"Captain, we're always working overtime. Now that we finally have a chance to rest, why don't you take it as a blessing, huh? Use the time to find yourself a wife. Look at you, burying yourself in work just to dodge loneliness."
Wang Xingyi had been watching him pace back and forth for more than an hour before she spoke. She was a year older than Li Zhirui, but he was still her boss, so their conversations balanced somewhere between respectful, professional, and casual. Though every now and then, they strayed past those lines.
Two days had passed since the board meeting, and the directive had been loud and clear: no unit was to share information with anyone from Unit One.
Now, whenever they crossed paths with colleagues, people either turned sharply away, slipped into the shadows, or ignored them altogether.
"Dummy Wang, where's your husband before you start lecturing me about a wife?" Li Zhirui shot back with a sneer.
The question made Wang Xingyi shudder. The very idea of a relationship with a man was enough to send her into retreat. She knew she was worse off than Li Zhirui when it came to love, and so, she surrendered the point without a fight.
Yang Lei closed his book with a soft thump and swiveled toward Li Zhirui.
"Li-ge, why are you still skeptical? He already confessed. His prints were on his belongings, right next to the victim's body, with the victim's blood on them. And those old men aren't wrong. With the higher-ups breathing down our necks, wouldn't it be better to just finish this and move on?"
"You don't know him." Li Zhirui's voice lowered, thoughtful. "He's sharp enough to fool an entire force."
"That's just your assumption, Captain." Chen Jiaqi countered. "What we know is this: he confessed. And if the superiors want to indict, that's more than enough."
"His prints were found on only one item. Why? He was careless enough to leave a wallet behind with his fingerprints, but careful enough to leave no trace on the body or the crime scene? Doesn't that sound too deliberate? Like a mistake that's a little too stupid to be real? No, something's wrong with his confession."
Wang Xingyi shrugged. "Aside from the ghost story he keeps spouting, I don't see a problem."
None of them was in the mood to indulge their captain's suspicions. This was a rare day, they could go home like ordinary working people.
Yang Lei had dinner plans with his parents. Chen Jiaqi had yet another date lined up. Zhang Haixin was itching to start a new tech project. And Wang Xingyi? Her bed was calling louder than anything else in the world. If their captain wanted to bury himself in work until dawn, they were more than happy to wave him off.
One by one, the traitors slipped out until Li Zhirui was left alone.
Night fell. Darkness crept into the office, but he didn't move. His mind kept circling around Gao Ming. Why confess at the peak of his career? Was he coerced? Forced?
Li Zhirui remembered the case he had handled when Gao Ming was a kid. His IQ was higher than every adult in the room back then, a genius through and through. Someone like that wouldn't just drop his own identification at a crime scene by accident. Impossible.
He tapped at his keyboard and pulled up the interrogation recording. Gao Ming had been unsettlingly cooperative. He answered questions willingly, even explained in detail when unnecessary. Only one question had met resistance: the location of the murder weapon. Why hide that?
Any criminal would want to bury the weapon. It was the one thing that could seal his fate. But Gao Ming hadn't acted like a man desperate to conceal it. That, more than anything, made Li Zhirui's gut tighten.
He sat glued to the screen until the very end, until the moment the domino tiles scattered across the table and clattered to the floor.
At first, nothing new. He sighed, ready to shut it off. Then a thought struck him.
He rewound, froze the frame on the dominoes, and let his eyes lock on Gao Ming's face. That smile.
Years ago, nearly twenty psychologists had tried to reach him, renowned men and women with names that carried weight. None had gotten through. Instead, each one had left drained, as if a little of their strength had been siphoned away.
Li Zhirui remembered the day of the ruling. A police escort had stood ready to take Gao Ming away. Li had gone to see him off. Wu Hanlin turned, looked him dead in the eye, and said,
"Detective, you're pretty bad at this."
Then he smiled and stepped into the car.
Now, on the screen, that same smile mocked him again. A smile that whispered, I'll have the last laugh.
Li Zhirui straightened, heart hammering.
The domino. Was Gao Ming hinting at something, or just playing?
He snatched up a marker and turned to the transparent board at the end of the office. Across it, he wrote the characters in bold strokes: Confession, the first domino tile.
Two arrows shot upward from the characters. He covered them with his palm, staring at the empty spaces at the ends of those arrows.
At the tip of one, he wrote: Evidence: Wallet with his fingerprints.
At the other, nothing came. Nothing else connected.
He stepped back. The flowchart mirrored the domino trail. He was following Gao Ming's game.
"Take out the foundational tile. Which one is it?"
The confession lay at the base. If he pulled that out, the so-called evidence would collapse. And compared to the real case, the answer was clear. The evidence didn't support the confession; the confession was propping up the evidence.
Which meant Gao Ming's next move would be obvious: retract it.
Li Zhirui grabbed his coat, tucked the tablet under his arm, and rushed out. His destination, the Deputy Director General's office.
He knocked. After a moment, an old, raspy voice told him to enter.
Li Zhirui straightened his shirt, buttoning the half-open collar that had left his chest exposed, smoothed his hair, and walked in.
To his surprise, Captain Chen Ruoxi of Unit Three was already seated inside. Beside him sat Chief Fang of the homicide department. Both men were drinking tea, looking far too at ease for Li Zhirui's liking.
The deputy director yawned, as though this were all a tiresome routine, and gestured for him to sit.
"We were just discussing the case. Chief Fang thinks there's nothing to worry about. Come, sit. We'll go over it together."
But Li Zhirui hadn't come for tea. The words burst out of him before he could hold them back.
"He's going to retract his confession."
The room stilled. First came confusion on their faces, then slow irritation.
"Captain Li, learn to let things go. Where is this even coming from? Did he whisper that to you?" Chief Fang's voice was sharp.
The deputy director pressed his fingers into his temples, weary.
"Sir, please. Look at this."
Li Zhirui set the tablet down on the glass table. The three men leaned forward reluctantly.
"If the foundational domino is removed, the whole structure collapses. That's exactly what he's doing. Analyze it carefully, the confession is the tile holding up this entire case. Without it, nothing stands. All he has to do is retract it, and the DCI and Prosecutorate will look like fools, played from the very start."
The men glanced at one another. To them, his urgency was nothing but nonsense. The deputy exhaled, long and exasperated.
"You came here over a child's game and some unreasonable metaphor? Do you think you're Sherlock Holmes? Li Zhirui, maybe I should give you a vacation so you can check whether your brain is still intact."
The others laughed at the jab. Chief Fang added with a shake of his head,
"Captain, you're overthinking. A confession isn't a joke. It's the strongest evidence we have. Even if he tries to retract, which I doubt, it won't be that easy."
"Sir, but..."
The deputy director cut him off with a sharp raise of his hand.
"This is exactly why I handed the case to Unit Three. You're too anxious, too suspicious, you make mountains out of knots. And now there's even talk that you're working too hard to shield this man. Do you know how that damages our image? Do me a favor, Li Zhirui. Step away from this case. I'm begging you."
Li Zhirui stared at them, hands clenched at his sides. Finally, he threw them up in frustration and left for home.