The wipers cut through the rain in slow arcs. Outside the windshield, the world dissolved and sharpened and dissolved again.
Yan Han and Zhen Nuan had changed into dry clothes. The car heater ran full blast, but the silence between them was its own kind of cold.
Zhen Nuan sat with her spine rigid, like a woman bracing for impact.
She would not quit a job she loved because of Shen Yi. That was not the kind of love most people understood. And she would not let her work poison what she had with Shen Yi. That was not the kind of safety most people understood either.
She had no past worth remembering, no faith to lean on, no family and no real friends. The only things that gave her a sense of being real in this world were her work and him. Those two things. Nothing else.
She did not want the bad blood between Yan Han and Shen Yi bleeding into her standing at the bureau. But she also could not keep sitting here while Yan Han treated Shen Yi like a suspect.
The bureau was close now. She spoke quietly.
"Captain."
"Hm?"
"Is it possible you and Shen Yi misread each other? Some kind of misunderstanding?"
"No."
She started again: "But you think--" then stopped. The way he said no told her everything. He was not uncertain. He was not guessing. There had been no misunderstanding, and that meant there was nothing to smooth over.
"Captain. He wouldn't kill anyone. Not without cause."
Yan Han's mouth curved, not warmly.
"He killed people for Ji Ting. Threw a bomb into a subway car. Those people had nothing to do with him. They were my enemies. My enemies."
He went quiet for a moment, then said it again, softer.
"My enemies."
Zhen Nuan had nothing to say.
After a while: "If you're certain it was him, why hasn't he been charged?"
Yan Han turned his head to look at her, something sharp in his eyes.
"If I had evidence, do you think he'd still be walking around?"
What he didn't say was the rest of it. That he had an obsession he could not name or explain. That Xia Shi was still alive while the ones who orchestrated everything ten years ago had been quietly erased. Dealt with. Vanished.
A strange light crossed his face. Zhen Nuan watched it and felt the hair rise on her arms.
In a voice that seemed to come from far away, he said: "Life and death. No attachments. No fears."
She understood it then. He was living only to kill one man. And when the time came, he would be the most dangerous thing in any room.
She found her voice, even if it trembled slightly at the edges.
"Have you considered that the reason there's no evidence is because he actually didn't do it?"
Yan Han tapped the steering wheel once.
"Shen Yi believes I suspect him of being the killer." A pause. A strange half-smile. "I never said that."
Zhen Nuan's hands went cold.
"Either he did it. Or he helped the person who did -- and he's been protecting them ever since."
"That's not fair. He was there the day Xia--" She lurched forward and the seatbelt locked hard across her throat.
The brakes hit. The tires screamed against the wet road.
"Don't say her name."
Low. Quiet. Less a command than a man barely holding something together.
The storm hammered the car. Inside, nothing moved.
Zhen Nuan pressed her hand to her neck and sat very still while her heartbeat stumbled back into rhythm.
She turned her head slowly.
The wipers kept moving. The streetlight came through the glass in pale strips, falling across the straight bridge of his nose. His hands were locked around the steering wheel, his jaw set hard, tendons stretched under the skin. He stared straight ahead at the rain.
He had a few days of stubble. His teeth were clenched. There was a severe line running from his jaw to his throat.
Then, in less than a second, it broke.
His head dropped slightly. The anger left him. What replaced it looked like exhaustion. Like someone who had been carrying weight so long they forgot what it felt like to put it down.
He straightened, just a little, and when he spoke again his voice was hoarse and even.
"Don't say her name. Please."
Every bit of control he had left, measured out carefully.
The rain was loud enough to fill the silence.
Zhen Nuan looked down. "I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault." Softer now. "My issues with him have nothing to do with your work. I promise you that."
"Thank you." She bit the inside of her lip. "But Captain -- is there any chance you have this wrong? That he had nothing to do with it?"
"How well do you actually know him?"
The question landed strangely.
She and Shen Yi should have been close. Nine years ago she woke from a coma after a car accident knowing only his face and her own name. She had no memory of the years before, only the evidence -- photographs, diary pages, letters she had written in handwriting she no longer recognized. The world had felt like a place she had been dropped into by mistake, and he was the only landmark.
She had been abroad with him. He had a complicated background, dangerous edges he kept carefully out of her sight. He built a clean perimeter around her and would not let anything sharp get close. Seven years ago, when the danger around him intensified, he sent her out of the country entirely. She had lived a very quiet, very protected life.
She had gone from wary stranger to someone who trusted him, and she had believed that was just how things naturally grew.
But now, sitting in this car, she felt the floor shift under the belief.
And more than the doubt, she hated the question itself. She hated that it had gotten inside her.
"I know him well enough. Better than you do."
"Really." His tone was flat. "I've been watching him for over a decade. I know what he's done. I know who he owes and who owes him. I know how his power has spread, who he's ruined, and who he's protected."
She clenched her fist in her lap. He kept hitting the thing she didn't want to look at directly.
"You just told me not to interfere because it would be pointless. You don't actually know how his hand got broken. He hasn't told you the truth of it."
He reached into his pocket again. No cigarettes. He cracked the window instead, irritated.
Cold came in fast, carrying rain with it. Drops hit Zhen Nuan's face. Her hair whipped sideways. He didn't seem to notice.
"Nine years ago, the day she disappeared. It was Laba Festival. That same day, Shen Yi lost his hand." He turned to look at her. The pale flash of lightning turned his eyes dark and bright at once, lit with something unhealthy. "She took it. That was how she was. Small, and not built for violence, only ever comfortable with a scalpel. But if someone hurt the people she loved, she'd make sure they paid."
He let his mouth curve into something genuine, something private.
"That was Ashi."
And for the first time, Zhen Nuan saw Yan Han smile with his whole face. Not the calculated version, not the one he kept ready near the surface. This one came from somewhere deeper, soft and involuntary, spreading from the corners of his mouth all the way into his eyes. Like a sky that had cleared when nobody was watching.
She thought he was the kind of man who smiled easily. But this was the only smile that had ever been real.
Zhen Nuan looked at him and felt something ache quietly in her chest. That stubborn devotion he was still carrying for a person who had been gone for nine years.
He had his memories. She had her protection.
She raised her chin and said what she meant.
"Then I have a feeling too. Shen Yi has nothing to do with this. There are things I don't know about him -- I'll admit that. But I know enough to believe him."
"You've always liked doing this to yourself?"
"What?"
"How old are you -- twenty-seven, twenty-eight? Your apartment is all warm colors. You sleep with stuffed animals. Emotionally you're running at maybe seventeen. You can't read people, you can't hold steady relationships, and you're frightened almost all the time."
His voice stayed level. That made it worse.
"The closest you and Shen Yi ever were was ten years ago, and you don't remember any of it. Since then, careful distance. Seven years abroad. Ten months back in the country. Two months back together. No physical intimacy. No kisses. Nothing. That's the relationship you're defending."
He let it settle.
"I told you. You trust too easily."
Zhen Nuan stared at him. The shock was cold and immediate. She had not expected him to open her up like that -- clinically, precisely, without any hesitation -- and she had not expected every word to be accurate. The more accurate it was, the more it burned.
The storm beat against the car like it was trying to come through the roof. His voice had cut straight through all of it.
"And what do you actually know about yourself? He says you danced ballet. Have you ever thought that maybe you're nothing like the person he's been describing?
After the accident you didn't know who you were. You still don't. You can't stabilize any relationship -- teachers, classmates, people you've tried to be close to. So when you defend him, are you defending him? Or are you just protecting the only thing keeping your world from falling apart -- because nothing else has ever made you feel safe?"
"You bastard."
Someone knocked on the window.
Zhen Nuan turned away hard. Her shoulders were shaking.
A security guard leaned down in his rain gear, flashlight beam swinging across the interior.
"Can't park here." Then recognition crossed his face. "Oh -- Captain Yan. Working late again?"
"Yeah." Yan Han started the car. "Thank you for your work."
The parking structure swallowed them. The car had barely stopped when Zhen Nuan shoved the door open and walked away fast, not looking back.
She stormed back to the office with her anger held close like a blade, changed quickly, gloved up, and pulled back the body bag herself. She did not wait for Xiao Song.
"You need a second person for an autopsy. Or are you planning to break protocol?"
The voice came from behind her. Unhurried. Indifferent.
Yan Han stood in the doorway with his arms crossed, looking like none of it had touched him.
"You're here, aren't you?" She turned on him, and for the first time her voice had edges. "Or do you not count yourself as a person?"
She hauled the faceless female body from the bag alone. It took effort. She didn't ask for help.
Yan Han settled against the doorframe, arms folded, head tilted slightly. He was almost smiling.
This was who she actually was. Direct, sharp, biting back when something bit her. Not the careful, flinching version she normally presented to the world. This was the real one.
He pushed off the wall and walked over.
"Showing your real face?"
"This is my room." She didn't look up. "Get out."
"I'm doing you a favor by being your witness, and this is what I get?"
She wanted to pick up a scalpel.
She gave herself three minutes. Breathed. Let the anger cool below the surface where it couldn't compromise the work.
Yan Han dropped into the observation chair to one side, turned toward the screen. He didn't look at her again until her gloved hands appeared on the monitor.
The recording began.
"November 7th. 5:01 a.m. C-Lab, Second Autopsy Suite. Pathology researcher Zhen Nuan. Deceased: unknown. Female. Height 165 centimeters. Weight 49.5 kilograms."
The room was very quiet. She worked methodically, speaking only when there was something to say.
"Clothing saturated. No damage. No foreign material in pockets."
Yan Han's gaze tracked her hands with a cold, precise attention, watching for anything she might miss.
The clothing yielded almost nothing -- a few fragments of wet grass, visually consistent with the dump site.
"Grass fragments to be compared against dump site samples."
She bagged the clothing, collected fingerprints, took impressions from the shoes and teeth.
The body lay uncovered on the table. Zhen Nuan picked up her blade and began shaving the scalp.
Part of the skull had collapsed, with only the skin holding its approximate shape. The surface was uneven, cratered. She worked slowly, the blade precise and light, clearing hair without a trace left behind and without breaking the skin. It was the kind of work that required complete quiet in the mind.
Fourteen minutes later, she had finished, and noticed something in the hair.
She reached for tweezers. Yan Han stood, moved in beside her, placed a ruler alongside it, and photographed it before she could touch anything.
No words. Just the quiet correction.
She pulled the autopsy camera closer and looked.
Small transparent fragments, irregular sizes, scattered through the strands.
"These appear to be--"
"Glass," Yan Han said, looking at the large monitor behind her.
She said nothing. Bagged the hair and the fragments together, labeled it.
"Unidentified material. Chemistry lab."
He smiled faintly, said nothing.
She moved to external examination.
"Face destroyed, unidentifiable. Significant laceration of facial skin. Multiple contusions and abrasions, superior cranium."
She tilted the jaw back.
"Faded contusions at the throat. Old injuries." Her eyes moved down. "Irregular grip-pattern bruising around the clavicle, old. Multiple bite marks near the breast, both recent and healed. Silicone impressions to be taken."
Yan Han let his gaze drop for a moment. The words were not light. But her voice was -- unhurried, steady, moving through the silence like something soft and continuous, like velvet against a quiet room.
Zhen Nuan's brow tightened.
"Bilateral flank bruising. Inner thighs. Perineum. Knees. Bruising and bite marks, varying age."
She braced herself inwardly.
She separated the legs. Checked.
"Cervical erosion, third degree. Evidence of intercourse prior to death."
She collected pubic hair samples carefully.
"Analysis required -- possible presence of foreign hair."
She took swab samples.
"Gynecological history to be reviewed."
She needed to turn the body. She didn't have the leverage.
She looked at Yan Han. He sat in his chair with one arm on the armrest, two fingers against his cheek, watching her with a loose, uninvested expression. No move to help.
Zhen Nuan looked away. She positioned the body's arm overhead, bent the other across the chest, drew the outer knee up, then grabbed the arm and knee together. The body turned, heavy and smooth.
She caught it and rolled it the rest of the way.
Yan Han's mouth moved.
"Good leverage. Well done."
She felt her temper flare and extinguished it carefully.
"Old contusions on the mid-lower back. Gluteal region, pronounced." A breath. "She was subjected to prolonged sexual violence."
She raised the dead woman's chin. Looked at the throat.
Clean. Not a single mark. Old or new.
That didn't make sense. Sexual violence and strangulation almost always coincided.
The door opened. Xiao Song came in.
Zhen Nuan glanced back toward Yan Han -- and realized he had gone quiet too long.
He was asleep.
He was sitting upright, posture perfectly straight, but his head had dropped forward slightly, and he was still. She couldn't see his face. Only dark, disordered hair, and long, dense lashes resting against his cheek.
That angle made him look almost fragile.
He had fallen asleep sitting up.
For a moment there was only the faint sound of wind and rain through the walls.
Xiao Song exhaled quietly. "The whole team's been running all day. It's only going to get harder."
Zhen Nuan didn't know if exhaustion had made him harder today, or if this was just who he was. She pulled her gaze back to the body and lowered her voice.
"Keep going."
Together they documented the fresh injuries -- the wounds that had caused or contributed to death.
For a regular detective, distinguishing injury type and timing from lividity was genuinely difficult. The body was covered in dark patches that could easily be mistaken for bruising. Xiao Song leaned in to study them.
"The lividity is entirely on the right side. She was probably lying on her right side after death."
Zhen Nuan came around to look.
The right side of the neck was dark red. The outer right arm pale. The elbow -- a dark cluster. From the side: the armpit, waist, knee, all dark. The ribcage, pelvis, pale. The right thigh and calf -- alternating red and white in strips.
"Is this reformed lividity? Was the body moved and repositioned?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Look at the scene photos." Zhen Nuan pressed a key. A series of photographs appeared on the monitor. "Look at the position."
In the photos, the woman lay on her right side on the roadside. Legs straight, left leg resting naturally over the right.
"What causes lividity?"
Xiao Song answered: "When circulation stops, blood settles into the lowest parts of the body under gravity, pooling in the capillaries and small veins."
"Which means lividity doesn't form where the body is pressed against a hard surface. The pressure blocks blood from pooling." Zhen Nuan paused. "If she'd been lying on her back, lividity would appear on the nape, lower back, and upper thighs -- not the head or buttocks, because those are compressed."
Xiao Song studied the marks, then the photographs, then went still.
"If the dump site position was the final one -- right leg pressed to the ground, no lividity there, all white. Left calf compressed, white. But the left thigh free, so red."
"Right. But look at what's actually there. The right thigh and calf are striped red and white. The left leg -- thigh and calf both white."
Xiao Song thought through it.
"She wasn't lying flat. Something the width of those white marks was pressing against her leg where she lay."
Zhen Nuan tilted her head slightly.
"You haven't noticed that the white marks are the same width as her hand?"
Xiao Song looked up.
"Help me raise her upper body."
She positioned the knees bent. The white marks on the thigh and calf aligned into a single line. She knelt on the table, braced against the feet, and wrapped the dead woman's own arms around her drawn-up legs. The forearms fell exactly along the pale marks.
Xiao Song said quietly: "She was holding her own knees. That was the position after she died. Someone put her that way."
"Yes. The body doesn't do that on its own."
"Why would the killer do that? Is there a psychological reason?"
Zhen Nuan had studied criminal psychology as a minor. She thought about Su Ya lately, the way she'd been presenting.
"A fetal position is the most protected one. Placing a victim that way sometimes signals guilt. Remorse."
Xiao Song nodded slowly. "You're incredible, how do you know all this."
A sound broke the quiet of the autopsy suite.
A quiet laugh. Rough at the edges, half-awake, carrying something between amusement and contempt.
"Not remorse."
They both looked.
Yan Han had lifted his head. His eyes were barely open. He hadn't moved from the chair.
"A suitcase."