I Became a Suspect

She took the bun, the corners of her mouth curling up.

She really hadn't eaten breakfast yet. Her stomach was practically growling.

"Is this— is this your brother?" A few girls crowded closer, their faces awkward but tinged with excitement, their eyes sparkling. "He's just so... well..."

"Hello." Yu Xing wore a gentle expression, the very picture of a harmless upperclassman.

Zhu Yan nodded. Before the bolder ones could ask Yu Xing for his WeChat, she cut off that possibility in advance. "Yeah, he's my brother. I won't introduce him to you. You've seen him and satisfied your curiosity, right? Then we're off."

She didn't have any particularly close friends here to begin with. Putting up with a whole morning of curious stares had already tested the limits of her composure.

"Why didn't you drive here?" She glanced around. Traffic crawled in every direction. Some cars were pulling into the campus parking lot, while others had stopped right outside the gate, making the congestion even worse.

"This?" Yu Xing followed her gaze and said helplessly, "If I'd driven here, I'd have to be an idiot."

Pfft. Zhu Yan realized she'd asked a pointless question. She tugged Yu Xing toward the campus. "Come on, let's go! The music club's performing in the auditorium this afternoon. I saved you a ticket. I'll show you around this morning!"

The other members of the music club were left behind. One girl wanted to follow them and get acquainted, but just as she moved, Yu Xing turned around.

His gaze landed squarely on her, carrying a hint of menace and warning.

In an instant, the girl felt as though some terrifying creature had set its eyes on her. She froze in fright, only coming to her senses a few seconds later. Was that just my imagination?

Zhu Yan and Yu Xing were already gone.

The clubs at Ruibo University had clearly gone all out for the anniversary celebration. They were full of energy first thing in the morning. Zhu Yan led Yu Xing around half the campus, where they saw all kinds of games.

Unfortunately, Yu Xing had no interest in these little games, and neither did Zhu Yan. Considering Yu Xing's feeble stamina, she took him to the second floor of the campus milk tea shop before long. They ordered two drinks and sat by the window.

"Look at you. Your stamina's worse than mine, and I'm a girl." Zhu Yan watched Yu Xing take off his baseball cap. He looked like he'd only just recovered from a serious illness, and she gleefully teased him.

"Give me a break. Most men don't necessarily have better stamina than you, either." Yu Xing wiped the sweat on his forehead. He'd simply gotten hot.

"Pfft, you're just weak! Keep this up and I could carry you off myself."

Oh? The young lady was feeling pretty rebellious today.

Yu Xing's long, narrow eyes swept over Zhu Yan's smug smile, and his gaze turned dangerous. The corner of his mouth lifted as he said ominously, "I trained you. If you weren't strong enough, you'd already be dead."

"Your look stopped working on me when I turned seventeen. You can't scare me, and I'm not backing down." Zhu Yan gave a disdainful snort. "You're really handsome today."

"Oh." Yu Xing listened to her smoothly surrender, then propped his chin on one hand.

"If you got serious and scared me, you'd be the one crying in the end." Zhu Yan blinked, utterly certain. "You'd be crying and pinching my philtrum, telling me not to die."

"I wouldn't. I'd toss you into a garbage dump without a second thought," Yu Xing said casually.

"Boo-hoo (┯_┯)..." Seeing Yu Xing treat her so coldly, Zhu Yan put on a wounded expression and started wheedling. "I was wrong. Your stamina's not bad at all. You could go three hundred rounds without a break!"

Yu Xing's expression turned strange for a moment. "Now that you're an adult, the way you talk is a lot less inappropriate than it used to be."

"Hehehe, it's called rhetoric. You taught me that when talking to different people, I should use different approaches to steer the conversation." Zhu Yan dropped her wounded act and took a sly sip of milk tea. "And you don't like it when I make dirty jokes at you, so you're sure to correct me. That means you can't keep making that creepy face! Have I finally put what you taught me to good use?"

At that, Yu Xing considered it. "Hmm... You've improved."

He looked out the window. On the open area outside the milk tea shop, plenty of clubs had set up booths. Some were selling things, while others were putting on demonstrations.

"Fine, you pass. No reward, though." Yu Xing nodded toward the outside with his chin. "You brought me here for a reason, didn't you? Which one out there is the person you wanted to introduce me to? You can tell me now."

"Ah, so in the end you still figured out what I was thinking..." Zhu Yan pouted in dissatisfaction, then focused her gaze on the bartending club's booth, where several young men were performing fancy tricks with drinks for the visitors.

"See that guy?" She meant the one mixing drinks. He wore designer clothes and was good-looking, with features a little more defined than those of most Asians. He seemed to be mixed-race.

"I see him. Go on." Yu Xing watched the young man's bartending skills for a while. He kept smiling, as bright and cheerful as a sunflower.

"His name is Wang Jue. He's Wang Cheng's nephew."

As soon as Zhu Yan brought up the subject, her expression lost its earlier excitement. Her high spirits clearly ebbed, replaced by a steady seriousness her classmates had never seen on her before.

"You told me to keep an eye on Wang Cheng from the Wang Group. After a week of investigating, I found that he really might be involved in criminal activity. Over the past two years, he's been investing in three films by the same director. That director was once charged with murder, but the charges were later dropped due to insufficient evidence."

Yu Xing said, "Go on."

"The director's name is Xiang Xiaoqun. I've already compiled the information and will send it to you later. Wang Cheng started investing in Xiang Xiaoqun before the murder charge, and the two are close friends who frequently exchange money. They're very cautious, too. The chat logs I found are full of phrases that make no sense. I think they must have agreed on code words or some other way to pass information, specifically to keep hackers like me from stealing evidence." Zhu Yan spoke matter-of-factly. She sounded no different discussing her suspicions than she would saying, "The buns are delicious."

"Mm. Afterward, split all the evidence you've found into two copies and give me a complete one." Yu Xing didn't seem surprised. He straightened his tousled bangs. "For the other copy, use your judgment and send the useful material to the Criminal Investigation Detachment. All you need to do is make them notice Wang Cheng. They can investigate the rest themselves."

"Huh?" Zhu Yan tilted her head. "Are we getting the police involved in this case too?"

Yu Xing looked at her and chuckled. "Don't act like you're some kind of criminal hiding in the shadows all the time. You're a confidential informant for the head of Mijin City's Criminal Investigation Detachment. If you've got evidence of a crime, of course you should give it to them."

"..." Zhu Yan wanted to say something at that, but in the end she swallowed her words and went back to talking about the young man at the bartending club.

She watched the young man with a cool, detached gaze. "On the surface, Wang Jue seems simple-minded—the typical rich young heir with more money than sense. He has a wide circle of friends at school. But no one knows whether he's actually involved in Wang Cheng's affairs. If you want to make connections with the Wang Group, you could use him."

"Mm."

Just then, Yu Xing faintly heard a scream. He looked down and saw that the crowd seemed to be getting restless.

At first, most people looked confused. But as news came from the southwest, their disbelief gradually gave way to curiosity and unease. Many began moving toward the northwest.

"What's going on?" Zhu Yan asked, puzzled. "Judging by their faces, it looks like... something happened."

The commotion grew louder. Wang Jue from the bartending club had already stopped what he was doing and run toward the southwest corner with the others.

Yu Xing watched coldly. A sentence rang through his mind.

In the southwest, during the celebration, a member of Single Prism would leave a trail.

He'd expected something to happen here today. He just hadn't expected it so soon.

Yu Xing stood up and picked up his milk tea. Smiling, he said, "We've got something to do. Let's go take a look."

Outside the sports equipment room beside the billiards hall, a crowd had gathered, craning their necks to look inside like a flock of long-necked, shrieking chickens.

Several security guards struggled to keep things orderly, drenched in sweat. "Stop pushing! Back up!"

But their efforts clearly couldn't drive away the onlookers. Not everyone there was a Ruibo University student; there were plenty of visitors too, and the campus guards had no authority over them.

University staff rushed over and tried to shut the equipment room's half-open door. But when they touched it, their hands came away bloody.

They exchanged grim looks, all thinking that the school was about to suffer a disaster through no fault of its own.

Yes, there was a dead body.

A middle-aged woman had been found dead inside the equipment room. The time of death was unknown, and they would have to wait for the police to arrive before making a determination.

Yu Xing drifted through the crowd from behind, ghostlike, and made his way to the front with ease. He got a clear view of the scene inside.

The victim lay in the center of the equipment room floor, wearing a flamboyant red dress. Blood flowed from the many cuts across her body, blending with the dress and turning the red into a patchwork of darker and lighter shades.

Around her, blood had been splashed about with a kind of artistic flair—across the floor and walls, and even onto the door—forming graffiti of various sizes.

It was obviously a deliberate murder. The killer had brazenly used the victim's blood to paint graffiti. If word got out without being properly controlled, it would cause a sensation.

Bang.

The door was finally shut, blocking Yu Xing's view. He frowned and told Zhu Yan, who had also squeezed her way to the front, to call the Criminal Investigation Detachment.

"A murder... The method suggests a disturbed mind. So, have members of Single Prism finally come out to commit crimes?" he murmured inwardly, scanning the crowd.

Just as he was about to work out where the killer might be by reasoning from their psychology, the Deduction System, which rarely appeared on its own, suddenly surfaced in his mind.

[Detected a real-world crime nearby. The culprit is a deducer, meeting the conditions for absurd mapping]

[Generating deduction game]

[Mapping Deduction Game generated. This deduction meets the requirements of your Main Quest]

[This is a six-player game. The deduction will not consume real-world time. The six nearest deducers will be invited to enter voluntarily. If anyone refuses, the spot will pass to the next person]

[Deduction participant Yu Xing, do you voluntarily enter?]

"What?" Yu Xing froze. He hadn't known the Absurd Deduction Game could work like this.

The next moment, another deduction prompt appeared.

[Three deducers have agreed to enter; four have refused]

[Deducer list (only Persona Mask names are displayed): Heng, Ghost Faith, Cold Wine]

Hmm...

When Yu Xing saw the words Cold Wine, he knew that even if no one from Single Prism was here, he'd better go in anyway, to fulfill the conditions he'd promised Zhao Mou.

The connection was a little too obvious.

Zhao Yijiu's home wasn't far from Ruibo University. Given the distance, it made perfect sense that he'd be pulled in.

Yu Xing silently confirmed that he would enter, then stepped aside into a corner.

Since the deduction wouldn't consume any real-world time, he didn't have to worry about suddenly disappearing and reappearing.

[Six deducers have agreed to enter; six have refused]

[Deducer list: Heng, Ghost Faith, Cold Wine, Xing, King Jue, Ze]

[Deduction beginning]

[Among the six deducers, one is the actual culprit in this real-world case]