Winter Time Rendering

"Go on." Song waved his hand, crossing his legs with a pompous, official air.

The woman hurried upstairs. As soon as her figure vanished from sight, the airs Song Nanshan had put on disappeared in a flash. He quickly whispered to Zhang Shutong:

"That must be her husband, then?"

Before Zhang Shutong could reply, the woman came back down the stairs, handing him the phone. "He says he wants to talk to you..."

Song Nanshan was about to try his bluff again, but the man on the other end was a hothead. He told him to get straight to the point, or else name his department and stop playing games.

After all, Song’s authority was just a front. He was helpless against someone like this and could only stand there, fuming into the phone.

As both of their voices grew louder, Zhang Shutong listened for a moment before stepping outside the shop.

The timeline didn’t add up.

The woman said it started raining not long after her husband got back.

But when they were taking Gu Qiuyan home, they had encountered the van in the rain.

Was she lying?

It didn’t seem likely.

’She couldn’t have fabricated a lie that quickly, and besides, she doesn’t even know the rain is a clue.’

So, rather than a lie, a more troublesome theory surfaced in Zhang Shutong’s mind.

He quickly walked over to the van and crouched down. Just then, Song Nanshan also came out, still talking on the phone:

"Then I have to wonder, what’s the deal with the sausages in your van? You eat them as a snack? Fine. But what about the brick? With two things lining up, what do you have to say for yourself? What’s that? You use it to press vegetables?"

Song scoffed in exasperation.

"You’re really not going to give up until you’re cornered, are you? Fine, I’ll call the cops. We can sort this out in person..."

As he was saying this, Zhang Shutong suddenly tugged on his raincoat.

Song covered the mouthpiece and mouthed, "What? Found a hole?"

’More than just a hole.’

Zhang Shutong sighed and said in a low voice:

"We’ve got the wrong van."

Song was stunned, forgetting he hadn’t hung up. "What do you mean?"

"The tires are dry." Zhang Shutong shone his phone on them. "Look, except for where they touch the ground, the rest is dry. It couldn’t have been driven through the rain. But when we saw the van..."

Hearing this, Song understood. His face paled slightly.

"So we’ve had the wrong van this whole time?"

"Right. The van we saw then wasn’t this one."

"Wait here for a second."

Zhang Shutong watched as Song hurried into the shop, handed the phone to the woman, then fumbled in his pockets for a long moment before finally pulling out a crumpled red bill.

"...Buy the kid something to eat..."

The woman was still completely confused. Song offered another apology and walked out with a grim expression.

"But I’ve already checked all the vehicles on the street. This is the only van. It’s also possible we were wrong from the beginning—that they never headed for the commercial street at all."

He said, lighting a cigarette in his frustration.

"This is a real pain. Are we supposed to go door-to-door now?"

Just as Zhang Shutong was about to say something, Song Nanshan was already pulling him toward the car.

"Alright, it’s like the universe is against us finding it today. Let’s stop this wild goose chase. Shutong, I’ll take you home. Worst case, we come back tomorrow morning..."

Zhang Shutong followed him without a word.

Song rambled on:

"Don’t you forget your promise to me. Since we couldn’t find it, you’ll just have to take Qiumian to your place. You said so yourself, no backing out now..."

Zhang Shutong neither nodded nor shook his head. The two of them quickly reached the car, where Song vigorously wrung the water from his clothes.

"You’re still trying to puzzle it out? Give it a rest. You think you can just deduce where that van went?"

As he spoke, he glanced at Zhang Shutong again.

"I’m going to find a place to buy a pack of tissues. You wait here."

With that, he started to hurry off.

But Zhang Shutong suddenly spoke up.

"I just had a thought."

"Why did we see that van?"

Song, completely unconcerned, casually brushed him off.

"Why else? Unless it was a hallucination."

"Then let me rephrase the question. Why did that van let us see it?"

"What do you mean, ’let us see it’? That’s a weird question. I told you to drop it. You’re just being stubborn now, aren’t you?" Song Nanshan knew he needed to pull rank. He was about to glare when Zhang Shutong met his eyes directly.

"Given that they went out of their way to avoid being noticed and smash the vase, it makes no sense that they would let us see their van. Wouldn’t that be delivering themselves into our hands?"

"What do you mean?" Song Nanshan was suddenly stunned. It was as if something monumental had just detonated in his brain, but the pieces wouldn’t come together.

"It means, if they knew what time Gu Qiuyan eats dinner, there’s no reason they wouldn’t know what time she gets out of school."

"And at that exact time, we would happen to run into them."

"So?" Song Nanshan suddenly felt a wave of agitation.

"So, if it was just about poisoning the dog, why not wait until the middle of the night? Why choose a time when they might be discovered?"

"There are two possibilities. One, it was a genuine mistake, and those guys are just stupid."

"But there’s another: it was a deliberate feint."

"To make people think they had really left, when in fact, they hadn’t."

Zhang Shutong closed his eyes, then opened them, recalling the road they had taken.

"That mountain road to Gu Qiuyan’s house has a fork, right? What if they didn’t drive away? What if they deliberately pulled over at the fork and waited? Waited for us to leave Gu Qiuyan’s house before going back?"

"But what’s the point of that? Why would they..." Song was dumbfounded.

"Because of Li Yipeng’s mother," Zhang Shutong said thoughtfully.

"What about her?"

"What if I told you they didn’t originally plan to make their move tonight?"

Zhang Shutong asked again.

Only he knew that this was, in fact, the truth.

Perhaps in the original timeline, Gu Qiuyan would have been safe tonight.

But Mrs. Li’s actions on the commercial street that afternoon became the butterfly wings that set this murder plot in motion.

So Zhang Shutong continued his analysis:

"The threats that woman made in the office—stuff like ’you just wait’ and ’the worst is yet to come’—I only learned after visiting the boutique that she was repeating those exact phrases all over the commercial street this afternoon."

"She herself isn’t important. The people who heard her are. Or, to put it another way, the speaker may be careless, but the listener takes it to heart."

"So let’s assume the worst-case scenario. Maybe the people in the van didn’t plan to act tonight, but they were worried that woman’s words would tip off Gu Jianhong, so they moved up their schedule."

"But they couldn’t be sure about our—or rather, the Gu family’s—attitude. Would we take it seriously, or not?"

"But whether we took it seriously or not didn’t really matter, so they prepared for both possibilities."

"If we didn’t take it seriously, all the better. They could go make their move now and no one would notice."

"But what if we did?" Song asked, as if imagining some terrible scene.

"That explains why we were allowed to see the van."

"So that’s the feint you were talking about?" Song Nanshan suddenly dove into the car and turned the key in the ignition.

The Fox gave a shudder, and Zhang Shutong continued:

"Exactly. They deliberately drove to cross our path—us going up the mountain, them coming down—to create the illusion that they’d already left. That way, everyone’s attention would be focused on where the van went. People would look for it on the commercial street, they’d look for it in other places, but the one place they’d overlook is Gu Qiuyan’s family villa."

"So you’re saying... they turned back?"