dong Feng hurriedly struggled to crawl back up. However, the person in the darkness moved faster; while Dong Feng’s palms slipped under the scarf, it was viciously yanked backwards. Intense pain simultaneously shot through both his hands and his neck.

Dong Feng could sense the stranger’s warm breath spilling out behind him, giving the icy ocean winds an ironic warmth.

“You should go blame your dad for being too meddlesome. They need to be taught a lesson.”

A voice he had never heard before.

While resisting, Dong Feng kicked something, a wire…Fishing tackle?

As he began to lose air, the single hand grabbing at the other’s face behind powerlessly fell.

The scarf loosened, and he was subsequently tossed into the foam. The chilling waves covered his body, then receded. When they crashed back over him, they drowned out his coughs.

The stranger crouched down next to him and grabbed his head, pressing it into the water.

So cold.

Extremely cold.

The coat absorbing the ocean water was like a layer of frost wrapping around him.

However…he was already long accustomed to this feeling. No matter how cold the water was, it could not compare to the frigidness of a human’s warmth disappearing.

The waves fell back once more. The opposite party stopped, letting Dong Feng take a large breath of air.

“Good enough.”

“Ah…yes…” He opened his mouth and inhaled the freezing cold air. The voice that came out from his throat was so rough that he could not even recognise it as his own.

“You…”

The next second, Dong Feng grabbed the large rock next to him and used all his power to smash it at the face silhouette leaning towards him. He heard the other let out a pained shout.

His strength was not enough.

A second time, and a third time, could not render the other party motionless.

He had grumbled about this before while carving too. However, he did not want to eat, so he could only make up for it by using more cuts to meticulously achieve his desired result.

“Fuck!”

As expected, he was flung aside. Before he could flee and call for help, the stranger tightened the scarf he had forgotten to take off first.

Be careful. The gap between the shallow and deep sections around here is huge. Don’t step too far out.

Fortunately, he was not the type of person that had a strong desire to live.

This was his only thought as he was pushed into the water and the darkness engulfed him.

Then, there was nothingness.

***

“Phone.”

As Yu Yin was spacing out at the clothes next to his hands, he was startled by the sudden ice-cold cellphone touching him.

Yu Yin had no idea how he had slipped into a daydream while folding clothes, and he smiled in slight embarrassment as he accepted Yu’s phone. “Hm? Uncle…Yu and I are fine, my classmates are fine too. They’re all in the guesthouse right now…some people went out to stroll through the night market…” The other person’s questions were spoken in a somewhat urgent tone, which Yu Yin found strange. “What’s wrong?”

After Yu Xia received confirmation on the questions from the other end, he gave a brief explanation of some of their situation before swiftly ending the call.

“Weird…”

Yu Yin stared at the cellphone; he had no idea why his uncle had suddenly called to ask about these matters. As he was pondering if he should call back and clarify, there was a series of knocks on the door.

“Ah Yin!”

The door opened to reveal Xiang Zhen Rong with a slightly panicked expression. “Did Dong Feng come back?”

“Huh? Didn’t he go outside for a walk…?”

“No, I arranged with him to go to the shore and bring him back after ten minutes, but I didn’t see him. I searched around nearby, but there was no one around. The anglers nearby said they hadn’t seen anyone walking over either. I thought he had ditched me and returned first.” Xiang Zhen Rong had gone out to grab Dong Feng on time, only to see nothing. He had originally assumed he had been ghosted, but felt something was wrong the more he’d searched. The other classmates making preparations in the courtyard had similarly stated they had not seen Dong Feng enter. Some people had even exclaimed in astonishment that they had thought it was Yu Yin who had gone out, since they had seen his jacket leave from the door and hadn’t thought any more about it.

“Wait, let me try contacting him…” The phone did not connect. Yu Yin and the other two noticed it was lying right next to the bed; the cellphone that had been left behind by its owner to charge was ringing endlessly.

An intense feeling of unease instantly spread through Yu Yin. He and Xiang Zhen Rong knocked on all the other room doors, but there was simply no one that had seen Dong Feng; Ah Guan and Li Lin Yue likewise sensed something amiss and swiftly led a few others to drive out and search.

“Was he last by the ocean?”

Yu Yin grabbed a flashlight and ran over to the beach with Wei Jun and some others. Xiang Zhen Rong headed towards the coast guards in the vicinity to request for help.

Dozens of people ran around through the area of the little town, and they looked very far along the shore as well. Yet, they were ultimately unable to see any sign of Dong Feng. The guesthouse owner living in the area even requested for the other residents to search around; even small fishing boats were dispatched. In that moment, there were various lights interweaving with each other along the shore.

Yu Yin stood atop the countless stones, completely lost with no clue what the situation was.

The ocean that crashed onto the stones receded for him to glimpse the tangled strands of hair by his feet once more.

“I don’t have time to care about you guys right now.”

The eyes under the water stared straight at him. As he shone the flashlight beam downwards, there was an eerie green light. With another splash of the sea, both the hair and the gaze below vanished again.

Yu tugged at him by his side with a worried face.

“It’s fine, it’s…” Yu Yin wanted to console Yu, but the voice leaving his mouth was so quiet that it was swallowed by the sound of the waves, and he could not even convince himself.

“It’s fine,” Yu quietly stated and patted Yu Yin’s shoulder before raising a flashlight to continue searching ahead.

Yu Yin stared at Yu’s back and rubbed his face. When he sharply turned on his heels, he glimpsed a black shadow appear near the water surface, coldly staring at him.

If it was this person–if their guess wasn’t wrong–then that person who had suffered work complications had already become something else.

While reading those journal entries, he had found out the person’s name.

“Wei Qi Xin.”

The black figure slowly faded, and a blurry face took its place.

The pale face that appeared was the same as the photo Yu Yin had seen on the person’s social media page.

In the photo, he had still been wearing a clearly happy smile.

“I don’t know what you’re doing, but I don’t have the time to pay attention to your pranks right now. If you want to find ‘that person’, then go. But even if you really do something to her, it won’t help you change now.”

There was no knowing if the other party understood his words or not. In any case, the young man stood there without its previous anger. Instead, it raised a hand to point in another direction down the shore.

“What…”

Before Yu Yin could ask further, the person vanished.

As he shone his light in that direction, the waves brought up many tiny dark objects before receding.

What remained behind on the countless pebbles was a lump of spoiled paper. Upon closer look, he found that it was bright yellow-coloured. The paper clearly had not been soaked in the water for too long, and it seemed to have been folded into a particular shape.

The waves attacked again to wrap around his feet. Around him were many strands of hair, as well as more soiled little paper boats.

Yu Yin picked up a boat and almost subconsciously broke out into a sprint forwards.

Each wave brought up paper boats one after another of various colours. It was impossible to discern the original forms of some that had simply turned into destroyed paper, while some maintained their intact appearance; the hands below the ocean pushed up a sky-blue boat that lay stranded between the pebbles.

Why are there so many?

Yu Yin vaguely knew the answer without much pondering.

When he accidentally tripped, he saw even more multi-coloured boats alighting on the shore with the tide, stopping by him as though they had docked at a harbour. Between the paper boats, he spotted a single sandal that had been washed up.

Then, even more paper boats.

He could practically see the gazes gathering under the ocean not far from him.

He had no idea what area he had run off to. All he saw across the beach in the darkness was a layer of paper boats that swayed with the intermittent foam splashing up.

Then, he caught sight of his own scarf.

A faint colour floating amidst the large amount of paper boats, with most of it submerged in the water.

“Ah Yin! What’s wrong?”

A few people shouted out after noticing the movement, though their voices sounded abnormally distant.

Yu Yin did not have the time to respond. He jumped down into the water and grabbed the scarf while noticing that the water here was deep enough to reach his thighs. He pushed aside the boats and used all his strength to pull up the submerged person.

“Call an ambulance!” Xiang Zhen Rong dashed forwards and immediately took off his jacket before helping Yu Yin pull the person up to move onto the rocky shore. They then swiftly removed the scarf and wrapped a dry coat around the person before performing emergency first-aid.

“Hurry up and help.” Li Lin Yue and Ah Guan divided up the people to have some alternate with Xiang Zhen Rong while directing the other half to retrieve warm objects and lead rescue personnel over.

Amidst the chaos, Yu Yin eyed the anglers that had come to see the commotion. Multiple black shadows suddenly appeared behind one of them and thick bundles of hair wrapped around the man’s neck. “Oi, that person—”

“Who!”

Upon noticing someone running in the opposite direction after being called out, Ah Guan swiftly reacted and lunged out to directly tackle that angler to the ground. “Got a problem?!”

The angler being restrained against the rocks had yet to speak when another voice directly interjected, “Move aside! The ambulance is here!”

In that moment of distraction, Ah Guan was caught off guard by the other person shoving him away.

The malicious angler spat out a curse and ran away.

Ah Guan actually had no idea what he had even captured that person for, so he could only shift away first to let others pass through.

Everything that followed was absolute chaos. Most of the students followed the rescue personnel to rush down the beach to leave, using a large amount of light sources to help illuminate the path.

“Let’s go,” Yu urged while tugging on Yu Yin.

A large wave crashed forth.

“Wait.” Although Yu Yin really wanted to follow after as quickly as possible, he had just touched something else underneath the water.

The waves carried away a large amount of paper boats. He shone the flashlight beam downwards to reveal another—or rather, a different—corpse. Its long hair floated among the surging water surface. Some wrapped around a rotting neck while some swept through the eyeless sockets.

A few female students that remained nearby let out screams.

Yu Yin took out his cellphone, but it was suddenly whisked away by someone next to him. He turned his head to see Li Lin Yue with a similarly poor complexion give him a push.

“I’ll report it to the police, you should just hurry up and go.”