Winter Time Rendering

The bell rang, signaling the end of the school day. Zhang Shutong stretched and walked out of the office.

The entire afternoon had passed just like that.

Song didn’t continue his rampage. He wanted to keep the incident contained within their class for the time being, but that was practically impossible.

Even though he repeatedly stressed not to spread the word and to be considerate of Gu Qiuyan’s feelings, plenty of people had seen what happened. It wasn’t long before other classes found out.

Miss Gu was quite well-known, after all. She and Lu Qinglian were arguably the two most-watched girls in the entire grade, if not the whole school. In no time, all sorts of embellished rumors were flying around.

During the break between classes, Zhang Shutong even saw Gu Qiuyan’s "little secretary" and a few others come looking for her. He found it a bit strange they were only just finding out. ’Didn’t she mention it during lunch?’

Song’s investigation was still ongoing. He asked Zhang Shutong for the photos and started looking for the culprit based on the handwriting. But their homeroom teacher taught English and didn’t have a keen eye for Chinese characters, so he brought the Chinese teacher over. After a look, that teacher also said it was no use—

Both the "Go die" on the A4 paper and the name on the stall partition were too short to be conclusive. Plus, a person’s handwriting with a marker is different from with a gel pen, so comparing it to homework wasn’t very reliable.

He also asked who was absent during the long break, even interviewing students one by one.

That was why both he and Qingyi were called to the office to... "help out" on the side.

Song seemed to have a lot of faith in their intelligence. Perhaps he knew Qingyi was a mystery fanatic. Or maybe details from last night had reached his ears, making him feel like he had a "junior detective league" by his side, so he let them listen in.

In the end, though, they came up with nothing.

For the entire afternoon, Zhang Shutong had just pulled up a chair and sat by the wall, pondering another question—

’Why smash Gu Qiuyan’s building block castle and not something else?’

’If it was really a so-called "death threat," why not use a more direct method, like writing a letter with a few more curses?’

’If it was just for revenge, to vent anger, why not just mess up her desk?’

’Like ripping up her backpack and books. Wouldn’t that be far more destructive than smashing a pile of building blocks?’

’Or was the person not from our class and didn’t know where Gu Qiuyan sat?’

’But if that were the case, how would they have targeted her building blocks?’

’And finally, there was Qingyi’s point: if it was for revenge, why write the name on the partition? Was the culprit afraid no one would find it?’

Many of the questions seemed to contradict each other.

And there was the most crucial question of all—

’Even if they identified a "suspect," with no witnesses and no surveillance footage, how could they make that person confess?’

Fortunately, Zhang Shutong hadn’t just sat there all afternoon for nothing. He had more or less found answers to many of these questions.

Now, there was just one last piece of the puzzle he couldn’t figure out. And verifying his ideas would have to wait until tomorrow, and that was only if things went smoothly.

Speaking of which, there was another problem:

Even if he solved the building block incident, it didn’t mean the murder case would be solved. There was still the matter of the commercial street demolition he’d overheard at the restaurant to investigate, not to mention the identity of the figure lurking in the restricted area.

On the off chance it might work, he had gotten the phone number for the Nanhu Fish Restaurant when he came down from the rooftop at noon and called the owner. The reason he hadn’t asked then and there was because Gu Qiuyan’s table hadn’t finished eating yet.

Unfortunately, she recognized his voice.

So, instead of asking about the demolition, he just said his family was looking to open a shop and asked if she could help him ask around, hoping to uncover some clues that way.

But she was extremely tight-lipped. Maybe because Gu Qiuyan had just treated him to a meal at noon, the owner thought they were in it together and was afraid he was a spy.

You reap what you sow. It was as simple as that.

In short, he had three leads on hand. Each seemed related, but they were difficult to piece together.

After school, he obviously couldn’t go hang out with his buddies.

He had two things to do:

First, grab a bite to eat.

Second, make another trip to the restricted area.

Zhang Shutong decided to eat at a small stall selling steamed buns right outside the school gate.

The buns were unique. The filling was made of candied pork fat, crispy fried lard residue, and salted duck egg yolk.

Zhang Shutong had never been a fan of them, but he wasn’t picky about what he ate. He was just learning from last night’s lesson and needed to replenish his energy.

The snow had mostly melted, leaving dirty piles heaped up next to the roadside trees. A steamer basket perched on a small cart let out wisps of white steam, and a chubby woman was busy at work.

Zhang Shutong stopped his bike and was about to call out to her when he ran into someone unexpected.

Gu Qiuyan was also waiting by the stall.

She was still wearing her signature red scarf, her small face burrowed into it. Her hands were tucked into the pockets of her overcoat as she stood there in silence.

Zhang Shutong glanced around and noticed the black Audi was nowhere in sight.

Come to think of it, he hadn’t spoken to Gu Qiuyan all afternoon. Song had wanted to call her to the office to listen in as well, but the girl refused. She gave the same reason as before: she was already in a bad mood and didn’t want to make it worse.

So it was hard to gauge her mood—

’You couldn’t say it was good. Her expression had been ice-cold all day. She’d seemed a little brighter in the morning, but that cheerfulness lasted for less than one morning reading session before he annoyed her. Then her building blocks were smashed... you can imagine how she felt after that.’

’But you couldn’t say it was bad, either. She had the time to take a group of people to a restaurant for lunch, and now she was in the mood to buy snacks from a street stall.’

Maybe the buns were just that good—soup dumplings, six to a basket, with a savory-sweet flavor.

And unlike shrimp cakes and stuffed pancakes, which were common local snacks, this was the only stall on the entire island that sold them. Apparently, the owner was from out of town, too.