Ruan Yu was lying flat on her back when she read that line. Her hand gave a jolt, and the phone came crashing straight down onto her face.

“Ow!” she yelped, and for the first time, movement stirred from outside. Xu Huaisong knocked three times on her bedroom door. “What happened?”

Ruan Yu pressed a hand to her forehead, curled up in pain like a shrimp, and...

That deliberately ambiguous remark was, without question, intentional on Xu Huaisong’s part.

Having worked her way through all 327 messages like a reading comprehension exercise, Ruan Yu had arrived at a conclusion: this man’s inner self was far gentler than he appeared on the surface — but also far more wicked than he appeared on the surface.

Seven parts ...

The phone was from a style at least ten years old.

The kind of non-smartphone that collectors on tricycles, cruising through old alleyways with megaphones blaring “buying old phones, scrapping broken phones” on loop, would routinely scoop up.

Ruan Yu almost thought she had been transported back in time.

She stared at it for a moment, then took a ...

It had taken Ruan Yu nearly eleven years to finally say those words — “I miss you” — on the evening of this heart-stopping day, just as it was drawing to a close.

It wasn’t that she had suddenly changed her nature. It was that on this day, having witnessed with her own eyes a missed connection that would leave someone with a lifetime of regret, she had suddenly real...

Fifteen minutes later, a police car pulled up outside the restaurant.

Fang Zhen came upstairs to find Ruan Yu. “Ms. Ruan, if it’s convenient, please come with us to the scene and assist with this arrest operation.”

Li Shican stepped in front of her and asked Fang Zhen: “What’s the situation over there right now? What’s the suspect’s condition? Is he carryi...