Chapter 3

“We’re also very confused,” Yan Dongcheng paused. “So please think it over carefully again, before Bai Yong left home, was there anything else, any detail you may have missed before?”

“Mm, he booked his plane ticket two months in advance...”

“Did he say he planned to go with friends?”

“He never mentioned it.”

“Was he usually someone who went everywhere alone?”

“No, wherever he went, he’d call up a whole group of friends. He wouldn’t go alone.”

“So him traveling abroad by himself, you didn’t think that was strange?”

“I was the one who thought it was strange!” Sun Yiyi stamped her foot anxiously. “To tell you the truth, I asked a classmate of mine who works at a travel agency to secretly help me check the flight list. I compared one name after another, and didn’t find any woman Bai Yong might have known.”

“You were worried he had another woman outside? Any signs?”

“There weren’t any signs...” Sun Yiyi said hesitantly. “He came home every day, only sometimes he seemed absent-minded, and when he got home he would just stay in his audio room.”

“Audio room? Is it convenient to show us?”

Sun Yiyi nodded, got to her feet, and led the guests toward the hallway at the end of the living room, pushing open one of the room doors.

Inside the room, besides the window space left open facing the door, all the other walls were fitted with brown solid-wood shelves, filled with all kinds of records. From vinyl records to CDs, there were even old-fashioned videotapes and cassette tapes.

A glass partition had been set up in the middle of the room, inside which was a full set of professional audio-visual equipment, equivalent to a small recording studio.

“Bai Yong recorded records himself?” Wang Rui picked up the disc on the black control console, on which the two words “Bai Yong” were scrawled in white marker.

“Yes, he was a singer, and sometimes he also helped friends record.” Sun Yiyi answered.

Wang Rui put the disc into the player, and a rich guitar sound flowed through the air, the turns lightly picked by fingertips, tremulously tugging at the listener’s heart.

Expensive professional speakers sounded worlds apart from ordinary ones.

After the guitar intro, Bai Yong’s singing rang out, carrying the hoarseness of years of running around nightclubs, and also the polish of rich singing technique.

Yan Dongcheng pictured Bai Yong holding a microphone, pressing it close to his lips when singing short notes, slowly pulling it away when singing long notes, singing familiar old songs skillfully beneath the colorful lights of the entertainment bar.

However, the disc he had recorded was a somewhat different song.

Who loves listening to autumn cicadas, and hates autumn cicadas,
Plants pomegranates, yet yearns for xinlan.
Pomegranate blossoms fall all over the water’s edge,
The petals that have cried,
Are like my shattered wine cup,
Unable to be restored to their original shape.

Who loves listening to autumn cicadas, and hates autumn cicadas,
Releases a kite, yet yearns for the kite.
The line of the big fish kite
Is the resentment held in your hand.
A heart-wrenching sob,
Flying all over the sky.

I cannot sleep night after night,
Piecing together the fragments of your crying.
High-flying geese, passing years,
You said we would never meet again.
Who loves listening to autumn cicadas, and hates autumn cicadas...

Yan Dongcheng listened quietly to the song. Instinctively, he felt that the lyrics contained many auditory images, listening to autumn cicadas, shattered, sobbing, the fragments of crying... The lyricist was someone very sensitive to sound.

“Did Bai Yong write this song himself?”

“He only wrote this one song,” Sun Yiyi said with a disdainful curl of her lip. “He wrote it in high school, and even now, at his age, he still sings it all the time.”

“Were the lyrics written by him too?”

“They should have been. I think, in student days, how could there be so much sorrow and resentment? It was all just making trouble for nothing, forcing ourselves to be sad, right?”

Sun Yiyi made no attempt to hide that she quite disliked this song Bai Yong had created.

“Did Bai Yong accompany himself on guitar?” Yan Dongcheng’s gaze swept around the room, there was no guitar in the room.

“The guitar accompaniment was Old Liu,” Sun Yiyi rolled her eyes. “Bai Yong’s elementary school classmate.”

“A good friend of Bai Yong’s? Did the two of them often make music together?”

“I can’t really say whether they were good or not. Anyway, they were pretty contradictory. When they were on good terms, they were inseparable, and when they fell out, they talked about cutting off ties. That year when we got married and invited Old Liu, Old Liu wouldn’t even come. Bai Yong swore up and down that he would never talk to that guy again, but not long after, the two of them made up again!”

“Did Bai Yong have any other friends like that, who would break up one moment and make up the next?”

“No one like that, just Old Liu! Bai Yong got along very harmoniously with other friends, he was very easygoing, everybody said he was popular.”

“After Bai Yong disappeared, did Old Liu look for him?”

“He called me twice last year, asking whether Bai Yong had come back.”

“Did he know Bai Yong had gone to Hokkaido?”

“He definitely knew, Bai Yong told him everything!”

Wang Rui used Bai Yong’s recording equipment to copy the disc Bai Yong had recorded himself, as evidence.

After the copying was finished, Yan Dongcheng and Wang Rui took their leave.

Sun Yiyi somehow took out a tissue and kept dabbing at the corners of her eyes. Her sorrow at losing a loved one came slowly, then all at once.

“Please see yourselves out!” Yan Dongcheng and Wang Rui stepped out of the room and hurried downstairs.

“Take care on the way, Officer Yan...” Sun Yiyi’s voice carried a sobbing tone as she poked her head out from the door, watching the guests’ backs as they disappeared.

After walking out of the apartment building, fresh air hit them in the face, carrying the mixed scent of oleander and hibiscus. On the hoods and roofs of the cars parked between the buildings, fine pale stamens and petals had fallen all over them.

“From what Sun Yiyi means,” Wang Rui took out his car key and opened the door, “that Old Liu who played guitar and Bai Yong had an unusual relationship.”

“Friendship between men can sometimes be a bit childish.” Yan Dongcheng smiled, revealing white teeth.

“They were probably the kind of friends who had known each other since childhood, what do you call it, childhood friends?”

“Mm, Old Liu should have been Bai Yong’s best friend.”

Wang Rui drove out of the residential complex gate. The workday was already over, and there were few people and cars on the road. The sky was darkening, thick clouds were churning in the air, as if they were brewing a heavy rain.

The car headed straight for Dingshan Art Park in the suburbs.

Old Liu’s studio was on the outer edge of the art park, with a grassy hillside behind it, and in the square open space in front of the door there was an old Harley motorcycle parked.

Yan Dongcheng opened the car door and got out, looked at his watch, it was not yet ten. Music people who stayed up late usually had not gotten up yet at this hour.

The studio was a steel-frame brick structure building, and in the tea-colored steel-framed glass windows at the front, several cloth curtains of different colors hung crookedly, as if a few bedsheets had been grabbed in a hurry to serve as curtains.

Wang Rui knocked on the door, and there was no sound from inside, so his hand knocked harder.

The surroundings were dead quiet. The steel-framed glass door suddenly opened, and a man with sunken cheeks and a face gaunt with thinness lifted his chin covered in black stubble, coldly looking at the visitors.

He had obviously just woken up, his hair sticking up in a mess on top of his head, and the thin shirt on his body was wrinkled, as if he had slept in it.

“What do you want?”

“Hello, we’re looking for Old Liu.”

“I’m Old Liu, what about it!”

“We are from the municipal bureau criminal investigation detachment, and we want to ask you about Bai Yong.”

“Bai Yong?” Old Liu’s hostility instantly disappeared, replaced by an indescribable dejection. “Come in.”

He turned and walked into the room, his shoulders hanging lazily, his neck thrust forward, making him look a little hunched.

The studio had a cold, industrial style, with iron stairs, black iron tables and chairs, and the walls painted dark gray. The only color was the dozens of guitars of all kinds hanging on the wall.

“Any news about Bai Yong?” Old Liu indicated for the guests to sit down, lit a cigarette himself, and casually threw the white cigarette case to Wang Rui.

“We don’t smoke, thank you.” Wang Rui politely waved it away.

“Bai Yong’s remains have been found.” Yan Dongcheng looked at Old Liu without expression.

The fingers of Old Liu’s hand holding the cigarette suddenly trembled, as if they had been burned by fire.

“Bai Yong, he really... died?” He widened his eyes in disbelief.

“The body was DNA tested and confirmed to be Bai Yong.”

“He really went to Hokkaido? That idiot, I tried to persuade him how many times, told him not to go, told him not to go...” Old Liu’s voice grew louder and louder, carrying a hoarse sobbing tone. “What was there that he couldn’t get over, that he had to take this step...”

Yan Dongcheng and Wang Rui, seated side by side, looked at each other at the same time. Regarding Bai Yong’s death, this elementary school classmate of Bai Yong’s seemed to be even sadder than Bai Yong’s wife.

“Please accept my condolences.” Wang Rui said softly.

Yan Dongcheng did not speak, and quietly waited for Old Liu’s emotions to settle.

After a long while, Yan Dongcheng asked, “You and Bai Yong were elementary school classmates, same age?”

“I was born in the year of the Rat, one year older than him,” Old Liu said in a muffled voice, with his knuckle pressing against the side of his nose, “I’m thirty-seven this year, he was thirty-six.”

“When you were in school, were you already making music together?”

“No. After middle school I went to art school, Bai Yong kept on with high school and went to take the college entrance exam, we didn’t go the same way, and for many years in between we had no contact. Later, when we ran into each other while performing at different venues outside, we got back together.”

“When was the last time you saw Bai Yong?”

“It was right before he went to Hokkaido, before the Spring Festival.”

“He came to see you?”

“This place is quiet, he often came over to sit for a while whenever he had nothing to do.”

“Bai Yong wrote a song, did you accompany him on guitar?”

“Heh,” Old Liu gave a dry, bitter laugh, several vertical lines squeezing out on his cheeks, “He only wrote one song in his whole life, wrote it in high school.”

“Were the lyrics written by Bai Yong too?”

...After a moment of hesitation, Old Liu nodded. “Yes.”

“You didn’t take part in the creation?”

“I helped him do the arrangement. The old version of the tune was a bit monotonous, so later I rearranged it.”

“When did you rearrange the tune?”

“When we recorded the song, a few years ago.”

“Which year?”

“Fo... five years ago.” Old Liu got a little stuck.

“Does this song have a special meaning? The lyrics are too sad, they don’t seem like something a high school boy would write.”

“Youthful longing,” Old Liu leaned back in the chair and stretched out his legs, “In this world, there are even people who commit suicide for love, the sorrows of young Werther!”

This topic seemed to ease Old Liu’s grief. The man who had been crying out loud just a moment ago suddenly wore a carefree, unconcerned expression.

“So, Bai Yong wrote this sad song because he fell in love with a girl?”

“Hm?” Old Liu looked at Yan Dongcheng in surprise.

“You said youthful longing.”

“These are all old sesame and rotten millet matters,” Old Liu said impatiently, shaking his head. “It has nothing at all to do with Bai Yong’s death, why are you asking about this!”

“Bai Yong’s remains were only just discovered, the case is still in the investigation and evidence collection stage, we hope to understand everyone and everything related to Bai Yong. You are Bai Yong’s best friend, please cooperate with us and help us find the cause of Bai Yong’s death.”

“Then of course I will, with no hesitation...”

“Bai Yong fell in love with a girl, and therefore created a song?”

“A high school boy falling in love with a girl in his class, that’s not anything new.”

“The girl in the same class that Bai Yong fell in love with, who was it?”

“Who... let me think,” Old Liu scratched his head, his eyes darting away, “It seems to have been... Bian Ranxin.”