Jian Jing was quite unhappy.
They had played the game for four and a half hours, deduced for less than half an hour, and spent the rest of the time organizing the love scenes. You love me, I love you, back and forth endlessly. Not a single decisive piece of evidence.
The murderer was especially arrogant.
Ji Feng comforted her: "They just came to socialize, it's normal for them to not take the investigation seriously."
Jian Jing pursed her lips: "I can forgive the guests, but what kind of script is this? This is fraud."
"It's a game. It has to be hard enough that the guests can't solve it, or it won't be fun. Besides, the case itself isn't too far-fetched, there's some cleverness to it," he evaluated objectively. "There's just too much emphasis on the love stories, the main plot and subplots aren't distinguished."
"That's right. Look at the evidence they found—it's all related to the love stories. This so-called romance, pah!" Jian Jing was so irritated her teeth itched. "Who wrote this script? It's garbage."
Ji Feng had never seen her in this state before and couldn't help an amused smile. "Alright alright, stop frowning. Ah, let me take you out for a meal."
Jian Jing: "Eat what? We need to hurry up and solve this Miao Tong case."
"That works too," Ji Feng nodded indifferently. "First off, Miao Tong wasn't purely a victim here."
Jian Jing's expression eased as she followed his lead. "That would explain the fingerprints on the railing. Miao Tong had indeed climbed over herself before, but not necessarily to commit suicide. She could have done it to make someone else lose their footing and fall."
"But in the end she was the one who fell. Whether it was an accidental slip or homicide, I'm afraid we'll have to ask the killer," Ji Feng sighed, rather conflicted. "This will be tricky. She's just a student, it could affect her whole life if we don't handle this carefully."
"Suicide and murder would have very different impacts on the student's life," Jian Jing mused. "Should we look for more evidence first?"
Ji Feng asked, "Go now?"
"Yes," Jian Jing said decisively. She still had pent-up frustration from the four wasted hours of the game and was determined to wrap this case up today. "They still have evening self-study anyway."
Ji Feng had no choice but to accompany her back to the school. After some effort, they found a piece of evidence and brought it back to the police station for analysis.
Lao Gao happened to be on duty today. Seeing the two of them come in together, he immediately perked up. "Well, well~~"
"Officer Gao, long time no see," Jian Jing greeted him brightly.
Lao Gao pulled up a seat for her. "Have a seat, Teacher Jian. Where are you two coming back from?"
"The crime scene," she said curiously. "What are you working on?"
"A break-in robbery case."
Jian Jing: Andiping City is as "peaceful" as always.
Ji Feng returned after submitting the materials. "There's a queue, we'll get the results tomorrow. Teacher Jian, shall I give you a ride home?"
Jian Jing pretended not to hear and wandered around instead.
In the interrogation room, a suspect was confessing to his crimes.
She tiptoed to sneak a peek.
"Teacher Jian, let's go eat, yeah?" Ji Feng quickly grabbed her and forcibly dragged her out. "You can't watch. Don't look, he's confessed everything already. I'll be damned, you should stop playing these mystery games in the future. It's not suitable for professionals like you..."
He barely managed to shove her into the passenger seat with great difficulty.
Ji Feng heaved a huge sigh of relief. Of all the dozens of suspects he had arrested, none had been this much trouble.
"What's wrong with taking a look? So petty," Jian Jing still hadn't vented her anger completely.
Ji Feng: "It's not your place to interfere. Go home early today, sleep early. We'll resolve this case tomorrow morning, okay?"
Jian Jing reluctantly conceded, "Fine."
"What do you want for dinner?"
"I'm not hungry."
"It's 11 pm, you still have to eat something. Noodles?"
"Don't want any."
"Barbecue?"
"Don't feel like it."
Ji Feng glanced at her. "Give me a clue here."
"Something hot, soft, savory, not greasy. No congee or noodles."
Ji Feng: "Then we'll have rice noodles. No objections allowed, you didn't exclude those earlier."
Jian Jing was baffled. "What's the difference between rice noodles and noodles?"
"One is rice, one is wheat. No difference?" Ji Feng was even more puzzled than her.
"No rice noodles, no wontons, no dumplings, no pan-fried cakes."
Ji Feng: "Rice cakes."
Jian Jing conceded: "Your train of thought is so clear, filtering by ingredients like that?"
"Are we getting them or not?"
"Spicy stir-fried rice cakes."
That's what she said, but once they got to the Korean restaurant, Jian Jing's appetite came back in full force.
She ordered a plate of spicy stir-fried rice cakes, a plate of sweet and spicy fried chicken, a bowl of buckwheat cold noodles, and roasted pork belly.
Ji Feng: "......"
So all that earlier fuss about not wanting anything greasy or noodles or barbecue was just talk?
Women really are fickle creatures.
The next day, under the bright sunshine...
Wu the Class Monitor came to the roof of the laboratory building and saw Jian Jing smiling radiantly at him under a parasol, dressed in a flowery French-style dress.
"We meet again," she said.
"Teacher Chen said you wanted to see me," the class monitor greeted politely. "How may I be of assistance?"
"You can help me organize my thoughts a bit," Jian Jing took off her sunglasses. "Is today's weather anything like the day Miao Tong died?"
Wu the Class Monitor: "What do you mean?"
Jian Jing took out a stack of papers from her bag. "Take a look."
Wu took them with stiff fingers. They were some printed screenshots of posts an account had made on various platforms, including some bragging about his well-connected relatives.
"You deleted the comments, but Miao Tong had saved everything by taking screenshots. We found this encrypted file on her computer," Jian Jing said. "It was you, wasn't it?"
Wu denied awkwardly, "I don't know anything about it."
"Lying is not the wise choice here. With today's technology, it's easy to trace who it was. But you're still just a kid, it's understandable you'd cling on to some hopeless wishful thinking," Jian Jing continued evenly. "Let me make everything clear to you."
"On the day of her death, Miao Tong asked you to meet her at the lab building. I imagine it was to threaten you to give up your guaranteed admission spot, or she would make these public. Not only would you lose your spot, but it would also implicate your principal uncle. You had no choice but to show up."
"At 2:20 pm, your PE class started. You first went with your classmates to the gym to get the equipment, then everyone headed to the basketball court together. No one would find it suspicious, it's perfectly normal for boys to play basketball. Leaving afterwards would also seem normal—your model student image means everyone would assume you went to study. In reality..."
As shoddily written as the mystery game's story was, the coincidences with reality were striking.
In the restaurant's balcony collapse case, the murderer had ingeniously created a true locked room scenario by taking advantage of the space. And in real life, the testimonies from the three witnesses also happened to establish a watched room puzzle.
Ji Yunyun and the others behind the lab building had only seen Miao Tong going in.
The cleaner on the left side of the first floor had only heard one person's footsteps.
The young couple secretly meeting on the right side of the first floor had only seen the cleaner, no one else.
At first glance, it seemed like there was simply no suspect present.
But Jian Jing remembered the girl mentioning their meeting spot was overgrown with lush wisteria vines (this critical detail did not appear in the police's records and had been overlooked). She inspected the scene and indeed found dense flowering vines, but only in the middle section.
Only there would the foliage be able to block the view from the office building for their secret rendezvous.
Similarly, the vines would have obstructed their view of the cleaner mopping on the left.
So who was that cleaner?
Of course, it had to be the other person who came for the meeting.
"We found the stolen uniform you took from the janitor's office. Luckily, we collected some hair and dander samples. A DNA comparison will easily confirm it was you," Jian Jing reminded him. "Is there anything you want to say? Turning yourself in could lead to a lighter punishment. You're still young."
"I didn't kill her," Wu clenched his fists, tone firm. "She fell by herself."
Jian Jing raised her brows. "Oh? Let me remind you, we have more evidence than what I've told you. You should tell the truth."
"I already told the truth," he stuck to his story. "The day before, Miao Tong asked me to go to the lab building during PE class, but at noon I saw her sneaking over there looking suspicious. I got worried and followed her over."
Jian Jing waited for him to continue.
Wu Class Monitor paused for a moment, then continued explaining: “She snuck upstairs stealthily, pried open the lock to the rooftop, and even climbed over the railing to stick something there. I thought she was hiding stuff, so after she left, I immediately took the thing away.”
“Then what?”
“Then I pretended I didn’t know anything. Just like you said, during P.E. class, I secretly went upstairs again. By then, she seemed to have realized the stuff was missing. I thought the problem was solved, but I didn’t expect she would take out a USB drive again and toss it outside the railing.”
He took a deep breath, suppressing his anger: “She promised she would delete the stuff, but instead she copied it again and again. I was so angry, I asked her what she was doing. She panicked like a guilty thief, lost her balance and fell straight down.”
"I was scared to death." Wu Class Monitor's voice turned hoarse, "At that time, people heard the sound and gathered around, I didn't dare stay upstairs, changed my clothes, and pretended I didn't know anything... But I really didn't kill her, she fell by herself."
Jian Jing did not comment.
So far, Wu Class Monitor’s testimony matched the evidence—the school surveillance camera caught him and Miao Tong appearing near the laboratory building at noon.
But the most critical part, whether Miao Tong accidentally fell or was pushed down, remains to be discussed.
"We extracted your fingerprints from Miao Tong's clothes," Ji Feng, who had been standing in the shade behind the door because the sun was too bright, spoke up at this moment, "on the spot between her shoulder blades."
"I'm in the same class as her, it's not weird I patted her shoulder before," said Wu Class Monitor.
"Why did you have to wear a janitor's clothes to go up? You'd already taken away the evidence, you didn't even have to show up for the meeting," Jian Jing cut to the chase, "Yet you deliberately disguised yourself, and even fabricated a suicide note afterwards."
She took out the suicide note sealed in an evidence bag, "The edges of the paper show traces of being cut with a blade. If I guess correctly, this is a sample you deliberately made Miao Tong write, then you cut off a part and made it look like a suicide note."
The original suicide note read:
After much thought, I still cannot accept
I have decided to give up
I'm sorry, please forgive my selfishness
The content was too vague and abstract to serve as a suicide note. Cannot accept what? Give up what? Who was the note addressed to? None of these were specified.
But if expanded, the content would obviously seem more reasonable, for example:
Teacher X, after much thought, I still cannot accept
the recommended admission
I have decided to give up
I have let you down, I'm sorry, please forgive my selfishness
I still plan to get into my ideal college by my own grades
...
"I only changed clothes because I didn't want anyone to see me, I couldn't let this get out," Wu Class Monitor defended himself. "The suicide note was something I only thought of afterwards. She told me to write it for insurance, to prove it was written by her own hand. She would put it in the principal's mailbox that day, she just didn't have time to take it back... I was so scared. She inexplicably died in the laboratory building, it would definitely arouse a lot of suspicion. If people knew I was there, I'd be done for!"
He said painfully, "Since it was just an accident anyway, I just wanted...to make it seem like a suicide to get it over with...it'd be better for everyone."
Jian Jing wrapped it up swiftly and decisively: "There is only one answer. After you saw Miao Tong fall, you first ran down to look at the corpse, then took advantage of the chaos to go back to the classroom building, found this note, and in front of so many classmates in the classroom, cut off a part, faked it into a suicide note and stuffed it in Miao Tong's drawer?"
"Yes, everyone was badly frightened then, no one noticed. It really only occurred to me after she died," Wu Class Monitor explained.
Jian Jing sighed lightly, then sternly said, "I gave you a chance."
"That afternoon, Miao Tong bought a box of yogurt, the new cherry flavor that just came out that day." She magically took out a box of fresh yogurt, "See, it's the peel-off kind, with a little spoon."
Wu Class Monitor showed an expression of incomprehension.
"According to eyewitness accounts, the yogurt Miao Tong ate before PE class had milk stains on the suicide note detected later. At that time, no one thought this would be such important evidence."
When the police checked the desk drawer, there was no unfinished yogurt left, indicating she had finished drinking and thrown it away before leaving. If you put the suicide note afterwards like you claimed, how did the milk stains get on it?"
Wu Jincheng turned pale, his mind racing but not knowing how to refute this compelling evidence.
Jian Jing concluded crisply: “There is only one answer. You already put the suicide note there before PE class, which means at that time, you had already decided to kill Miao Tong."
Silence filled the room.
The author has something to say: Simple case this time, barely any suspects huh
Sigh, every time I write about Jing Jing eating, I get hungry myself, but can't eat these days, agony
