Bun Girl's testimony was very brief.
She made two outwardly similar red bean cakes at home, one poisoned and one not, intending to find an opportunity during the trip to make the victim eat the poisoned cake.
Then, she would slip a bottle of wine steeped with aconite into the victim's luggage. Since aconite is often used as an ingredient in soups or steeped in wine, accidental poisoning happens frequently, so it would be a barely passable excuse, especially since Jia Yue was known to love drinking.
That was the entirety of Gan Min's plan.
As for the motive, it was the same as previously speculated, stemming from Zhou Chang's death.
Bun Girl said: "If it wasn't for Jia Yue's arrogance, Brother Chang wouldn't have died either. He was so kind to all of us, like an older brother, and I'm definitely not the only one who wanted to make him pay."
Jian Jing and Ji Feng exchanged a glance - not just her, so who else might it be?
She asked: "What did you do after poisoning the cakes?"
"I didn't get to do anything." Bun Girl emphasized, "I was planning to slip the stuff in when he got sick, but who knew he'd get beaten to death first. I really didn't kill him."
"Did you go back to the victim's room afterwards?" Ji Feng asked. "What did you do with the leftover poisoned cakes?"
"I didn't need to do anything with them," Bun Girl explained. "He must have been starving and just gulped them all down right away. I saw it with my own eyes."
She was actually quite lucky. The overly unappetizing lunch led the victim to be ravenously hungry and gobble down the poison cakes in seconds, directly sparing her the need to dispose of them afterwards. And the second murderer's actions allowed her to evade the charge of homicide.
Not everyone has that kind of luck and opportunity.
Jian Jing thought to herself, and asked: "Did you tell anyone about this plan of yours?"
She shook her head: "I didn't want to drag anyone else into this, not even telling Xiao Wen."
"Were you paying any attention to Room 204? Do you know when the victim left?"
Bun Girl hesitated briefly before replying: "I was keeping an eye on it, but there was always music playing loudly in the room across the hall, so I couldn't make out any sounds."
Jian Jing believed she was probably telling the truth. Delivering repeated blows to the victim's head not only took strength, but also a strong homicidal motive and psychological resilience.
Bun Girl's hatred was not that intense, and after entering the room, her gaze intentionally and unintentionally avoided the corpse, unlike someone capable of bashing in a skull.
Direct homicide and indirect homicide bring completely different psychological impacts.
Since Bun Girl chose the latter, given her disposition, there was no need or likelihood for her to choose the former.
So who was the second murderer?
For now, Gao MaWei could be ruled out - she didn't have the opportunity, and according to Bun Girl's account, she never left her room either. That left Huangmao and the crew cut, as well as the seemingly unrelated Chai Reporter and Fracture Man.
Because of Bun Girl's actions, her two companions had two motives:
To avenge Zhou Chang, and to protect Bun Girl.
Let's put aside the former for now, and consider the second possibility: Perhaps the other party, through subtle clues, guessed Bun Girl's poisoning plan and believed she would make her move this afternoon. Or they wanted to make the first move, using the excuse of repairing the car to lure out the victim and kill him.
From a timeline perspective, Huangmao and the crew cut were equally suspicious.
To discern who was more suspicious required some other references.
Like the zombie.
"Do you know what was up with that chicken?" She asked Bun Girl.
Bun Girl was stunned for a moment, confusion surfacing in her eyes. She reflexively denied: "Chicken? Wasn't me."
Jian Jing smiled reassuringly to indicate she needn't be nervous. "What I mean is, do you know who did it?"
"No idea. Definitely not me or Xiao Wen, we wouldn't bother with something so silly." She said. "If you insist I guess, it'd be Jia Yue. He loves pulling stupid pranks like that."
That was actually a new line of thought - Jia Yue killed a chicken to further prove the appearance of the zombie and indirectly lend credibility to the car accident story.
But was that really the truth?
At 7pm, Jian Jing and Ji Feng were sitting in the dining room, comparing notes.
Jian Jing: "I found aconite powder in Gan Min's medicine kit."
Ji Feng: "Still haven't found the murder weapon."
"It wasn't in any of their luggage or the car?" She asked incredulously.
Ji Feng spread his hands helplessly. "I've checked everything suspicious with your luminol spray, nothing."
She said: "Then I'm starting to suspect that crew cut. He may have destroyed the weapon on his way back to the parking lot."
Ji Feng said: "Alright, let's assume it was him. Can we reconstruct the crime?"
"2:20pm, he splits off from Huangmao and returns to the inn one after the other. The victim was lured to near the warehouse and killed by him, then he took a different path back to the repair point, destroying evidence along the way." Jian Jing recounted, then realized an inconsistency, "Instant noodles - where did the instant noodles come from?"
"The only people who knew Huangmao wanted something were those at the inn." Ji Feng murmured. "The murderer wanted to create the illusion that the victim was still alive. From this angle, who is most suspicious?"
Jian Jing flipped through her notes: "Bun Girl, Chai Reporter, Fracture Man, and Huangmao himself."
"The reporter made too many moves." Ji Feng said intuitively. "Although it makes sense, but it's just too much."
Jian Jing said: "Around 1:10pm was the last time Bun Girl saw the victim. The kitchen staff was busy until 1:20pm. If the victim came around here, she should have seen him. So it should have been between 1:20-2:35pm."
She counted the reporter's actions: "Left at 1:40pm, returned at 1:50pm, came looking for us again at 2:10pm, and left around 2:15pm. That is quite..."
Indeed, Chai Reporter had the opportunity.
1:20-1:40pm, 20 minutes. 1:50-2:10pm, another 20 minutes. 2:15-2:35pm, 20 minutes again.
20 minutes is enough to kill someone. The issue is, why make things so complicated?
Jian Jing tried to analyze the purpose of each time period: "The photos and videos can prove there was no body near the warehouse before 1:50pm. So did she kill the person between 1:20-1:40pm? Hid the body, then came back, went downstairs, and took photos. What was the purpose of coming to find us at 2:10pm? Shouldn't that establish an alibi?"
"No, if the goal was to establish an alibi, the body should have been discovered earlier." Ji Feng said. "Not all her actions necessarily had meaning. She may have just been muddying the waters."
He pondered briefly before waving a hand dismissively. "Teacher Jian, let's organize the facts we can confirm first, and set aside the rest for now."
Jian Jing agreed, and started a new page, jotting down a few words.
Poisoning (confirmed by Bun Girl)
Murder weapon (missing?)
Zombie (???)
Instant noodles (create illusion victim was alive at 2:35pm)
Umbrella (rain stopped at 2:30pm, if victim died earlier, should have used umbrella. Who did Fracture Man see holding an umbrella?)
"Right." Ji Feng nodded. "Too many confusing factors. I think we should subtract some things. In my opinion, the first few points are all fuzzy. Let's focus on the instant noodles, what do you think?"
Jian Jing shrugged, having no objections.
He opened his phone gallery, his train of thought clear: "I took photos of everyone's luggage. The two girls had bread and mints, the two guys' rooms only had Snickers bars. According to them, most of the luggage was in the victim's Room 204.
"Chai Reporter's bag had fruit, Japanese instant noodles, and instant coffee. Fracture guy didn't have any food. But the inn only sold domestic brands of instant noodles, Kangshifu and Tongyi. Yet what Huangmao got was a Korean Shin Ramyun.
"So we can confirm, the instant noodles must have come from the student group, either they had a pack left over from before, or the murderer took it from the victim's room.
"Teacher Jian, do you agree with my analysis?"
She peeled a milk candy, nodding as she ate.
"Give me one." Ji Feng shamelessly snatched one away, and continued, "If they had a leftover pack, the crew cut wouldn't know, and it doesn't seem like something the two girls would do either. The only possibility is Huangmao staging it himself, so undoubtedly, he is the murderer. But let's leave him aside for now and see if there are any other possibilities."
He said: "Let's hypothesize - what if the murderer took the instant noodles from the victim's room? What then?"
Jian Jing pondered: "The killer must have known about Huangmao knocking on the door, which rules out crew cut: If he had come back, he would have been seen by the service staff walking through the front door, and he had to pass our room for the back door, but none of us saw him."
"That just leaves a few people who stayed behind," Ji Feng seamlessly continued, "The key now is that the killer needed a key."
The hotel used old-fashioned locks that only had a keyhole on the outside, and the door locked immediately when closed. Unless there was an accident, the victim would have definitely closed the door when leaving the room.
But Jian Jing immediately came up with a new line of thinking: "There's another possibility - the killer was in the victim's room at the time."
Ji Feng was stunned and said incredulously: "If I didn't misunderstand, you're not saying the killer took the key and happened to be looking for something in the room, but that they killed the victim in the room and then moved the body? Room 204 doesn't look like the primary crime scene at all!"
"I know it's a small probability," she lifted her chin, "But we can't rule out the possibility that the killer knocked the victim unconscious, then moved him outside to kill him."
Ji Feng: "Too much like a detective novel."
Jian Jing: "I am a writer after all."
"I knew you were still resenting me," he said helplessly and amusedly, "I was wrong, I have a loose tongue, forgive me, okay? Let's talk about the facts."
"A man's most insincere apology," she said coldly. "Who's resenting you? I'm just being thorough."
Ji Feng: "..."
He wisely changed the subject: "Let's assume the killer had a key. But when we found the body, the key was already in the victim's pocket - the killer must have had a chance to return it."
Jian Jing pondered: "The only ones who left between 2:35 pm and 4 pm were Huangmao and Chai Reporter."
Huangmao had two possibilities - he left his own instant noodles behind and lied about it, or didn't leave them behind, killed the victim, took the key, got his noodles, and falsely claimed he had been in his own room.
As for Chai Reporter, her movements were more varied, leaving more possibilities.
"Now we have two suspects," Ji Feng said. "Teacher Jian, pick one and let's keep trying our luck."
She said: "To verify Huangmao's story we'd have to go to the bathroom... If you want to go, go ahead, I have no desire to go."
"Alright, let's split up and investigate."
Ji Feng went upstairs, but Jian Jing didn't move, continuing to ponder.
If Chai Reporter was the killer, how did she pull it off?
1:20-1:40 pm, first 20 minute period
1:40-1:50 pm, at the crime scene, no victim
1:50-2:10 pm, second 20 minute period
2:10-2:15 pm, asked to borrow something from Jian Jing
2:15-2:35 pm, third 20 minute period
2:35-3:20 pm, had to put back the instant noodles
3:30 pm, went to kitchen + returned key
The timeline for returning the instant noodles and key was very reasonable. She couldn't be certain when the body would be discovered, so she needed to return the items quickly.
Therefore, if she had killed the victim during the first or second period, there was no reason not to return the items during the third period, yet she inexplicably waited until Huangmao returned - she couldn't have foreseen that Huangmao would knock on the door.
It could thus be inferred that 2:15-2:35 pm was the most likely time period for the murder.
But this posed a major problem.
How did she pull it off?
Going downstairs via the emergency exit would mean passing by room 205's door, but Jian Jing never saw her come by again.
If she had gone downstairs via the stairs, passed through the front door and took a roundabout route, or gone through the kitchen's door to the backyard and then the back door, she would have been seen by the female service staff.
She only saw Chai Reporter come out once, and only went to the bathroom a little after 1 pm.
