Three days passed.
Lin Wei wrote. I watched. Ruan Qing came and went.
The story spread. Not like wildfire. Slower than that. The way truth spreads when people don't want to hear it. A post here. A share there. A comment thread that turned into an argument that turned into a hundred arguments.
But it was moving.
Lin Wei's office was a disaster. Papers everywhere. Printouts pinned to the walls. A whiteboard covered in names and dates and arrows pointing in directions that only made sense to him.
I stood in the corner. Watching.
He coughed. That dry, hollow sound. Then he kept typing.
"You should rest," I said.
He didn't look up. "I'll rest when I'm dead."
"You're almost dead."
He stopped typing. Looked at me. That thin, tired smile.
"Then I'll rest soon."
He went back to work.
Damn. I admired him. And I hated admiring him. Because he reminded me of myself. Before I died. Before I learned that working yourself to death just meant you ended up dead with unfinished business.
Hah. Look at me now. Standing in a dying man's apartment, judging him for working too hard. Pot calling the kettle black. Or ghost calling the journalist black. Whatever.
I shook my head and went back to watching.
---
Ruan Qing arrived at noon.
She didn't knock. She had a key. She walked in like she owned the place, carrying a bag of takeout. Noodles. Soup. The smell filled the small apartment.
She set the bag on the table. Looked at Lin Wei. Looked at me.
"You're still here," she said.
"I'm dead. I don't have anywhere else to be."
She rolled her eyes. Then she sat down and started eating.
Lin Wei joined her. He moved slowly, carefully, but he sat across from her and opened his own container.
They didn't talk. They just ate.
I watched and smelled noodles aroma, damn. I couldn't do anything except stand there like an idiot, watching two living people eat noodles.
Damn. I missed noodles.
"So," Ruan Qing said finally, wiping her mouth, "what's next?"
Lin Wei set down his chopsticks. "Zhang Feng."
"What about him?"
"He's feeling the pressure. The story is out. People are asking questions. His business partners are getting nervous."
Lin Wei pulled up a document on his screen. A list of names. Companies. Transactions.
"He's been hiding money. Moving it around. Trying to cover his tracks."
He looked at me.
"Your client's husband was into some dangerous people. Zhang Feng was the middleman. When the husband died, Zhang Feng took over."
"Dangerous how?" I asked.
Lin Wei leaned back.
"Loans. Gambling. People who break legs when you don't pay."
He paused.
"Zhang Feng has been paying them. For three years. Keeping them quiet. But now the story is out. Now they're asking questions."
"So he's scared."
Lin Wei nodded. "He should be."
Ruan Qing snorted. "Good. Let him be scared."
I looked at her. "You don't like him."
"I don't like men who hurt women and let other women go to prison for it."
Fair enough.
---
That night, I went back to Evergreen Court.
The apartment. Apartment 5C. Zhang Feng's place.
The lobby was empty. The elevator opened for no one. I took the stairs. Five flights. My footsteps made no sound.
The door to 5C. I walked through it.
---
He was awake.
Sitting on the couch. TV off. Bottle on the floor. Cheap whiskey. Plastic. Half empty.
He wasn't drinking.
He was staring at the wall.
His phone was in his hand. The old one. The one on the nightstand. The one with the messages. The one he couldn't throw away.
He was looking at it.
Not scrolling. Not reading. Just looking.
His face was different now. Not calm. Not controlled. His jaw was tight. His eyes were red. His hands were shaking.
He unlocked the phone.
I held my breath.
He scrolled. Slowly. Message by message. Threat by threat. Photo by photo.
Lin Yue's face. Her bruises. Her silence.
He stared at them.
Then he closed the phone. Set it down. Picked up the bottle.
Drank.
---
I stood across from him.
Three feet away. He couldn't see me. He couldn't hear me. But I was there.
I wanted to say something. To tell him I knew. To tell him everyone would know soon. To tell him Lin Yue's sister was still out there, still waiting, still hoping.
But I couldn't.
So I just stood there.
Watching.
He finished the bottle. Set it down. Stared at the wall.
Then he spoke.
"I didn't mean for her to die."
His voice was quiet. Hoarse. Like he hadn't used it in days.
"I just wanted him gone. He was going to ruin everything. The deals. The money. He was going to tell them everything."
He paused.
"She wasn't supposed to be there. She wasn't supposed to see anything."
He looked at his hands.
"But she saw. She always saw."
He stood. Walked to the bedroom.
I followed.
---
He stopped in front of the nightstand. Looked at the phone. The old one. The one charging. The one waiting.
He picked it up.
For a moment — his thumb hovered over the screen.
He almost turned it on.
Almost.
Then he stopped.
His jaw tightened. His hand clenched around the phone.
"No," he muttered.
He placed it back on the nightstand. More carefully than necessary. Like it mattered. Like it was precious. Like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to something he didn't want to forget.
Then he lay down on the bed.
Closed his eyes.
Didn't sleep.
Just lay there.
Breathing.
---
I stayed until dawn.
He didn't move. Didn't speak. Just lay there, staring at the ceiling, holding the phone against his chest.
At 6:00 AM, his alarm went off.
He sat up. Turned it off. Stood. Walked to the bathroom. Splashed water on his face. Looked at himself in the mirror.
He looked like hell.
He knew it.
He went back to the living room. Picked up his new phone. The clean one. The one without the messages.
He made a call.
"It's me," he said. "We need to talk."
Pause.
"No, not on the phone. In person."
Another pause.
"Today. The usual place."
He ended the call.
Then he sat on the couch. Stared at the wall. Waited.
---
I followed him.
He left the apartment at 9:00 AM. Dressed in a suit. Tie tight. Hair combed. Trying to look normal. Trying to look like a man who hadn't spent the night drinking alone, whispering to ghosts.
He took the bus. Sat in the back. Stared out the window.
I sat next to him. He couldn't see me. But I saw him. The way his hands gripped his phone. The way his jaw tightened every time the bus stopped. The way his eyes darted to every passenger who looked in his direction.
Paranoid.
Good.
He got off at the edge of the city. An old warehouse district. Abandoned buildings. Broken windows. Graffiti on every wall.
He walked to a building at the end of the street. Knocked three times. Paused. Knocked twice more.
The door opened.
He went inside.
I walked through the door.
---
The room was empty. Concrete floor. Metal chairs. A single table. Two men sat at the table. Older. Hard faces. The kind of faces that had seen things. Done things.
Zhang Feng sat across from them.
His hands were on the table. Open. Palms up. Like he was showing them he had nothing to hide.
"We have a problem," one of the men said.
His voice was low. Flat. The voice of a man who didn't make threats. He made promises.
"The story," the man continued. "The woman. Lin Yue. People are asking questions."
Zhang Feng nodded. "I know."
"Questions lead to answers. Answers lead to names. Names lead to us."
Zhang Feng didn't move.
"We don't like our names in the news," the man said.
"It's under control."
The man leaned forward.
"Is it?"
Zhang Feng's hands trembled. Just slightly. He pulled them off the table. Put them in his lap.
"It will be," he said.
The man stared at him for a long moment.
Then he stood.
"Fix it," he said. "Or we will."
He walked toward the door. The other man followed.
They passed through me. Didn't notice. Didn't feel a thing.
The door closed.
Zhang Feng sat alone in the empty room.
His hands were shaking.
---
I left.
The streets were waking up. A woman with coffee. A man checking his watch. A kid weaving through traffic on a bike.
Normal. Ordinary. Alive.
I walked back to Lin Wei's apartment.
He was already awake. Already working. Already typing.
Ruan Qing was there too. Sitting by the window. Drinking tea.
"He's scared," I said.
Lin Wei looked up. "Zhang Feng?"
"He was up all night. Looking at the phone. Reading the messages. He talked to himself."
I paused.
"He said he didn't mean for her to die."
Lin Wei leaned back. His eyes were sharp.
"That's not a confession. But it's something."
He opened a new document. Started typing.
"We need more. We need him to break."
Ruan Qing set down her tea.
"Then we push harder."
She looked at me.
"Did you follow him? The meeting?"
I nodded.
"Two men. Older. Hard faces. They threatened him. Told him to fix it or they would."
Lin Wei's fingers stopped typing.
"Description," he said. "Give me everything."
I told him. The warehouse district. The knock pattern. The men's faces. Their clothes. Their voices.
Lin Wei wrote it all down.
"I know who they are," he said. "Loan sharks. Enforcers. Zhang Feng's been paying them for years."
He looked at me.
"This is bigger than Lin Yue now."
Ruan Qing stood.
"Then we make it bigger."
She looked at me.
"Can you follow him again? Tomorrow? See who else he meets?"
I thought about it. Zhang Feng was scared. The men were threatening him. The story was spreading.
But Zhang Feng was still alive. Still free. Still sleeping in Lin Yue's apartment, keeping her phone on his nightstand.
"Yeah," I said. "I can do that."
Lin Wei nodded.
"Then we keep pushing. Until he breaks."
---
I left the apartment.
The sun was rising. The city was waking.
Somewhere across the city, Zhang Feng was probably drinking alone. Staring at the phone. Whispering to himself.
"I didn't mean for her to die."
He was scared.
Good.
He should be.
But scared wasn't enough. Scared didn't bring back Lin Yue. Scared didn't undo three years of silence.
We needed more.
We needed him to break.
The question was — how far could we push before something else broke first?
I didn't know the answer.
But I was about to find out.