"Officer Luo, the person involved is right here. Why aren't you questioning her?" Fu Hanyi interrupted Mo Xueying impatiently, turning to the police officer standing nearby.
Officer Luo immediately turned to Mo Xueying. "Mo Xueying, come with me to make your statement. We have a lot of cases, so let's make it quick."
Mo Xueying paused, lifted her chin, and said firmly to Fu Hanyi, "Fu Hanyi, I will recover the data from my old phone and show you the proof!"
Yet her vow was met with nothing more than a cold sneer from Fu Hanyi, who turned and left without another word.
Watching the man's heartless back, Mo Xueying's eyes reddened as she vowed with conviction, "Yuanyuan, even though your deep devotion was misplaced, I will still prove your innocence."
Seeing Xueying's stubborn determination, tears spilled from my eyes.
You silly girl, why bother trying to wake someone who is only pretending to sleep?
Mo Xueying followed the police into the office, and I drifted along behind them.
Before the questioning even began, Mo Xueying had already started to cry.
She was my best friend. After I had been missing for so many days, she must have been in unspeakable agony.
Weeping, she asked, "Officer, besides finding the wedding dress Yuanyuan was wearing, are there really no other clues?"
"The day Wen Yuan went out missing, she was on the phone with you for more than ten minutes. Did she drop any hint about where she was going?" the police officer asked.
Mo Xueying wiped her tears, composed herself, and said, "No. That day, Yuanyuan was overjoyed to go and get engaged to Fu Hanyi, but Fu Hanyi deceived her and got engaged to someone else instead. That was the day Yuanyuan found out Fu Hanyi's true identity. She had poured her heart out to him, yet this is how he treated her. Yuanyuan was heartbroken and called me to pour her heart out. I comforted her for a long time, and later, I told her to wait by the roadside while I had my brother go pick her up."
"Why didn't you go, and what were you doing?"
"I was away on a business trip in City B. I had no choice but to ask my brother to pick her up. But my brother didn't find Yuanyuan, and her phone was unreachable. After my brother told me, I tried calling Yuanyuan's phone for ages, but it wouldn't go through either. It's all my fault!"
Mo Xueying's voice suddenly choked with emotion. Covering her mouth, she wept bitterly again. "When Yuanyuan's phone wouldn't go through, I should have called the police. But I thought she was just heartbroken over a failed relationship and had turned off her phone because she wanted some quiet time alone. The next morning, when I called her mother, I found out Yuanyuan hadn't come home all night. It was all my carelessness that caused us to miss the best window to rescue Yuanyuan. But why did she make her final cry for help to Fu Hanyi instead of calling me? Why would she foolishly expect a man who abandoned her to save her? Yuanyuan, you really are so foolish..."
Overcome by grief, Mo Xueying wept uncontrollably.
I rushed to embrace Mo Xueying, though I could no longer shed any tears.
I had already paid the price for my own foolishness, paying with the tragic cost of my life.
No amount of tears could ever buy back my life.
If I could be reborn, I would surely steer far, far away from that cold-hearted man.
I followed Mo Xueying as she left the police station.
She took a bus home to a very dilapidated residential complex.
The moment she opened the door, she heard the sound of a bowl shattering.
"If you don't give me money today, I'm going to smash everything in this house!" came Father Mo's vicious voice.
"All the money has already been given to you. Even if you tear the house apart, I have nothing left to give," Mother Mo wept, her hair disheveled, the marks of a slap visible on her face. "Chenzhi, please stop gambling."
"Shut up, you jinx! All you know how to do is cry, you've cried away all my luck..." Father Mo roared furiously.
As if accustomed to the sight, Mo Xueying quietly slipped into her bedroom. She took an old phone out of her drawer, put it in her bag, and left the house.
My heart ached as I followed her.
Poor though my family was, I had a mother and Grandmother who cherished me, as well as a cousin like Xie Yanchuan.
Yet Mo Xueying had no warm home to speak of.
Her father was an alcoholic prone to heavy gambling and domestic violence; she and Mother Mo lived practically in hell.
There was a mobile phone repair shop near the complex. Mo Xueying handed the old phone to the shopkeeper. "Please help me fix this phone, and make sure the data inside is preserved."
"Alright, come back to pick it up in a couple of days," the shopkeeper said, taking the phone.
Mo Xueying had bought that phone secondhand. I had even gone with her to buy it back then, and it had been several years already.
She was finally willing to replace it.
"Yuanyuan, this is the only thing I can do for you."
Stepping out of the repair shop, Mo Xueying murmured with a choked voice. She lifted her chin slightly, and tears spilled from her eyes.
A sharp ache gripped my nose, and I pulled her into an embrace.
My dear, this is already enough.
Even though clearing my name no longer mattered.
When Mo Xueying returned home, Father Mo had already left, and Mother Mo was curled up in a corner weeping. Mo Xueying silently cleaned up the chaotic mess.
"Mom, let's leave this place," Mo Xueying said suddenly after a long silence.
With a vacant look in her eyes, Mother Mo gave a bitter, desolate laugh. "Do you have any money?"
Mo Xueying fell silent, looking as if she had more to say but swallowed her words.
She cleaned the house and cooked a meal. I stayed by her side the entire time, not being pulled back to Fu Hanyi's side.
I discovered that I could linger briefly beside anyone who had contact with Fu Hanyi.
Yet when would this drifting, floating state of mine ever end?
Where was my body, and when would I finally find true peace?
As these thoughts swirled, my consciousness slowly drifted away.
When I suddenly woke up, I had left Mo Xueying's side and found myself crouching in a small patch of woods.
The sky was pitch black and the night was deep, but a short distance away, several beams of light were bobbing up and down.
Looking closely, I saw several men wearing headlamps, swinging shovels and digging into the dirt.
They wore black clothes, hats, and face masks, making their facial features almost indistinguishable.
The eerie glow stretched their shadows long in the dead of night, suffusing the scene with a sense of terror.
An aura of danger emanated from all of them.
At a single glance, they were clearly no good.
Uncertain what they were digging for, I drifted lazily closer. Before I even got near, I heard a man's voice laced with excitement: "Damn it, the last lump is finally dug up. Maogou, He Er, the two of you go down and haul it up."
Two men jumped down.
The pit they had dug was nearly as tall as a man, yet both men stood nearly one hundred and eighty centimeters tall, and only their heads remained visible.
The two men squatted down.
A moment later, the two of them hoisted up a sack. The two men standing at the edge immediately reached out to take it, but one of them suddenly gagged.
"So stinky."
The stench must have been utterly revolting, nearly causing the two to drop it, but they endured and dragged the sack up.
I had lost my physical senses and could no longer smell odors, so I drifted over indifferently.
I had no idea why I had suddenly been brought to this place, nor did I know what they were up to. But I could easily guess it was certainly nothing good.
These people were clearly scoundrels.
Yet whatever shady business they were conducting, I was already dead anyway, so nothing I saw could possibly frighten me.
The two men climbed out of the pit, and the four of them joined forces to shovel the excavated dirt back in, scattering dried leaves they had prepared beforehand across the ground to cover the traces of fresh soil.
"Let's go," someone said in a low voice.
One of the men hoisted the sack onto his shoulder.
The four of them hurried toward a van parked not far away, completely unaware that something had fallen out of the sack. It must have been a small item; it flashed a gleam of light as it dropped, which was how I noticed it.
After the four men got into the vehicle, I drifted over and squatted down in the pile of fallen leaves, looking at the object that had dropped from the sack.
When I clearly saw what it was, I screamed as if my soul was being torn apart!