sincerity of lies

In 2007, Qinshi

Even though he was in a dilapidated small hotel, and when he buried his head in the pillow and quilt, it smelled of musty dampness, it didn't affect him from sleeping until dawn.He opened the door, took the bank card, went to the self-service teller machine and took out 300 yuan, then dug out the map of Qinshi, took a hot steamed bun in his mouth, and walked all the way to Xu Shijin's home address.

In the school infirmary yesterday, he not only saw Yu Xiaoyu's address, but also stored the address of the whole class in image memory, and marked it as much as possible on the Qinshi map. Of course, he would not be an important person like Xu Shijin. miss.

Xu Shijin's home is on Zhonghe Road. Ji Xun got up early and wandered here. It was only seven o'clock, and he still had time to look around. He saw that this area was newly built, tall buildings, and people were coming and going Yes, mostly young and middle-aged people, it should be a new community built by the government in recent years.

Seeing this, Ji Xun had some guesses about Xu Shijin's family environment, including his parents.

Most of them are middle-aged white-collar workers with some savings in their families and good jobs.This also seems to be in line with some of Xu Shijin's practices in school. Although it is ordinary, when someone really bullies him, he will use various methods to fight back, and he does not appear cowardly.

Ji Xun walked into the community where Xu Shijin's parents lived. He remembered that Xu Shijin's parents lived in Building C. Before he bothered to find them, the crowd gathered together, formed a large circle, and chattered first and told him where Building C was. .

He squeezed into the crowd, first looked up at the building - Building C, and then looked in the circle surrounded by the crowd. He saw a couple with old faces sitting in front of the lobby of the building, holding a white banner in their hands. On the miserable bottom, there are several bloody characters:

"Blood debt, pay back my daughter's life!"

"What's going on?" Ji Xun hurriedly asked the aunt next to him. The situation at the scene was unclear, so he must be right by asking the uncle and aunt who was at the scene.

He did not ask the wrong person, and the aunt immediately told him: "The first two have come to make troubles a few times recently. They came to find the one on the 15th floor and said that the daughter on the 15th floor killed their daughter at school."

According to the school address book, Xu Shijin's home is on the 15th floor.

There is no doubt that the old couple in front of them are Zhen Huan's parents.

"Didn't the police say it was an accident of falling into the water?" Ji Xun asked suspiciously, "Are they here to blackmail?"

"It can't be said for sure." Auntie's face suddenly became mysterious, and she lowered her voice with an expression as if she had revealed a big secret, "I saw the couple on the 15th floor last time secretly stuffing them with money. It's..."

The uncle next to him also joined the conversation.He proved his aunt's statement: "I saw it too. If you didn't do anything wrong, why put the money? Too much money will burn your hands?"

"That's right." The aunt added, "Their daughter is 17 years old, so she is still a teenager. Isn't there a rule now that the police should keep secrets for juvenile delinquents? Maybe the case has been solved long ago, but they didn't tell us. We haven't seen each other for two days 15 Lou’s daughter came out and told us that she ran away from home, so she might be arrested by the police!”

"Why isn't the one on the 15th floor coming down?" the uncle said again.

"This couple can make a fuss, cry, quarrel, tear and fight. The couple on the 15th floor were tossed enough, maybe they dare not come down..."

There was still a lot of gossip about the 15th floor, and Ji Xun heard that what they said became more and more outrageous, so he lost the patience to listen further.He temporarily used his ears as decorations, and focused on observing the two people in front of him.

On the 15th floor, Xu Shijin's parents didn't come down. Even though the two had thousands of martial arts, they couldn't use them for a while. They could only sit there with stiff faces, like two stone statues with mournful faces.

Ji Xun looked at it, his eyes suddenly focused.

There was a plastic bag next to Zhen Huan's mother, and he saw some light yellow long cartons in it. Looking carefully, he found that it was a hotel carton containing disposable toiletries with the words "Jinya Hotel" printed on it.

Why would the couple carry these with them?Did they stay in the same hotel as themselves last night?But if you don’t live at home, why live in a hotel?

Ji Xun moved his gaze to the clothes of the two of them. In autumn, under the elbow of Zhen Huan's mother's coat, there was a large piece of black ash.That is……?

He thought for a while, then went around to the other side of the encirclement to see Zhen Huan's father, and saw the same marks on his father. There were many more marks on his father than on his mother. It seemed that men were not as careful as women. , so rub more black ash.

Zhen Huan's father also had a large piece of gray on his back. The water stains on it were not completely dried, and the black ash residue could be seen, but it had been washed, so it was not very obvious.

They have realized that the clothes are dirty, and they have scrubbed them, but they still wear them and haven't changed them... Was it for some reason that they couldn't get a change of clothes?That kind of black ash is not dust on the ground or paint or ink, but more like... the stubborn soot on the gas stove?

Ji Xun thought of a possibility, but there was also a problem with this guess: How could the ash from the gas stove rub off on the husband and wife, leaving such a large area?It can't be in 07, they still use the earthen stove, and the earthen stove happened to be blocked, let the man get in and pass through the stove, right?

Ji Xun turned his mind a few times and turned to the uncle: "Uncle, do you have any cigarettes? Give me one?"

The uncle glanced at him: "Go, what kind of cigarettes do children smoke?"

Ji Xun smiled lowly: "No, uncle, give me a cigarette, and I'll show you a good show."

The uncle gave Ji Xun a rare look, maybe thinking of a good show, he took out the cigarette case and gave Ji Xun a cigarette, Ji Xun got the lighter from the other party, then he got into the crowd and came to the husband and wife. Beside the two, he handed the cigarette to Zhen Huan's father, and clicked the lighter at the same time:

"Uncle, let me light you a cigarette..."

Zhen Huan's mother's complexion changed, she seemed to have gone from dead to alive, from meditation to sobriety in an instant, she opened Ji Xun's hand and shouted: "Brat, put the fire away—"

Zhen Huan's mother didn't say the follow-up words, but she snatched the cigarette from her husband's hand and crumpled it up.

Ji Xun looked at the two thoughtfully for a while, until he was chased away by Zhen Huan's mother, before returning to the crowd.

"Where is the good show?" The uncle came up and asked.

"The good thing is," Ji Xun snapped his fingers, "I'm sensitive to fire, I don't live in the house, and I get ash on my body. There is probably a fire in their house."

Shock appeared on the uncle's face, and confusion appeared in the shock, and admiration appeared in the confusion. In short, all kinds of emotions on a face were old and complicated.

However, Ji Xun was far away from the crowd at this time, and he was going to go to Zhen Huan's house to check his speculation, but Zhen Huan was from Class A, and he didn't have the address of Zhen Huan's house—but it was not a big problem, he picked up the On the mobile phone, dial 114, get the front desk number of Jinya Hotel from the service desk, then transfer to the front desk, pretend to be a guest, and ask about the location of Jinya Hotel.

When he arrived near the Jinya Hotel, Ji Xun took a stroll around several neighborhoods and asked the elders and aunts who were walking in the neighborhood. It didn't take much effort to find out the exact location of the fire.

Room 2, Building 202, Kangquan Homeland.

The old-fashioned building is full of strange small advertisements. Ji Xun went up a flight of stairs and found Zhen Huan's house. This is an L-shaped structure with three families on the first floor. The kitchen of the house in the middle is in the corridor. , Now the entire corridor on the 2nd floor is black and black after being burned.

The outside of the kitchen window in the corridor is a security window. There should have been curtains inside, but they have been burned clean now, leaving only the bare bars still lying under the ceiling.Ji Xun was not a firefighter, so he couldn't tell where the fire started at a glance, but he could still tell that the window that was kept open was probably also open when the incident happened—the open window sill on the left was much darker than the right.

Outside the open window, through the same black and black security net, he poked his head and looked inside.

The kitchen of this type of apartment is small, and there is a door separating the kitchen and the living space. The door is closed, and there is still a shape. Maybe the inside is not as serious as the kitchen.

There are a lot of messy things on the countertop in the kitchen, all of which are charred and black, and the owner has not cleaned them up. Judging from the location, this family must have no cleanliness, and they don’t know how to store them. The bowls and chopsticks in the sink are just thrown around. It's full of seasonings and oil bottles.

The kitchen cabinet door was wooden and had been completely burned away. The gas tank was placed in the corner and was not damaged. This must be the luckiest part of the fire.

There seemed to be no more noteworthy places inside. He retracted his gaze and looked at the corridor. The two houses on the left and right of the corridor each had a shoe cabinet placed outside. The shoe cabinet on the left was hidden at the entrance. Fortunately, the shoe cabinet on the right was miserable, almost half of it was burned, and I knew that the shoes that were originally placed in it probably would not be spared.

Ji Xun has completely imagined a series of unlucky things that happened to Zhen Huan's parents yesterday:

When they came back from hard work, they suddenly found that their home had burned down and suffered heavy losses. The fire burned the kitchen and destroyed the neighbors and public corridors. Xu Shijin's parents' door, to transfer the loss.

Ji Xun walked around the corridor twice, looked and looked at the house where the fire broke out, and suddenly found a small piece of white paper under the door of Zhen Huan's parents.

Curious, he squatted down, pinched the corner of the white paper, and pulled it out, only to realize that it was not a white paper, but a white envelope with no seal. He opened it and saw that there was a tape inside.

At noon, Ji Xun found the kid he met yesterday, Zhou Zhaonan, in the High School Attached to Qin University.

It was a bit of a struggle to find the kid, and I had to pretend to be his elder brother, poking around outside the classroom when he was out of school, to accurately take away the person carrying the schoolbag from the gritted eyes of the bad students who were unwilling to do so. And take people to a small restaurant outside the school.

This small restaurant is quite popular, because Ji Xun had already made friends with the boss before entering the door, so they were able to occupy a corner seat in the overcrowded shop.

"What do you want to eat?" Ji asked. He was given a big mouthful by three roommates last night. Today he was a lot more generous and put the menu in front of the children. "Order whatever you want, brother will pay for it."

The person on the opposite side looked up at him, his eyes shot from the drooping hair, vaguely speechless.

"You are not my brother, and don't call me a kid."

The child's face was really exciting yesterday, but after a night, it was much better. At least he could see that the child's skin was fair and his outline was delicate—it was precisely because of this that the bruises and broken skin on his face looked even more exaggerated. terror.

"Don't scratch the wound on your face when it scabs over. It would be a pity to leave a scar." Ji Xun couldn't help exhorting, and then asked, "What's that called?"

"classmate."

"Good student Zhou." Ji Xun followed suit.

The person opposite seemed to pause for a moment, glanced at him, and said, "A bowl of noodles."

Ji Xun didn't take it seriously, and ordered a bowl of noodles, then took out the tape seized from Zhen Huan's parents' house, and waved it in front of classmate Zhou: "Look what I found."

Then he briefly told Zhou a series of things that happened in the morning.

During the process of narrating, the face was also warmed up. It was much hotter inside the restaurant than outside. Ji Xun took off his coat and asked again: "Do you have a Walkman?"

In order to read English, the average student will always have these things.Classmate Zhou really did.He opened his schoolbag, took out his walkman, and a pair of headphones.

"Everything is complete." Ji Xun praised, put the tape into the Walkman, plugged in the earphones, put them in his ears, and started to listen.

This tape had a strange origin, apparently it was inserted between Zhen Huan's parents leaving home last night and his arrival at the scene this morning.Why is it such a coincidence that you choose to put this anonymous thing in at this point in time?

In connection with the first reaction of Zhen Huan's parents after the fire, Ji Xun vaguely felt that this thing might have something to do with Zhen Huan and Xu Shijin... He was ready to listen to the secret.

result……

Ji Xun didn't speak for a long time, and Zhou classmate asked, "What's wrong?"

Ji Xun suddenly grabbed the coat hanging on the chair, and wrapped himself around his head. The bright orange coat wrapped around his head and face, leaving only a thin crack, allowing Ji Xun's embarrassing voice of gnashing his teeth to leak out:

"Don't ask. It's not suitable for children... Fuck!"