The Death of An Zhi

Flipping through channels, Wen Yiqian had a thought that was probably inevitable given enough idle time.

This was a world from a novel. His novel. Which meant, in principle, he could do what protagonists in entertainment fiction always did — reach back into the real world and pull things across. Poems. Songs. Films. Copy them wholesale, pass them off as original, and ride that to fame and wealth within the year.

He turned this over for approximately thirty seconds before it collapsed.

His memory was not an asset. He couldn’t retain a novel of any length, let alone reproduce one. He couldn’t read sheet music. He had no particular literary instinct. And the deeper problem — would material from his world even resonate here? The cultural soil was different. You couldn’t just transplant a song and assume it would take root.

He let the idea go and kept flipping.

The channel landed on news.

”— a murder occurred in our city in the early hours of this morning. The victim is a young woman. Reports indicate she was formerly a police officer, suspended and under investigation following certain professional misconduct—”

Wen Yiqian stopped moving.

The sound seemed to drop out. A ringing filled it instead.

An Zhi.

He sat with a blank face for a moment, not entirely inside himself.

He hadn’t particularly liked her. That was the honest truth. She had caused him real trouble — her personality, her suspicion, her certainty that he was something he wasn’t. But that personality was his own invention. He had written her that way deliberately, as a foil for the male lead, a source of dramatic friction. The over-active imagination, the fixed conclusions, the refusal to let things go — he had given her all of it.

He had not expected to end up on the receiving end of what he’d created.

But because it had come from him — because she was, in some sense, his — he couldn’t make himself feel nothing about her. Whatever complicated thing he felt when he thought about her, it wasn’t hatred. It had never quite reached hatred.

He got dressed and went downstairs.

In the taxi on the way to the police station, the inconvenience of his locked phone became sharply apparent again. He could have had the technicians at the station crack it days ago — but the original owner’s history gave him reason for caution. There was no telling what was on it. If someone else saw it first, no amount of explanation would help. He had held onto that concern and kept holding onto it, which meant he still had no way to make a call.

The officers at the station knew his face by now. Nobody stopped him at the door.

“Big brother Yiqian.” Officer Little Wang appeared and came over. “Here to see the captain?”

“I just need to ask something.” Wen Yiqian paused. “I saw the news.”

Little Wang’s expression shifted. He drew Wen Yiqian slightly aside, lowering his voice. “You already know?”

“It’s An Zhi, isn’t it.”

It wasn’t a question. Little Wang nodded anyway, and something crossed his face — genuine grief, briefly surfacing. “A girl like that. Gone just like that.” His expression darkened. “We won’t let it go. Whoever did this—”

Wen Yiqian didn’t hear the rest. He was already moving toward the exit.

Outside, the city continued at its ordinary pace, indifferent. He stood on the pavement and tried to locate what he was feeling.

Was it the fox mourning the hare — recognizing a shared vulnerability? Simple surplus sympathy? Or something more specific: an author’s particular grief at watching a character he’d made meet an end he hadn’t written for her?

He couldn’t resolve it. What he kept coming back to was simpler and harder to set aside:

She had been afraid. When it happened, she had been in pain.

Li Weiguo was coming back from somewhere when they nearly walked into each other at the station entrance.

The dark circles were severe. His face carried the particular exhaustion that comes from a night that didn’t involve sleep. His voice, when he spoke, had shed whatever warmth it sometimes held.

“What are you doing here.”

“I saw the news,” Wen Yiqian said. His voice came out rough.

Li Weiguo looked at him for a moment. “You want to get involved again.”

Wen Yiqian opened his mouth and found he had no answer — not yes, not no.

“I checked the hostage records from the bank incident,” Li Weiguo said. His tone was even, deliberate. “No one named Mu Su was among them. Not one hostage knew anyone by that name.” He paused. “You lied to me.”

Wen Yiqian bit the inside of his lip. Nothing came to him.

“The rest of it too — the claim that your behavior was all a conscious performance. I’ve looked into your background.” Li Weiguo held his gaze steadily. “Cognitive difficulties since childhood. Unusual behavior throughout. A head injury, and then a return to something approximating normal.” A brief pause. “If I had to name it, I’d say dissociative identity disorder. A surface self that functions like anyone else, and underneath it something that seeks out dangerous situations. Something that enjoys them.”

He wasn’t asking. He was laying out a conclusion he’d already reached.

Wen Yiqian said nothing. There was no explanation he could offer that would improve the situation.

“Go home.” Li Weiguo turned toward the station doors. “An Zhi’s case has nothing to do with you. Look after yourself.”

He went inside without looking back.

Wen Yiqian stood where he was for a long moment.

It has nothing to do with me.

He said it quietly, several times, as though testing whether it would eventually feel true.

Then he walked to the bus stop.

Bus 101. Two yuan. Back section, window seat. The city moved past the glass.

Who killed An Zhi?

What reason was strong enough?

He went still.

He thought he already knew.

Back at the apartment, he went through his things until he found it — a red business card, the kind that announces itself. No name. A string of mobile digits. In the upper right corner, a cartoon fox.

He held it and thought it through carefully.

An Zhi had made enemies. Her personality had seen to that. But wanting someone gone was not the same as needing them gone.

There was only one person who had both the motive and the necessity.

In the earlier incident, An Zhi had been maneuvered into making a serious mistake. Fox’s doing. The result had cost her her credibility, her position, her standing with the people who might otherwise have listened to her. If she tried to expose Fox now, there was no one left who would believe her.

But she was still alive. And a living person, even a discredited one, is still a witness. Still a thread that could, under the right circumstances, be pulled.

Fox — Mask — would not have left that thread in place.

The answer had been there all along.

Wen Yiqian walked to the window with the business card in his hand.

The pavement below was dark and wet.

“It rained heavily last night,” he said quietly.

He looked at the sky.

“Will it rain again today?”

(End of Chapter)