"Mama... Mama!"

A faint, tearful call came from the bedroom, like a sharp awl piercing a raw nerve. Chen Chun quickly put down her phone and rushed to the bedroom. "Coming, coming, Taotao, Mama's here."

Her daughter lay in bed, cheeks flushed red from fever, her large eyes brimming with tears. In a hoarse voice, she cried out again, "Mama, I don't feel well." Chen Chun's heart ached terribly; she wished she could suffer in her daughter's place. She pulled a tissue from the bedside table to wipe the tears and snot from Taotao's face, tucked her daughter's favorite doll under the corner of the quilt, and patted her gently through the blanket. "It's okay, Taotao. You won't feel so bad after you take your medicine in a little while."

Taotao hugged the little toy dog's head tightly. "Mama, I don't want to go to the hospital for a shot."

"Okay, no shot for now." Chen Chun pressed the back of her hand against her daughter's hot forehead. "If your fever breaks tonight, we won't go to the hospital."

As she spoke, she sighed with worry. That evening, she had taken her daughter to the Mid-Autumn Lantern Festival in the park when it suddenly started pouring rain. Luckily, a kind person helped them with an umbrella and walked them to the bus stop, saving them from getting completely soaked. After getting home, she had quickly given her daughter a bath, changed her clothes, and made her drink hot water. But less than half an hour after lying down, Taotao started crying that her body ached. It seemed she couldn't escape the fate of catching a cold and running a fever.

Taotao tossed and turned under the covers, too weak from her illness to stay still. "Mama, I'm not afraid of drinking medicine. My deskmate said she's super, super scared of bitter things, so she always wants to get a shot whenever she has a fever."

"That's right, Taotao is very brave," Chen Chun said. "But to get better sooner, we should be brave and see a doctor even if we're scared, right?"

The little girl puffed out her cheeks indignantly. "Mama never gets shots herself, she only makes me get them. Mama is scared of shots too."

Chen Chun froze for a moment. Her headache, which had slightly subsided, suddenly began to throb with a vengeance. Before she could think of a reply, the notification sound for a text message rang from her phone in the outer room. She quickly stood up and hurriedly instructed, "Alright, no more fussing. Lie down and be good. Mama's going to get her phone."

Walking into the living room, Chen Chun opened the text message and frowned immediately.

It was already past midnight. They had run out of fever medicine at home, and the nearby pharmacies were closed. She had ordered children's fever medicine from a 24-hour online pharmacy, but just now, the pharmacy had suddenly sent a message saying the medicine was currently out of stock and that she should request a refund and purchase it elsewhere.

Taotao was still fussing and moving around in her room. "Mama, Mama—I want to read a picture book—"

"Mama will be right there, wait a moment."

Chen Chun replied casually, hurriedly clicked the link to request a refund, then opened the app again to buy fever medicine from a different pharmacy. After the payment went through, she tossed her phone aside and rushed back to the bedroom to soothe her daughter. She had also been caught in the rain tonight. Her head felt like it had a faulty high-voltage wire inside, throbbing painfully behind her eyes. Wondering if it was the onset of a cold, she decided to make herself a packet of cold medicine after her daughter fell asleep.

A while later, her phone rang. She went out to answer it. The delivery driver told her the medicine had arrived and was left at her doorstep as requested in the notes. Chen Chun leaned against the door, holding her breath and waiting until the footsteps outside had completely faded away before she opened it and brought in the paper bag hanging on the doorknob.

After taking the medicine, Taotao finally drifted off into a groggy sleep. Chen Chun let out a sigh of relief, only to feel a rubber ball bouncing around inside her head. Her headache had gotten worse. She barely managed to push herself up using the edge of the bed.

The phone buzzed again. Afraid of waking her daughter, she quickly closed the bedroom door and answered the call. "Hello?"

"Hello, your delivery has arrived. I've left it at your doorstep."

"Huh?" Chen Chun was baffled. "What delivery?"

"Juquan Medicine Delivery." The delivery driver's voice sounded both through the phone and from outside her door. "Let me check... You're Ms. Chen in 503, phone number ending in 8798, right?"

Chen Chun: "..."

"Just leave it at the door for now," she said with difficulty.

"Okay."

But the medicine had already been delivered over ten minutes ago... Had the order cancellation failed? If they had the medicine, why did they notify her it was out of stock? Or was there something wrong with the first batch of fever medicine?

Her thoughts in a jumble, Chen Chun brought the other bag of medicine inside. In that short half-minute, her phone chimed several more times. An ominous premonition pounded in her chest. Her subconscious seemed to have already found the answer, but her conscious mind had short-circuited. Her fingers trembled so much she almost swiped the lock screen incorrectly. Then she saw four consecutive bank transaction alerts on the screen.

Chen Chun's vision went dark, and her mind went blank with a loud buzz.

The wire sparking with pain in her head had finally exploded. She threw her phone away as if it were a scorching piece of charcoal, curled into a small ball, and stuffed herself under the small dining table.

The moonlight was as white as snow. In the silent, deep night, the sound of quiet sobbing could be heard.

"Yuan Hang!"

"Here. What's up?"

Yuan Hang poked his head out of the suite doorway. Qin Dongming, the captain of the Jinxi Branch Criminal Investigation Division, was multitasking—typing on his keyboard while replying to a WeChat message. He forwarded him the internal network information and ordered without looking up, "The local station in Danfang Town reported a case. An unidentified male body was found near the drainage outlet of the Qingyuan Sewage Treatment Plant leading to the Xinliu River. The possibility of a criminal case can't be ruled out. Take some people to the scene."

The printer next to the desk whirred and spat out a report. Yuan Hang took it and quickly scanned it: a male, around 30 years old, died of drowning, with a significant injury to the back of his head. It seemed that was the reason a criminal case couldn't be ruled out. However, it wasn't uncommon for people to hit their heads on rocks or drainpipes in the riverbed after falling in. It could be a suicide, or an unfortunate accident.

Preconceptions were inadvisable, but as long as one was human, biases were inevitable. While silently praying it wasn't a homicide, he casually folded the printed paper and stuffed it into his pocket. "Alright, Captain Qin. I'm heading out."

"Handle the scene properly, and pay special attention to the impact," Qin Dongming said. "Report any new developments to the team promptly."

Yuan Hang was slightly taken aback, not quite grasping the specific meaning of "pay special attention." He nodded vaguely. "I understand."

He sent a message to the medical examiner and the forensics team, then headed out and turned right. He hadn't taken two steps when his leg suddenly bumped into something half-soft, half-hard with a thud. Yuan Hang looked down and met a small face, two-thirds of which was covered by a mask. Tears quickly welled up in her large, amber-bead-like eyes. "Waaaah..."

"I... Whose kid is this?" Yuan Hang barely managed to swallow a curse. He quickly reached down, scooped the little girl up from the floor, and, holding her under her armpits, respectfully transferred her to a plastic chair in the hallway. "Sorry, sorry, Uncle wasn't looking where he was going. Where did you get hit? Did it hurt? Don't cry, don't cry..."

The noise alerted the Anti-Fraud Center office next door. A young woman with her hair in a bun rushed out. "Taotao?! What's wrong?"

"I'm so sorry, I accidentally bumped into your child just now. She took a little tumble." Yuan Hang apologized hurriedly. He saw that the woman looked haggard, her eyes bloodshot. It wasn't hard to guess she was a victim who had come to report a crime. Someone who had already suffered a huge mental blow couldn't withstand any more stimulation. He gestured to Ding Sheng, who was peeking out from the office, signaling him to come over and take charge so he wouldn't be delayed from responding to the call.

Fortunately, the little girl only let out a couple of dry sobs before quickly stopping her tears when she saw her mother. The woman comforted her with a few words, poked her daughter's forehead, then stood up and nodded apologetically to Yuan Hang. "Officer, I'm sorry. It's my fault for not watching her properly and letting her run around. I've disturbed your work."

"Not at all, please don't say that. As long as the child is okay." Yuan Hang gave her a perfunctory nod and said to Ding Sheng, "You guys carry on. I'm off to the scene. Bye."

He practically fled the hallway. After exiting the main entrance of the police station, he took a deep breath of the car exhaust from the road. Only then did he feel the oppressive feeling, which had lingered before his eyes like a cold fog, slowly dissipate in the bright autumn afternoon sunlight.

Yuan Hang didn't consider himself a particularly delicate or sensitive type, but to suddenly encounter that kind of completely harmless yet nerve-wracking fragility—like a cracked glass vase suspended in mid-air by a thin thread—a normal person's first reaction would never be to reach out and catch it. On the contrary, precisely because one could foresee its fate of shattering at the slightest touch, one couldn't help but want to stay away.

A long line of police tape was stretched along the bank of the Xinliu River. Under the dense bushes on the bank were piles of soft, damp fallen leaves. The banks were quite a bit higher than the river surface, and the unrepaired jumble of rocks and dirt slopes looked quite steep. A sign reading "No Swimming, No Fishing" was stuck into the ground at an angle nearby.

The body had been placed on the riverbank. Yuan Hang put on gloves and shoe covers and squatted beside the plastic sheet with the medical examiner to observe. The deceased's skin was pale, with fine white foam in his mouth. The livor mortis was faint, and the skin on his fingers was wrinkled—typical signs of drowning. There was a deep wound on the back of his head, with visible sand and grit in the gash.

The deceased was wearing a black short-sleeved T-shirt, khaki casual trousers, and brown lace-up casual shoes. He wore a mechanical watch on his wrist, its hands stopped at 12:08.

"Although the deceased has a contusion on the back of his head, based on the external signs, the most likely cause of death is drowning. The preliminary estimate for the time of death is about 14 hours ago, which would be between 11 PM last night and the early morning hours. We'll need a more detailed examination for specifics." The medical examiner stood up, steadying himself with his knees. Yuan Hang turned to the local police officer next to him and asked, "Who reported it?"

The officer was a young man, perhaps not yet used to facing dead bodies directly. His gaze kept drifting to the side. "The ones who reported it were a few retired old men fishing by the river. They saw something stuck in the drainage outlet from a distance. Out of curiosity, they went closer to check and realized it was a person, so they immediately called the police."

"Any evidence left at the scene?"

A crime scene investigator held up a transparent evidence bag. "Two milk candies in the deceased's left pants pocket. No other personal belongings."

"What about a phone? Wallet, keys, ID... Nothing at all?"

The other person shook his head.

Yuan Hang rubbed his chin and muttered, "You've got to be kidding me. He's a John Doe?"

The officer pointed behind and to his left. "Brother Yuan, before you arrived, we already searched the vicinity with the discovery site as the center. We didn't find any particular evidence."

Yuan Hang followed his finger and looked over. Not far away, on the edge of the riverbed, was a large, protruding reinforced concrete pipe, its opening covered with a wire mesh. Weeds and garbage floated in the surrounding area.

This likely wasn't the primary crime scene, but it wasn't far from it. In a way, it was a stroke of luck amidst the misfortune: after falling into the water, the deceased was carried nearby by the current and happened to be stopped by the sewage pipe, which allowed him to be discovered so quickly. If he had flowed downstream unimpeded and been found a few days later, he wouldn't look like this.

He tilted his chin towards the weather-beaten and rusty sign and asked teasingly, "Doesn't that say 'No Fishing'?"

"Uh," the officer said sheepishly, "we've tried to discourage them, but if we're too harsh... we're afraid the old men might have a heart attack."

Yuan Hang's eyelids drooped as he grunted in acknowledgment. He had naturally downturned eyes, which made him look a bit lazy when relaxed. "After seeing this scene today, I'm sure the old men will sleep soundly."

The officer couldn't help but let out a laugh, but quickly swallowed it when he remembered it was a crime scene. Yuan Hang turned around again, tilting his head back to scan the area. "Are there no surveillance cameras here?"

"This is still an undeveloped area. The sewage treatment plant and a garbage dump are nearby. Besides the old fishing grandpas, basically no one comes here."

"Then we'll have to check the surveillance footage from the main road nearby. We'll also have to expand the search area further upstream, and include the opposite bank. If he really did commit suicide, his phone and personal belongings might still be somewhere upstream."

Yuan Hang pushed himself up on his knees and stared silently at the glittering surface of the water. The "clues" that could solve the puzzle were like the fish in this river. He was starting to understand how the old men felt.