When Lin Nuanqing took the case, she thought it was just a medical dispute.
The person who reported it was the victim's mother. Her voice over the phone was very even, so even it didn't sound like someone who had just lost her daughter. She said, “My daughter went in for surgery yesterday. This morning, the clinic called and said she was dead.”
By the time Nuanqing arrived, the clinic's metal shutters were already down.
It hadn't closed for business. They had run.
The sign was still there: “Huanmei Medical Aesthetics Clinic,” pink letters with a flower drawn beside them. Nuanqing stood at the entrance and looked inside through the gaps in the shutters. The lights were still on. The cloth on the operating table hadn't been put away, and there was a puddle of something on the floor that hadn't been completely cleaned up.
She took a step back and started making calls.
The victim's name was Zhou Ruoxuan. Twenty-two years old, a senior in college. The cause of death was a fat embolism caused by liposuction. There had been no proper postoperative monitoring or emergency equipment, and by the time she was taken to the hospital, it was already too late.
The clinic didn't have a qualified surgical license. The person who had operated on her was later found not to be a plastic surgeon at all.
The case was clear. Illegal medical practice and death caused by professional negligence. All Nuanqing had to do was organize the information and transfer the case.
But she still opened Zhou Ruoxuan's phone.
She didn't know why she wanted to look. Maybe it was a habit left over from her last case. Maybe it was something else. She just couldn't understand why a twenty-two-year-old girl would walk into a back-alley clinic whose sign practically radiated cheapness and let someone she didn't even know cut into her body.
There were a lot of photos in the phone's album. Nuanqing started from the earliest ones.
The earliest photos were from freshman year. Zhou Ruoxuan stood in front of the school gate with a canvas bag on her back, smiling with all her might. She was very ordinary-looking. Not ugly, but not the kind of person who made anyone look twice. A round face, monolids, a nose neither high nor low, and slightly thick lips. The kind of face that would disappear into a crowd on the street.
Another girl stood beside her.
That girl was different. Long hair, big eyes, dimples when she smiled. It was as if all the light in the picture had been drawn toward her. The two of them had their arms linked, but your eyes could only settle on one of them.
Nuanqing swiped to the next photo. Still a picture of the two of them together. The next one was the same. Outside a movie theater, inside a bubble tea shop, on a street decorated for Christmas, beneath the fireworks on New Year's Eve. Every picture had the two of them in it, and Zhou Ruoxuan was smiling happily in every one.
Nuanqing opened Zhou Ruoxuan's social media account. Forty-seven followers. She didn't post much, occasionally sharing some personality quizzes and cat videos.
Then she opened the account belonging to her best friend.
Xu Manlin. Twelve thousand followers.
Nuanqing scrolled down. Xu Manlin's feed was beautiful. Every photo had been edited, with consistent filters and carefully considered compositions. She posted selfies, outfits, and food. Her comments section was always full of praise: “Naturally gorgeous.” “How can you be this beautiful?” “Our goddess looks amazing today, too.”
Then Nuanqing saw the photos of the two of them together.
Xu Manlin had posted their pictures on her own account. She tagged Zhou Ruoxuan in every one.
The comments had a different vibe.
“Who’s the one next to her?”
“You don’t realize how gorgeous Manlin is until you see the comparison.”
“Is that friend there just to make her look good? LOL.”
“Doesn’t she feel insecure standing next to the goddess?”
Nuanqing read them one by one.
The comments had started freshman year. At first there had only been a few. Later, there were more and more. Someone began making memes out of Zhou Ruoxuan's face, adding captions like “The confidence of an average person.” During one of Xu Manlin's livestreams, someone asked, “Does your friend know what she looks like?” Xu Manlin laughed and said, “Come on, don't be like that,” then changed the subject.
Most of the comments were casual little digs, with awkward phrasing and tons of typos. It was obvious that people had scrolled past the photo, tapped out a few words, and moved on. But a few were different.
“Standing next to a light source only makes the shadow more obvious.”
“She isn't unattractive. She just doesn't know she's unattractive. That's the cruelest part.”
Nuanqing's finger paused.
These comments contained no profanity and no mocking tone, but they hurt ten times more than the ones filled with “LOL.” They weren't insults. They had precisely located a person's most vulnerable spot, then calmly driven a knife into it.
The writing felt vaguely familiar to her. Where had she seen it before? She thought for a moment but couldn't remember.
Maybe she had read too many comments. She kept scrolling.
Nuanqing continued looking through Zhou Ruoxuan's phone.
Starting in the second semester of sophomore year, Zhou Ruoxuan's album contained many more makeup photos. They weren't selfies. They were practice shots taken in front of a mirror. Her eyeliner was crooked, her eyeshadow had smudged into a blur, and her lipstick extended past the edges of her lips. One photo, then two, then ten, then twenty. She was practicing.
But her makeup still looked wrong in the group photos. It wasn't a matter of technique. Her features didn't suit that style. She was imitating Xu Manlin's makeup.
The comments became even nastier.
“Even makeup can't save her.”
“Please stop taking pictures with the goddess. It's so uncomfortable to look at.”
“Is that bare-faced or with makeup? If that's with makeup…”
Nuanqing set the phone down and rubbed her eyes.
Then she picked it up again.
In the first semester of junior year, the photos of Zhou Ruoxuan suddenly became less frequent. There were no new photos for three consecutive months. Then a postoperative photo appeared.
She was lying on a white bed, her face wrapped in gauze with only her mouth exposed. A sheet of paper listing postoperative precautions lay beside her. The photo hadn't been posted on social media. It existed only in the album.
Later, Nuanqing found a list in Zhou Ruoxuan's notes.
“Lee Ji-eun's eyes.”
“Bae Suzy's nose.”
“Jun Ji-hyun's lip shape.”
Each line had a check mark after it.
Nuanqing stared at the list, and her stomach turned.
She wasn't choosing the appearance she wanted for herself. She was piecing one together. Taking different people's features apart and assembling them on her own face, as if she were putting together something she believed was “supposed to be beautiful.”
Nuanqing went slowly through the photos of her recovery. The gauze came off layer by layer, and the swelling gradually subsided. Zhou Ruoxuan started taking selfies. She was careful with the angles, taking many shots each time.
Her eyes were bigger now, with deep double eyelids. Her nose was higher, the tip tilted upward. Her lips were thinner, with a curve in the upper lip.
But the features didn't look right together.
Nuanqing couldn't say exactly what was wrong, but something was wrong. Like a jigsaw puzzle where every piece looked beautiful on its own, but the edges didn't line up once they were put together. Her eyes were too big, so big they didn't suit the shape of her original face. Her nose was too prominent, prominent enough to clash with her cheekbones. The curve of her lips belonged to someone else. On her face, it looked borrowed.
Xu Manlin posted a new photo of the two of them together and tagged Zhou Ruoxuan.
The comments section exploded.
“Oh my God, did she get plastic surgery?”
“Those features look so fake. She looks deformed.”
“After getting work done like that, she would've been better off leaving herself alone. At least she was naturally ugly before.”
“The goddess has a plastic person next to her now.”
Nuanqing saw that Zhou Ruoxuan had taken thirty-seven screenshots of the comments in succession that night. Every one of them was saved in the album.
Why save them? Nuanqing wondered. Why take screenshots one by one?
Was she trying to remember them? Or prove something? Or had she already become unable to stop, just like Fang Zhiyu—knowing she shouldn't look but unable to resist?
Nuanqing closed the album and opened Zhou Ruoxuan's banking app records.
Starting in the second semester of junior year, Zhou Ruoxuan's account showed a steady stream of small deposits every month. Convenience stores, drink shops, tutoring, online-sales customer service. She held down four jobs at once. Classes during the day, work at night, and back to the dorm in the early morning.
Her food expenses grew smaller and smaller. Three meals a day became two, then one. There were several days with no food expenses at all.
Then there was a large expense. A transfer to a plastic surgery clinic.
The second surgery.
The postoperative photos were different this time. Zhou Ruoxuan's face had changed. It no longer looked pieced together. She had shaved down her bones, changing the entire outline of her face. The features that hadn't fit before now had a new framework to support them.
She looked beautiful. Truly beautiful.
Nuanqing saw that Zhou Ruoxuan had posted her first selfie on her own social media account after the surgery. Her followers had increased from forty-seven to more than two hundred. People commented, “So pretty,” “You look so different,” and “Is this the same person?”
Xu Manlin posted a picture of the two of them together, too. The comments were different this time.
“The girl next to her is so pretty!”
“Who is she? A new friend?”
“They're both beautiful.”
Nuanqing checked Zhou Ruoxuan's search history from that night. She had searched for: “How long is the recovery period after bone-shaving surgery?” Then she searched for another word: “Happy.”
Just those two searches. One about surgery, and one about happiness.
Nuanqing leaned back in her chair. The ceiling light was painfully white.
She kept looking.
The good times didn't last. Someone among Xu Manlin's followers dug up Zhou Ruoxuan's old photos. Before-and-after pictures of her surgeries were made into a nine-panel collage and spread across the internet.
“So she was a plastic surgery freak all along.”
“How much did she pay for that face?”
“Even after all that work, she's still just the sidekick standing next to the goddess.”
Then that comment appeared.
It wasn't insulting her face. Beneath a full-body photo, someone wrote: “Her face is fixed now, sure, but what’s going on with those arms and thighs?”
Just that one sentence.
Nuanqing saw that Zhou Ruoxuan had screenshotted it. Only that one. She hadn't saved the comments attacking her for getting plastic surgery. She had saved this one.
Because this one told her: You can never change everything.
You change your face, and they criticize your body. You change your body, and they'll criticize your voice, the way you walk, your personality, your very existence. You will never be good enough, because “not good enough” isn't your problem. They need someone who isn't good enough.
But Zhou Ruoxuan didn't know that. She only knew she still wasn't enough.
The bank records showed that she had started working multiple jobs again. But this time, she didn't save for long. Three weeks later, she searched online for “cheap liposuction.”
She found Huanmei Medical Aesthetics Clinic.
The price was one-third that of a legitimate clinic. No preoperative evaluation, no complete physical examination, no qualified anesthesiologist. She paid a deposit and went in the next day.
Then she never came out.
Nuanqing closed Zhou Ruoxuan's phone.
She sat at her desk in the precinct with a half-finished report in front of her.
Cause of death: fat embolism. Manner: surgical accident. In the notes field, she typed a few words, deleted them, typed again, and deleted them again.
In the end, she wrote: “The deceased is suspected to have been affected by prolonged exposure to online comments, undergoing multiple plastic surgeries before ultimately dying after liposuction at an unqualified medical facility.”
She stared at the screen.
What could these words change? Would the people who had typed those comments be held accountable? No. They didn't even know Zhou Ruoxuan was dead. Even if they did, they would say, “I never told her to get plastic surgery.”
Nuanqing saved the file.
She picked up her phone and opened Xu Manlin's social media account. Her latest post was from yesterday: a selfie captioned, “The weather is so nice today, and I'm in such a good mood.”
The comments section was running as usual. “The goddess is so beautiful.” “I'm so jealous.” “Naturally gorgeous.”
No one mentioned Zhou Ruoxuan.
Nuanqing turned her phone face down.
She thought of passing her sister's room on her way out that morning. The door had been closed, and there had been no sound inside. She had stood there for a moment, raised her hand to knock, then lowered it.
She didn't know what her sister was doing inside. Sleeping? Looking at her phone? Taking screenshots one by one of the comments that had once hurt her, saving them in a folder no one would ever open?
Nuanqing closed her eyes.
She printed the report, put it in a folder, and handed it to her Senior.
Her Senior flipped through it and said, “A medical dispute. Just transfer it and be done with it. Don't overthink it.”
Nuanqing nodded.
She returned to her desk and sat down, staring at the blank screen.
When the screen went dark, she saw her own face reflected in it.
She remembered the list in Zhou Ruoxuan's phone. Lee Ji-eun's eyes, Bae Suzy's nose, Jun Ji-hyun's lip shape. There was a check mark after every line, as if she had accomplished something extraordinary.
But there wasn't a single line on that list that said “Zhou Ruoxuan.”
She had taken herself apart, put someone else's parts together, and in the end, even died beneath a face that wasn't her own.
And the people who had made her feel she needed to be taken apart were now scrolling through their phones, looking at the next person's picture and getting ready to type the next line.
Nuanqing woke the screen and closed the report window.
The boxed meal on her desk had gone cold. She didn't eat it.
She got home at eleven. The living room lights were off, and the tiny red standby light on the television glowed in the darkness.
She changed into her slippers and passed her sister's room.
The door was closed. A thin line of light showed beneath it.
Nuanqing stood in front of the door. She didn't raise her hand. She simply leaned against the doorframe, her shoulder touching the wood, and closed her eyes.
It was very quiet inside. No keyboard, no music, nothing. So quiet that she couldn't tell whether her sister was awake or asleep, whether she'd left the light on while sleeping or was sitting on the bed, staring blankly at something.
She stood there for a long time. Long enough for her right foot to grow numb, long enough to hear her own breathing.
Zhou Ruoxuan's list was still in her mind. Lee Ji-eun's eyes, Bae Suzy's nose, Jun Ji-hyun's lip shape. There was a check mark after every line.
Was there a list in Nuan'an's room?
She didn't know. She didn't dare ask.
Nuanqing rested her forehead against the doorframe for one last second, then turned and walked away.
Back in her own room, she didn't turn on the light. She lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
A sound suddenly came from the room next door. Very soft, like something being moved around. Paper, or a blanket.
Then it went quiet.
Nuanqing lay awake in the darkness and listened for a long time.
There was nothing left.