In 2147, Chen Xiulian was 20 years old and had already started working at a factory. Her family had four children at the time. Her older brother needed to study, so her mother sent her to work in the factory. She worked there for two years and was very popular because she was not only beautiful but also very efficient. The only issue was that she was too tall, so she still hadn't found a partner.

Her mother took Chen Xiulian on blind dates everywhere. She went a few times, sitting on a chair like a freshly picked vegetable, being picked over and scrutinized. Chen Xiulian felt she had skills and could endure hardship, and she didn't want to suffer such indignities, so she refused to go anymore. Her mother grew anxious and tried to drag her along, but she simply wouldn't cooperate.

It was that year that the factory hired new workers, and a group of young men arrived. Among them was one named He Zhiguo, who was handsome and loved to have fun. Someone played matchmaker, and Chen Xiulian met He Zhiguo at a dinner party. Chen Xiulian's first impression of He Zhiguo was very good. She had a shy personality and would always blush when talking to people. He Zhiguo not only knew how to liven up the atmosphere but also always took care of her. The two gradually became familiar with each other. Every time Chen Xiulian worked overtime, He Zhiguo would stay with her. When Chen Xiulian was sick, He Zhiguo would show her great care and concern.

However, for some reason, He Zhiguo never said anything about making their relationship official. When others asked him about it, he would just grin foolishly and not deny it. Chen Xiulian thought it was because they hadn't spent enough time together and didn't know each other well enough, so she would just have to wait a little longer. Six months later, it was He Zhiguo's birthday. He invited people out for a celebratory dinner and made Chen Xiulian drink a lot of alcohol. When the party ended, Chen Xiulian wanted to go back with her female friend, but He Zhiguo said there was no need, that he wasn't drunk and could take her home. As it turned out, he took her to his own home.

Chen Xiulian would never forget the fragments of that night. She wanted to go home, but He Zhiguo said no. She was too drunk to stand steady and couldn't pull the door open. He Zhiguo half-carried, half-dragged her from behind. She repeatedly said, "I want to go home." At first, He Zhiguo would respond, but later he just ignored her words. He dragged Chen Xiulian into the room and threw her onto the bed. When Chen Xiulian recalled it later, her memory became fragmented from this point on, turning from images into pure pain. All she could see was the lamp in He Zhiguo's rented room.

A dead fly was stuck to the lamp, swinging back and forth.

Chen Xiulian felt nauseated. She couldn't bear it and vomited loudly amidst the struggle and beating. Later, she would have countless dreams about that dead fly, as if it were the one crawling over her body. She passed out and came to again. The alcohol had worn off, and only the pain remained.

It was from that night that Chen Xiulian learned just how long a night could be. When dawn broke, she thought it was over. But much later, she finally realized that it was only the beginning.

Chen Xiulian curled up in the corner of the bed and said to He Zhiguo, "I'm going to call the police."

He Zhiguo threw some paper on the floor and replied, "Are you crazy? We're dating. Sleeping together was consensual. It's not against the law."

Chen Xiulian didn't believe him. She went to the township's supervisory office with her bruises and said, "I was raped. I want to report He Zhiguo." The staff at the supervisory office were all acquaintances. One of them turned to look at her and said, "Who are you reporting? You and He Zhiguo have been dating for a while now." Chen Xiulian said they weren't dating, but no one listened to her. She sat in the supervisory office from morning till night. He Zhiguo came to find her, took her hand, and said, "Why are you still throwing a tantrum?" Her mother also came, took her hand, and said, "Go home and argue with him there."

Chen Xiulian felt the world was so small; overnight, everyone was taking her by the hand. They said they understood. They said that's just how things are. They said, if you didn't want to, why did you go with He Zhiguo? If you didn't want to, why did you go to his birthday party? If you didn't want to, why didn't you resist?

Why didn't you resist?

Why the hell didn't you resist?

Chen Xiulian wanted to scream, to shout, to throw a hysterical tantrum! She wanted to rip off these identical faces to see if they were humans or demons underneath. But there was nothing she could do. She could only snatch her hand back, point at He Zhiguo, and say, "I'm reporting him for rape."

He Zhiguo knelt before Chen Xiulian, as if she had just made a declaration of love that moved him to tears, and he even wanted to marry her. Her mother grasped Chen Xiulian's hand again, saying with pity, "My daughter is just stubborn. Young couples often bicker like this."

Chen Xiulian finally burst into tears. What saddened her was that she had lived to be 20 only to discover that she spoke a different language, one that nobody could understand. In an instant, she became an alien species, thrown into the cracks beneath their feet, with no one of her own kind.

Her mother took her home. He Zhiguo followed them in, saying, "I want to marry Xiulian." He spoke to Chen Xiulian's mother with great sincerity, even factoring in his family's small convenience store, saying it would all be under Xiulian's management in the future. The two were moved by each other and hit it off immediately, as if this were a business transaction and Chen Xiulian was the object being weighed and priced.

In this farce, Chen Xiulian gradually realized her own strangeness. It was she who was too strange. He Zhiguo was the boyfriend she had never verbally acknowledged. The thing that pinned her down that night was just a fly. She leaned against the window at home, watching the sun rise and set. She couldn't sleep at night. If she closed her eyes, she would just contradict herself. Contradiction was too painful, so she could only force her eyes wide open and make herself accept the script given to her by fate.

In the winter of 2147, at 20 years old, Chen Xiulian married He Zhiguo. She slept in the bed from her dreams, seeing that familiar lamp and the fly that lingered in her mind. He Zhiguo could use her. Her body did not belong to her; her eyes, her mouth, her thoughts—none of them belonged to her.

There was a question Chen Xiulian pondered for decades. What exactly was she? Was she a person? No one gave her any respect. When He Zhiguo drank with others, he would get drunk and talk glibly about his 'great achievements.' He was so confident, treating his wife like a badge of honor, yet he also felt she wasn't presentable enough.

When He Zhiguo beat Chen Xiulian, it was his 'way of managing his wife'—a dutiful wife is produced under the rod, after all! He thought he was so mighty, comparable to a hero from the North-South War, making an outstanding contribution to the Northern Front Alliance by stabilizing the family in the rear. It was a pity no one came to commend him, so he talked about it online. He saw himself as a cultured man, able to elicit countless cheers from his 'brothers' with just a few words.

After the war, the economy in the Docking Area declined. A large number of steel plants went bankrupt, and He Zhiguo's small workshop closed down as well. His unpredictable temper became more and more pronounced, reaching the point of paranoia. By then, Chen Xiulian had Qinqin, and the mother and daughter slept downstairs. One day, she woke up in the middle of the night, turned her head, and saw He Zhiguo sitting by the door, just his head showing, staring at her.

Chen Xiulian thought He Zhiguo was sick in the head. She didn't want him near Qinqin, so she sat by Qinqin's bed all night long. During the day, she worked to support Qinqin, willing to do anything. Qinqin was very sensible. Every day after school, she would lie on a table in the cafeteria to do her homework, waiting for Chen Xiulian to get off work. Chen Xiulian finally felt normal again; Qinqin was her link to the world. She hid money, saving it up piece by piece, wanting to send Qinqin to school, wanting to take Qinqin and leave. The two of them could go anywhere.

But He Zhiguo shattered Chen Xiulian's dream with a drunk driving incident.

......

It started to rain just before dawn, the raindrops drumming urgently on the sheet metal cover outside the small window. Liu Chen was woken up by the noise. His cheek was pressed against the floor, his nostrils filled with the musty smell of the basement. A few dogs were barking. Liu Chen heard the sound of a door opening.

"Get up." Chen Xiulian turned on the light and squatted down to pat Liu Chen's face.

Liu Chen had spent the night in the damp basement, and his head was splitting. He shivered involuntarily when she patted him, restraining the urge to pull away for fear of provoking Chen Xiulian. He answered in a hoarse voice, "I'm... I'm awake."

Chen Xiulian held a wooden stick used for moving things. She poked the stick out the window, propped up the sheet metal cover, and pulled it over to cover the window.

The sound of the rain became muffled, like hot oil sizzling under a lid, and Liu Chen was the meat in that oil. Liu Chen's glasses had fallen off somewhere; right now, the walls were just a blur. He moved his eyes. His throat was on fire, an aftereffect of his screaming last night.

"I thought about it all night," Chen Xiulian said, putting down the stick and picking up a bowl of food. She ate as she spoke. "Your original intentions were good, right? I think it's great that you reported on those things, but some of the things you said were very..." she searched for the right word, "like He Zhiguo."

Liu Chen had been beaten into a daze last night, and now his back was burning. He moved his eyes, but all he could see were Chen Xiulian's shoes.

Chen Xiulian was wearing her own shoes today and was planning to go to work later. She ate quickly; her bowl was full of meat. This meat had been piling up in the fridge and would spoil if not eaten soon. She said, "You have a real talent for writing. I even wanted to call you before. Is the number you put on your homepage real?"

Liu Chen filtered for keywords. His dry lips moved as he answered, "It's... it's real."

"You should have said so earlier," Chen Xiulian said, setting her bowl and chopsticks aside. "I thought it was fake."

Liu Chen felt his chest was too constricted; the ropes around his body kept him from breathing properly. He scraped against the floor, shifting his body slightly.

Chen Xiulian watched Liu Chen squirm like a maggot and asked, "Have you ever called me?" As if worried he wouldn't understand, she deliberately held a Communicator in front of his eyes and waved it. "This. Have you ever called it?"

Liu Chen shook his head quickly, his face damp. When he opened his mouth, the damp, musty smell rushed in, as if trying to swallow him whole.

"Oh," Chen Xiulian put the Communicator away. "So it wasn't you. You know 'Snow in May,' right? You two have chatted. I saw it in the chat room." She sounded a little disappointed. "When he called me, I thought it was you, wanting to help me. I've always wanted to talk to you, to talk about my life."

"We..." Liu Chen frantically swallowed to wet his throat. "We can talk now."

Chen Xiulian listened to the sound of the rain, thinking for a long time. After a while, she said, "No. You're not interesting either. Your reports are all lies."

She stood up and cleared away the clutter on the table. There were two cleavers in a knife block. She took them out and pressed them against a whetstone to sharpen them. She had become skilled at this, had learned to solve problems with cleavers.

The grinding machine and saw He Zhiguo had left behind were worn out.

Hearing the sound of the knife being sharpened, a sob slowly escaped Liu Chen's throat. He sobbed violently, smearing tears and snot all over his face, looking both pathetic and wretched. He rubbed his forehead against the ground, choking out, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! But Huo Qingjun, Teacher Huo's case... I only reported on it after the verdict was officially announced." His sobs grew louder. "You can't blame me for this, really, I just followed the court's decision."

But Chen Xiulian ignored him, stubbornly sharpening her knife in the dim light.

......

Rain beat against the glass window. In the interrogation room, Cheng Lixin was crying and making a scene, saying to Piao Lin, "I really don't know any murderer!"

Yan Junxun leaned against the glass, staring at Cheng Lixin. His thoughts were like the rain, beating rapidly inside his head, soaking the old and new details over and over as if trying to draw out a hint of the murderer.

"Yang Yu is in 240," Jiang Lian said, walking over to Yan Junxun. "She said she has a few 'sisters' she works with, two of whom work at the industrial park near the Puli Residential Community. Jue, give Junxun the details."

"I've checked the information on these two friends of Yang Yu. They are both unregistered residents who haven't passed the regional audit, and the entry/exit IDs they use daily are not their own. One is named Lin Hui, a cafeteria lady at the industrial park's steel plant, who uses her son's ID. The other is named Chen Xiulian, a coke transport driver at the industrial park's steel plant, who uses the ID of her husband, He Zhiguo." Jue adjusted the light screen and continued, speaking to Yan Junxun, "Lin Hui normally works without holidays, doesn't interact much with Yang Yu privately, and has never covered her shifts. Only Chen Xiulian has done cleaning work for Yang Yu in the past six months and also knows where Yang Yu lives."

Yan Junxun's eyelids felt heavy. He said, "Got it."

"You don't look very well." Jue paused for a moment before adding, "We tried to contact He Zhiguo, but no one is answering the call."

A surveillance image of Chen Xiulian in front of the weigh station appeared on the light screen. She was waiting for the weigh station staff to weigh her load of coke and fill out a record slip.

"His vehicle has been consistently used by Chen Xiulian."

Yan Junxun looked at Chen Xiulian in the surveillance footage. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes were deep, and her reactions seemed a bit slow. She had a very earnest expression as she listened to the staff member speak.

Yan Junxun thought.

This is how she must have looked when she struck up a conversation with Huo Qingjun. She looks so normal, so approachable, even a little like a pushover.

"But He Zhiguo moved in 2156. At that time, the Docking Area had already begun pre-war preparations, and the real-time updating of resident information was neglected. Yang Yu said she doesn't know where they live, as Chen Xiulian never invites friends over to her house."

"She might have changed the license plate, but she couldn't have changed the vehicle," Yan Junxun said wearily. "You can ask the steel plant for their surveillance footage. Figure out her driving route, and you'll know where she lives."

"Yes, that's what we were thinking. But the tricky part is, the steel plant is refusing to provide surveillance footage or any information related to their truck drivers," Jue said. "Because they have too many unregistered residents."

"Then you guys should figure out a way," Shi Shanyan said strangely, the stick of his lollipop still in his mouth. "Is Yan Junxun the Supervisory Bureau's negotiator? Jiang Lian, go get 'em."

Yan Junxun looked at the window again. The rain streaked across the glass, making it look shattered. He kept feeling like there was a steel bullet rolling around in his head and that there was still a problem somewhere. But the madman, the high-speed chase, and the sound of the rain crowded his mind, leaving him no room to think any further.