The wail of police sirens drew closer, sharply tearing through the night-time tranquility of the old apartment building before finally screeching to a halt downstairs.
A sudden commotion immediately erupted in the hallway. Amidst the hurried clacking of high heels against the concrete floor came Auntie Wang’s irrepressible, exceptionally excited voice:
"Officer, hurry! Right here! Third floor! That little beast—that little punk named Lin Fan!"
*Thump, thump, thump!*
The knocking on the door was urgent and heavy, carrying an unquestionable authority as if it meant to shatter the thin wooden panel.
Standing behind the door, Lin Fan took a deep breath, suppressing the slight upturn of his lips brought on by the smooth progress of his plan. He deliberately worked up a light sweat on his palms to ensure he looked sufficiently "nervous."
Outside, he listened to Auntie Wang’s triumphant tone, as though she were eager to claim her reward on the spot:
"He's right inside! Officer, this time it's a definite catch-in-the-act! Let me tell you, this kid is rotten to the core. So young and yet lawless, peddling contraband! I even made a recording and found the note from their transaction! The evidence is airtight!"
Her voice was shrill, brimming with the eagerness of someone angling for credit, as if she had rehearsed this exact scene countless times in her head.
Lin Fan adjusted his breathing, forcing himself to look as though he had been frightened by the spectacle before finally pulling the door open.
Standing in the doorway were two stern-looking police officers in crisp uniforms with sharp, piercing gazes.
Auntie Wang stood at their side like a victorious general, smugly elbowing her way forward. Her face bore an unmasked gloating expression, her triangular eyes flashing with malice as she envisioned Lin Fan being handcuffed and hauled away.
"You're Lin Fan, right? Someone reported you for participating in illegal transactions and hoarding stolen goods."
One of the officers cut straight to the point, his sharp gaze sweeping across the room as though it could pierce right through the walls.
Lin Fan managed to squeeze out a just-right look of panic on his face, though a flash of calculated triumph flickered deep within his eyes. He averted his gaze slightly, his voice carrying the faltering awkwardness and helplessness of a wrongly accused youth:
"Officer, this... isn't this some kind of huge misunderstanding? I'm... I'm just a student, how could I ever do something like that?"
Inwardly, however, he was thinking: *Go on, keep acting. Today, I'm going to show you malicious neighbor just why the flowers are red!*
"Misunderstanding?! I saw it with my own eyes! How could it be fake?!"
Auntie Wang immediately jumped in, terrified that the officers wouldn't believe her, nearly spitting right in Lin Fan's face.
"I even saw him acting all shady and making a handoff with some guy wearing a baseball cap! Anyone could tell he was no good! Officer, you absolutely cannot let yourselves be fooled by his student act!"
"We received a report and need to inspect your residence. Please cooperate."
The officer’s tone brooked no argument, clearly a standard procedure.
As if resigning himself to his fate, Lin Fan let his shoulders slump, his voice tinged with a palpable sense of grievance and resentment:
"The stuff... the stuff is in that cardboard box under the bed."
He slowly bent down and dragged a semi-dilapidated cardboard box out from under the bed, deliberately injecting a measure of guilt-ridden hesitation and despair into his movements.
Auntie Wang’s eyes instantly burst with greed, her neck stretching out longer than a duck's as she practically tried to dive into the box herself.
She could almost smell the stench of copper coins, as if the box didn't contain cardboard at all, but rather piles of glittering gold bars and blinding diamonds—her stepping stone to fame and glory!
Before everyone's watchful eyes, Lin Fan slowly opened the box.
The anticipated dazzling jewels, bundles of cash, and illegal drugs... none of them appeared!
In their place were:
Several stacks of *Five Years of College Entrance Examination and Three Years of Mock Exams* thick enough to serve as pillows, with mock exam papers for various subjects piled up like a small mountain. Their edges were curled from repeated reading, emitting the bitter, comforting scent of printer ink and sweat.
Tucked away in the corner were a few anime character figurines in somewhat childish packaging, flanked by a few boxes of gaudy, second-year-syndrome-style game cartridges. The characters on the covers stared angrily at Auntie Wang with passionate eyes.
For a fraction of a second, the entire hallway froze into absolute, pin-drop silence.
The winning smile on Auntie Wang’s face instantly solidified like a frozen piece of shoddy plaster. Her eyes dilated to the size of saucers, nearly popping out of their sockets, and her mouth hung open wide enough to swallow a whole egg.
She stared dead at the "stolen goods" in the box, the color rapidly draining from her face, shifting from an excited flush to an incredulous, ghastly pale.
*What... what is this garbage?! Where are my gold bars? Where are my diamonds? Where is my grand reporting achievement?!*
The two police officers furrowed their brows slightly, exchanging a rather peculiar look before casting probing glances back at Auntie Wang.
Speechless...
Lin Fan scratched the back of his head, looking somewhat embarrassed as he spoke with the characteristic greenness and "grievance" of a teenager:
"Officer, those 'goods,' 'diamonds,' and 'gold bars' that Auntie Wang mentioned... they're actually lines for our school anime club's drama rehearsal. The script has plots about undercover agents and treasure hunting, and we've been practicing lately."
He pointed toward a pile of "props" he had dug up from a cheap accessories shop on the desk—a massive gold chain thick enough to choke someone, pigeon-egg-sized glass "diamond rings" flashing a tacky light, and a few gaudy fake jade bead bracelets.
"These, these are all props from the drama club. They're worthless, just meant to look intimidating for stage effect."
"A drama?" One officer was clearly skeptical, but looking at the mountain of study materials in the box alongside those impossibly cheap "props," he felt Auntie Wang’s accusations were getting a bit absurd.
These "stolen goods" were a bit too... inspiring, weren't they?
"Right, our faculty advisor knows all about it. If you don't believe me, you can call our club president, Mu Qingxue. She's in our class too, she can vouch for it."
Lin Fan hurriedly rattled off a string of numbers, his tone as earnest as earnest could be.
The officers exchanged glances, and one of them pulled out his phone and dialed.
The call connected quickly, and a cool, polite female voice came through the receiver—it was indeed Mu Qingxue.
The officer briefly explained the situation.
On the other end of the line, Mu Qingxue's voice remained cool yet carried a convincing composure and politeness, methodically corroborating Lin Fan's story:
"Hello, Officer. Yes, our anime club has indeed been rehearsing a play recently that includes undercover and treasure-hunting elements. The lines Classmate Lin Fan mentioned, like 'diamonds,' 'gold bars,' and 'the cops are cracking down hard,' are all from the script. If necessary, I can immediately email the electronic version of the script to your official inbox."
She paused, a touch of well-measured helplessness entering her voice as she casually yet with absolute precision added:
"Actually... Auntie Wang has perhaps always had a bit of... well, excessive concern toward Classmate Lin Fan. Even before this, over harmless little matters like me dropping off study materials for him, she would interrogate him for ages with a strange look in her eyes. This time, perhaps she simply misheard. After all, she's always been rather... 'enthusiastic' about the affairs of those around her, sometimes perhaps a bit overly enthusiastic."
Her voice wasn't loud, but those words—"excessive concern," "interrogate him for ages with a strange look in her eyes," and that drawn-out, meaningful "enthusiastic" at the end—
Every single word fell like a small hammer, gently striking Auntie Wang's heart and letting the officers read between the lines, causing them to look at Auntie Wang with even more profound implications.
"Then what about this note?" Another officer held up the crumpled slip of paper Auntie Wang had found.
" 'Tonight at seven, same old place, cash on delivery.' That can't be a line from the script, can it?"
Auntie Wang immediately regained her spirit, grasping at it like a drowning person clutching a straw, and shrieked:
"Right! And there's also the time he was sneaking around exchanging things with some guy! I saw it with my own two eyes! That guy was even wearing a hat, you could tell he was no good! How do you explain that?!"