The Yu Brothers’ Case Book

The bread in Yu Yin’s mouth dropped.

“No way…how could such a thing happen…” He was completely stunned. His eyes widened at the TV monitor as the flashing screen seemed to remind him that he wasn’t just dreaming.

It was reality, completely all reality.

He remained shocked at this reality for thirty seconds.

His save file for the video game had been overwritten. Moreover, it had been overwritten in a super painful way: it was at the same time and place, same amount of progress, but the other party clearly had more money, a higher level, a more outstanding reputation, and stronger pets than him.

“Xiao Yu! Did you do this?!” There was only one person in the house that would use such a high-level method of revenge. No wonder he had seen Xiao Yu hastily switching TV channels when he’d come home from work the past two days.

He actually used this kind of way to pay back for the pudding thing!

Xiao Yu had just been wandering down the stairs with a bunch of original texts in his arms. The instant he heard Yu Yin’s shout, he immediately spun around to walk back up. But before he could get away with it, he was directly dragged downstairs.

“Do you know how long I played to get that far? A week! Yet you destroyed that week I, your Gē, spent my life on! I was just about to beat the demon king, you know!” Yu Yin had a very strong urge to strangle the other person to death as he shook Xiao Yu’s shoulders. “Also! How many days did you spend on it?” Xiao Yu, who was being shaken so much that he was about to drop his books, hurriedly tightened his grip on them before holding up two fingers.

“Two days! You managed to beat my progress in two days!” Yu Yin was beyond depressed as his self-esteem suffered a major blow.

Xiao Yu turned his head. He actually really wanted to tell Yu Yin that he had spent the first day on getting a feel of the gameplay. He had only spent a tiny bit over one day to actually progress in the game.

“You despicable brat! You think I’ll drop it if you turn your head away?” He grabbed the side of Xiao Yu’s face and didn’t hold back as he forcefully jerked it back. “You wiped my save file just because I wouldn’t give you pudding? Trust me, next time I’ll directly eat the entire box in front of you, just wait and see!”

“Before then, you’d better kneel down first and repent.”

Yu Xia forcefully kicked Yu Yin to the ground. He felt like every time he came home, he saw the older of the sons bullying the younger, and he mercilessly stated, “I already told you several times to not bully Xiao Yu. Did you think I would let you off easily just because you’re still recovering?”

Yu Yin hugged his heavily injured leg as he rolled around on the ground and protested in pain, “I’m clearly the one being bullied…”

“Save your lies for someone else to listen to. And don’t just stand there, you’re blocking the way.” Yu Xia easily kicked him aside as he walked into the kitchen with a hefty bag. “Ah Yin, do you have a classmate named Li Lin Yue?”

“Huh?”

Yu Yin raised his head to look at the person standing in the kitchen. He had originally been about to roll around a few more times to protest some more, but when he noticed something off about the mood in the air, he stood up and replied, “I do. She often comes over to our place, did you forget? She’s that woman who grew up with me. She’s even the school flower now.” The girl was no stranger to his family, there was no reason for his uncle to suddenly ask about this. “Did something happen?”

“I might have to make a trip to the southern district to confirm some things these next few days.” Yu Xia did not directly answer Yu Yin’s question. As he neatly arranged the cans and foods from the bag into the kitchen cabinets, he said, “Tong still has things to do at the station, and this trip may take quite a bit of time. You two had better stay at home; be good and don’t get tossed into any mess.”

“Is it related to the student drug trafficking issue from before?”

Although Yu Yin had suffered from a beaten skull, he had heard fragmented discussions about it from others afterwards. He could only think of this matter being enough for his uncle to abandon his current work and rush down to the southern district as soon as possible.

Xiao Yu, who was standing off the side, bit his lip without making a sound.

Yu Xia tilted his head in thought for a long while before answering, “It’s not.”

“Why do you need to think so long to answer that? Does it have to do with Xiao Yu?” Yu Yin pointed his gaze at the person who had finished putting everything away. “Uncle, what happened?”

“Didn’t you mention that a group of people from your class was heading to the southern district a few days ago?” Yu Xia turned to nod at his family’s son sitting on the ground, and bluntly said straight out, “That entire group has gone missing. The only one they found in the villa was Li Lin Yue, who is still unconscious as a result of extreme shock. I was originally thinking it would be great if I had mis-remembered the name, but it looks like she really is your classmate.”

For a few seconds, Yu Yin’s mind went completely blank. It took him a while to finally respond. “When did this happen?”

“We just heard of it today, but it has already been around a day and a half since it happened. Because it would give rise to an uproar, the media has temporarily been suppressed for now. But after hearing the news, the parents of some of the missing students who have connections pressured the higher-ups here to quickly dispatch people and help search for the students that have disappeared, since they are from your school. The police departments have been under a lot of public scrutiny and discussion recently, so I might be tossed over there as early as tomorrow.” After thinking for a bit, Yu Xia still passed on the information to Yu Yin. “So I came back to gather my things.” He actually didn’t need much time for that, since all he needed to do was stuff together some T-shirts and jeans that were easy to move around in.

“I want to go too.” Yu Yin barely needed to consider it before he instantly stood up and said, “I’ll pay for my own ride.”

“You are not allowed to go!” Yu Xia’s tone turned extremely strict, leaving no room for negotiation. “You’d better not even think about it this time. Did you forget how you got such a huge hole in your skull? I kept telling you to stay out of these things, yet you still loved meddling for no reason, and you ended up like this. Just look at how many injuries you’ve gotten!” Moreover, Yu Yin had never trained in any self-defense, so every time he touched anything, he’d get into trouble. No matter what, he cannot be allowed to get mixed up in this.

“Then Xiao Yu can go…”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Yu Xia rewarded him a malicious, patronizing glare.

Yu Yin shrugged, knowing that his uncle was serious this time. “Sigh, don’t get so worked up. It’s just looking for some missing people this time, it’s not as if everyone died in a single night and we have to look for a bunch of murderers. I doubt I’ll get whacked by a stick.” The only reason he’d gotten into accidents the past few times was because there were murderers. There’s no way I’d get randomly hit by a stick while searching for people, right?

If that were possible, even bad luck wouldn’t be enough to explain it. He probably would have to find out if he had done something this year to bring such bad luck, or whether he had offended something.

“There’s nothing to discuss!”

He walked over to pinch hard at Yu Yin’s ear, not giving any room for negotiation. “In short, you’d better just stay at home properly this summer break, or bring Xiao Yu to walk around outside. If either I or my coworkers discover you at the scene or nearby the area, I’ll definitely beat you to death after! Do you hear me?”

Yu Xia stomped back to his own bedroom.

Xiao Yu watched him leave, before taking out pudding from the fridge. He sat down on the floor and handed a dessert to the person next to him.

“Sigh…what do I do? It’s not like I can just turn a blind eye to that woman…Ah Fang and the others helped me quite a bit before too. And isn’t Ah Guan a bit too unlucky…he was just nearly killed not long ago…” Yu Yin chewed on the pudding spoon. Actually, he also knew that he couldn’t really help this time, but he still tried to come up with ways to go down south.

Obviously, he didn’t wish for any of his classmates to have gotten into any accidents. Not seeing anything would be best.

Moreover, ever since his brain had been bashed open, it seemed like he hadn’t been able to see things as much as before. He had stayed in the hospital for quite a period of time, yet had barely seen any “friends”…theoretically speaking, the hospital would be where most of them gathered.

If this abnormal ability could be struck out along with his head, it wasn’t really a bad thing either. At least, he wouldn’t be frightened awake, and he could become a normal person.

I’m getting sidetracked…

Yu Yin refocused on the issue of the disappearances. He thought back to what that woman had told him about their itinerary before they had left, but no matter how much he contemplated, he couldn’t think of any place they would make a detour to.

Just as Yu Yin’s thoughts were starting to make his head hurt, a bunch of tickets materialised in front of him. When he looked more closely, he realized they were the gift tickets Yu Tong and Yu Xia had given him. Most of them were objects of appreciation from the station, although some were transferred over from others. They covered places that included things like holiday lodgings and theme parks.

Xiao Yu tilted his head at him and waved the tickets.

Yu Yin grabbed the tickets that had been specially picked out and smiled. He patted Xiao Yu on the shoulder and said, “What a good kid. Your Gē will buy you any kind of pudding you want.” He had forgotten there was still this trick.

“Let’s go on vacation together!”

***

The aroma of coffee filled the room.

“Oh, I hadn’t expected you to be free enough to come over here to play today?” Yan Si, who was waiting for a corpse to thaw, and for once didn’t have any extremely urgent work, leisurely prepared some coffee and passed it over to his friend sitting on the sofa. “But if it would be better if you didn’t bring documents over to look at.”

Li Zi Hong was skimming over documents on his laptop at extremely fast speeds. Without paying any mind to the adjacent person’s laments or the defrosting body in front of him, he had assumed this office as his own, automatically handling some cases online.

“There are people over there, it’s noisy.” Because the higher-ups had come down to the office for inspections, Li Zi Hong had been unable to peacefully do work there. Thus, he simply went straight to his friend’s place, which was the quietest area, to continue going through his unfinished documents and grab a drink.

“Hmph, Boss Yu’s place has been like that recently too. And these aren’t my words, but are your higher-ups just bored from having nothing better to do? Is it because they don’t think it’s busy enough that they’re going around doing inspections nearly every day?” Yan Si absentmindedly leaned against the table next to him and did a mental calculation; he still had a few hours to hang around.

“The outside world is like the media, and under the pressure of the high-class, the heads dance around in a frenzy.” Li Zi Hong sipped his coffee and indifferently said this as he maintained his gaze on the computer screen.

“Ha…” Yan Si darted over to glance at the screen and saw the case that everyone had been paying close attention to recently. “Have you found anything regarding Xiao Yu’s case?”

At the moment, they only knew about the problem with the incense. The other one they caught selling drugs at the school had no relation with Xiao Yu’s family incident; they only admitted to selling drugs to the residents of the fourth floor case.

After careful analysis to determine the composition, they determined that it more or less had the same harmful effects as drugs. It could cause hallucinations in both hearing and vision, which was one more piece of evidence that it could numb one’s mental state and cause brutal changes. However, the next assay hadn’t been completed yet, and this was the new pointer that the case did not have.

The drug was used through inhalation, seemingly placed in air conditioning or lit as incense. The most unusual aspect was that after the incense burned out, nothing was detected in its remains. Everything would disappear in the air. The cigarette they had tested had the same trait, but since it was a homemade cigarette, it wasn’t very refined. In the end, it still had some traces in the remnants.

…Perhaps our train of thought had been incorrect.The cigarettes were developed first, then the incense, since the incense was more subtle and practically undetectable.

Li Zi Hong could more or less understand why the incense had been overlooked in Shaodi Yu’s case before. It could even be said that there might have been quite a few such things in the homes of the victims that just had not been discovered. It was very possible that they had all simply been treated as the typical case of domestic violence or unfilial conduct.

Thus, he had requested for a transfer of all similar cases to examine them all. He wanted to determine how many layers this thing had infiltrated into.

“The person we seized does not know where it comes from.” Or maybe he knows but doesn’t dare say. Li Zi Hong rested his chin on his hand as he debated whether or not to request for his friends from other districts to transfer dossier over as well.

“The people buying these kinds of things have gotten more cautious recently. The one the media claimed as the head of the drugs that we captured was really just a middle man. We can’t catch them all.” Yan Si glanced at the defrosting corpse and shrugged. “Look at this one that was sent over. The person was found in a park bathroom after overdosing on drugs. Sometimes, opening up these kinds of bodies can be pretty nasty. Despite the internal organs already turning that bad, they still keep taking drugs. Humans are such a resilient species. But if we let everyone know what we see, it would definitely cause alarm or some kind of uproar, right?”

“Ha…” Li Zi Hong faintly smiled, but did not agree or disagree. He simply continued flipping through his pages.

“But it’s been really hard to Boss Yu to behave. There’s the loud waves of criticisms outside, and the higher-ups doing the same on the inside. I remember my mother’s generation used to be very afraid of the cops, so there weren’t many criminals. But people nowadays seem to disregard the police completely, since paying fines and using relationships to pressure others quickly resolves their problems. I really wonder what’s wrong with this society…as long as one has connections, they can be protected even if they’ve committed murder.” Yan Si kept his gaze on the corpse as he sipped his already slightly cold coffee. “Sometimes I think human lives aren’t worth it at all. The law cannot punish them, and you just have to wait for them self-destruct like this one. But before they are destroyed, they could have harmed countless families.”

“We can only live in this kind of place,” Li Zi Hong said as he went through the cases.

“What a warped system of values…” The two friends exchanged a glance and did not continue the discouraging topic.

Sometimes, things just like this would happen. Although they clearly knew something, they could not tell anyone outside, and simply watch them continue repeating their actions.

“Ahhh, it really puts one in a bad mood. How about we go eat some good food after work later? There’s a pretty good place that opened nearby recently…”

“I refuse.” Li Zi Hong directly interrupted a certain person’s words as he switched screens to look at the item he had just received yesterday.

“Why?” Yan Si wailed out.

“The places you go to are always very expensive.” He eyed the guy who always went to places with medium-high expenses. Li Zi Hong had no desire to play around with his own wages like that.

“Which ones are expensive?!”

“All of them.” Li Zi Hong had strong feelings about how his own lunch had been from a convenience store for 50 yuan, while this person next to him had gotten food for hundreds of yuan, and even added a drink.

In the beginning, he seemed to have spent quite a bit of time trying to change Yan Si’s exquisite dishes to filling breakfasts. In the end, he had simply given up and just told the other person to buy whatever he pleased.

“Earning money is meant for eating, buying houses, and purchasing cars in the first place. So shouldn’t we be eating what we like?” Yan Si retorted, believing there was no need to save money on food. “If you used your video game money for food and drink, you could eat better. All that’s inside your closet is discs, disc players, video game tapes, and even now a Wii. You don’t have the right to talk.” What’s even scarier is that he plays them with a blank face. Who knows if those games are actually entertaining or not?

“I’d like to point out that you’ve played them before too?” I wonder who comes over to pass the time after eating!

“That’s why I often invite you out to eat! Let’s go, old friend, it’ll be my treat today.” Yan Si put his arms around his former roommate’s shoulders with a cheerful smile.

Under the condition that the meal would be free, Li Zi Hong nodded.

“Oh right, any new information yet?” Yan Si looked at the page containing the information on all the university students, recognizing some of the students that had seemingly been involved with the brawl last time.

“No.” Although Li Zi Hong wasn’t responsible for the incidents in that region, he had repeatedly asked his friends over there about the situation.

Those university students lodging there had all disappeared in a single night.

The only one left was the female university student with the surname Li, who had been discovered the next morning. They had only realized something had gone wrong after the person who had gone over to deliver breakfast saw her lying on the front porch, her face pale without any trace of colour.

According to the preliminary investigation, someone from the pension had also delivered dinner and barbecue tools at around six that evening the incident had occurred, and had only met with a single male student staying there. The student had told the staff member that the others had gone out and would return later, so they had simply placed the items down as usual and left.

But on the next day, when they discovered the female student, they noticed that the barbecue tools and dinner hadn’t been touched at all. Nobody knew exactly what had happened inside, nor where everyone had gone.

In any case, the single female student that had not disappeared had only awoken for a short ten minutes. But because she had been so terrified, she could not speak before fainting again. She still had yet to wake, and nobody knew what had occurred.

“Feels pretty similar to an alien incident.” Yan Si voiced his feelings, although he actually wanted to say it was very much like the typical, paranormal plots where someone would always vanish.

“Only the truth exists in this world,” Li Zi Hong levelly refuted his friend’s delusion. “It can always be found.”

“Eh, aren’t there plenty of things that can’t be explained too? Just look at the student that was ganged up on. You can’t just say he has vision issues, right? And don’t you believe his words?” Yan Si shrugged and glanced at his now completely cold, tasteless coffee with an expression of disgust. “If I really had to say something, I’d say that the truth behind spontaneous human combustion is probably the result of drinking too much alcohol and the weather being too hot.”

Li Zi Hong turned to look at him with doubt written all over his face.

“You know…if you drink too much alcohol, wouldn’t the concentration of ethanol in your body be abnormally high? If you happen to go to an extremely scorching hot place at that point, the water inside your body would gradually evaporate, and then the ethanol would naturally become more volatile. Then it would lead to the body combusting by itself. Isn’t that the case?” Yan Si crossed his arms and said with an expression that clearly said: That is the case.

Li Zi Hong immediately turned back to his documents. He felt like the seconds he had spent seriously listening to that explanation had been a complete waste of time.

“Listen to your own nonsense.”

***

The heatwave directly hit them in their faces.

Yu Yin felt it the instant he got off the train and immediately wanted to retreat back into the cool carriage.

“I suddenly feel like Taichung is a great place…” At least I can’t die from heat there. Yu Yin looked up at the sun that could practically kill with its heat, feeling slightly dazed.

Xiao Yu pushed at him from behind and continued doing so all the way out of the station in order to not block anyone’s way. He sat down next to the flower bed in front of the train station, ignoring the shouts from cab drivers.

“Ah, what am I doing, going to a place so damned hot instead of somewhere with cool air?” Yu Yin grieved as he flipped through the guide in his hands to look at the lodging description. Right after Yu Xia had stepped out the door, Yu Yin had immediately contacted a hotel to book a room, then requested leave from his part-time job, before following after to head towards the southern district.

Xiao Yu looked at him and expressionlessly drank the bottled water in his hands.

It was probably more accurate to regard him as Passerby A. He probably could have holed up in a library or spent the very long and blistering hot summer days at Yan Si’s place, but because the person currently sighing about the heat had wanted to look for his classmates in the south, Xiao Yu had somehow been brought along for company and was now roasting together with Yu Yin.

Xiao Yu eyed the air, which was already a bit distorted from the heatwave. He then silently looked around and decided to buy a straw hat or something else to shield him from the sun.

About fifteen minutes later, Xiao Yu ran back with a large straw hat on his head. He just happened to see Yu Yin currently chatting with a cab driver. Moreover, they seemed to be chatting pretty intimately, as if they had known each other for years.

“Ah, where did you run off to and get that!” Yu Yin’s attention was distracted by the straw hat when all he saw was how disproportionately large it was compared to his small, younger brother. He wasn’t sure if it was amusing or ridiculous.

“If you buy anything around here, you’ll get scammed. Let me know before you want to buy something next time. The locals all know cheaper places!” The cab driver that appeared to be in his thirties had the southerners’ amiability. He openly patted Yu Yin’s shoulders and said with a local Taiwanese accent, “So everyone here now? The hotel we’re goin’ to is a tad far, wanna look around for a route that’ll save a bit of cash?”

“No need, we’re a bit rushed. When we call you for a ride back, just give us a slightly cheaper price.” Yu Yin quickly reached a consensus with the cab driver, and the straightforward driver gave them his name card as well, before welcoming them onto his car.

“Actually, I know the hotel yer headin’ to, it’s run by my wife’s younger brother. I’ll tell him to give you guys a special reception, and you guys make sure you come down to play often when yer free.”

Yu Yin studied the name card and stopped the other from turning on the radio as he said, “I heard there’s a pension near this hotel…and it seems that a bunch of university students staying there suddenly disappeared two days ago?”

The driver blanked out slightly before looking at him through the rearview mirror to ask, “Weird, I thought the news wasn’t spreadin’? How didya know?”

“Oh, I heard from a classmate who apparently knew one of the people that came here. They were originally supposed to meet up there, but he suddenly couldn’t find the person.” Yu Yin used an excuse he had planned out beforehand to discreetly scout for information.

The driver nodded. “That’s what I told those cops. They were scared of people findin’ out and doin’ whatever, but in the end, it’ll still be found out.” The driver, who had seemingly been told not to chat about it to anyone, turned the wheel. Having finally found someone to talk to, he continued to gabble, “That pension yer talkin’ about actually is close to the hotel my wife’s younger brother has. They were competin’ pretty fiercely before too. That pension’s head suddenly popped up and started doin’ this mebbe a dozen or so years ago. No idea where he got the cash, but he spent a hefty sum to buy the farmland for settin’ up the pension, and opened it for a very cheap price. Nearly killed off all the hotels ‘round here. Luckily the pricing turned fairer later.”

“Was the villa the same?”

“Yep, but the villa was later, maybe completed around ten years ago? Nothin’ special about it either. Think it was originally for him to live in himself, but for some reason he never stayed in the end. Rentin’ out homes seemed to be all the rage the past few years, so he just changed it to be that way. It’s been rented out plenty o’ times now, and was even recommended on some kinda site.”

So there was probably nothing wrong with the villa and the pension themselves?

Yu Yin felt his head start to throb as he pondered the driver’s words, so he just noted them down first to contemplate them further later. He turned to look at Xiao Yu sitting next to him, who had taken off his large straw hat inside the car and was fixated at the open fields outside the entire time. It appeared as if he had never seen such scenery before, and was pretty fascinated by it.

It probably would’ve been better to bring him out here earlier, huh.

As Yu Yin thought this to himself, he decided that if this matter wrapped up early, they would come back out for an actual vacation after.

“Oh right, what’s fun to do around here?” Yu Yin flipped through his guide. Actually, since he had been so rushed with this trip, he hadn’t properly read through its contents.

Moreover, he had turned off his cellphone since he was afraid his uncle would find somehow find him and then charge straight over to wring his neck.

Although that would probably happen sooner or later, he truly hoped that it would happen as late as possible…ideally it would be best to not be discovered before they returned, but that didn’t seem very likely.

“Tourin’ around the night market, probably? Outsiders love goin’ there, plus there’s night tours and all that. The hotel also has bikes you can borrow. A lotta city folk like pedalling around to explore ‘cause it’s a healthy lifestyle or something like that.” The driver didn’t actually think anything was particularly entertaining, but he still recited the string of locations also introduced in the guide. In the end, he added that there honestly wasn’t much though. “Oh right, there’s a patch o’ woods near the hotel. If you go past that, there’s a common folk’s shrine. Don’t go ridin’ there for no reason.”

“Is there something wrong with it?” Yu Yin asked absentmindedly as he glanced at the guide, wondering where the missing guys could have gone.

“Has people that died long ago, so there’s a lotta yin there. Local people don’t even go there really. Only youngsters with spoiled heads run o’er there to fool around at night. They never listen to warnings. Nothing’s really happened of course, but still best to stay away,” the driver advised with good intentions. After one last turn, they could see the roof of the hotel. He began to slow down the car as he said, “On the right is that pension you just asked about.”

Yu Yin looked in the direction the driver pointed at and really did see the decent-sized pension. There were two police cars parked outside of it. For some reason, he reflexively shrank back, afraid of being spotted by any officers. However, only after recoiling did he remember that his uncle was probably still carrying out the formalities necessary for being dispatched. There was no way he could have arrived here so quickly.

He had tried to hide so quickly that it really was pretty much a reflex now…

The instant he shifted his gaze, he seemed to catch sight of someone over at the pension waving at him from the corner of his eye.

But when he immediately turned to look, he did not see anything.

Had his eyes just been playing tricks on him?

As he grew suspicious, the cab stopped and the driver informed them that they had arrived at their lodging for tonight.

“Hand the name card over to the boss for some special service,” the driver warmly and candidly told them before heading out.

Xiao Yu glanced up at the bright sky and once again placed the straw hat on his head.

Thus, their special vacation began.

“Let’s go look for that woman first,” Yu Yin said.