Chapter 134: 88. In the dark night, the murderer gave her a charming smile.
That night, Shi Nian thought about S’s death and couldn’t sleep.
In her mind, she filtered through the roommates of 507 one by one, wondering which one was more likely to be the murderer. The more she thought about it, the more she felt that each one had suspicious points. In the dim night, their faces were all soaked in shadows, grinning at her sinisterly, as if mocking her current helplessness.
The light flickered, and suddenly she saw Tang Yanqing wearing an ivory knit sweater, paired with denim pants, black-framed glasses perched on his nose, exuding an air of elegance, walking step by step across the boundary of darkness and light, and stopping in front of her.
A beam of light fell brightly on his face. He looked at her, smiling lightly: "With me here, don’t be afraid of anything."
With his soft voice, those faces grinning sinisterly at her in the shadows disappeared one by one, like dust blown away by the wind, leaving no trace.
Shi Nian’s body shuddered, and she woke up.
It turned out that she had indeed fallen asleep.
Once awake, she found it hard to fall back asleep, concerned about the noises outside. So she got up, put on a coat, and went to the bathroom.
The entire suite was quiet, and the doors of the four bedrooms were all closed. Shi Nian walked to the bathroom for girls and turned on the light switch on the wall, but for some reason, she suddenly felt someone watching her in the darkness.
She trembled, touched the switch, and looked back.
But she saw that the living room was completely dark. Even though the street lamps outside cast a dim yellow glow inside, it was all broken into tiny bands of light by the furniture, scattered all over. Making those shadowy places look even more eerie and terrifying.
Shi Nian took a deep breath, comforting herself: Perhaps it’s just paranoia.
After using the bathroom, she washed her face at the sink. As she passed by S and Marina’s room, she stopped and gently knocked on the door.
On such a night, even she was scared, let alone Marina, sleeping alone in that room.
She still wanted to persuade Marina to come to her room and squeeze in together.
After knocking a few times, there was no response from inside the door.
Could she be asleep?
Impossible, that doesn’t make sense. No matter how tired one is, a normal person couldn’t possibly sleep this deeply in the bed of someone who just died.
An ominous feeling arose in her heart.
Shi Nian held onto the door lock and glanced around.
There was still no one in the darkness.
She reached up to her temple. Her long hair was smooth, and with a gentle flick of her fingers, she slid a hairpin down. She straightened the hairpin, and skillfully inserted it into the door lock.
At Kangchuan University, the dorms were old, and even the locks were still the effortless spherical kind. With just a simple twist, there was a pleasing click. The spring in the lock bounced open. Shi Nian put the hairpin back into her hair with a clever smile, both hands gently holding the doorknob, silently pushing it open.
.
She actually learned the skill of unlocking when she was just in elementary school.
Dad was a policeman, starting from the grassroots. When she first started elementary school, Dad was still a local police officer at the precinct. The area he managed had a lot of petty troublemakers, young ones, but they were frequent visitors to the station. Neighbors all looked down on them, but Dad didn’t. Dad said most of them were actually pitiable children, either from divorced families or left to grow up with grandparents as their parents worked far away, lacking education and care.
Later, Dad organized these kids, found them a master to teach them skills. At first, there was no place for classes, so Dad brought them home, cleared out the living room to use as a classroom.
Those good at picking locks and prying doors with nimble hands, Dad had them learn car repair, machining. Later, many of them actually found decent jobs with these skills. Even years later, when Shi Nian went to college, many of those young ones had become senior technicians, even winning the May 1st labor medals. They brought heavy gifts to thank Dad, kneeling at the door as soon as they entered, tears streaming down their faces.
—Shi Nian learned this "skill" back then from those "dexterous hands."
She found it fun, and those kids, grateful to Dad with nothing else to offer, entertained her with it.
But when Mom found out later, she got really angry at Dad, complaining about him bringing those unscrupulous people home. Mom cried, saying what if someone harbored ill intentions toward Nian Nian...
Those memories are like smoke. Even recalling her parents’ arguments now feels like happiness to her.
How she wished Dad were still by her side now, and Mom could still logically argue with Dad, leaving the always authoritative figure in a police uniform speechless, continually bowing, pleading, saying: "Xin Zhen, Xin Zhen, I sincerely know I was wrong. I sincerely won’t do it again."