Bonus Chapter: The Crime-Solving Chronicles of a Northeastern Mother

Jin Zhaoxuan is having a real headache lately, just like when he was confronted by investors for three hours straight at a hearing in Beijing years ago, who kept asking, "What kind of technology can Anshan produce?" The way those people in suits looked at him was like they were looking at a madman who insisted that the Earth was a triangle.

At this moment, this "madman" is facing the biggest crisis of his life: his own mother, Ms. Jin Meilan, a legendary figure in the matchmaking world of Tiedong District, Anshan, is sending him matchmaking partners at a rate of one every 48 hours.

"You have to see this!" At 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Kim Mi-ran used her spare key to open the door to her son's bedroom and shoved a photo in the face of Kim So-hyun, who hadn't even opened his eyes yet. "Elementary school PE teacher! Healthy! Your future children will definitely be healthy!"

Jin Zhaoxuan woke up with a start, momentarily thinking he had been kidnapped: "Mom... what time is it..."

"What time is it? Your Aunt Wang's rooster is already crowing for the tricycles!" Jin Meilan threw off the covers. "Get up quickly, that girl has been waiting at 219 Park since nine o'clock!"

The phone vibrated incessantly on the bedside table. Jin Zhaoxuan reached over and saw Yin Shaoqing's face squeezed into the small window of the live stream, his hair still wet—this guy had recently learned to use AR effects to style his hair, and this morning he clearly had a "just out of the shower" look.

[Yin Shaoqing: A physical education teacher? The Book of Rites says that archery and charioteering are one of the Six Arts, which makes sense...]

Jin Zhaoxuan squinted as he typed a reply: [Shut up, or I'll put your phone in the microwave tonight.]

Yin Shaoqing: ...

"Who are you messaging?" Kim Mi-ran's sharp gaze swept over.

"No, no one, just a colleague." Jin Zhaoxuan stuffed his phone under his pillow. "Mom, I really'm not going. I have to go to the Ansteel Museum to debug the system today..."

"Adjust my ass!" Jin Meilan said, hands on her hips. "You're thirty-two! Thirty-two! Thirty-two is considered unsaleable in the matchmaking market! In Anshan, people your age already have kids who can run errands! Your Aunt Wang's Teddy dog ​​is getting 3,000 yuan for breeding this year, and what about you? You don't even have a girlfriend! Do you know what Aunt Li downstairs is saying about you behind your back?"

Jin Zhaoxuan had a bad feeling: "What did you say?"

"Tell me..." Kim Mi-ran lowered her voice, glancing around as if revealing a state secret, "Tell me if you like men!"

Jin Zhaoxuan: "..."

The phone under my pillow vibrated so hard it looked like it was about to jump up.

"Of course Mom doesn't believe it!" Jin Meilan waved her hand. "How could I not know my son? You're a workaholic! But people don't believe it! So you have to go today and shatter the rumors with your actions!"

Jin Zhaoxuan wiped his face and decided to use his trump card: "Mom, actually I have a boyfriend."

The air was silent for three seconds.

Then Jin Meilan burst into a thunderous laugh: "Hahahaha! Son, you've used this excuse eight times now! Last time you said your girlfriend was a flight attendant, but it turned out you downloaded her photo from the internet! The time before that you said she was a lawyer, but the 'lawyer' who answered the phone said, 'Hello, this is the Anshan Tiexi District Funeral Home!'"

Jin Zhaoxuan: "..." That time, Yin Shaoqing accidentally dialed the wrong number.

"What have you come up with this time?" Kim Mi-ran sat down, crossed her legs, and gave him a "let's see how you act" look.

Jin Zhaoxuan took a deep breath: "Our company's historical consultant, surnamed Yin, is the one who video chatted with you last time."

Kim Mi-ran's smile froze on her face.

The phone under my pillow has stopped vibrating.

"That one..." Jin Meilan said slowly, "...has a nice voice, is quite fair-skinned, and has an old-fashioned clock ringing in the background?"

"right."

"The one you said is abroad, but once I clearly heard the old Anshan railway station broadcasting in the background—'Passengers, boarding for train K7591 bound for Shenyang has begun'—?"

Jin Zhaoxuan's back began to sweat. Damn it, Yin Shaoqing has recently become obsessed with using AR to recreate the Anshan Station scene in the 1930s, and even recorded ambient sounds as white noise.

“That one,” Kim Mi-ran stood up and approached step by step, “the one where you were up at three in the morning, whispering into your phone, ‘Does your wound still hurt?’ and the next day when I checked you, you didn’t have a single mosquito bite?”

Jin Zhaoxuan: "..." That time, Yin Shaoqing said that the rusty iron in the water tower illusion scratched his "spirit body".

“That one,” Kim Mi-ran had already walked to the bedside, looking down at you, “that one that suddenly appeared on your desk, written in neat calligraphy with a brush, titled ‘Notes on the Improvement of the Blast Furnace Hot Blast System (1934-1937),’ with such neat handwriting that it could be used as a calligraphy model, but the content is all Japanese mixed with traditional Chinese characters?!”

Jin Zhaoxuan was completely dumbfounded. That notebook was something Yin Shaoqing had written a few days ago on a whim; he'd locked it in the drawer after reading it—when did his mother find it?!

The phone under the pillow started to get hot—a peculiar phenomenon that Yin Shaoqing exhibits when he's nervous.

Kim Mi-ran looked at her son silently for ten seconds, then slowly reached out her hand.

Jin Zhaoxuan closed his eyes, bracing himself for the slap of fate.

The hand reached past him and pulled the phone out from under the pillow.

"mom!"

Jin Meilan skillfully entered the password—yes, she even knew her son's phone password—and opened the live stream's backend. Yin Shaoqing's pale, panicked face appeared on the screen, his hair still dripping wet, against the backdrop of the rusty interior of a water tower.

"Teacher Yin," Jin Meilan said calmly, "Good morning."

Yin Shaoqing's voice drifted from the loudspeaker, trembling like leaves in the autumn wind: "Good morning, Auntie..."

Have you eaten?

"Not...not yet..." Yin Shaoqing answered subconsciously, then realized, "No, I don't need to eat..."

"That's a pity, I brought some pickled cabbage buns." Jin Meilan actually took out a lunchbox from her bag and placed one in front of her phone, "Just smelling them is fine too."

Jin Zhaoxuan: "???"

Yin Shaoqing: "!!!"

For the next ten minutes, Kim Mi-ran engaged in a conversation that resembled a criminal interrogation:

How old are you, Teacher Yin?

"According to...according to the year of birth, one hundred and two..."

"Oh, so you're a dog? The same zodiac sign as my husband."

"Yes, yes..."

Where do you live?

“Right…right here,” Yin Shaoqing said softly, “in the water tower, the server, or Zhaoxuan’s phone.”

"Work unit?"

"Showa Steel Works... but that was in the past. Now I'm helping Zhaoxuan organize historical data."

Where are your parents?

"Died young..."

"Brothers and sisters?"

"No……"

How many boyfriends have you dated?

Yin Shaoqing almost cried: "Auntie, I haven't touched a living person since I was nineteen."

Jin Meilan nodded and turned to Jin Zhaoxuan, who was already petrified: "So, you found a 102-year-old man who has no parents, no house, no car, whose workplace has been closed for over 80 years, and who, strictly speaking, is not even a 'living person'?"

Jin Zhaoxuan forced a smile and said, "...Yes."

How much is the salary?

"..."

"What about the five social insurances and one housing fund?"

"..."

Do you receive a pension?

"Mom!" Jin Zhaoxuan broke down. "He's a ghost! What does a ghost need a retirement pension for?!"

Jin Meilan slapped him on the back of the head: "Ghosts don't need to plan for the future?! What if you get old and he's still around? Who's going to take care of whom?!"

The logic was so shocking that Jin Zhaoxuan and Yin Shaoqing both crashed.

Looking at the silly expressions of the human and the ghost, Jin Meilan suddenly burst out laughing. Her laughter grew louder and louder until she was slapping her thigh in ecstasy.

“Okay, okay…” She wiped away the tears of laughter. “Although the conditions are a bit poor, at least he’s a decent ‘person’—oh no, a decent ‘ghost’.”

She looked at her phone screen again; Yin Shaoqing was still frozen, his eyes wide open.

“Child,” Jin Meilan’s voice softened, “you really love my son?”

Yin Shaoqing snapped out of her daze, her face flushing red—though the redness on her face wasn't obvious, Jin Zhaoxuan could tell.

"I like it..." Her voice was barely audible, like a mosquito's buzz.

"What do I like about him? He's stubborn, can't cook, and always stays up late."

“He…he’s very good.” Yin Shaoqing’s voice was unusually soft in the dimly lit old house, as if afraid of disturbing something: “Jin Zhaoxuan is the best person in the world.”

The virtual figure rippled slightly in the mirror, and the flowing data points slowed down, like snowflakes gently sinking into a deep pool.

“He would take me to eat barbecue, choosing the old alleys in Tiexi that I used to frequent. As the charcoal crackled, he would point to the newly built high-rises and tell me what workshops and warehouses used to be underneath them.” Yin Shaoqing paused, his virtual eyelashes drooping. “He spoke very quickly, as if afraid I would overthink it. But I understood—he was using his own way to show me, little by little, the Anshan that I could never return to.”

The figure in the mirror raised its hand, and a faint light from its fingertips outlined the shape of the barbecue stall before slowly fading away.

“He will also…” Yin Shaoqing’s voice choked, “and get angry because I’m sad.”

Jin Zhaoxuan leaned against the door, a long ash burning from the cigarette between his fingers, which he forgot to flick off.

“Last month, I saw an old photo posted by the descendants of technician Liu Fusheng. It was a work log that their family found.” Yin Shaoqing’s voice was calm, but the data points flickered for a moment. “There was my adoptive father’s handwriting in it. He wrote that he brought me osmanthus cake that morning. I was stunned.

Kim Mi-ran listened quietly.

“He was playing games next to me, pretending not to see me. But as soon as my data fluctuated, he immediately took off his headphones.” Yin Shaoqing’s virtual figure turned towards the outside of the mirror, as if looking through the mirror at the silent man smoking. “He didn’t ask anything, just stood up and went to the balcony to smoke. When he came back, he turned the game volume up to the top of the wall and smashed the controller—but he smashed the cushion, not the floor.”

Mrs. Jin sat on the old sofa in the living room, clutching the cloth she used to wipe the sauerkraut jar in her hand until her knuckles turned white.

“I know what he’s angry about,” Yin Shaoqing said softly. “He’s angry that he can’t really pat me on the shoulder, angry that those sad things still haunt me after eighty years, angry that he…” His voice choked up again, and he paused for a long time this time. “He’s angry that no matter how hard he tries, he can’t give me a real hug.”

The cigarette ash finally broke and fell to the floor.

Mrs. Jin slowly stood up and walked to the mirror. She didn't look at Yin Shaoqing, but at her son's tense profile reflected in the mirror.

“Mom,” Jin Zhaoxuan suddenly spoke, his voice hoarse as if sandpaper had been scraped, “please don’t try to persuade me.”

"Who's trying to persuade you?" Mrs. Jin raised her hand, her rough palm pressed against the cold mirror, directly against Yin Shaoqing's chest. "I'm here to tell Xiao Yin—"

She turned her head and faced the virtual figure for the first time. Her gaze seemed to pierce through eighty years of dust and fog, looking straight into those eyes made of data, yet filled with real pain.

“My son has never been good at saying nice things. When his father passed away, he knelt in front of the funeral hall for three days without shedding a single tear. Everyone praised him for being strong.” Mrs. Jin smiled, a glimmer of light in the corner of her eyes. “Only I know that he hid under the covers in the middle of the night, covered his face with his father’s old work clothes, and cried until he couldn’t breathe—just once, just that one time.”

She withdrew her hand, then gripped the cloth tightly again: "The reason he's treating you like this isn't because he's stupid, not because he doesn't understand what 'putting your whole life down' means. It's precisely because he understands it all too well—"

Her voice suddenly became both soft and heavy, each word like a blow to the heart:

"That's why he chose you."

The room was so quiet that you could hear the hum of the server's cooling fan, regular and steady, like a faint but tenacious heartbeat.

“In this life,” Mrs. Jin walked back to the sofa and slowly sat down, “some people pray for a house full of children and grandchildren, some people pray for success and fame. What does my son pray for?” She looked at Jin Zhaoxuan, “What he prays for is—that when he also turns to ashes, there will still be someone in this world, no, there will still be an ‘existence’ that can clearly remember which year the Hun River in Anshan thawed earliest, and which year the cherry blossoms in Tiexi bloomed the most wildly.”

She paused, then said, word by word:

“And that ‘existence’ is something he personally pulled out of the ruins, held in his heart, and warmed back little by little over the next few decades of his life.”

Yin Shaoqing's virtual figure fluctuated violently, the data points like an exploding galaxy, or like tears bursting from a dam—though he could no longer shed tears.

“I’ve been trapped here for eighty years,” Yin Shaoqing’s voice became even softer, “and only he has seen me, spoken to me, and treated me as… as a ‘person’.”

The room fell silent.

Jin Zhaoxuan felt a little sore in his nose.

Kim Mi-ran remained silent for a long time, then she reached out and gently touched the phone screen—as if she were really touching someone's head.

"Silly child," she said softly, "you don't need to hide anymore."

“Mom already knew.” Jin Meilan smiled again. “From the first video call, when the clock in your background chimed—I recognize that chime. My maternal grandfather’s house used to have one, but it was destroyed during the war in 1945 and was never repaired.”

She paused for a moment: "The second time, you said you were 'overseas,' but there was a broadcast from the old Anshan station in the background—that broadcast was the version from before 1978, it's been changed long ago."

"The third time, I showed the notes you wrote to Zhaoxuan to a retired engineer from Ansteel. He said that the data in the notes matched the part that was lost in the archives—no one but the original author could have written it."

Jin Meilan looked at the stunned Yin Shaoqing on the screen, her eyes reddening: "Child, you've suffered so much."

Four words.

Four words that sound light and airy.

Yin Shaoqing's tears finally fell—although the ghost's tears turned into water vapor as soon as they left the eyes, Jin Zhaoxuan saw fine water droplets rolling down the screen.

"aunt……"

"Call me Mom."

Yin Shaoqing choked up: "Mom..."

"Yes!" Jin Meilan responded loudly, then took out a red cloth bag from her bag and stuffed it into Jin Zhaoxuan's hand, "Here, this is a change of address fee."

Jin Zhaoxuan opened it—inside was an old-fashioned brass key, tied with a faded red string.

“This is the key to our old house. It was demolished a long time ago, but I kept the key,” Jin Meilan said. “Now I’m giving it to Shaoqing—as proof. From now on, this will be your home, your home together.”

She then pulled out a brand-new smartphone, skillfully opened the live streaming app, and subscribed to a yearly membership: "Here, take this one. It's specifically for video chatting with Shaoqing. I've researched it; this phone has good heat dissipation and is suitable for long-term live streaming—don't always use your work phone, it'll damage the battery."

Jin Zhaoxuan stared at the keys and phone in his hand, his throat tightening, unable to utter a single word.

Yin Shaoqing was already crying her eyes out on the screen—if ghosts could cry their eyes out.

“Also,” Jin Meilan said seriously, “I’m making dumplings next weekend, and you two have to come. Shaoqing can use his phone; I’ll set the screen up on the table and put a bowl and chopsticks on it for you too.”

She blinked: "We don't care for those superficial things in our family. Just being 'present' is enough."

As she was leaving, Jin Meilan stopped at the door, turned back and said, "By the way, Zhaoxuan."

"Um?"

“Be nice to him,” Jin Meilan said seriously. “The 102-year-old ghost is with you, so don’t bully him—or Mom will beat you up.”

The door closed.

Jin Zhaoxuan stood in the living room, motionless for a long time. On the phone, Yin Shaoqing was still sobbing softly.

"Stop crying," Jin Zhaoxuan said hoarsely, "If you keep crying, your phone will really get wet."

"I...I can't control myself..." Yin Shaoqing wiped away her tears, "How...how can your mother be so good..."

“Because she’s my mom.” Jin Zhaoxuan laughed, walked to the sofa, lay down, and held his phone up to his face. “Now she’s your mom too.”

Yin Shaoqing burst into laughter through his tears, his pale face appearing remarkably vivid on the screen.

That night, Jin Zhaoxuan changed the title of his live stream to:

[A resounding success in meeting the parents! A Northeastern mother single-handedly resolves a love triangle between a human and a ghost!]

The comments section went completely crazy:

[So, Mrs. Kim solved the case through the ringing of the clock, the old radio broadcast, and an eighty-year-old notebook?!]

[It's a shame this investigative skill isn't in the police force!]

[The key! It's the house key! I burst into tears!]

"As long as I can stay home"—this simple statement is deadly!

[Am I the only one who noticed that Mrs. Jin subscribed to an annual membership? She's really going all out for her daughter-in-law (?)!]

Jin Zhaoxuan rarely replied to the comments: "He is my son-in-law."

Comments: [???]

So, Teacher Yin is the dominant one?!

[How come CEO Jin, who seems like such a domineering CEO, is actually a bottom?!]

[My worldview has been turned upside down! But it seems even more exciting now!]

Jin Zhaoxuan turned off the bullet comments, placed the new phone on the bedside table, and put the old phone next to the pillow—so that Yin Shaoqing could "run between the two."

"Go to sleep," Jin Zhaoxuan said softly. "We have to go to the museum tomorrow. Aren't you supposed to explain the No. 3 gust to the visitors?"

Yin Shaoqing hummed in agreement and whispered, "Goodnight, Zhaoxuan."

"good evening."

The night was gentle, and both phone screens glowed softly.

One week later, the Jin family's dumpling feast.

Jin Meilan really did make dumplings, with a three-delicacy filling. There were three sets of bowls and chopsticks on the table, and in front of the third set was the new cell phone, with Yin Shaoqing's smiling face displayed on the screen.

Aunt Li came to visit and was stunned by the scene: "Meilan, why are there only two of you eating here, when there are only three people eating?"

Jin Meilan remained calm: "My other son, who studies history, is doing research abroad and can't come back—but I need him to participate in family activities, so it's a video call."

"Oh, what a filial son!" Aunt Li exclaimed. "This child is so handsome, just like you!"

"Of course, he's my son!" Jin Meilan said proudly.

After Aunt Li left, Yin Shaoqing whispered on the screen, "Mom, I don't actually look like you..."

"I say it looks like it, so it looks like it!" Jin Meilan picked up a dumpling and said into the phone, "Here, Mom will feed you—ah—"

Yin Shaoqing cooperated by letting out an "Ah".

Watching this scene, Jin Zhaoxuan suddenly felt that the most absurd yet happiest thing in his life was probably:

Your biological mother accepted your ghost boyfriend and even bought him a yearly membership to her live stream.

And the ghost that had been dead for eighty years was on the phone screen, laughing like a child who had finally returned home.

postscript:

Since then, Ms. Jin Meilan has changed her phone wallpaper to a "group photo" of the three of them—Jin Zhaoxuan on the left, her on the right, and Yin Shaoqing's smiling face in the middle of the phone screen.

Someone asked, "Who is that young man in the middle?"

Jin Meilan always answered with pride, "My youngest son is a historian; he's incredibly knowledgeable!"

Sometimes, love doesn't require understanding all the supernatural phenomena.

All you need is a heart that is willing to accept.

—And a smartphone with a full year's subscription and good heat dissipation.

(over)