SES Chapter 112 Part 1

Chapter 112

Yan Hongsha waited with Mu Dai in the room. The sun sank lower and lower, but no one came back, and no calls came in. She grew more and more restless, glancing at her phone again and again.

Mu Dai looked at her once.

Yan Hongsha immediately said, “It’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

Mu Dai answered, “If it were good news, we would’ve heard already.”

Yan Hongsha fell silent.

Everyone wants to be the messenger who brings good news early, but with bad news, the later it comes, the better.

The longer they waited, the more uneasy Yan Hongsha grew. When the door finally sounded, she practically leapt at it, while Mu Dai, by contrast, stayed calm—just sitting there, head slightly lifted, as if after waiting so long, she’d stopped expecting a pleasant surprise.

It was Luo Ren who walked in. Mu Dai overheard him at the door, telling Yan Hongsha to call Yi Wansan and the others to hurry back.

Then he came inside and met her eyes.

The first thing he said was: “I’ve managed to get the blood sample submitted. The results should be out in the next couple of days.”

Blood sample? It took Mu Dai a moment to realize he meant the HIV antibody test. Strangely enough, she found she no longer cared that much about it.

Almost mockingly, she thought: how do you ignore one problem? Two ways—either solve it, or bury it under a bigger one.

Luo Ren didn’t hide the truth: “About Song Tie—I believe he wasn’t lying.”

Even though things happened suddenly and there was no time to prepare polygraph equipment, before meeting Song Tie, Luo Ren had already planned a set of simple lie-detection methods.

Micro-expressions, eye movement, body language, reaction time, splitting up questions, repeating them deliberately—he’d used these tricks against hardened, cunning criminals. On Song Tie, it was overkill.

Song Tie was an honest, ordinary man in his forties. He hadn’t seen much of the world and got nervous easily.

He’d said, “I hardly ever play mahjong. That night, a coworker dragged me along, and it went past midnight…”

His tone was full of regret—as if, had he just gone home, none of this mess would’ve touched him.

That night, the game ended around two in the morning. He’d lost quite a bit and walked home down the riverside in low spirits.

The night wind was sharp, the streets mostly empty. Many of the streetlights had gone dim. In the distance stood the big bridge across the river, its lamps spaced apart so that from far away, they looked like a string of giant beads suspended in the air.

And then—by chance—Song Tie looked up and saw something fall from the bridge. It didn’t hit the water. It struck the embankment below with a thud.

His heart jolted. A thought flashed across his mind: Could that have been… a person?

He squinted hard. There were shadowy figures still moving on the bridge.

Confused, he stood frozen for a while before moving again. After just a few steps, he heard footsteps pounding. A man with a buzz cut, face pale, came running toward him and rushed past.

Song Tie flinched aside but still caught a good look at the man’s face. Instinct told him: if something really happened on that bridge, someone fleeing in panic like that might very well be the culprit.

So the sequence went like this: someone reported the incident → police canvassed the area → Song Tie gave them a lead. The sketch he provided was of the buzz-cut man.

This is why the police were convinced the two witnesses hadn’t colluded. Ma Chao and Song Tie didn’t know each other. When Song Tie described the “suspect,” he could only give a rough face and clothing.

Only later, after Ma Chao was questioned, did Mu Dai’s name come up. And when police mentioned this to Song Tie, he immediately reacted: “That girl? I saw her too!”

He told Luo Ren in detail: “I didn’t tell the police before, because I didn’t think it was her… I mean, how should I put it…”

He explained that as he neared the bridge entrance, Mu Dai came walking off the bridge. He’d watched her carefully.

She looked like a quiet student, with long hair, hands in her pockets, slowly passing him by.

“She looked like a good girl from a good family,” Song Tie said. “How could she be out wandering so late at night? It’s dangerous. If she’d been one of those delinquent kids, sure—but because she wasn’t, I paid more attention. I remembered her face clearly.”

He’d speculated plenty: maybe the buzz-cut guy had robbed her? Or done something worse?

But then he thought: No, she looked too calm, not like someone who’d been frightened.

And just like that, they passed each other and went their separate ways.

Mu Dai didn’t interrupt. She listened without question.

But Yan Hongsha couldn’t help blurting: “Wait—so that Song Tie actually saw Mu Dai coming off the bridge?”

“Song Tie already identified her at the station,” Luo Ren confirmed. “He said it was definitely the same girl. He couldn’t be mistaken.”

Yan Hongsha murmured, “That’s bad… Mu Dai told the police she was asleep at home that night. She said she never went out…” She turned, worried, to look at Mu Dai.

Mu Dai bit her lip. “I was asleep. I didn’t go out.”

Her voice wavered. Even she felt unconvinced. Her hand clenched hard into the sofa leather.

If she had been on that bridge, it meant something had happened while she was unconscious—beyond her control.

It meant her supposed split personalities had grown to where she couldn’t sense or control them. It meant she really had killed someone.

Her knuckles went pale as she forced the words again: “I was asleep. I didn’t go out.”

Her tone was strange. Yan Hongsha, panicked, didn’t know what to do. Luckily, a knock at the door broke the tension.

Yi Wansan and Cao Yanhua had returned.

Yan Hongsha rushed them inside.

Under everyone’s questioning eyes, the two men exchanged a guilty glance. After a pause, Cao Yanhua rubbed his hands. “Well… it’s not looking good…”

That night, Mu Dai couldn’t sleep. She got up, fumbled in the dark, and curled onto the sofa.

Hearing the movement, Yan Hongsha switched on the light. Through sleepy eyes, she saw Mu Dai hugging her knees in the corner.