At 3:30 a.m., the wind and rain showed no sign of letting up. The temperature in the mountains had dropped even further.
Whether it was the cold or the exhaustion, Yan Han's face had gone unusually pale, lean almost to the point of gauntness. Only his eyes held steady — pitch-black, hard, and watchful.
Zhen Nuan did the math in her head. They'd been running for nearly sixteen hours, from yesterday's missing person investigation straight into tonight's sudden homicide. No one here was fresh. The fact that they were all still standing, still thinking, was its own kind of willpower.
She felt a brief, quiet sympathy for her colleagues.
Only a moment.
She thought through what Yan Han had said and understood at once.
Agricultural vehicles crawl on rainy mountain roads. A police car in full sprint could cover the stretch from the mountain entrance to here in ten minutes. A farm truck would need twenty to thirty. Factor in the time the killer drove out at top speed — and the window between when the body was dumped and when the farm vehicle struck her on the open road stretched to thirty or forty minutes.
Going by the current rate of temperature drop, the body had cooled at least eighteen degrees.
"Rough mental calculation," Yan Han said. "When the farm vehicle hit her, her body temperature was around twenty-nine degrees. If the killer left the mountain before the truck arrived, her temperature at time of dumping would have been at least forty-eight." He looked up. "Zhen Nuan."
She met his eyes immediately and picked up the thread: "We'll need the pathology section to confirm. But visually, the breach shows no heat damage to brain tissue. More likely, the killer dumped the body after the truck had already gone a short distance into the mountains, then left in the same direction."
Yan Han glanced at her — a look of quiet approval — and gestured upstream along the road. "So the killer went that way. It's the off-season. Fewer people. The canvass shouldn't be too difficult."
One of the detectives spoke up: "What if the driver lied? What if he dumped the body himself and then disfigured her?"
"Unlikely." Yan Han coughed again, a dry sound he couldn't quite suppress. "There's no air conditioning in that farm truck."
Zhen Nuan blinked. She hadn't thought of that. But then — everyone around her had stopped being surprised by Yan Han a long time ago.
She pressed her lip between her teeth. His throat sounded rough. Was he coming down with something? She was still turning that thought over when she looked up and found him already watching her. She went still and didn't look away.
"Traffic cameras along the route should confirm whether the vehicle was carrying a body," Yan Han said, his gaze moving on. "That rules out the driver."
Nods around the tent.
"That's all rough assessment. Everything gets verified once we're back and running the numbers." He looked around at the group — everyone standing grey and frozen, barely distinguishable from the dead. He checked his watch and gave a tired smile. "Get some rest. We continue this morning." A pause. "Which is now, apparently."
Zhen Nuan supervised the bagging of the body. As her colleagues worked, she tugged aside the collar of the deceased's jacket and pointed to the mottling along the arms.
"Look, Komatsu. Livor mortis this pronounced means she's been dead a while."
Komatsu leaned in and frowned. "Teacher, in the early stages of livor mortis, moving the body causes the original marks to fade and new ones to form in their place. But she was moved less than an hour ago. Shouldn't the marks still be forming?"
"That's exactly what I find suspicious." Zhen Nuan straightened. "We dissect and we'll know."
Komatsu nodded, then asked quietly: "Teacher Zhen, can we even identify her? No name, no records."
Zhen Nuan considered that for a moment. Then, with more certainty than she felt: "We will."
It wouldn't be easy. People without criminal records left nothing in the police database — no fingerprints, no DNA. Without an identity, the whole investigation stalled. The pressure on Zhen Nuan was real, and she knew it.
Yan Han appeared at her shoulder. He glanced once at the body bag. "Identity. Time of death. Location. Reconstruct the sequence as fast as you can."
The pressure doubled. But she had no objection. Everyone was running on nothing, and she at least had slept early the night before. The scene was already degrading. Every hour cost them.
"I'm going to the office now." She nodded like she was sealing a contract with herself, eyes bright and hard. The exhaustion was there — but underneath it, something sharper.
Yan Han watched her for a moment. The corner of his mouth curved, just slightly.
The small smile made her uncomfortable in a way she couldn't place. She rubbed her face, checking instinctively for ink or smudges. "What?"
He just smiled and said nothing.
She's changed, he thought. From passive, carried along by circumstance — to this. She'll be a worthy successor to Professor Zheng.
"Captain," she said, quieter now. "What's so funny?"
He was about to answer.
Then the wind hit.
The tarp overhead — swelling and deflating all night with the gusts — finally gave. The ropes snapped free. The canvas came loose, and the iron support frame went with it, the whole thing crashing down like a kite with a broken string.
Zhen Nuan didn't see it coming. She only saw Yan Han's expression change — eyes wide, body already moving, closing the distance between them in three long strides. Instinct made her step back, but she wasn't fast enough.
He grabbed her and yanked her clear. The iron frame sliced down through the space where she'd been standing.
Zhen Nuan, ungrateful by reflex, wrenched at his grip — and that was her mistake. Before she could break free, the loose canvas struck them both like a wave. She staggered and fell straight into him.
His arms closed around her automatically.
Her heartbeat spiked so hard it almost hurt.
Physical contact with men had always been difficult for her. Falling into his arms felt less like an accident and more like falling into fire.
She struggled, flushing and panicking, trying to pull away. But the iron frames had collapsed around them, and the canvas wrapped them both like a cocoon.
Wind. Rain. No leverage. Even Yan Han couldn't hold them upright. They went down together in a tangle of wet canvas.
The tarp split with a sharp rip — and the water pooled across it dumped over them both in one cold rush, flooding down their necks and into their clothes.
Cold that reached the bone. Cold that reached the heart.
"Ah!" Zhen Nuan screamed.
The other detectives swarmed in and pulled them free.
"Xiao Mao, you okay?" "Boss, you good?"
"Fine." Yan Han said it through clenched teeth, winced, and pointed at Zhen Nuan. Her first.
Zhen Nuan was shivering so hard she looked like she was vibrating. The team extracted her from the soaked canvas like lifting a wet cat from a puddle.
"Poor little thing's going to freeze to death — where's a coat!" Lao Bai spun in circles hunting for an umbrella.
"Coming, coming." Brother Tan swept a coat around her shoulders in one motion. Her teeth were chattering too hard to form words. Her whole body was shaking like it might fall apart.
Hei Zi squeezed in to block the wind. "Mao'er. You okay?"
The first shock of it passed. Zhen Nuan steadied slightly. "I'm — I'm fine," she said, in pieces.
She wasn't. Her soaked clothes pressed against her skin like holding ice directly against the body. Cold seeped inward, bone-deep, and the rain was still hammering down on her head. She wanted to disappear.
Yan Han's face was white too — but he had more control over it. He looked at Zhen Nuan with an expression that was strange and flat. If she hadn't twisted around fighting him like he was a threat instead of a rescue, they'd have cleared the frame with time to spare.
He didn't say it. But he thought it clearly.
The team began packing up to leave. With most of the investigators already gone, there weren't enough vehicles. Routes got sorted out in fragments.
Yan Han and Zhen Nuan lived in the same direction — both needed to stop home before heading to the office. They'd ride together.
On the way back, Yan Han drove fast. The heater climbed. But Zhen Nuan had been soaked through to somewhere past cold, and as the car warmed, her body somehow made it worse — she felt every degree of temperature rising against how frozen she still was inside.
She was ice all the way through.
She hunched in the passenger seat, teeth clicking relentlessly, unable to stop for even a second.
"I'll drop you home first."
"No." She got the words out in stuttering pieces. "Your place is on the way. We go there, then mine, then the office. Otherwise we're backtracking and wasting time."
Her voice came out thin and fractured, like a ghost trying to speak.
Yan Han glanced up at the rearview mirror. Her hair was soaked flat against her cheeks. Her face was white as paper.
He reached back and tapped the back of her hand with two fingers — trying to gauge her temperature. Her hand pulled away instantly.
"What?" He turned to look at her.
She gave a small, awkward smile. "I'm fine. About the same as you."
He took her home first anyway.
Zhen Nuan looked at him — completely drenched, face hollow and pale, and he'd been out in it far longer than she had. "Come change inside," she said. "I have men's clothes. They'll fit you."
Yan Han was quiet for a moment. Then: "All right."
Zhen Nuan's apartment was warm and lived-in. Orange sofa. Blue photo wall. White dining table. Red rug. A lot of color, but nothing that clashed — it looked abundant and alive.
He stepped in and stood near the door, still dripping.
"Sit down, it's fine." She poured them both hot tea and drained her own cup in one long pull. Something warm finally reached the inside of her.
Yan Han wrapped both hands around his cup and drank slowly. Over the rim of the glass, his dark eyes watched her with a glint of quiet amusement.
"What?" she asked.
"You just drank like a cow," he said.
She pressed her lips together and went to the second bedroom without a word.
She came back with a full set of clothes — trench coat, sweater, dress shirt, trousers. And underwear.
She kept her eyes somewhere else and pointed at it briefly. "Still in the packaging. Help yourself. The bathroom's over there. Hot shower first — it'll help."
"Thank you," he said.
He was quick. She heard the water, then quiet, and when she looked up he was standing in the living room in her things, his wet clothes nowhere to be seen.
The apartment was still. The only sound was the shower running in her bedroom.
He looked at the photo wall. Most of the pictures were old — Shen Ge and Zhen Nuan, young, close together, kissing in some of them. Even then, the younger Zhen Nuan had something cool and watchful in her eyes, something that seemed too old for her face.
The more recent pictures were different. Just one photo, and in it they stood only shoulder to shoulder.
Shen Ge looked more or less the same as he had years ago. Zhen Nuan had grown into herself considerably.
Yan Han's gaze drifted. His mind went somewhere he couldn't quite account for. He reached into his pocket for a cigarette out of habit. Nothing there.
Then three hard thumps came from the direction of her bathroom. Heavy. Muffled. Too deliberate to be an accident.
He walked to the bedroom doorway and knocked. "Zhen Nuan?"
Nothing.
"Zhen Nuan?" He pushed the door open slowly.
Her bedroom was warm, lit amber by the lamp beside the bed. A comforter printed with red roses. A massive Doraemon on the small armchair, flanked by a crowd of Angry Birds.
He knocked on the bathroom door. "Zhen Nuan. Are you all right?"
The light was on. No running water. No sound.
He knocked again, sharper. "Zhen Nuan!"
Through the frosted glass came a sound — a voice barely holding together, somewhere between pain and plea: "Captain. Can you come in?"
He pushed the door open.
She was on the bathroom floor in a white robe, curled in on herself, both hands locked around her knees, whole body shaking. She looked up. Her forehead was red — that was what the thumping had been. Fist against knee. Head against wall.
Her face was drained of color. Hair plastered wet against her cheeks — he couldn't tell water from sweat. She looked like something pulled from bleach.
Yan Han's expression went cold and tight. He crossed the room and grabbed her by the shoulders. "Are you on something?"
She looked up at him, bewildered, eyes glassy and too-bright. "Would drugs hurt this much?"
He held still for a second. Looked at her properly. Then, less hard: "Where does it hurt?"
"Everywhere. The bones. Every bone." The pain had stripped her past guarding herself, and even though she was fighting to look calm, the tears came the moment she opened her mouth. "I'm cold. I'm wet. Can you — can you get my medicine. Please."
"Where."
"Second drawer, nightstand."
He found a row of medicated patches. Rheumatism. Possibly hereditary. But severe like this?
The bathroom went quiet for a beat — then a crash. Heavy, rhythmic. She was hitting herself again.
He ran back. She'd curled into a ball and was slamming her fists into her shins, her knuckles against her skull.
"Zhen Nuan!"
He pinned her wrists behind her back. She was trapped against him, and still every bone in her body felt like it was crawling — itching and burning at once, ants eating from the inside out.
She finally broke. She cried — not controlled, not managed, raw and ugly. Her whole body twisted against him, fighting something that had no surface to fight.
She wasn't aware of what her movements were doing to him.
Yan Han went rigid for a sharp, startled second, thinking something he immediately refused to finish thinking. He pulled back, putting distance between them. "Stay still. I'll put the patches on."
After the worst of it passed, she slid down the wall and sat on the floor, still shaking, but not wild anymore. Just depleted. Her eyes — feverish, too clear, too direct — fixed on him as if she was trying to see straight through him.
He didn't comment on her stare. He pressed the pain patches to her knees and shins, then her arms and elbows. His expression was tight, unreadable.
Finally, without looking up, he asked flatly: "How did you pass the medical exam?"
Only he would analyze the situation at a time like this.
She turned her head away and muttered, "I checked the right boxes and lied." Then, quieter: "Don't report me."
He didn't answer. He held up one of the patches. "Head too?"
She didn't have energy for his jokes.
She looked back at him, miserable. "You're going to report me, aren't you."
"Your condition isn't suited for this work."
"It's fine. Today was unusual. It passes fast." She looked up at him, earnest despite everything. "Really. Give it a few more minutes and I'll be good to go back with you, I promise—"
She didn't finish. Tears hit the floor before she could stop them.
"Buying me off with tears?" He raised one eyebrow. No softness there at all.
"No." She wiped her face quickly, tried to smile. "It just really hurts."
Her mouth was smiling. Her eyes — dark, clear, rimmed with tears — were watching him like she was asking for something she didn't know how to name. She was trying to be strong. Her body was doing what it wanted anyway.
Something in him shifted.
He crouched beside her and began working her calves through the robe, steady pressure, then her knees.
She tensed to pull away. But the relief was immediate and real. She didn't know why she let him continue. She exhaled a small, involuntary sound.
The bathroom was quiet.
"Better?" he asked.
"Thank you," she said.
Yan Han made a low sound of amusement. "I take advantage of you and you thank me."
Zhen Nuan's face went faintly pink. She thought about it, then smiled, a little strained. "Most people would beg to have their boss give them a massage." She was trying to learn to take his teasing as just that.
"If you're this cooperative, what do you want from me?"
"Don't report me. I can't lose this job."
He narrowed his eyes slightly. "Why not?"
"I... don't know." She looked down and picked at the robe's fabric.
He didn't answer for a moment. Then, lower: "Winter's hard for you."
A small sound, somewhere between a sigh and assent. She wasn't the type to turn pain into a performance. "How do you know that pressing helps?"
"My dog used to roll around on the floor like this. A good rub and it passed."
Zhen Nuan stared at him.
He was looking down, but she could see it — the slight, white edge of a smile along his jaw.
"You have a dog?"
"No. I don't like animals." He turned to look at her. "Do you always believe everything people tell you?"
She considered him for a moment. "The things you say are easy to believe."
He studied her — quietly, assessing, as if checking for a lie. Then he gave a faint smile and let it go.
"Still hurting?"
She looked a little embarrassed, given how much work he'd put into this. "Still a little. But better." Then, softly: "Can you... press a little harder?"
He gave her a look. Something moved behind his eyes — brief, unreadable. But he pressed harder.
"Ow—" She winced and made a sound she immediately regretted. Eyes filling again. "Not that hard. That hurts."
He stopped. Glanced at her sideways. He had something to say about the sounds she was making and the way she was saying them. He decided against it. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and continued.
Zhen Nuan had a vague sense he found something funny. She couldn't figure out what.
It didn't matter. The right pressure had been found — or the patches were taking hold — and the gnawing, itching ache inside her bones was finally ebbing.
"It's finally not so awful," she breathed.
Then she caught a shadow at the bathroom doorway.
Tall. Lean. Still. A pair of dark eyes looking directly at her.
She startled hard, jerked away from Yan Han's hands, and scrambled to her feet. She moved too fast. The robe shifted — she grabbed it before anything could slip, but barely.
She clutched the fabric against herself. "Shen Ge. What are you doing here."
It wasn't quite a question.
Her mind was running too fast. She wanted to explain, but Shen Ge's expression was untroubled — or nearly so. He let his eyes pass over Yan Han once, noting the clothes he wore, and said nothing about it.
Zhen Nuan got there first, fast and stumbling: "There's a murder case. We got soaked in the rain and still have to go back in. I borrowed your clothes because it was an emergency — he would've frozen otherwise, we have work — my legs were cramping, he was just helping—"
Yan Han watched her talk herself in circles. Something that wasn't quite a smile pulled at his mouth.
"I didn't assume anything," Shen Ge said. He looked at Zhen Nuan. "Bones again?"
"A little." She nodded. "Better now." She straightened up. "I'm going to change. Make him tea."
"All right." Shen Ge agreed easily — because she had asked him to play host, and so he would.
He patted her back lightly. "Go."
While she changed, she turned something over in her mind. Shen Ge trusted her. He was certain of her. He was almost always unshakeable.
But tonight something was off. She'd felt it. A thread of tension in him she didn't recognize.
Then something heavy hit from the other room — not glass, not furniture. A sound with impact behind it. A closed fist.
Zhen Nuan yelled through the door, still half into her clothes: "Yan Han, his right hand doesn't work — don't do anything to him. Shen Ge, he's sick tonight — don't you hit him either."
Silence.
She ran out still pulling herself together, convinced she'd find wreckage.
The room was undisturbed. Yan Han and Shen Ge were seated on the sofa, perfectly upright, holding their cups at exactly the same angle, both looking at her with the same mildly confused expression.
Yan Han spoke first. A beat of quiet amusement. "Where exactly am I sick? A cough?"
Zhen Nuan stood in the doorway with no idea what to do with herself.
He set his cup down and stood. "I'll wait downstairs."
Shen Ge's face stayed even.
When the door closed, Zhen Nuan turned to him. "Homicide case. We don't have an ID on the victim yet. Back to work."
"Mm."
"Did you — did you two fight just now?"
Shen Ge didn't answer. He picked up the hair dryer. "Let me dry your hair before you go."
The dryer roared to life, and his long fingers worked through her hair. She leaned into it despite herself.
She waited until it was almost done, then said his name.
"Shen Ge."
"Mm?"
"Yan Han — is he the cop? The one you have history with?"
"Yes."
"What happened?"
"He believes I killed someone he loved." His fingers kept moving through her hair, unhurried. "Her name was Xia Shi, I think."
"How could he think that?"
"She died the same day I saw her."
Zhen Nuan's chest went tight.
"You knew she was dead?"