Chapter 46 USB Flash Drive: "The police have no evidence!"

Lifting the curtain of the play area, the smell of instant noodles and cigarettes wafted out. Xie Shijin ordered a private room, which cost twenty yuan for two hours.

Although it's called a private room, it's actually a small room partitioned with plywood and isn't soundproof at all.

As soon as I sat down, my phone in my pocket vibrated several times in a row.

Xie Shijin frowned, took it out and looked at it.

Ni Jiaqi: [Where are you?]

Ni Jiaqi: [What did you find out?]

Ni Jiaqi: [I called Officer Yang, but she said she wasn't in Yichuan. Xie Shijin, what are you trying to do?]

Ni Jiaqi: [Answering the phone.]

Ni Jiaqi: [If they don't answer the phone, I'm calling the police!]

After putting his phone on silent mode, Xie Shijin turned on his computer.

In the few seconds it took to boot up, Xie Shijin took out the USB drive he had found in Guo Renyi's study.

Guo Renyi hid the USB drive in a book on the bookshelf and usually didn't allow anyone to enter his study. It must have contained some things that were not meant to be seen by others.

Xie Shijin turned on the computer, logged into his account, and plugged the USB drive into the USB port on the computer under the desk.

A window immediately popped up on the desktop.

—There are nine folders named after the years in the USB drive, from 2010 to 2018.

Xie Shijin opened the first folder, which contained several videos in A.VI format.

This type of video often comes from old-fashioned pinhole cameras.

The video titles are named after people.

Xie Shijin put on his headphones and opened the first video of 2010.

The image quality is a bit blurry, but Guo Renyi's face appears in the picture.

From a slightly upward angle, one corner is obscured by black, suggesting the camera might be placed behind a computer or some greenery.

The background shows an office, but not the temporary office on the fifth floor of the Boxue Building. The large mahogany desk and the leather swivel chair with armrests indicate Guo Renyi's private office in the administration building.

The filming took place at 9:30 p.m., during the evening self-study period for the first year of high school. Guo Renyi had not yet left and was signing documents in his hand with his head down.

Suddenly, he looked up and saw someone walk in.

A moment later, the back view of a girl in a school uniform appeared on the screen.

Guo Renyi chuckled and patted his thigh.

The girl stiffened, hesitated for a long time, and finally sat down, her back ramrod straight, revealing an undisguised resistance.

The next second, Guo Renyi reached out and pulled down the zipper of the girl's school uniform.

They were saying something, but all you could see were their lips moving; no sound came out.

Xie Shijin adjusted the volume; the headphones on this machine were broken, and the sound was coming directly from the speakers.

"Principal Guo, no!"

The girl's piercing scream, filled with sobs and despair, suddenly rang out: "No! Please! I'm scared! I'm really scared!"

The private room wasn't soundproof, and someone knocked on the wall next door: "Damn, bro, you're playing movies out loud?"

"What movie is so exciting?"

Xie Shijin frowned, took off his headphones and turned off the sound, then knocked on the wall and replied, "It's not a movie, don't joke around."

The other person stopped talking.

Xie Shijin dragged the progress bar forward, and it was just as he had expected.

Guo Renyi taught at Yichuan No. 7 Middle School for nine years and took advantage of his position to sexually assault female students.

Like a murderer returning to the crime scene afterward, Guo Renyi filmed and saved videos while sexually assaulting female students.

From the perspective of criminal psychology, this behavior is called "criminal souvenir".

The motivation behind such behavior is often that criminals want to satisfy their own perverse and distorted psychological needs.

On the one hand, by preserving images of the crime, they repeatedly relive the sense of control and pleasure they felt during the act of violence, transforming the victim's suffering into a continuous source of psychological stimulation for themselves.

On the other hand, these videos may also be used as a trophy or as leverage to intimidate victims, thereby consolidating their dominance and preventing victims from reporting the incident to the police.

Xie Shijin looked through the folder from 2016 and, sure enough, found Feng Yue's name inside.

Date: October 26, 2015.

Instead of calling the police, Feng Yue started dating the man.

Xie Shijin backed up these videos, and regardless of whether he returned tomorrow, the videos would be sent to Yang Shengnan's email address at regular intervals.

After doing all that, the boy leaned back in his chair, clenched his injured hand, and then abruptly let go after feeling a slight pain.

After clearing his local browsing history, Xie Shijin put on his hat and went to the front desk to return his card.

"Your machine has only been on for an hour," the receptionist said. "The time hasn't expired, so we can't give you a refund."

Xie Shijin nodded and then asked, "Do you have a power bank?"

His phone battery was low, and he wasn't planning on going home.

The receptionist took a power bank from the counter and said, "Yes, it's fully charged, unlimited time, and the deposit is one hundred."

Xie Shijin opened his phone to scan the QR code when a text message popped up at the top of the screen.

Unknown number: [This is Feng Yue.]

Unknown number: [Didn't you want to know about Cheng Shiyun?]

The other party used very careful words.

Unknown number: [Come to my house at 10 PM tonight.]

Xie Shijin's eyes darkened.

The receptionist reminded him, "Handsome, deposit."

Xie Shijin looked up in response, concealing the thoughts in her eyes, and scanned the code to pay the deposit.

At seven o'clock, the night unfolded.

Street vendors set up their stalls, and students from tutoring classes walked in twos and threes after school. The streets were bustling with traffic, and car lights formed flowing ribbons of light.

Ni Jiaqi was still sending messages to Xie Shijin. Among the 99 messages cursing him, there were one or two asking where he was.

12715: [I'm fine, don't come looking for me.]

12715: [Take her to your house, don't go back to Xuezi Road.]

12715: [Take good care of her.]

After sending these messages, Xie Shijin left the internet cafe and hailed a taxi: "Xingqing Street."

...

After sending the message, Feng Yue immediately turned her phone upside down on the table.

Xie Shijin didn't reply to the message, and she didn't know if Xie Shijin had seen it.

Guo Renyi gave Xie Shijin her phone number. In just one morning, Guo Renyi had already come up with a plan to prevent Xie Shijin from continuing her investigation.

At the cost of her innocence, she was made to frame Xie Shijin.

She was utterly shocked upon hearing this idea and repeatedly said that she couldn't do it.

"How could Xie Shijin possibly..."

Guo Renyi said, "He will."

"He will come."

Cheng Jinghua had given up on Cheng Shiyun's death, but Xie Shijin remained obstinate.

Those who stubbornly refuse to see the truth will pay the price.

“It’s not like I’m asking you to actually have anything happen between you and him. Aren’t you quite good at crying?” The man looked at her terrified, pale face, his eyes clouded and malicious. “When Cheng Shiyun died, I felt sorry for the few tears you shed in front of me.”

"When the police arrive, you don't need to say anything, just cry. Cry as aggrievedly as possible. His hair is inside you, so even if he had ten mouths, he wouldn't be able to explain himself."

She clutched the sealed plastic bag, her voice barely audible: "But even then, I'll..." become a girl who has been raped.

"You already were."

That's what the man said.

Feng Yue's throat was instantly blocked.

She only knew that Guo Renyi was ruthless, but she never thought that he would set his sights on her and ruin two people in this way.

But can she choose not to do it?

Does she have a choice?

Guo Renyi has her videos. If she doesn't listen to the man, those videos will be all over the internet tomorrow.

Feng Yue dared not gamble, nor could she afford to, so she could only obey the man's orders and play the role of "victim".

Tonight, her parents took her younger brother to Happy Valley for a nighttime visit, leaving her behind. Feng Yue was used to this; they wouldn't be back until after 11 PM, leaving her alone at home. She knew tonight was the perfect opportunity, so she sent Xie Shijin a text message.

Eight o'clock.

8:30.

Nine o'clock.

9:30.

10 o'clock.

10:30.

...

Xie Shijin did not come.

...

Why didn't Xie Shijin come?

Doesn't he want to know how Cheng Shiyun died?

Or has he already found other clues?

Feng Yue curled up on the edge of the bed, biting her nails so hard that all ten fingers were bitten until they were bloody and mangled.

If Xie Shijin didn't come, their carefully laid plan would become a dead end. Her parents would be back in an hour, and fearing that Xie Shijin would notice something was wrong, Feng Yue didn't dare to send him any more messages.

Unable to make up her mind, she still called Guo Renyi.

"He didn't come?" The man opposite was clearly surprised as well.

Feng Yue didn't know where the man was. There was a constant squeaking sound on the phone, like a nest of sharp-toothed rats crawling into her brain through the receiver and sucking out her brain matter.

Squeak squeak squeak—

Squeak squeak squeak—

It's so noisy!

"He didn't come!"

Feng Yue roared, losing her temper with a man for the first time.

"He must know our plan! He definitely knows!" She was on the verge of collapse, almost hysterical. "I told you this method wouldn't work..."

"How would he know?" The man paused, his tone as dismissive as a thin layer of ice. "Don't scare yourself."

Then came a long silence, with only the buzzing of electricity and the squeaking of mice coming through the receiver. It seemed that Guo Renyi also couldn't understand why Xie Shijin hadn't come.

Feng Yue said, "I sent him a text message, didn't he see it?"

"You saw it, why didn't you come?"

"Hasn't he always wanted to know the truth about that night?"

"Just a few days ago he was interrogating me about how Cheng Shiyun died, so why isn't he here today?"

She asked incoherently, but there was only dead silence on the other end. The man remained silent for so long that Feng Yue almost thought the call had been disconnected.

The deathly silence tightened around Feng Yue's nerves. She frantically bit her nails until the nail bed was raw and bleeding, and a metallic taste rose in her throat. Finally, she spoke in a hoarse voice: "...Let's turn ourselves in."

"Confess?"

The person opposite him began to breathe heavily, gritting their teeth as they uttered those two words.

“I dreamt of Cheng Shiyun again last night…” Feng Yue’s voice broke into fragments, tears falling onto the back of her hand, burning her skin. “She asked me why I treated her like this, why I didn’t save her… She said she was in so much pain, and asked when I was going down to visit her… I’m going crazy, Guo Renyi, I really can’t take it anymore…”

Guo Renyi said, "Go ahead."

“Go tell the police how you strangled her, how you covered her mouth to stop her from screaming, how you dragged her into the trunk like a dead dog, and how you ran her over with your car.”

Her eardrums were ringing, and Feng Yue screamed, "It wasn't me!"

She kept shaking her head: "I didn't kill her! It was you! You forced me to do it!"

When she went upstairs, Cheng Shiyun was already suffocating. Guo Renyi asked her to help move Cheng Shiyun into the trunk. She was stunned and had no idea what to do. She could only listen to the man.

Afterwards, Guo Renyi went to delete the surveillance footage. She sat in her car and heard Cheng Shiyun's phone ringing and ringing and ringing…

She was driven crazy by her adorable phone ringtone, so she covered her ears and didn't hear the noise from the trunk.

Guo Renyi returned, and just as his car drove out of the school, a loud thud came from the trunk.

Cheng Shiyun is not dead!

She came back to life!

She used her blue umbrella to pry open the trunk.

She climbed out of the trunk, fell to the ground, got up again, and ran forward, running desperately...

Her skirt was soaked through and clung to her snow-white legs, like a gardenia that had been soaked by the rain, drooping but still tenacious and vibrant.

But she runs very slowly.

The rainwater reached her ankles, dragging her along.

Guo Renyi floored the accelerator and caught up.

...

Feng Yue remembered that she had tried to stop it.

But it didn't work.

...

“It’s not you,” the man said. “It’s me.”

Guo Renyi's voice suddenly calmed down, a calmness that sent chills down one's spine: "You can turn yourself in and say that I did all of this, and put all the blame on me. Do you think you can avoid going to jail that way?"

"Do you think your photos will still be searchable online after you get out of jail?"

"Will your family, your parents, your extended family, and your neighbors point and whisper about your photo?"

"I'll call you a heartless slut, I'll call you an accomplice to murder..."

The man continued speaking, his foul language laced with sticky malice, buzzing like swarms of greenbottle flies, trying to burrow into her ears and sting into her flesh.

"I can't take it anymore, I really can't take it anymore..." Feng Yue collapsed to the ground, her shoulders convulsing violently, tears mixed with blood from between her fingers, smearing her face.

Living in this dark and fearful environment every day, she was being worn down to nothing but an empty shell.

Guo Renyi chuckled mockingly, seemingly puzzled: "What are you so afraid of?"

“I don’t want to go to jail, I don’t want to dream of Cheng Shiyun’s eyes, I don’t want to see Xie Shijin again…” Feng Yue choked back tears, despairing and struggling, “But the police will definitely find me… they will find out sooner or later…”

Guo Renyi: "I've already said that I destroyed her phone long ago, and the police have no evidence!"

-----------------------

Author's Note: One more chapter to go!

The atmosphere was a bit tense. Taking a breath and going separately felt better!

Statement: If you encounter persecution in real life, call the police! Call the police! Call the police! Don't be afraid! Call the police!