Nuanqing started after work.
Not because anyone told her to, and not because the case required it. Zhou Ruoxuan's case had already been transferred for prosecution—illegal medical practice and death caused by professional negligence. It had nothing to do with her anymore. Fang Zhiyu's case had been closed even earlier: suicide, no suspects, no one to hold responsible.
Both cases were closed. Both people were dead. The reports had all been written.
But Nuanqing still remembered those comments.
Not the sarcastic "LOL" comments. The few that were different. In Fang Zhiyu's case, the comments posted one after another between two and three in the morning, with remarkably similar wording and intervals of no more than two minutes. And in Zhou Ruoxuan's case, those two lines without a single curse word—"Standing next to a light source only makes the shadows more obvious" and "It's not that she's unattractive. She just doesn't know she's unattractive."
She couldn't say why she cared. Maybe it was an occupational hazard. Maybe it was something else.
Most of the people at the precinct had already left. A Senior called out, "I'm heading out," and Nuanqing nodded. The officer on duty was scrolling through a phone in the corner. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, and one of the tubes had been flickering for days without anyone fixing it. Nuanqing opened her laptop and started doing something no one had asked her to do.
She opened the screenshots of the comments from Zhou Ruoxuan's case.
She looked at them one by one.
She wasn't looking at the content. She had already read it all and remembered every comment. She was looking at the accounts.
The first account had a cat for its profile picture and the username Passing Breeze. Nuanqing clicked into its profile. No original posts, no reposts, following twelve people and followed by none. Its entire posting history consisted of comments—it had only commented under Xu Manlin's account, seven times in total, all targeting Zhou Ruoxuan. The account had been created during the first semester of sophomore year. It hadn't existed before then.
Nuanqing copied the account's information into her notebook: username, creation date, number of comments, and who they were directed at.
The second account had the default gray silhouette as its profile picture and the username Just Another Ordinary Person. Posting history: only three comments, all on the same day, all beneath the same group photo. The account had been created on the day the photo was posted.
Nuanqing wrote that one down too.
She kept going, examining the accounts one by one.
Most of them were normal. They had their own posts, people they followed, traces of ordinary lives. Some used selfies as their profile pictures. Some had profiles full of travel and food photos. They had simply passed by, seen a photo, casually typed a few words, and kept scrolling. They might have already forgotten what they had written.
Nuanqing skipped those accounts.
But a few were different.
They had no lives of their own. They had never posted their own photos or reposted anything. They followed very few people and had even fewer followers. The only trace of their existence was their comments. And they didn't comment only about Zhou Ruoxuan.
Nuanqing followed one of the accounts and checked what it had posted elsewhere.
Beneath a food blogger's post: "So what if the pictures look good? You can't fake your palate."
Beneath a college student's selfie: "Confidence is a good thing, but too much confidence is just cluelessness."
Beneath a small influencer's video: "There's nothing wrong with working hard, but hard work in the wrong direction just makes you look pathetic."
Nuanqing's finger stopped on the screen.
She read the three comments again. Then once more.
They all had the same tone. No insults, no profanity. They even sounded as if they were making reasonable points. But every line precisely found what the other person cared about most, then pressed into it in the calmest possible tone. The food blogger cared most about professional expertise in taste, and the account had said, "You can't fake your palate." The college student cared most about confidence, and it had said, "Too much confidence is just cluelessness." The small influencer cared most about having their hard work recognized, and it had said, "Hard work in the wrong direction just makes you look pathetic."
Every blade cut into the most painful place. And every blade was wrapped up as a "well-meaning reminder."
Nuanqing wrote down this account too.
She checked the time. 9:15 p.m. She had already been at it for more than an hour.
The officer on duty shifted positions, propping their feet on the chair beside them, and continued scrolling. Nuanqing's water cup was empty. She got up to refill it, took a sip, and sat back down.
Then she did something else.
She opened the files for Fang Zhiyu's case and flipped to the screenshots of those comments.
She didn't know why she was doing this. The two cases were completely unrelated. One involved a female actress driven to jump from a building by rumors. The other involved a female college student who had been bullied over her looks until she died after plastic surgery. Different people, different times, different platforms, different incidents.
But the "flavor" of those comments was too similar.
She went through the account names on the comments posted between two and three in the morning, one by one.
The first was Clear-Eyed Bystander. Its profile picture was a patch of gray.
Nuanqing flipped to the list of accounts from Zhou Ruoxuan's case that she had just written down. Her eyes moved back and forth between the two pages.
Clear-Eyed Bystander hadn't appeared in Zhou Ruoxuan's case.
She kept comparing them. She went through the accounts in Fang Zhiyu's case one by one, then looked back at the list from Zhou Ruoxuan's case. Most of them didn't match. Different names, different profile pictures, different people.
Nuanqing rubbed her eyes. Maybe she was overthinking it. Maybe these really were two unrelated cases that happened to involve some accounts belonging to people who liked taking cheap shots everywhere. The internet was full of people like that.
She almost closed everything.
But then she checked one more.
Another account from Fang Zhiyu's case: Just Telling the Truth. She clicked into its posting history.
This account had left four comments beneath Fang Zhiyu's social media posts, two beneath posts by another person Nuanqing didn't know, and one reply in a discussion forum.
Then it had left one comment beneath a group photo posted by Xu Manlin.
Nuanqing stared at the screen.
She flipped her notebook to the page for Zhou Ruoxuan's case, and her finger moved down the account list. Just Telling the Truth—she hadn't written this account down earlier because it had appeared only once in Zhou Ruoxuan's case. She had assumed it was just passing through.
But it wasn't.
The same account. Fang Zhiyu's case. Zhou Ruoxuan's case. Two completely unrelated people, different times, different platforms, different incidents. But the same account had appeared in both places.
Nuanqing circled the account's name in her notebook.
She kept searching.
She wasn't flipping through things randomly anymore. She placed the account lists from Fang Zhiyu's case and Zhou Ruoxuan's case side by side on the screen and compared them one by one. She skipped names that were different and clicked into names that matched to confirm whether they were the same account.
Most of them weren't. Some names looked similar but belonged to different people. Some had the same name but different accounts.
Nuanqing's neck began to stiffen. She turned her head, and a bone cracked. Her shoulders ached from sitting too long. She stood and stretched her back, then walked to the window and glanced outside. The streetlights were on, and a car passed by now and then. She sat back down.
Two hours had passed.
The officer on duty was already asleep with their head on the desk, mouth slightly open. Their phone had fallen to the floor, its screen still glowing. The precinct held nothing but the hum of the fluorescent lights and the sound of Nuanqing's fingers tapping on the keyboard. At some point, the flickering tube had stopped flickering. Maybe she had simply gotten used to it.
She found two more.
Passing Breeze—appeared in Zhou Ruoxuan's case and also in a related discussion thread about Fang Zhiyu. It had left seven comments in Zhou Ruoxuan's case and three in the discussion thread about Fang Zhiyu. Nuanqing placed the comments from both sides together and read them. The wording was different, but the method of finding the most painful spot and pressing into it in the calmest possible tone was exactly the same.
Just Stating a Fact—appeared in Fang Zhiyu's case and beneath another post by Xu Manlin, Zhou Ruoxuan's best friend. It had left two comments in Fang Zhiyu's case and one beneath Xu Manlin's post. That comment read: "Some people's kindness only exists because they haven't been tested yet." Nuanqing didn't know who it was aimed at, but she knew how much damage the sentence could do.
Nuanqing spread open her notebook and lined up the four account names.
Passing Breeze. Just Telling the Truth. Clear-Eyed Bystander. Just Stating a Fact.
She stared at them for a long time.
Four accounts. Two cases. Two dead people.
The four accounts had several things in common. First, none of them had any traces of a life of their own—only comments. Second, they all had the same style: no insults, no profanity, just a precise strike at the most painful spot. Third, they had appeared in two completely unrelated cases.
Nuanqing knew this might not mean anything. There were plenty of people online who just liked commenting everywhere and taking shots at everyone. Maybe these four accounts belonged to one bored person who had nothing better to do than go around poking at people. Maybe they belonged to two people, three people, or four people who happened to like speaking this way.
But her instincts told her otherwise.
Not because she had any evidence. It was the way those comments were written. They were too similar. Not in their wording, but in the way they knew how to cause the most damage with the fewest words. Ordinary trolls didn't do this. Ordinary trolls cursed, made typos, rambled, and typed a bunch of incoherent nonsense in the heat of the moment. These accounts didn't. Every comment seemed thought out. As if someone had sat in front of a screen, carefully studied the other person's post, found their weakest point, and then driven the blade in with as few words as possible.
This wasn't something typed on a whim. It had been designed.
Nuanqing didn't have the authority to trace IP addresses. She was just an ordinary police officer assigned to a local jurisdiction, and these cases had already been closed. She had no reason to request investigative authority. She wasn't even sure this counted as a case. Four accounts had left a few comments across two cases. What could that amount to?
All she could do was this: examine the accounts one by one, compare the comments one by one, and use her eyes to look for patterns.
Brute force.
She closed her notebook and put it in her bag. She shut down her laptop, stood, and stretched her back. Her neck was stiff, her shoulders sore, and the chair had left a crease in her back from leaning against it for so long. The water cup on her desk was empty. She didn't remember when she had finished it. The cup of tea she had brewed that morning had gone completely cold, the tea leaves settled at the bottom, its color as dark as ink.
She poured out the tea, washed the cup, and put it back on the desk.
It was already very dark outside when she left the precinct. The streetlights stretched her shadow long across the sidewalk, where it trailed behind her like another person following her. She stood at the entrance and glanced at her phone. 11:40 p.m.
The night wind carried a hint of cold. Nuanqing zipped up her jacket and walked toward where she had parked.
On the way home, she passed a convenience store. The lights inside were bright, and a clerk leaned behind the register, scrolling through their phone. Nuanqing hesitated, then stopped and went in to buy two rice balls. One was for herself. She left the other outside her younger sister's bedroom.
She didn't know whether her sister would take it. But she bought one every time.
When she got home, the living room was dark. The light in the entryway was still broken, and she still hadn't replaced it. She changed into her slippers in the darkness and placed one rice ball on top of the shoe cabinet—for later, when she passed her sister's room and left it by the door.
She walked down the hallway.
Her sister's room.
The door was closed. Light shone beneath it.
Nuanqing gently placed the rice ball on the floor outside the door. She didn't knock.
She stood there, leaning against the wall, and closed her eyes.
There was a sound inside.
Keyboard taps.
Very soft, but steady. Not the aimless clatter of random typing. There was a rhythm to it, as if she was writing something. A string of words, then a pause, as if she was thinking, followed by another string of words. The pauses varied in length. Sometimes only a second. Sometimes so long that Nuanqing thought she had stopped typing—then it would begin again.
Nuanqing listened for a long time.
She thought of the accounts she had spent more than three hours looking at today. Who were the people behind those accounts? Where were they sitting? What expressions did they wear while they typed? Were they casually typing with one hand while watching TV in the living room, or were they like her, sitting alone in a room late at night, facing a screen and striking out each word one at a time?
Did they know that the words they typed would eventually become screenshots that someone couldn't delete from their phone, a list that tore them apart and put them back together, a window opened from the tenth floor?
They didn't know. They didn't care.
But Nuanqing cared.
She opened her eyes and looked at the strip of light beneath the door.
Her sister was typing inside. Nuanqing didn't know what she was writing. A diary? A novel? Or was she, like Nuanqing, doing something alone in the middle of the night, facing a screen and doing something no one had asked her to do?
She wanted to knock. She wanted to ask her sister what she was writing. She wanted to sit beside her without saying anything, just sit there and listen to her type.
She didn't knock.
She stood there for a while, listening to the keyboard, then turned and walked away.
Back in her room, she took the notebook out of her bag and placed it beside the bed.
Four account names. Two cases. Two dead people.
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe she had spent more than three hours doing something completely meaningless.
But what if it wasn't?
Nuanqing turned off the light.
The keyboard next door continued. She lay in the darkness, listening to the sound, and slowly closed her eyes.
In her mind, she repeated the four account names once more.
Passing Breeze. Just Telling the Truth. Clear-Eyed Bystander. Just Stating a Fact.
She would remember them.