Ai Ying was fair and wore two braids. When she walked in and saw Old Qian, her face reddened and she gripped the sides of her pants tightly with both hands.
Old Qian’s face darkened even more and he looked scary.
“Please sit!” Old Qian pointed at the chair opposite. He had tried to make his voice softer but the girl was still trembling when she sat down.
The first few questions were the same as before, Old Qian only changed to a different style of questioning and repeated the questions.
“I heard that you’re her closest friend, do you know if she had any interaction with people out of school? Did she know anyone outside?” The last question was the one he intended to ask.
The girl’s eyes moved around a few times, after the first few questions she was no longer so afraid. Even though she still didn’t dare look directly at Old Qian, her voice was not trembling anymore.
The girl started shaking her head, but suddenly she raised her head and her eyes lit up, “Before this I had never seen her interact with anyone from outside, but after the first semester of Year 3, she had an older cousin who came to visit her frequently.”
“Older cousin?”
“Mm hmm, I saw him once at the school entrance. He was tall and handsome and treated her well. He often bought her clothes and food.”
Old Qian immediately wrote down a few words in his notepad: Older cousin, tall, handsome, bought food and clothes.
Then their relationship was not just cousins!
“If you saw this person, would you be able to recognize him?”
The girl nodded.
“Did she have any conflict with anyone?”
“No way, Liu Wen Juan was timid, as long as you didn’t cross her line she would just tolerate it,” Ai Ying would never believe that someone had a grudge against Liu Wen Juan, she was very soft-spoken and never even raised her voice once.
“On the days leading to her death, were there any changes in her emotions? Did she say that she didn’t want to live anymore, or anything that sounded suicidal?”
Old Qian just finished speaking but Ai Ying already shook her head fiercely, “No, not at all!” She was very sure of this, “She even said that she wanted to study hard to pass the pre-selection exam and get into university. She was a very quiet person, I never thought that she would commit suicide. She was even afraid of a mouse, I never expected… If I had detected it earlier, I would have talked to her.”
Old Qian listened carefully and jotted some notes down. There were some discrepancies.
After asking a few more questions, Old Qian let Ai Ying leave.
Old Qian continued asking the other four who lived in the same dormitory. Apart from the mention of the cousin brother, everyone said similar things about her character and hobbies.
The last one who went in was Su Mian.
Su Mian and he met before, Wei Zhen Hui had also met him.
“Director Qian!” Su Mian walked in and called out to him.
“Su Mian!” Old Qian stood up, he still felt guilty thinking about the time when Su Mian almost got kidnapped by some gangsters. The old captain asked him to help take care of her, but on the night he had to go out and asked the deputy director to look after her, something happened.
“We were lucky that you didn’t get hurt last time, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to face the captain,” Old Qian saw Su Mian in the police station last time but he didn’t have time to talk to her, this was a good opportunity to do so.
“Good people are protected by the gods, thanks to the big white dog last time. Right, you were looking for the dog after that, did you find it? Has it been brought to justice?” Su Mian already knew the answer, she would be surprised if they had actually found it.
Upon mentioning this incident, Old Qian felt some regrets, “Don’t mention the dog anymore, it took two lives. Last time we went everywhere to exterminate dogs, now almost all the dogs nearby have been exterminated !”
