Chapter 1340: Passing By
In the dead of night, Deng Yilan, dressed in pajamas and slippers, sat on the side of the main road like a madwoman. She suddenly stopped a girl passing by to ask a question. How could the girl not be wary?
The girl didn't answer and was quickly escorted away by her colleagues, which was only natural.
Deng Yilan sighed inwardly and opened the door to room 203.
The girl still had to go to work the next day. She would surely encounter her again if she continued to wait at Copper Harbor in the morning. Today, she would just spend the night in this small hotel.
She set an alarm on her phone but couldn't muster the energy to check for hidden cameras in the room. Instead, she crawled under the covers. Her mind had been rolling like a nightmare since she received the call from the injured woman in the afternoon. She tossed and turned for a while, unable to sleep but feeling thirsty. She got up again. She looked at the kettle, remembering the rumors of people boiling underwear in hotel kettles for disinfection.
'Forget it.'
They sold bottled water at the front desk. Without touching her phone, Deng Yilan grabbed her wallet and room key and walked out. When she reached the staircase, she heard voices drifting up from downstairs.
"...Yes, yes, she was only wearing pajamas, very strange." The middle-aged woman who had checked her in was now surprisingly gentle in tone. "She came in over half an hour ago. She might already be asleep."
They were talking about her.
Deng Yilan's palms became sweaty, and she almost couldn't hold onto her wallet. She stretched her neck to look down but could only see a few pairs of feet, all wearing similar black leather shoes. She turned her head to look around the corridor, took off her slippers, and slowly backed away toward the direction of the emergency exit, her ears standing straight up.
"Which room number?" a man's voice asked.
"203," the middle-aged woman immediately replied. She asked, "Shall I take you to open the door now?"
"Yeah, let's go."
Deng Yilan's heart skipped a beat, and she ran for it. Luckily, she had left in time. She would have been trapped in the room if she had been a half-minute later. As she pushed open the fire door and slipped into the corridor, she saw several figures coming up the stairs—the same staircase where she was. With a glance, she recognized the middle-aged man in charge of the Han Jun case.
Why were they coming to find her? How did they know to come to this hotel to find someone?
To avoid making any noise, Deng Yilan slowly closed the door, put on her slippers, and felt her hands and feet go weak for no reason. If only Han Jun were here... They had agreed to spend their lives together, but she was suddenly alone. Nobody in the world knew how lost and scared she was now, and she wanted to ask what was going on, but there was no one she could ask.
She crawled out of the hotel's ground-floor window. After such a long day, she was tired and sleepy. She fell asleep sitting in a fast-food restaurant that was open all night. When gradually increasing noise awakened her, she momentarily forgot where she was. She almost called out "husband" out of habit.
With a start, Deng Yilan held onto the table's edge tightly, as if afraid of falling off, blinked her eyes, and gradually remembered yesterday's memories.
What time was it?
She hurriedly looked at the clock on the wall, her heart skipping a beat, and quickly reached for her wallet to leave. It was already half past eight, and if that girl from last night had come early, she might already be at work in Copper Harbor. However, as she grabbed for her wallet, she found it empty. She looked around the table but couldn't see her wallet anywhere.
It wasn't on the ground either.
Deng Yilan quickly looked around, but the restaurant staff on night duty had already left, and the people coming and going to buy breakfast all had indifferent faces. The world was operating according to its usual routine, indifferent to the fact that someone had stolen a lone woman's purse while she slept.. She didn't even know when it had happened.
It was as if this world suddenly had a mission to see when it could break her last straw.
They didn't know that day was still far away.
Through blurry tears, Deng Yilan opened her eyes wide, carefully examining each dockworker passing by. She should still have time. After all, that girl worked overtime until past midnight, so she might also be late for work today. Looking around, she suddenly saw a figure stop in the distance, seeming surprised to see her.
"Hello," Deng Yilan hurriedly caught up and called out. She knew she had to appear normal now to not scare the girl away again. The morning sunlight shone on her wrinkled pajamas and her face marked with red imprints from her arms. Her eyes couldn't help but shed tears, and her facial muscles forced out a smile—what was normal? She had forgotten.
The girl was about to move away, but when she looked up and saw the look on her face, she suddenly stopped. She hesitated for a few seconds, then quietly asked, "Are you his wife...?"
Deng Yilan couldn't say a word, just nodded.
The girl was about to speak but was suddenly stopped by something and changed her mind. "I don't know anything... I still have to go to work here. You go."
"Wait." Deng Yilan hurriedly stopped her. Seeing her footsteps never stopping, she could only rush to catch up and shout, "Wait! Please, look, this is my wedding ring."
The girl glanced at her finger.
"We met through an arranged meeting, which was not romantic at all, without even a proposal... We discussed getting the certificate, which was considered completing the task." Deng Yilan felt like she was even crazier than a madwoman, but she couldn't stop talking, tears and words spewing out together, "But after we got married, one day when I was wearing a coat and went out, I touched my pocket and found this ring. He was too embarrassed to give it to me face to face and probably also thought it was too cheesy to give each other rings, so he just threw it in my pocket. I wore it for a week, and he asked me, 'Where's my ring? When I go out, people still think I'm not married.'"
It must have sounded like a boring little thing to outsiders, but Deng Yilan spoke out of breath. "My, my husband is like that," she was so anxious that she even hiccupped, "If—If I could see him again—"
The girl suddenly stopped in her tracks, waved to her distant colleague, indicating that she was okay, and turned to Deng Yilan.
"I'll only say this once. Even if you ask me to testify later, I will absolutely not go." She lowered her voice, tense and thin, refusing to look at Deng Yilan, just staring at her toes. "I saw him. On the 6th, the manager asked me to bring him to the warehouse behind the office and said it was a VIP passage. I found it strange then, but I still went to call him. He said he was waiting for someone and refused to follow me. The manager said he must go see Mr. Peng, and a few security guards I didn't know took him away."
The girl seemed to have chewed and repeated this sentence countless times in her mind. Although afraid, she seemed to be waiting to say it out loud. Her face turned pale, and she said lowly, "At that time, I thought Mr. Peng's guest must be very important, so I poured tea and prepared to take it in. Then... then... I heard them inside."
Deng Yilan stood in the briny sea breeze under the morning sun at nine o'clock, listening to her say, "At that time... I heard them... beating someone inside. I quickly took the tea back in... Later, I didn't see him come out. Maybe I missed it... I don't know where he went afterward."
Something was very wrong with all of this.
Deng Yilan asked hazily, "Was there a woman? About this tall?"
"No." The girl shook her head, looking like she no longer wanted anything to do with Deng Yilan, turned, and hurried away.
This world was becoming increasingly incomprehensible, and Deng Yilan felt like she was dreaming. The test report said he was hit with a blunt object on the head, but—yes, Han Jun did indeed get beaten before he died. That glance she had given in the small grove, the memories returned vividly: the green bruises, the distorted face... The plastic bag was still wet, hard, and cold when she touched it, just like a frozen fish just taken out of the refrigerator.
Her husband was now being compared to frozen fish, but she didn't know why.
What to do next was very clear. She had to go see Mr. Peng. He was beaten on the 6th, but she only found Han Jun's body on the 10th. What happened in those few days?
Deng Yilan wasn't angry or sad now, her mind was focused on how to meet Mr. Peng and what to say when she met him. She stood outside Copper Harbor for a while, and even the sound of a cruise ship's horn docking failed to grab her attention. Countless tourists poured out from behind the gate, dragging their suitcases and carrying backpacks. Their faces were all red from the sun, exuding the relaxation of the holiday they just had.
A girl expressionlessly took out her phone.
"Hello?" She was probably about one meter sixty tall, empty-handed, alone, and didn't look like a tourist, but she emerged from the crowd. Because she had an inexplicable air about her, Deng Yilan's gaze passed over her, but her mind didn't linger.
"Yeah, I've disembarked. No," the girl said into the phone, whether angry or dejected, or both. "Even in the open sea, I still can't get a signal. I tried all of mine, not just your communicator; none of them could send a message. It seems to have nothing to do with whether there's a network or not... It's been a waste of several days for me."
She quickly walked past, and Deng Yilan didn't hear what she said next, nor did she have the time to think about the conversation between strangers. Someone tapped her on the shoulder from behind, and when she turned around, she saw a stranger's face.
"You must be his sister," the person smiled at her, pushing up his glasses. "I remember Han Jun showing me your wedding photos... Yes, I know him. Oh, my surname is Peng. Han Jun might have mentioned me at home? Come, let's sit down... Why are you dressed like this?"
The distance between Nu Yue and Deng Yilan was getting farther and farther apart, and neither knew that the person who had just passed had a thousand threads of connection with them, but they would never meet again.
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