☆, Archimedes and the Cipher

After leaving the police station, Owen pulled the lawyer aside for a private conversation.
Yan Su and Zhen Ai stood by the roadside, looking at the tracks left by car wheels in the snow, not speaking to each other.

Yan Su stood with his legs straight, his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker. The cold night wind blew fiercely, but he stood straight like a tree.

Zhen Ai, on the other hand, curled up, shivering from the cold, occasionally glancing at him.
In the winter nights of the northern hemisphere, darkness falls early. In the darkness, his profile became paler, his contours sharper, as if carved by a knife. His forehead was full, his eye sockets deep.
His eyes were beautiful, seemingly calm yet with a ripple of water, reflecting the neon lights across the street, shining brightly. His nose had a perfect shape, his thin lips lightly pursed, and the curve of his jaw was clean and sharp, reminding her of the plaster models of Western figures she had seen in her childhood.

He was completely unaware of Zhen Ai’s gaze, focused intently on the street across, with a faint curve at the corner of his lips, as if he had spotted something interesting.

Following his gaze, Zhen Ai saw nothing. She turned to look at him, wondering what he was looking at.
Suddenly, his eyes drooped, sensing her gaze. He turned his head slowly to look at her, his eyes stained dark brown by the night, seemingly deep yet shallow. His eyes were as clean as the snowy ground on a moonlit night, seeming pure yet profound.

He looked at her quietly, as if asking, “What are you looking at?”

Caught off guard by his gaze, Zhen Ai awkwardly tugged at the corners of her mouth and asked, “What are you looking at?”

“That billboard is interesting,” he nodded towards the opposite direction, raising his chin.

Only then did Zhen Ai notice that he was looking at the outdoor Walmart billboard, which advertised discounts—

“O GEE! ON SALE! MAR. 1ST

ALL @ N.Y.T

Oh my, big discounts, March 1st at N.Y.T.”

N.Y.T was the abbreviation for North Yearfield Township, the city they were in.

The billboard depicted bright orange oranges, which looked beautiful in the winter sun. But she didn’t see what was interesting about it.

He continued to look, realizing she had no reaction. He explained, “The text on that billboard is interesting.”

This explanation didn’t seem to help…

His world was really hard to understand.

Zhen Ai was completely lost for words.

Seeing her silent, Yan Su pursed his lips and looked at her for a few seconds before asking, “Have you ever played anagram games?”

Zhen Ai raised her head, puzzled.

She knew anagrams involved rearranging letters in words or sentences to form new words or sentences. But she didn’t understand how this related to what they were just talking about.
“You need four or five seconds to think about this kind of question?” Yan Su glanced sideways, his evaluation faint, “Your reaction speed is really shockingly slow.”

Zhen Ai pursed her lips. “I’ve never played, but I’ve heard of it.”

Yan Su turned slightly towards her, facing her, and began to ask, “For example, what word can ‘eat’ be changed into?”

Zhen Ai didn’t expect him to suddenly ask, so she hesitated before saying, “tea!”

“Very slow!” Yan Su didn’t hide his disdain, continuing, “lived.”

“devil.”

“Well done.” Yan Su nodded, then asked, “Want to continue playing?”

She had never played any kind of game before. This game, which tested visual memory, spatial imagination, and reaction speed, was novel to her, so she nodded.

He looked at her and his voice suddenly softened, “Are you ready?”

This sentence made Zhen Ai’s heart beat inexplicably, as if she were a contestant participating in a quiz show for the first time. “I’m ready!”

“When listening to someone speak, it’s best to remain quiet, because…”

“Because ‘listen’ rearranged is ‘silent’!” Zhen Ai immediately answered before Yan Su could say the word, which wasn’t difficult.

“Don’t be too sad at a funeral, why?”

“Funeral, that’s… real fun!” It’s really fun.

“Why are daughters-in-law afraid of their mothers-in-law?”

“Mother-in-law is a mother-in-law.” She frowned and thought for a moment before asking quietly, “Because she’s a woman Hitler?”

“Yes.” Yan Su seemed very satisfied with her speed and cooperation, appearing unusually light-hearted. “One last one, why do so many people like Tom Cruise?”

Tom Cruise? His name can be rearranged into…

Zhen Ai bit her lip, a flash of inspiration struck her, “Ah! So I’m cuter, I’m the most lovable!”

Yan Su raised his eyebrows slightly, smiling but not smiling, “Is that what you really think?”
Zhen Ai was stunned. Was he serious or not at this moment?

Her cheeks felt a strange warmth, and she lowered her head, “I mean, his name can be spelled as ‘I’m the most lovable,’ not that I am.”

Yan Su made a vague “oh” sound and looked back at the Walmart billboard with a pile of oranges. “Then try to rearrange the letters in that sentence.”

O! GEE! ON SALE! MAR. 1ST

ALL @ N.Y.T

When the words were disassembled, there were a total of 21 letters. How could they be divided into several independent words, each with exactly the right number of letters, and then rearranged into a grammatically correct and semantically complete sentence?

Zhen Ai stared at the colorful words on the billboard. For a moment, it seemed like all those letters were jumping around in her mind, forming words one by one—sea, rest, moon, rang, year, tale, or, tally, total… none of them were correct.

No matter what word appeared, the remaining letters couldn’t form meaningful words, let alone a complete sentence.

What was the sentence?

Zhen Ai couldn’t help but clench her fists, suddenly seeing a large group of oranges on the billboard. Orange?

In an instant, everything became clear. All the English words were swirling around, rearranged into a sentence—

An ET stole all my oranges!

The promotional billboard with a bunch of bright orange oranges was going to be stolen by an alien, haha!

She couldn’t help but smile. Yes, Yan Su was right, this billboard was interesting.

So, was he always immersed in his world full of creativity and thought?

This person was really mysterious.

“The game’s over,” Yan Su said lightly, his gaze drifting to other outdoor billboards and contact numbers.

Zhen Ai, still not satisfied, looked at him again, but he had returned to his usual cold demeanor, as if the moment he gave her the questions had never happened. Perhaps his world only consisted of data, codes, and behavioral analysis, all of which were the only things that interested him.

Zhen Ai took a deep breath, feeling cold and numb. She hadn’t paid attention earlier and now she felt even colder. After contemplating for a moment, she asked, “Do you suspect me in today’s case?”
At that moment, Yan Su was trying to decrypt a string of phone numbers in his line of sight. Upon hearing Zhen Ai’s words, he turned his head slowly and looked at her. “No.”

Before Zhen Ai could finish pronouncing “thanks,” he continued, “I only believe in objectivity. ‘Suspicion’ is a subjective emotion and is a taboo for rational people.”

Zhen Ai then asked in a different way, “Does the evidence objectively indicate that I’m the murderer?”
Yan Su replied in a formulaic manner, “The objective evidence is insufficient.” Then, he added, “But I believe that if you were to commit murder, you would choose a more elegant method, such as poisoning. Of course, you wouldn’t choose a poison that’s easily accessible, but one that is rare yet deadly and torturous.”

Zhen Ai: “… Should I say thank you?”

Yan Su: “No need to thank me.”

Zhen Ai remained silent, staring into space. At one moment, it seemed like a small snowflake drifted past, but when she focused her gaze, there was nothing there. Looking up at the sky, it was still pitch black.

It turned out that the snowflake just now was an illusion.

As the cold wind blew, it became even colder.

Her teeth kept chattering, and she couldn’t help but make a “creak” sound. She immediately bit down on her teeth, not making a sound.

Of course, Yan Su heard the sound of her teeth chattering. He looked down at her and asked, “Are you cold?”

“Yeah.”

He made a sound of acknowledgment and said nothing more, continuing to look at the numbers on the lightbox in the distance. After a while, as if speaking to someone else, he said, “From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, feeling cold is due to kidney yang deficiency; from the perspective of Western medicine, it’s due to iron deficiency in the blood, insufficient thyroid hormone secretion…”

Seeing her pale face and her eyes widening as if she were looking at an alien, he shut his mouth and fell silent before saying, “I shouldn’t be saying these things at this time.”

He looked up at the sky again, after two seconds—

“I mean, you should probably go to the hospital.”

“…”

Who would go to the hospital because they felt cold due to their nerves?

While Zhen Ai remained speechless, she suddenly felt warmth behind her. The next moment, she was enveloped in something warm, shielding her from the cold wind. Owen had walked over at some point and draped his coat over Zhen Ai.

Zhen Ai noticed that he was only wearing a thin sweater underneath. She wanted to shake it off, but he pressed down on the collar of the coat and quickly buttoned it up. In the next few seconds, he quickly buttoned up the rest of the buttons, wrapping Zhen Ai tightly like a small dumpling.

He patted Zhen Ai’s shoulder and smiled indifferently, “I generate heat well, so I’m not afraid of the cold.” As he spoke, the warm breath he exhaled scattered like cotton in the wind.
Zhen Ai didn’t refuse anymore and walked with Owen to the parking lot.

After a few steps, they realized that Yan Su hadn’t followed. They turned back in confusion and saw Yan Su standing straight in place, furrowing his brows as if contemplating something while looking at Zhen Ai.

Suddenly, he took long strides forward, walking towards Zhen Ai while taking off his scarf. He reached her in two or three steps, stood in front of her, and wrapped his thick scarf around her neck.
The movement was too sudden, and Zhen Ai didn’t react until she felt warmth around her neck. It wasn’t until he was about to wrap it for the second time, standing so close to her, that Zhen Ai came back to her senses and instinctively moved back:

“No need.”

“Don’t move.”

He commanded in a deep voice, and his long, slender fingers lightly moved, pulling the scarf and pulling her back.

She almost bumped into his arms, but managed to stand firm. He, however, was completely focused on wrapping the thick, long gray scarf around her neck, one loop after another.

The scarf was soft and comfortable, intimate and snug, carrying the warmth of a man’s body, and a faint scent that Zhen Ai had never smelled before, like the sky at the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, not too intense, but with a faint aroma, pure and profound.

Zhen Ai didn’t feel cold anymore. She looked up at him, seeing him lightly furrow his brows, his expression serious and solemn, as if facing a string of numbers, a code, or a logical problem.
Such an ambiguous gesture, yet he did it with such calm elegance, his eyes pure and proud, without a hint of familiarity, clean and clear, just like him.

Moved by his pure temperament, Zhen Ai pursed her lips and smiled, feeling neither embarrassed nor blushing. She naturally accepted his kindness.

Yan Su finished wrapping the scarf around Zhen Ai’s neck, nodded in satisfaction, then put his hand on her shoulder and awkwardly patted it, saying in a formal manner, “I’m also good at generating heat, so I’m not afraid of the cold.”

Zhen Ai: …

Was he learning from Owen to be kind to people…?

At that moment, she felt that he was like a certain kind of primate, imitating humans, or like a little baby learning from adults during the cognitive period.

Zhen Ai was once again at a loss for words, thinking for a moment, about to say thank you. But—
Yan Su glanced at her, calmly commenting, “But gray doesn’t suit you. Wearing it makes you look ugly, like a withered bamboo worm.”

He used a bamboo worm to describe her? Zhen Ai completely lost the intention of thanking him.
Owen walked beside them and suggested, “Brightly colored scarves are popular lately. With your fair complexion, red would definitely look good on you.”

Yan Su heard him and made a faint “hmph” sound.

Owen turned his head to see Yan Su clearly raising his eyebrows, asking, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”

Owen was puzzled, “Let me guess, where did your strange imagination fly off to this time? What does red remind you of? Bulls?”

Yan Su looked at him disdainfully, “Bulls are colorblind. It’s unscientific to associate red with bulls.”
Owen was speechless, but after a while, he couldn’t help but ask again, “Then what did you think of?”
“Adrenaline.”

…

That’s even more unscientific!!!