Hunt her

As the motorcycle restarted, he unbuttoned his uniform collar with one hand, revealing a fresh scratch on his collarbone: "See, this is where he should apologize."

The morning breeze blew into his open collar, dispelling the last traces of the police station's atmosphere, and also revealing the neglected account book in Yan Xu's mind—from the moment Zhou Yu threw a punch, every defensive move Shen Yi made was precisely designed to inflict more serious injury on his opponent.

Before the morning mist had completely dissipated, Yan Xu was already standing in front of Zhou Yu's apartment.

When she raised her hand to knock on the door, she noticed that her knuckles still bore the scrapes from the fight the night before, and she heard the sound of a bottle rolling inside.

When Zhou Yu opened the door, his right eye was so swollen he could barely open it, and there was dried blood on the collar of his pajamas.

"Here to collect the body?"

When he grinned, he revealed a missing front tooth.

Yan Xu pushed him aside and went into the house. The broken glass on the floor looked like scattered diamonds in the morning light.

She stepped over the police mediation document Zhou Yu had thrown on the ground; the shoe print on the paper completely obscured Shen Yi's signature. "The CCTV footage of you kicking my motorcycle last night..."

She pulled her phone out of her pocket. "I just happened to catch you stealing cigarettes at the convenience store."

Zhou Yu's expression froze, while Yan Xu had already pressed play. The screen clearly showed that as he stuffed cigarettes into his pocket, Shen Yi's figure, leaning against the motorcycle and looking at his watch, was reflected in the rearview mirror of the shelf.

Zhou Yu stared at the surveillance footage on his phone screen, then suddenly let out a sneer and crushed the beer can in his hand.

"You think you can threaten me with this?"

He staggered back two steps, knocking over the medicine box on the coffee table, scattering bandages and alcohol swabs all over the floor.

"Don't forget that when your mother married my father, your name on the household registration was added later." He spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, staining the mediation agreement at Yan Xu's feet.

Yan Xu's nails dug deeply into the abrasions on her palms, the pain making her voice unusually clear: "That's perfect, saves me the trouble of worrying about blood ties."

She swiped her phone to bring up another video—it clearly showed Zhou Yu secretly deleting surveillance footage while giving a statement at the police station. Suddenly, police sirens sounded outside the window, growing louder as they approached.

Shen Yi's figure appeared at the corner of the corridor, his uniform epaulets glistening with morning dew.

He bent down to pick up the trampled mediation agreement from the ground, and lightly tapped Zhou Yu's signature with his fingertip: "Now, we have three cases to discuss."

As the siren echoed in the stairwell, Yan Xu saw her mother Yu Zheng's slippers appear at the corner of the stairs.

The woman's hair was loose, and she was clutching a supermarket plastic bag in her hand, clearly indicating that she had been picked up directly from the morning market by a police car.

Shen Yi folded the mediation agreement in half and stuffed it into his breast pocket, the metal button brushing against Zhou Yu's cheek: "Intentional injury, obstruction of official duties, destruction of evidence—enough for you to stay in a single room for three months."

Yu Zheng's fingernails dug into the plastic bag, and celery leaves leaked out from the cracks, falling at Zhou Yu's feet.

"Mom! They teamed up—" Zhou Yu was about to pounce when Shen Yi pressed a police mobile phone against his throat.

Yan Xu suddenly grabbed his mother's trembling wrist and turned the phone screen towards her: "Look carefully, this is administrative detention."

She pressed play, and the surveillance footage of Zhou Yu deleting records looped and zoomed in. "Next time..." Yan Xu released her grip, letting her mother stagger and lean against the wall for support, "it will be a criminal crime scene."

Shen Yi's leather shoes rolled over the blood-stained bandages on the ground, stopping in front of Yu Zheng: "The time your son goes on his drunken rampage each time," he flipped through the duty logbook, "is twenty minutes earlier than the last time."

Yu Zheng's trembling fingers gripped Yan Xu's sleeve, causing the celery stalks in the plastic bag to snap with a crisp sound. "He's your brother!"

Her voice was hoarse, as if it had been sanded, "When you were little and had a fever, he would sneak out and run three blocks to buy you fever-reducing medicine..."

Yan Xu shook off her mother's hand, and the broken glass made a screeching sound as it was crushed against the sole of her boot.

"He stole the medicine from the school clinic," she said, turning her phone screen towards Yu Zheng. The surveillance video was frozen on the scene of Zhou Yu picking the lock, "just like stealing cigarettes or deleting surveillance footage now."

Shen Yi's police communication device suddenly emitted a piercing alarm, and Zhou Yu took the opportunity to pounce on Yan Xu.

Amid Yu Zheng's screams, Shen Yi swiftly slammed him onto the beer-stained floor, handcuffs digging into the bruises from last night's fight. "Tolerance?" Yan Xu looked at Zhou Yu's contorted face. "Mom, he doesn't need tolerance—"

The sound of sirens pierced the morning mist. When Shen Yi pulled Zhou Yu up, half a pack of blood-stained convenience store cigarettes fell out of his pajama pocket.

As the police car sped away from the residential area, Yan Xu saw through the car window that her mother, Yu Zheng, was still standing there, with the celery from the plastic bag scattered all over the ground.

Her fingers, gripping the phone, turned white; the screen still held the image of Zhou Yu being led into a police car.

Shen Yi's motorcycle keys jingled on the entryway cabinet. When Yan Xu opened the door, he found Shen Yi pressing a cotton swab against the wound on the corner of his mouth, his uniform jacket casually draped over the sofa armrest.

"The case report isn't finished yet." When Shen Yi looked up, the case file spread out on the coffee table revealed Zhou Yu's file photo.

Yan Xu silently walked around the pile of documents, took an ice pack from the refrigerator, and handed it over.

The sound of a tap dripping, not being turned off completely, came from the kitchen, like some kind of countdown. Shen Yi suddenly grabbed her wrist: "Your mother just now..."

"She won't answer the phone." Yan Xu pulled her hand back, smashing the ice pack onto the case file, the water stains blurring Zhou Yu's birth date.

The aroma of soup wafting from the neighbor's house mingled with the lingering smell of blood inside.

Shen Yi pressed an ice pack onto his bruised arm, revealing several fresh scratches when he rolled up his uniform sleeves.

Yan Xu's gaze swept over the wounds, and he suddenly reached out and tore open the other sleeve—dark purple bruises were spreading out at the elbow joint.

"You call this not serious?" Her voice was sharp, like the chill of a refrigerator.

When Shen Yi pulled his arm back, he knocked over the case file, and Zhou Yu's file photo slipped onto the floor, covering the water stains that had spread from the kitchen.

“Compared to this,” he flicked the photo with his toe and tossed it back onto the coffee table, “your brother’s performance of biting his lip until it bled in the interrogation room was far more entertaining.”

Yan Xu suddenly grabbed a blood-stained cotton swab and smashed it against the wall, leaving a dark red trail on the beige wallpaper.

Shen Yi's pen paused on the case closure report, the ink spreading out like dark clouds over the character "稳" (steady) in "family members' emotions are stable".

Shen Yi suddenly gasped and sank into the sofa.

"It hurts..." He looked up at Yan Xu, his eyelashes casting dappled shadows under the overhead light. "That kid elbowed me in the same spot yesterday, it's an old injury." Yan Xu stared at the bruise on his arm, his nails unconsciously digging crescent-shaped marks into his palm.

Taking advantage of the situation, Shen Yi hooked her little finger with his uninjured left hand: "Anyway, it's a day off today..."

The shouts of scrap collectors drifted in from outside the window, and the chain of a tricycle creaked.

Yan Xu suddenly pulled her hand away and, amidst Shen Yi's suddenly dimmed gaze, grabbed the keychain: "I'm going to buy medicine."

The moment the security door closed, Shen Yi pulled out his vibrating phone from his pocket—the words "Yu Zheng" flashed glaringly on the screen.

As he pressed the answer button, the sound of a key turning came from the entryway. The call log was quickly deleted by him as Yan Xu walked in carrying a plastic bag.

"Safflower oil?" Shen Yi raised an eyebrow at the bandages and anti-inflammatory medicine in the shopping bag. Yan Xu had already unscrewed the cap, and the pungent smell of the medicine immediately masked the lingering smell of blood in the room.

When she pressed her medicine-covered fingertips onto his arm, Shen Yi suddenly hissed and rested his head on her shoulder: "It'll heal faster this way."