Chapter 7.1

Su Ying spent a week in S City with her parents, not setting alarms or rigid itineraries. They followed her parents’ daily habits, strolling around, eating, drinking, and enjoying themselves. The trip was leisurely and comfortable, experiencing a slower pace of life even in a bustling big city.

Her parents also fully embraced the “big city shopping mode,” buying all kinds of tasty snacks and fun items. Most of these purchases Su Ying helped arrange to be sent as packages back to the village’s delivery station. Time passed quickly, and soon Su Ying and her parents were on their way home. After a long journey on the high-speed train and bus, they arrived home in the afternoon.

Su Ying then rode the family’s little tricycle to the village’s delivery station to pick up the packages that had been shipped during the trip.

The village delivery station was run by Su Ying’s middle school classmate, Huang Liang. Huang Liang had average grades and went to work in the city after finishing middle school. After working as a courier for several years, he saved enough money to come back and open the delivery station. At first, almost no one in the village shopped online, so business was slow. But as more of the younger generation returned home, they began sending things back to their families, and older villagers also got into the habit of buying cheap online deals like 9.9-yuan free shipping items or 0.01-yuan flash sales. Gradually, the station became busier.

“Liangzi, I’m here to pick up my packages—last four digits 8285,” Su Ying said as she walked up to Huang Liang, who was sorting packages at the door. Huang Liang looked up and gave her a friendly grin. “Got it, I’ll get them for you.”

Using the PDA in his hand, Huang Liang quickly found nine packages but, after searching the shelves for a long time, couldn’t locate the last one. His heart sank. He loaded the nine found packages onto Su Ying’s tricycle and said in confusion, “I really don’t know what’s going on lately—packages keep going missing. Check which one you’re missing; I’ll look again.”

Su Ying took out her phone and checked one by one. Since many of the orders had been arranged through WeChat with the shop owners, it took a while to sort through them. After checking, she realized that the missing package was a box of pastry gift sets.

She showed Huang Liang the tracking slip that the shop owner had sent. Confirming that it was indeed the missing item, Huang Liang asked, “Was the gift set expensive?”

“It wasn’t too bad—just over two hundred yuan,” Su Ying replied.

“This is really strange. Two other packages went missing in the past two or three days, and I’ve already had to pay out 450 yuan in compensation. Now with yours, that’s three missing packages. Things have been so busy lately that I haven’t had time to investigate. Since you’re here, could you help me check the security cameras? I can’t figure them out. I really want to see which troublemaker is stealing the packages.”

Su Ying didn’t refuse. She followed Huang Liang into the station, where there was a small office desk. Delivery stations were equipped with surveillance cameras not only to prevent unnecessary complaints but also to deter petty theft.

Su Ying easily logged into the security system using the account and password Huang Liang gave her. “Liangzi, when should I start checking?” she asked.

“Look at three days ago, around 2 p.m. That’s when the delivery came in. I had just sorted it and put it on the shelves. Two hours later, someone came to pick up their package, and it was already gone,” Huang Liang said, watching the screen as Su Ying entered the date and time. The video feed from that day appeared.

The camera was installed on the ceiling of the delivery station, and the shelves weren’t very high, so it captured a full view of the interior. Su Ying asked, “Do you remember which shelf it was on?”

“Shelf number two. It was all small items. The one that went missing that day was a thermos cup,” Huang Liang recalled.

Su Ying sped up the video to 16x. Around 2 to 3:30 p.m., the footage showed only Huang Liang busily scanning and shelving packages. After 3:30 p.m., a few people came in to pick up their packages—some on electric scooters, some on foot. There were only about five people in total. At 5:10 p.m., Spring Juan, the wife of a man from the Li family, came to pick up the thermos.

In the video, Spring Juan reported her phone number, Huang Liang checked it, then turned to shelf number two to look for the package. He searched for five or six minutes, rummaging through the entire shelf, but couldn’t find it.

Su Ying thought aloud, “So it must have been taken sometime between 3:30 and 5:10 p.m. The chances of someone taking it by mistake are slim.” She rewound the footage back to 3:30 p.m., narrowing it down to the five people who could have taken the package.

These five were Aunt Niu, Aunt Xiang, Old Man Li, and Sister Dongdong.

Aunt Niu was the village widow. Her husband died young, leaving her with two daughters and a son. She heavily favored her son. When her eldest daughter came of age, she married her off to a bachelor in his thirties for a high bride price. Her younger daughter, frightened by this, ran off to work in the city and never returned, while her son was spoiled and lazy.

Aunt Xiang was Su Ying’s mother’s best friend. The two had married into the village from other villages and had been close since their youth. Each had a child, and they had once joked about a betrothal, but both ended up having daughters. Aunt Xiang’s daughter studied at a teachers’ college and was now a teacher in the city. She was filial and often sent things home. She would always come back during the winter and summer breaks.

Old Man Li lived at the village entrance. He was a former soldier who had injured his leg and was a chess buddy of Su Ying’s father. He loved smoking, growing his own tobacco leaves to roll into cigarettes. His wife died in childbirth when giving birth to their son. After running a small convenience store in town and raising his son, he returned to the village in his old age. Every weekend, his son would bring his family to visit him.

Sister Dongdong, whose full name was Gao Dongdong, had been Su Ying’s classmate in middle school. She was two years older because she had started school late, so everyone called her “Sister Dongdong.” She married her childhood sweetheart right after graduating from high school and now had a pair of adorable twins.

At first, the footage didn’t reveal anything suspicious, so Su Ying pulled up the footage from the day before when another package had gone missing. They quickly ruled out Sister Dongdong and Aunt Xiang because they hadn’t been there that day. The missing item was a bracelet that belonged to Sister Dongdong, and Aunt Xiang hadn’t come to the station.

The missing package from the previous day had also disappeared less than half an hour after being shelved. In that footage, only Aunt Niu and Old Man Li appeared. Su Ying then reviewed the footage from earlier that day, before she had arrived, and saw that only Aunt Niu had visited the station to pick up a package.

Huang Liang recalled that Aunt Niu had only one package to pick up. She came often and, unlike most people, usually didn’t ask him to fetch it—she would just grab it from the shelf herself. While some others were also familiar with the station and helped themselves, there had never been missing items before.

The video from that day made things even clearer. The two packages that had gone missing earlier in the week—a thermos and a bracelet—were both small. Su Ying’s box of pastries wasn’t expensive, but it was bulky, packed in a big box with foam lining, making it very conspicuous.

Huang Liang checked the package Aunt Niu had scanned out that day—it was a thin, small parcel. But in the footage, it was obvious that she had walked out carrying a large foam box.