Chapter 137: For No Reason

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“Even if Chang Yu had something urgent to attend to and needed to leave early, he would have told us beforehand. He wouldn’t just vanish for no reason.”

“Now that you mention it, it is strange. Even if something had really happened to him, we should have heard some kind of commotion.” Shi Chengjin was equally baffled.

“But he disappeared without a sound, as though he had vanished into thin air. Not even the slightest noise. What an utterly bizarre thing.”

“Let’s check the restroom again and see whether we can find Chang Yu.” Katerina turned and headed straight for the bathroom.

“Hey, wait!” Feng Sanpao hurried after her. “Don’t leave me behind!”

When they returned to the men’s restroom, it was still as empty as before.

Apart from the unchanging stench of urine, everything remained exactly as it had been.

“Looks like he isn’t here.” Katerina reached the helpless conclusion.

Although she appeared calm on the surface, she was already frantic inside.

A vague yet persistent sense of urgency weighed heavily on her heart.

To carry away a living person weighing more than fifty kilograms without making a sound, right under the noses of so many people—

What sort of eerie method would be required to accomplish that?

She suddenly realized that the calamity they were facing this time was by no means a minor one.

They had to find Chang Yu immediately and rescue him.

Otherwise, if they delayed too long, Chang Yu might truly end up dead.

“Perhaps something happened to him somewhere other than the men’s restroom. After all, by the time we realized he was missing, we had already walked quite a distance.”

“Let’s search elsewhere in the school. We may be able to find some clue about Chang Yu.”

“If we really can’t find him, then we’ll have no choice but to request assistance from headquarters.” Katerina made what was hardly a decision at all.

I hope nothing has happened to him, Katerina thought.

At that moment, the students in the classrooms were also being dismissed. Great crowds of boys and girls in school uniforms streamed out of the teaching building and wandered about the athletic field in groups of two and three.

This undoubtedly created a considerable obstacle for Katerina and the others’ search-and-rescue operation.

Their group was already rather conspicuous, especially Feng Sanpao in his armor of a Qin dynasty general. It was impossible for him not to attract attention.

Among the high school students were plenty of cosplay enthusiasts. The moment they spotted Feng Sanpao, they came screaming toward him.

They pulled out their phones and eagerly posed for pictures with him, each of them wearing a blissful, delighted smile.

Nowadays, with cosplay becoming increasingly common, people no longer found it particularly strange to see someone going out dressed in such an unusual outfit. They merely found it novel.

Twenty years ago, however, anyone who dared go outside dressed like that would certainly have been taken for a lunatic and dragged off to the police station.

But now... well, it seemed perfectly normal.

This was the first time Feng Sanpao had ever encountered such a scene.

In his experience, people had always gone out of their way to avoid him. Anyone who knew that he was mentally ill would instinctively keep their distance.

They treated him as though he were a plague god, afraid that if they stayed near him for too long, something unclean might rub off on them.

This was the first time he had ever felt popular, just like today.

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It was a rather pleasant feeling, he thought.

For a while, Feng Sanpao seemed to forget his original mission entirely. Grinning from ear to ear, he struck one pose after another and warmly took pictures with his adoring fans.

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The way he was enjoying himself, one might have thought him some internet celebrity warmly posing with his fans.

Of course, not every student in the crowd wanted to take a picture with Feng Sanpao.

Among them, a thin, undersized boy with several scars on his arm and a thoroughly miserable look about him caught Katerina’s attention.

He looked somewhat pitiful. His school uniform was patched in several places and had been washed until it was faded and worn.

From his appearance, he clearly came from a family of modest means.

He was completely alone. While the other boys and girls called out to their friends and gathered together, he stood silently by himself, watching everything unfold. He seemed to embody the truth that human joys are not shared.

He was like a detached observer, quietly taking in everything around him without sorrow or joy, as though none of it had anything to do with him.

Katerina first noticed him because, while everyone else was busy taking pictures with Feng Sanpao, he alone remained standing where he was, apparently uninterested in Feng Sanpao’s armor.

The longer she observed him, the more Katerina felt that there was something unusual about the boy.

It was the intuition she had developed over nearly ten years as an investigator. Sometimes, people in their line of work had to trust their sixth sense—and that sixth sense often proved remarkably effective.

She studied the boy without blinking and discovered that his eyes were empty and cold.

A look like that did not belong on the face of a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boy.

In the past, she had seen it only in adults who had witnessed the harshness of the world.

Simply put, no one who had never suffered the blows of society could possess eyes like those.

This discovery immediately aroused Katerina’s interest.

“You there!” Katerina pointed at him. “Could you come over here for a moment?”

The boy glanced around. Then, with some uncertainty, he pointed at himself and asked, “Are you calling me?”

“That’s right. You.”

“Is something wrong, big sister?” The boy walked over to Katerina.

“Do you know if anything has happened at this school recently?” Katerina asked tentatively.

The boy looked utterly bewildered, as innocent as a young deer that had never experienced the world. “If you really want to count something, I suppose the final exams will be coming up soon.”

“That’s not what I’m asking.” Katerina’s tone remained flat. “I mean, have any strange or unusual things happened lately?”

“Such as the haunting in the boys’ restroom.” As she said this, a sharp glint flashed through her eyes.

The corner of the boy’s mouth curved stubbornly upward as he insisted, “Rumors about ghosts have been going around ever since I first came to this high school.”

“And now I’ve already been studying here for two years, yet I haven’t even seen the shadow of a ghost.”

“Rumors are only rumors. You can listen to them, but you shouldn’t take them seriously.”

The boy’s performance was convincing. He made himself look completely innocent, yet Katerina could still tell that he was lying.

Especially when he spoke, that stubborn curve at the corner of his mouth practically announced the truth to her:

I know exactly what happened, but I’m not going to tell you.

That was probably what the boy was thinking.

Katerina believed that he definitely knew something. She had found a lead.

But how to make him willingly reveal those secrets was another difficult obstacle standing in her way.

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If the boy had been willing to talk, he would have told Katerina the truth from the beginning. There would have been no need for him to lie.

Was the purpose of lying not to conceal the truth of certain matters?

Ultimately, was he not lying because he did not want Katerina to learn the secrets he carried in his heart?

“Oh, I see. Thank you for your help.” Katerina’s expression did not change, as though nothing had happened.

Even though, inside, she already had countless suspicions about the boy before her.

Nearly ten years of experience working for the Calamity Investigation Bureau had taught her to remain unruffled no matter what she encountered.

“Then... can I leave now?” The boy’s expression seemed to show a trace of relief.

“That won’t do.” Katerina’s answer was entirely beyond the boy’s expectations.

She stepped forward and pushed through the layers of people surrounding Feng Sanpao until she reached his side.

Then, while he stared at her in bewilderment, Katerina snatched the sparkler from his hand.

She left Feng Sanpao standing alone in the breeze, completely at a loss.

When she returned to the boy, Katerina casually held out the sparkler to him.

The boy accepted it instinctively. The sparkler showed no abnormal reaction. It neither lit up nor made a sound.

“What is this?” he asked.

“Just a little prop. For cosplay.” As she spoke, Katerina used her phone to take a picture with the boy.

Then she said to the bewildered youngster, “It’s not every day I get to meet such a cute little brother. How could I let you leave before taking a picture with me?”

As she said this, Katerina forced what she considered a gentle smile onto her face.

Although the smile was somewhat stiff.

The boy did not suspect Katerina’s intentions. He probably had never imagined that an ordinary sparkler could conceal anything unusual.

He had no idea that Katerina was testing him.

As soon as the boy left, Katerina’s smile vanished. She gazed deeply in the direction he had gone, her thoughts impossible to read.

The next second, she briskly sent the photograph they had just taken to her younger brother, Zhen Youcai.

This was how their conversation went.

Katerina: Photo.jpg

Zhen Youcai: ?

Zhen Youcai: Thumbs-up emoji.jpg

A moment later, the slightly lecherous, chubby boy sent her a voice message.

“Is this the boyfriend you found? He doesn’t look very handsome, and he seems awfully young. Isn’t he still underage?”

“Sis, I never thought you’d finally come to your senses after being single since birth.”

Katerina: ...

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End of chapter

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