Flower Museum Headless Dismemberment Case (1)

Chen Jierong took a taxi to the shopping mall in the city center. There was a food store on the first floor of the mall. When she walked down the stairs from the first floor, she could already see various brands of food. She took a few steps, smelled the strong aroma, and successfully found the restaurant she had agreed to meet.

This is a Western restaurant. It is lunchtime and there are already quite a few people inside. Chen Jierong put her shoulder bag in place, pinned her messy hair, and opened the door.

After consulting with a waiter, she was taken to a small open-air box in the back. A man in his thirties in a suit and tie stood up from his seat with a smile on his face and greeted her.

Chen Jierong responded generously with a smile: "You are Mr. Qin."

Mr. Qin has thick eyebrows, big eyes, a broad face and a square mouth. He is wearing a high-end navy blue suit of excellent quality, a dark red tie, and a very polite demeanor.

He looked at her. Chen Jierong had changed into a white long skirt after get off work today, and wore a white coat on the outside. She had long hair, an oval face, delicate features, and light red lips that added a touch of sexiness to her elegant temperament.

She smiled without getting tired of it, and had a calm demeanor, which made Qin Shuo realize that she had high taste and quality.

He made a humble invitation gesture, "Miss Chen invites you, my humble name is Qin Shuo."

"Hello, nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too. Miss Chen, you must be hungry. Please sit down quickly." Qin Shuo waited for her to sit down before he sat down.

"What would you like to drink?" he asked her, tilting his head slightly.

"Well, Mr. Qin, let's order directly."

"You see," Qin Shuo smiled, "I was negligent. Waiter!" He shouted to the side.

Chen Jierong had a good first impression of Qin Shuo. He looked quite elegant. Although she knew in advance that he was a businessman, he was still a little different from ordinary businessmen. This reminded her of a word, "Confucian businessman".

While waiting for the food to be served, Qin Shuo said, "Ms. Chen looks very young."

"Really?"

"Twenty-three or twenty-four at most, with a very good temperament."

"Thank you." Although Chen Jierong knew that he was being a bit boastful, she was still very happy to receive other people's praise.

"You remind me of a flower."

"What flower?"

"In the depth of winter, all flowers seem to stay, but I am alone facing the icy beauty, feeling sad. Narcissus, also known as the Fragrant Concubine of Luo River and the Fairy of Lingbo."

"Thank you, Mr. Qin. I really learned a lot."

It was rare for Chen Jierong to be appreciated like this and she smiled brightly. She was usually too busy with work to have such an easy time. Her impression of Qin Shuo became better.

Her mother Li Jingfen had been busy arranging this blind date for more than a month. She said that you could tell just by looking at the person: he came from a scholarly family and was a talent in finance.

She doesn't like blind dates. This is her third time. If her mother hadn't kept urging her, she wouldn't be sitting here.

She didn't have much impulse towards marriage. In fact, sometimes she thought that she could live her whole life without getting married, but her family didn't allow it. She knew what she needed to do.

Therefore, if she meets the right person, she would consider marrying him. It doesn't matter whether this person is a financial genius or not. As long as they can live together and support each other's careers, that's enough.

These thoughts have slowly grown in the past two years. In the past few years, she was very disgusted with blind dates and refused to fall in love. But when she saw her mother's white hair that time, she burst into tears. Her mother was getting older and her father's health was getting worse, so she had to make some considerations.

The dishes were served quickly. Qin Shuo was very polite and used a serving chopstick to pick up some braised pork ribs for her. "Eat more. You look quite thin. Eat more nutrition."

"Thank you, Mr. Qin. You don't have to be so polite."

"Call me Qin Shuo, it will be easier to talk this way."

"Yeah." Chen Jierong nodded. She was not good at socializing, but she was quite eloquent. However, Qin Shuo seemed to be more sociable.

"Jie Rong, does your work smell like disinfectant?"

"Yeah, right." Chen Jierong admitted that disinfectant is a necessity in her life.

“I actually like this taste too.”

"Hmm?" Chen Jierong rarely heard people like the smell of disinfectant.

"My mother was seriously ill before, and I stayed with her in the hospital for more than a month. After she recovered, I gradually got used to the taste and even had a lingering feeling."

Chen Jierong smiled, feeling his filial piety, but also felt that something was a little wrong, but she didn't think too much about it.

"But this smell will get annoying if you smell it too much. The flower museum in the city will open next Saturday, and I got two tickets in advance."

Qin Shuo took out a ticket from his pocket and handed it to the empty table in front of Chen Jierong. "Jierong, please come with me to see the flower show and smell the flowers. There are daffodils there, as beautiful as you."

Chen Jierong picked up the ticket and looked at it. The time was 9:00 a.m. on March 26th. She had heard of this flower museum. It was a key project of the city and should be the most grand flower show in Jinyang City. People in the city or surrounding cities must know about it. It was just because she was always immersed in work that she didn't know much about it.

She kept smiling and accepted his invitation.

"Jie Rong, you don't usually work night shifts, right?"

"Not necessarily. Sometimes I have to stay up all night to do autopsies when there is a case."

"Yes, if you encounter an emergency, you really have to save the dying and the injured."

Chen Jierong paused. She felt that Qin Shuo didn't know her true information. She didn't know how her mother introduced her. She was a straightforward person and didn't want any misunderstandings between them. So she asked, "Does Mr. Qin know my profession?"

"A surgeon at a key city hospital."

As expected, Li Jingfen still didn't explain it clearly, just like the previous two times. Chen Jierong said formally: "Maybe my mother didn't explain it clearly. In fact, I am a forensic doctor."

"Forensic doctor?" Qin Shuo's easy-going face was slightly stunned.

He seemed to understand the meaning behind the word. He regained control of his facial expression and smiled: "If I understand correctly, it is and..."

"You got it right. My job is to deal with corpses."

Qin Shuo's Adam's apple rolled, and he slowly put down his chopsticks. He leaned back slightly from his previous forward leaning posture, and moved a little further away from her.

The atmosphere suddenly became quiet, even a little solemn.

"It's like this." Qin Shuo forced a smile, "I really don't know much about this industry, so don't mind. Beauties like you shouldn't come into contact with..." He seemed reluctant to say that word.

Chen Jierong has never been shy about her job. "In fact, I am the chief forensic doctor. In our police station, I have to conduct a comprehensive examination and autopsy on the corpse."

Qin Shuo's sitting posture has become a little awkward. Perhaps this has a lot to do with his cognitive bias in life. Maybe in his life, forensic medicine is a very distant profession.

Chen Jierong understood him, so she didn't have any emotional aversion.

"Mr. Qin, is there anything else you want to know about our forensic doctor?" In fact, she would try to make the other party not so passive and awkward.

"I... I don't really care. I've seen it on TV..."

"Perhaps what you have seen are some mosaic props. What we need to touch are real corpses, including highly decayed giants and dismembered corpses..."

Qin Shuo suddenly stretched out a hand, looking uncomfortable, "No need to say more..."

Chen Jierong quickly stopped describing. Perhaps she had been exposed to such things so often that she thought she was describing a trivial matter that she was accustomed to.

"Ms. Chen, I..." He patted his chest, "I feel a little uncomfortable. I will..."

"It's OK."

Qin Shuo swallowed again, picked up the wet towel on the table and wiped his palms repeatedly, as if today's meeting made him feel particularly bad.

"Sorry." Qin Shuo walked past her quickly without even looking at her.

Chen Jierong was still hungry, so she took a few more bites of the braised spareribs and gently wiped her greasy red lips. "Waiter, check out."

After another unpleasant parting, Chen Jierong took a taxi back home. When her mother Li Jingfen saw her, she immediately smiled and walked up to her, holding her wrist, "What's wrong? Tell me quickly."

Chen Jierong was both angry and amused, "Mom, did you tell people that I'm a surgeon at the city hospital?"

Li Jingfen knew that today's event would most likely not work out. She suppressed her smile and said, "If I don't say that, I won't agree to see you."

"You should have known that a long time ago." Chen Jierong remembered that she didn't mention it during her last blind date. They were having a good chat, but the other person found out her occupation and they never contacted each other again.

"That's better than breaking up at the first meeting. Think about it, relationships need to be nurtured. You're so pretty and have a good personality, how could they not like you? Talk for a while, hold hands, kiss..."

Chen Jierong changed her little leather shoes and curled her lips helplessly after hearing her mother's description.

"I'm right," Li Jingfen said confidently, "He held your hand and kissed you, how can he deny it? You're a virgin, how dare he do that?"

"So," Chen Jierong held Li Jingfen's hand, "If you force others to submit in this way and your marriage is unhappy in the future, who can you blame?"

"That's better than not getting married. You know you're already 28 this year." Li Jingfen said with a worried look on her face. "Go ask if there are still singles at this age. Your college classmate Qiao Juan works in a hospital and her child is in elementary school this year. The last time she saw me, she asked about your current situation, but I was too embarrassed to tell her."

She continued, "You said that the people in the company are together every day and it's awkward to see each other. The people outside the company care about your work, so you have to think of a way..."

Chen Jierong understood Li Jingfen very well, but she didn't want to listen to her nagging, so she could only say, "I understand. Next time, tell him I'm a forensic doctor. If he agrees to meet me, I'll definitely go over to him. As long as someone likes me, I'll marry him."

Li Jingfen knew her daughter was just saying this out of anger, so she stopped urging her and consoled her, "Okay, don't blame me. I'm doing this for your own good."

Chen Jierong smiled, giving Li Jingfen some reassurance, indicating that she felt the same way about wanting to get married.

Returning to the room, she closed the door and sat at the table. She sighed softly. There was a window right above the table, facing the night outside. The moonlight was hazy and there was blue mist in the air. It was very beautiful, but all this seemed to have little to do with her.

After sitting for a long time, she felt a little heavy-hearted, and she didn't know what was bothering her. She slowly opened the bottom layer of drawers and took out a cloth bag from the inside.

Whenever she felt depressed, she would turn the cloth bag over and carefully pull out the envelopes inside. There were four letters in total, but she was deeply impressed by the weight of each letter and the words inside.

She had been trying to forget it all, but she still wanted to take a look.

When she opened the first letter, her fingers trembled slightly.

The letter had been folded countless times, but it felt like it was being opened for the first time.

"Jie Rong, I am very happy to write this letter to you. Today is my second year as a criminal police officer. My master and I have solved another case. Please don't flatter me too much. Last time at the scene, I saw you again. You looked better than when you first came to the police station..."

"Jie Rong, I am very happy to write you a second letter..."

"Jie Rong, I am very happy to write you the third letter..."

"Jie Rong, I am very happy to write you my fourth letter. Today is my third year as a criminal police officer. I really have a lot to say to you. The case I am working on is a bit tricky, so I don't have time to write to you. I hope you can understand... Every time I think of your appearance, I am very satisfied. I want to marry you and make you my wife. You said you wanted to stabilize your work first. I will wait for you, and I will always wait for you..."

Chen Jierong slowly closed the letter, but before she could do so, her tears dripped onto the letter paper.

The letter paper had already turned yellow, and the tears just fell on the bottom of the letter and soaked into the signature on the letter.

She quickly wiped away the tears on her name with her fingers, fearing that it would be soaked.

The name "Xiang Jie" became clear again.

She remembered that she was the one who examined Xiang Jie's body herself.