As dusk fell, Zhen Nuan leaned against the leaky iron door. The warmth faded, replaced by a rising chill.
Yan Han still leaned against the wall smoking, his profile calm. Zhen Nuan wondered if she'd been mistaken about what she'd seen earlier.
Standing there quietly felt awkward.
He had remarkable composure and didn't seem to care.
But she was thin-skinned and kept recalling what had happened: he was her boss, yet she'd competed with him in that dark room, rolled together on the floor, and even hit his neck with her mouth.
The silence only made it worse.
She attempted small talk. "Captain, what do you think about this..."
Yan Han laughed out loud, choked on smoke, and coughed with slightly watering eyes. "Am I that old?"
Zhen Nuan's brain short-circuited for a few seconds before she caught on.
A blush crept across her face as she corrected herself. "Team Leader, do you think Jiang Xiao committed suicide or was murdered?"
He leaned back against the wall casually. "That's your job."
Zhen Nuan felt the sting. Determining suicide versus homicide was a forensic doctor's basic skill.
Yan Han pushed off from the wall and walked to the trash can to extinguish his cigarette.
He turned up his collar and headed for the stairs. "Meeting tomorrow morning at eight. I need your report."
Tomorrow morning? Zhen Nuan glanced at her watch. She'd be pulling an all-nighter.
Yan Han descended a few steps, then suddenly stopped and turned back. "If suicide is wrongly judged as homicide, it wastes police resources. If homicide is wrongly judged as suicide, the deceased suffers an injustice. Your probation period is three months. I hope you can make it through."
His words sent pressure crashing down on Zhen Nuan.
He raised the corner of his lips. "Ms. Zhen Nuan, welcome to Yucheng Public Security Bureau."
Zhen Nuan couldn't bring herself to smile.
Whether she stayed or left depended entirely on his opinion. Just perfect.
The parking lot was full of cars but empty of people—silent and still.
Yan Han strode toward his vehicle with a cold expression, opened the door, and got in. He sat motionless for a long time without starting the engine.
He gripped the steering wheel tightly, eyes fixed on the windshield, as if watching a scene from over ten years ago:
A silent, tenacious squad trekking and staking out for more than forty days in an endless gray-green jungle. Mosquitoes, flies, poisonous insects, wild animals, snakes, pythons...
Until one day—flames shooting skyward, bullets raining down, enemies resisting stubbornly, heads shot through, corpses charred, villages covered in blood, unarmed civilians...
He always remembered Han Bing saying, "This den must be wiped out in one fell swoop. No one left alive."
The cunning enemy grabbed someone dressed as a civilian, using them as a shield while shooting. Both sides exchanged fire.
He also remembered his teenage self shouting at the top of his lungs: "You're all crazy! Those are hostages!"
But he was soon met with a heavy punch to the cheek from Flying Eagle. "You're the one who's crazy. Those are all drug dealers' informants and manufacturers."
The boy's eyes turned red, and he lunged at Flying Eagle to fight.
His teammates beat him so badly he could barely stand. Qianyang told him, "They're using their own accomplices. Team Blazing fell for this trick last time. Those civilians were all drug traffickers in disguise."
After that operation, the squad was quickly disbanded.
He was transferred to Yucheng Police Academy as a reserve cadre.
Like everyone else, he thought the incident would blow over.
It wasn't until a year later that Xia Shi disappeared, and two years after that, her bones were unearthed.
In the end, he was the one who had harmed her.
During the year he returned to peaceful life, he secretly investigated the source of their intelligence. One clue led to Ji Ting, the then-retired patriarch of the Ji family, who suddenly died in a car accident.
No news since then.
Over the years, he gradually understood what Han Bing meant: if you're a drug-related suspect, their organization will remember your face and do everything possible to hunt you down for revenge.
When he was dragging his body—covered in wounds from his teammates' beating—while hiding with a little girl in his arms, the girl, just over seven years old, suddenly said in broken Chinese: "They are looking for you and calling you 'Xiao Huo'?"
Then she reached up and pulled off his mask.
Yan Han lowered his head, released his grip on the steering wheel, and rubbed his nose hard.
Why had the little girl from that small border village become the eldest daughter of the Ji family? After ten years, could this be a new clue?
And why had he used Ah Shi's nickname 'Xiao Huo' as his code name?
Low heat.
Yan Xiaohuo.
Yan Han exhaled slowly and deeply, leaning back in his seat in a daze. He could inexplicably recall her voice:
"Brother Xiaohuo." "Brother Xiaohuo."
Sometimes tender, sometimes clingy, gradually becoming softer and shyer as she grew older.
That was a long time ago.
Summer. Bluestone alley.
Shenzhen only had summer, so his and her memories were always entangled with its scent.
When he was young, he grew annoyed at her constant "Brother Xiaohuo," so he pulled her down to squat in the mud and wrote her name stroke by stroke with a branch.
After writing the character "่จ," he couldn't remember how to write "็" (enthalpy).
While he puzzled over it, he noticed little Xia Shi squatting beside him. Her white underwear with a pink kitty cat was visible beneath her short sundress.
He covered his eyes for a moment, then curiously opened his fingers to peek. After looking for a while, unable to resist, he stretched out a finger and poked the kitty cat's face. Soft.
There didn't seem to be anything particularly special about girls' underwear.
So he lectured her seriously. "Xia Jia A Shi, girls shouldn't let their underwear show."
"Oh, really?" Little Xia Shi spread her legs and leaned down to look. "Wow, it really is showing."
Everything Brother Xiaohuo said was right.
Little Xia Shi immediately twisted and turned, her small hands grabbing the hem of her skirt and pulling it down until it reached the ground. She pressed her bare legs against her chest, wrapped in the fabric.
"There."
Little Yan Han was satisfied and continued writing his name. He wrote "่จ็็ป" and told her: "Look carefully. My name is Yan Han, not Yan Xiaohuo. Don't call me Brother Xiaohuo anymore."
Little Xia Shi tilted her head and frowned, her little finger poking at the only character she recognized. "Fire~ This is fire~ Brother Xiaohuo's fire~"
"It's enthalpy! It's pronounced the same as 'han' in 'cold.'"
She tugged at her thin eyebrows, extremely puzzled. "How can it be cold when there's fire? It's Brother Xiaohuo's fire."
"Yan Han."
"Yan Xiaohuo."
"Yan Han!"
"Yan Xiaohuo!"
Silence. They stared at each other.
More silence. More staring.
"Yan Han!"
"Yan Xiaohuo!"
Silence.
Silence.
"Yan Han!"
"Yan Xiaohuo!"
"Yan Han."
"Yan Xiaohuo."
After countless cycles...
"Smack!"
A stunned gasp. "Brother Xiaohuo hit me!"
She whimpered and tried to get up to find her mother, but her legs were wrapped in her skirt and she rolled to the ground like a ball.
She froze for a moment, feet and bottom exposed.
Little Yan Han covered his eyes, then opened his fingers to peek through them.
Little Xia Shi forgot to cry. She rolled on the ground like a small barrel, grunting and struggling to push her feet out of her skirt. She brushed off the dirt and ran after Brother Xiaohuo to catch cicadas.
She always ran happily behind him, from the time she could walk until she grew up, even though he often ran too fast for her to catch up, leaving her lost and wandering.
Yan Han's little tail. Yan Han's follower. Yan Han's little wife. From childhood to adulthood, the children in the bluestone alley called her that.
If she were still here, their children would already have childhood sweethearts of their own.
If that were the case...
Yan Han, sitting in the car, slowly curled the corners of his lips and whispered, "...A Shi..."
A Shi from the Xia family. His A Shi.
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