Chapter 57

A few days later on the weekend, after summer rain, the air finally became less stuffy.

Fang Jiayue was accompanied by her mother Liao Qinghe, and they walked to the bottom of the Rainy Clinic together.

This was Fang Jiayue’s first time at a psychological clinic, and she didn’t know what kind of doctor was waiting for her. Standing downstairs, she hesitated and was a little scared.

Liao Qinghe stood in front of her and urged her to move forward: “Come on… Didn’t we agree on this? I begged my friend to find a place that can provide free psychological counseling for teenagers.”

Fang Jiayue then reluctantly followed her into the elevator.

Along the way, Aunt Liao smiled and nodded to everyone she met, always thinking about free things. She was so subservient that Fang Jiayue really wanted to pretend she didn’t know her.

The consultation had already been arranged after an appointment. When they arrived at the door, a nurse at the front desk led Fang Jiayue in and then turned to Liao Qinghe, who tried to follow her: “Auntie, you can wait for her in the resting area over there.”

Liao Qinghe’s expression froze for a moment: “It’s just a medical check-up, why can’t I go in?”

“Psychological treatment is different from ordinary medical treatment,” the nurse reassured her, “the patient must talk to the psychological counselor alone.”

“But she’s still a child…” Liao Qinghe said, “she doesn’t know what to say and what not to say.”

The nurse refused her again: “We need to ensure privacy here, don’t worry, Auntie. If parents think they need to communicate, you can ask the doctor about the situation after the face-to-face consultation.”

Only then did Liao Qinghe say “oh” and sat on a soft stool at the door, still looking reluctant, watching Fang Jiayue walk in.

Later, Fang Jiayue was led into a room by the nurse, where two doctors took out a form: “Fang Jiayue, right?”

The girl nodded: “Yes…”

“You can do these questions first, it will help the doctor evaluate your psychology. We will assist you in answering them here.”

Fang Jiayue sat down and looked at the words on the form – PHQ-9.

She had never heard of it before and was a bit nervous. She treated the questions in front of her as an exam, looked at each one and answered them.

After finishing the form, one of the doctors asked the other, “She’s fifteen years old, should we do the Hamilton test now?”

The other doctor nodded and took out another form. This time, the doctor didn’t ask her to fill it out herself, but began asking her questions.

Blaming herself and feeling that she was burdening others…

Having difficulty falling asleep every night…

Fang Jiayue answered and looked at the two doctors’ faces becoming increasingly serious. She felt like she had contracted some sort of terminal illness.

Then the two doctors whispered to each other for a while, and with her holding a form, they led her into a blue room with a reclining chair and a swivel chair with someone sitting on it facing away.

When they entered, the person turned around, and Fang Jiayue saw a handsome male doctor wearing a white coat and gold-rimmed glasses. He looked very refined.

“My surname is An, you can call me Dr. An. Don’t be afraid, come and sit here,” the doctor’s voice was pleasant and his smile was handsome. Although he was a man, he didn’t seem to have any aggressiveness. Such a man seemed like a completely different kind of creature from Zhang Fumin.

Fang Jiayue was still a little nervous. Her hands were shaking, and she sat on the chair timidly. Her legs were crossed, and her feet didn’t touch the ground, which made her feel insecure.

She asked timidly, “Doctor, what’s wrong with me?”

“You just have mild depression,” Dr. An Yu Ci smiled and asked, “Have you encountered any problems?”

Fang Jiayue’s mind was a bit blank, and she only managed to say, “My home…” before stopping, and her fingers slowly twisted.

“I have some peppermint candy, drinks, and music here. Would you like to relax for a while before we start?” Dr. An Yu Ci asked with a smile.

Fang Jiayue hesitated for a moment and shook her head.

Dr. An said, “Then let me teach you a breathing technique. This technique can help you relieve tension. Follow me and say as I do…”

Fang Jiayue lay down and followed Dr. An’s instructions to breathe in a belly-breathing style and then breathed according to his commands and counted numbers. The whole world seemed to stop spinning and quieted down.

“Now, can you tell me what happened in your home?” Dr. An Yuci asked patiently.

Fang Jiayue lay on the seat, looking at the ceiling covered with stars: “My biological father was a gambling scum. He spent all the money at home, my mom divorced him, and he also left debts.”

“Later…my mom married my stepdad to pay off the debts. She was not in good health and lived a hard life.” Thinking of her mom’s aging face and hands, Fang Jiayue felt very sad.

An Yuci said: “I can tell that you are also a very beautiful girl. So when your mom was young, she must have been very beautiful.”

The girl in front of her had a youthful vibe that couldn’t be concealed even with short hair and a school uniform. With a little grooming, she was like a blooming flower, tempting and attractive.

“My stepdad treats my mom badly, often hitting and scolding her. He is not good to me either, always looking at me with strange eyes…” Fang Jiayue hesitated to speak in front of a stranger like An Yuci.

An Yuci didn’t urge her or ask more questions, but listened to her continue.

Fang Jiayue began to talk about school, her grades were average, and she didn’t quite fit in. The math representative in the class had a grudge against her.

On her way home from school, there were always a few boys whistling at her, and sometimes they would push her when she was not paying attention. She was very annoyed by this.

Later, she talked about things at home, some of which were messy and disorganized, mostly small things, children’s troubles.

Dr. An quietly listened all along, laying the groundwork. Fang Jiayue finally took a deep breath and spoke out what had been weighing on her heart.

“Since I was twelve years old, I found that Zhang Fumin treated me differently. One time my mom wasn’t home, and I was taking a shower. He suddenly came in to grab a towel…he also suggested to my mom whether or not to change the door of my room to one with glass, so she could see if I was being lazy in my room. One time I woke up and found him staring at me outside the door…and another time I was sitting on the couch watching TV, and his hand reached out to me, saying that the weather was so hot, why was I wearing so much. Then he started to help me take off my clothes, but my mom happened to come back, and he stopped.”

At the end, she choked up, and Dr. An handed her a tissue. Fang Jiayue cried and said that she was afraid of men and afraid of the adult world.

During the day, she was overwhelmed with coursework, and at night she couldn’t sleep.

She felt incredibly hopeless about life, and Zhang Fumin was the last straw that broke her.

“I know my mother might know, but she won’t do anything because our family’s living expenses, my tuition, and her medical expenses all depend on my stepfather’s salary. When I went to the police station, she asked me to understand her, to endure it, to stay away from Zhang Fumin…”

An Yuci asked her, “What do you think in your heart?”

“Sometimes I can’t understand why she doesn’t love me even though I’m her own daughter, the person closest to her in the world. But sometimes I understand her. Zhang Fumin doesn’t do anything out of line, so she won’t divorce him. Because once they divorce, we’ll have nothing. I may not be able to afford to go to school, and maybe the person she remarries won’t be as good as Zhang Fumin.”

She sympathizes with her mother on one hand, and resents her helplessness on the other. At the same time, she regrets her own insignificance.

She’s afraid that Zhang Fumin will do something out of line and feels like she’s in danger all the time.

Fang Jiayue said to An Yuci, “Now I feel tired and uncomfortable. Sometimes I feel like I can’t make it through.”

An Yuci looked at her and, after listening to the girl’s description, his eyes also unconsciously turned red: “You feel very sad now because you’re sick, and it’s very serious. When I cure your illness, you can think about your life again, and then you can make the right choices.”

She sobbed, “But when I think about life, I feel powerless, and I can’t change it, I can only endure it.”

An Yuci’s voice was low, and he asked her softly, “It’s your fear that deepens your depression, and you need to pull yourself together to face those things.”

Fang Jiayue quieted down, and yes, she had to make herself stronger.

An Yuci continued, “Actually, many of your problems aren’t really your fault, they’re caused by those adults. As you grow older, many of those things will be resolved, just like you can’t remember the difficulties you had when you were four or five. As long as you persevere and slowly cure your depression, the problems will gradually be resolved.”

Fang Jiayue blinked, “Really?”

An Yuci looked at her, his eyes gentle and handsome behind his glasses, “Really, I’ll face those difficulties with you…”

I’ll hold your hand and won’t let you fall into the abyss alone.

“The first hour of the consultation was quickly completed. An Yu Ci scheduled 1-2 consultations per week for Fang Jia Yue and gave her a prescription to go get medication. After seeing off Fang Jia Yue, An Yu Ci didn’t have many patients left for the day and could leave work by now. He took off his doctor’s coat and changed into his own dark blue shirt before walking out.

At the consultation desk, several nurses and patients were gathered together, looking at something. An Yu Ci frowned and walked closer to see a small bird lying on the ground. He asked, “Jin Qiu, what happened?” Jin Qiu explained that the bird had suddenly flown in through the window and hit the glass door before anyone could react. The bird was not completely dead yet and had a few drops of blood at the corner of its mouth. It lay there twitching its wings slightly, but its injuries were too severe, making it unable to stand, and it could only move its wings occasionally.

A young nurse squatted down and said, “Maybe it has a concussion…” A patient nearby also said, “It looks like its neck is broken. The bird won’t survive…” Jin Qiu was worried and asked, “What should we do? It’s still alive. We can’t just leave it here. What if someone steps on it? We’re about to finish work, and there’s no one around here…”

An Yu Ci stood by for a while and then offered, “Can you give me some tissue?” Jin Qiu quickly fetched some tissue for him. An Yu Ci carefully laid the tissues on the ground and passed through the bird’s body, making a simple white stretcher. He then carefully held the two corners of the tissue, wrapped the bird in it, and held it in his palm. “I’ll take it to see a doctor and see if it can be saved.” The young nurses felt relieved that someone had solved the problem and thanked An Yu Ci.

An Yu Ci took the bird to a nearby pet shop. The store staff looked at it and said, “The bird is too small, and it seems to have hit very severely. Do you own it?” An Yu Ci shook his head and said, “No, I just picked it up on the way.” The female staff member poked the bird’s foot with her hand, and the bird curled up weakly. “We can take an X-ray, but we can’t do any kind of brace for it. If you’re not willing to give up, take it back and see if it can make it on its own.” An Yu Ci was silent for a while and said, “Then sell me some bird food and a small syringe. I’ll try to take care of it myself…”

Since the day they moved all the files back, the entire Major Crimes Unit had entered a “hell mode.” They didn’t realize before that reviewing files was such a headache.

What are the doubts and what are the truths, the true and false are hidden in layers of fog in those files, each case seemed suspicious but also seemed to have no problem.

With everyone’s efforts, a stack of files had finally been roughly screened.

They were also about to hold their first summary meeting.

Before the meeting, Zheng Bai’s progress was a bit behind, still holding on to Qu Ming and asking, “There was a case here, an accidental drowning, and when the body was pulled out, blood flowed from seven orifices… Is this suspicious?”

Qu Ming shook his head and said, “No, bleeding from seven orifices is caused by pressure on the internal organs due to water pressure. Normal bodies will be like this.”

Zheng Bai nodded and quickly marked it down, “Then what about this one? Hanging himself while tied up?”

Qu Ming analyzed, “That was probably an accidental death from choking…”

Each case was like a puzzle, waiting for them to uncover the hidden truth.

When the time came, Lu Junchi and Su Hui entered the meeting room with the forms that Xia Mingxi had sorted out. The ones marked with a star on them were all questionable and needed to be checked carefully.

Several police officers in the group introduced the doubts in those cases one by one.

Some were due to the inefficiency of the local police station’s criminal investigation, some were due to significant suspicion of the deceased’s family, and cases with problems will be sent back to the local police station for further investigation.

They discussed one by one and briefly went through dozens of cases.

Except for a few cases that are still pending with no obvious doubts, they found some problems in most of the other cases.

Lu Junchi asked them, “Have you found any important doubts or commonalities among these cases?”

Su Hui also put down the pen when he heard this and raised his head.

Although there was some progress in their work, it was clearly beyond their expectations to only deal with such scattered cases.

Qiao Ze said, “I have found something, not from the deceased’s belongings, but from a person related to the deceased. The local police station once suspected this person of murder, so they searched the suspect’s online records. That suspect had browsed a website called ‘Sleeper’. However, they did not find any solid evidence linking this suspect to the case, so they did not investigate further.”

“Sleeper…” Qu Ming repeated the name of the website and then searched for a file. “I also have a case here where the person the police suspected had browsed this website. But that suspect had a clear alibi.”

Lu Junchi took the printed forms from them, then logged into the website and said, “This website looks like a self-help website for people with psychological disorders.”

He sensibly felt that this clue was unusual, “You should ask the cyber police to investigate the server of this website and see if they can find any clues.”

Qiao Ze said, “I’ve checked it, the server is located overseas, and the website is only one-way, with only one set of questions and answers. If you suspect that you have a psychological disorder and need help, after uploading your answers, someone will contact you. The website also requires you to fill in your personal information and leave your Weibo address. The registration process is quite troublesome.”

Lu Junchi asked, “What did the two suspects say before?”

Qiao Ze replied, “They said that they were just depressed and wanted to seek help, so they just browsed the website and did not take any further action.”

Lu Junchi asked, “Have you checked their call records?” If they were lying, it was highly likely that they had registered their phone numbers and had subsequent phone contact.

Qiao Ze shrugged, “I couldn’t tell, they might have used number protection.”

Lu Junchi frowned even deeper when he heard this. They couldn’t be sure whether the Sleeper website had played a role in those unexpected cases.

The bodies in those two cases had already been cremated, and the scene had been cleaned up, so it was impossible to determine if there were other people present.

Su Hui continued to flip through the printed questions, paying attention to the other party’s screening criteria.

Lu Junchi thought for a moment and said, “It’s no coincidence that there are two related cases. I think there’s something wrong with the Sleeper website, and we need to find out what’s hidden behind this web address.” He thought for a moment and said, “Let’s try fishing, upload the answer sheets and information as they requested, and see if they will contact us.”

Su Hui agreed with this suggestion and looked up at him.

Lu Junchi avoided his gaze and said, “Let Old Qu handle this, and remember to make it look fake.”

Su Hui looked a bit puzzled, he opened his mouth to say something but hesitated.

The direction of their work had been decided for the moment, and they could only prepare themselves along these clues.

After the meeting, Lu Junchi went to the bathroom and saw Su Hui washing his hands by the sink. When Su Hui saw him come out, he raised his eyes and looked at him, “Are you trying to keep me away from this case?”

Lu Junchi smiled and said, “I just think we’re still investigating the doubts, and it’s not yet time for you to get involved.”

The two of them walked out of the bathroom together, and Su Hui pointed out, “Are you worried that it will affect me? I think you don’t have to be so nervous. I’m not depressed, and I also have some knowledge of psychology. I think I might know more about those people and their mental states than they do.”

Lu Junchi thought for a moment and invited Su Hui, “Let’s go downstairs and take a walk.”

Su Hui nodded and followed him out of the office building.

The area occupied by the General Bureau is very large, with a main office building in the front and several buildings in the back. The Anti-Drug, Anti-Pornography, and Forensic departments all have their own buildings.

The Major Crimes Unit and the Unsolved Cases Unit are located in the same building, known as Building 8. The Major Crime Unit is on the third floor, the Unsolved Case Unit is on the second floor, and the Missing Persons Archive is on the first floor.

Compared to the Unsolved Cases Unit, the Major Crimes Unit has more people and greater authority.

When they reached an empty area downstairs, Lu Junchi turned to Su Hui and asked, “Do you think there is a problem with that website?”

Su Hui replied, “I believe that those two people are the beneficiaries of the two accidental deaths. The police suspect them for a reason. It’s not a coincidence that they logged onto that website. They may have contacted the people behind the website.”

On the surface, that website has no direct connection with the cases they are currently investigating. However, as excellent detectives, they know that many clues are hidden in these seemingly small and unreasonable things.

Su Hui continued, “But I think your fishing method is problematic. The other party is unlikely to take the bait.”

Lu Junchi frowned, “Why?”

Su Hui explained, “People who are not depressed cannot enter that world. The answers you received and posted online are like the low-cost spam of water armies. Those who really suffer from depression or those who are familiar with those patients can see through them at a glance.”

Lu Junchi crossed his arms and said, “So what’s your suggestion?”

Su Hui said, “I can try it.” He paused for a moment and said, “It will be done under your supervision.”

Lu Junchi fell silent. He knew Su Hui was seeking his opinion.

Lu Junchi looked at Su Hui, whose facial features were exquisitely delicate, but he seemed cold all over. There was a sense of alienation from Su Hui, as if all emotions were hidden under an iceberg. However, when it came to the case, there was a glimmer of light in his eyes, like the flames that remained in the ashes. The desire to fight against evil in the world was still burning in his soul.

He felt that Su Hui’s paleness and weakness were just an illusion. He was fearless and stubborn in his bones. He wanted to protect Su Hui behind him, but he always wanted to stand beside him, in the midst of danger, as if danger was an essential ingredient to prove that he was alive.

He couldn’t stop him, nor could he completely protect him under his wings.

Lu Junchi sighed and began to recall the details of his communication with Su Hui before. Although Su Hui was somewhat negative and completely indifferent to many things, he did not show any signs of depression.

He fell silent for a while, for several seconds, and then said, “Then let’s split up and see who catches the fish first, you with Qu Ming or me here.”

TN:

PHQ-9 stands for Patient Health Questionnaire-9. It is a standard, self-reported screening tool used to assess the severity of depression symptoms in adults. It consists of 9 questions and takes only a few minutes to complete. The score ranges from 0 to 27, with higher scores indicating more severe depression. It is often used by healthcare professionals in primary care and mental health settings as an initial assessment tool for depression.

The Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HRSD), also known as the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS), is a standardized interview-based questionnaire that is used to assess the severity of depressive symptoms in patients with mood disorders. It was developed by psychiatrist Max Hamilton in the late 1950s and is still widely used today.

The HRSD consists of 17 items, each of which rates a particular symptom of depression such as mood, guilt, suicidal ideation, sleep disturbances, and anxiety. The interviewer rates the severity of each symptom on a scale from 0 to 2, 0 to 4, or 0 to 6, depending on the item, with higher scores indicating more severe symptoms.

The HRSD is often used in clinical trials and research studies to measure treatment response and to monitor changes in depressive symptoms over time. It is also sometimes used in clinical practice to help diagnose and manage depression, although other measures such as the PHQ-9 are more commonly used for this purpose in primary care settings.