Through the peephole, he saw that the person knocking was Aunt Wang from apartment 802 next door. She looked frantic and helpless, as if she'd run into a terrible crisis.
The two families had always been close, so Jiang Yue hurried to open the door.
"Little Jiang, quick! Come help me take a look. Your Sister He is sick, and I'm the only old woman at home. I have no idea what to do!"
Sister He was Aunt Wang's daughter-in-law. She was in her mid-to-late twenties and had a lot in common with Jiang Yue's sister, Jiang Ying. The two could be considered best friends.
Aunt Wang's son—that is, Sister He's husband—had been working away from home for a long time. As a result, after several years of marriage, the couple still hadn't had any children. In their daily lives, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law had mostly relied on each other.
They weren't exactly as close as a mother and daughter, but they got along well enough.
"San Gou, guard the house."
Jiang Yue didn't give San Gou a chance to refuse. He shut the security door behind him.
Someone was lying sideways on the sofa in Aunt Wang's living room. From a distance, judging by the clothes, it seemed to be Sister He.
But when Jiang Yue got closer, he was completely baffled.
"Aunt Wang, who is this?"
Aunt Wang wiped at her tears. "It's your Sister He. She was perfectly fine when she came home at noon."
"She sat on the sofa for a while after lunch, and then she turned into this. Little Jiang, what strange illness has your Sister He come down with?"
Jiang Yue gaped, unable to find the words.
The woman before him looked well over fifty. Her skin sagged, her face was covered in wrinkles, and it was mottled like orange peel.
She looked nearly as old as Aunt Wang. There was no way to reconcile her with the young, beautiful Sister He he knew.
His first thought was that Sister He was playing a prank. Had she put on makeup like this, or had she actually switched places with someone else just to fool Aunt Wang?
But after taking a closer look, he realized something was wrong.
For one thing, the spots on her skin looked completely real. There was none of the stiffness that came from makeup, so he could rule out a prank involving cosmetics.
Besides, the beauty mark at the corner of Sister He's mouth—the one she'd had since she was young—was still there.
Her clothes, her jewelry, the proportions of her facial features, and every detail of her face's outline all told Jiang Yue that this was indeed the same sexy, beautiful Sister He as before!
If he had to sum it up, she looked like Sister He twenty years in the future, in the twilight of her life!
The feeling was absurd.
It was as if Father Time had played a cruel joke on Sister He, injecting twenty years into her all at once and making her age in an instant.
Jiang Yue checked her pulse. Sister He's pulse, heartbeat, and breathing were faint, almost nonexistent. She seemed to have suffered a massive shock, and the resulting emotional upheaval had sent her into severe shock.
Jiang Yue pinched the philtrum beneath Sister He's nose. He didn't have time to worry about propriety and began performing CPR.
"Aunt Wang, have you called emergency services?"
"I did, I did. I also called the police." Aunt Wang's tears streamed down her face. "You know how much that girl cared about her looks. She suddenly turned into this. How's she supposed to go on living? She can't even show her face in public like this."
Jiang Yue didn't know how to comfort her. He could only bow his head and keep performing CPR.
How could you tell someone to stay calm when you hadn't endured what they had?
Who could possibly stay calm in this situation?
For some reason, Jiang Yue thought of San Gou's strange pair of pants, the taxi driver, and even his mother, who had grown old in his dream.
Could this world really never go back to normal?
"Phew..."
Sister He suddenly exhaled and slowly came to.
Seeing a handsome face anxiously moving back and forth in front of her, she thought she was having a beautiful, romantic dream.
Then she realized Jiang Yue's hands were pressing against her chest, pumping again and again. She was about to scream when something suddenly came back to her.
"A mirror! I want a mirror! Give me a mirror!"
Jiang Yue quickly held down her flailing hands. "Sister He, try to calm down first."
Getting a woman who had lost her youth and beauty in an instant to calm down was about as easy as making the sun rise in the west.
Wee-oo, wee-oo, wee-oo...
Just then, an ambulance drove into the residential complex and pulled up beneath their building.
The paramedics soon pushed a stretcher into the elevator and arrived at Aunt Wang's home.
Sister He clamped both hands over her face and kept banging her head against the sofa. No one could stop her.
She felt as if she'd rather die on the spot, and kept wailing, "I don't want to go to the hospital! Just let me die. I might as well be dead. Boohoo..."
To make matters worse, one of the paramedics piled on, asking, "Who's the patient's family member?"
"I am," Aunt Wang said, stepping forward.
"What are you to the patient? Her sister or her younger sister? Ideally, you'd be her spouse, but an immediate family member will do."
"Are you the patient's son?"
This question was directed at Jiang Yue. The patient was a little old to be his mother, but having a child in your thirties wasn't unusual nowadays.
A mother-in-law had become someone's sister, and the little guy next door had become someone's son.
Those words hit hard. Sister He struggled to roll off the stretcher, crying at the top of her lungs. "Waaah... Boohoohoo, I really don't want to live anymore!"
Aunt Wang was at a loss. For a moment, she didn't even know how to explain.
After much effort, they finally got the stretcher downstairs.
Sister He kept covering her face, clearly feeling as if there was nothing left to live for.
They had just come out of the building and were about to get into the ambulance when two police officers approached.
"Did you call the police?"
Aunt Wang had no choice but to step forward and explain what had happened. In her panic, she had called the police.
To be honest, Aunt Wang was always cautious and was a little uneasy about getting the authorities involved in something like this.
The paramedics standing nearby overheard the explanation. They immediately pulled Sister He's hands away from her face and examined it.
"How could there be another case?" one of the nurses exclaimed.
"My god, one of our hospital employees just had the same thing happen!"
Another case?
Jiang Yue's heart stirred at the news. He glanced at the ambulance parked by the roadside and saw that it belonged to Star City Second Hospital.
"Aunt Wang, did Sister He go to Star City Second Hospital today?" Jiang Yue suddenly asked.
While the paramedics were forcibly pulling Sister He's hands away, Jiang Yue casually glanced at her palms.
Aunt Wang was taken aback, then answered, "She spent all morning at Second Hospital, visiting a friend who's in the hospital. She only got back shortly before lunch. Little Jiang, how did you know? Th-this isn't contagious, is it?"
Those three words were extremely sensitive.
Everyone present changed expression at the word "contagious."
The emergency doctor shook his head. "Impossible! There's no such contagious disease in the world right now. If it were contagious, given how quickly they fell ill, you family members would already be infected."
A tall, broad-shouldered police officer walked over to Jiang Yue. "Young man, why did you ask whether she went to Star City Second Hospital?"
The officer was clearly experienced. His instincts for an investigation were exceptionally sharp.
Jiang Yue's question had revealed just the tiniest clue. Before anyone else had caught on, he'd immediately picked up on it.
"I heard the doctors say there'd been another case like this at Second Hospital, so I thought of the possibility of it being contagious. That's why I asked whether Sister He had been there."
That wasn't the truth, of course. With so many people around, Jiang Yue couldn't present his suspicions as evidence.
The officer gave Jiang Yue a knowing look and smiled, but didn't press him further.
Turning to Aunt Wang, he said, "Auntie, we'll need to get her to the hospital and find out what caused this. The police will investigate every lead. Don't worry too much. If she's sick, we'll treat her one step at a time."
As a police officer, he spoke with measured calm.
The ambulance took Sister He away with its siren wailing. Jiang Yue was worried that Aunt Wang was too old to manage on her own, so he wanted to go with her. But the officer stopped him.
"Young man, stay here. I have a few questions for you."
Jiang Yue looked at the growing crowd around them and nodded. "Why don't we go somewhere else to talk?"
"Sure!"
That somewhere else turned out to be the police station.
Jiang Yue had a clear conscience, so he didn't think there was anything wrong with it. The police and the public were one family; since he hadn't done anything illegal, he had nothing to worry about.
The officer was quite courteous. He invited Jiang Yue to sit in his office, closed the door, and even handed him a bottle of iced tea.
He introduced himself as Officer Han and said he was a team leader.
"Little Jiang, you recognize the license plate on this taxi, don't you?" Officer Han slid a photograph across the desk.
Jiang Yue picked it up and glanced at it. It was clearly the taxi he'd taken home at noon. He never forgot a face, or a car, so he remembered it.
"Officer Han, what are you getting at?"
"This driver called the police an hour ago and said he'd been attacked by a passenger earlier. We used the time and route he gave us to check the surveillance footage. Then we cross-referenced it with our database, and the passenger he described was you."
If just grabbing someone's hand counted as an assault, then the definition of assault was ridiculous.
"Officer Han, I did take that taxi. But the claim that I attacked him is a complete lie."
Officer Han smiled without confirming or denying it.
In fact, they'd certainly check the caller's background, too.
And once they did, they found quite a criminal record.
Fighting, theft, gambling, soliciting prostitutes, staging accidents for compensation...
The man's list of dirty deeds could fill an encyclopedia of scumbags.
Then there was Jiang Yue, a polite young man who clearly came from a respectable family.
By comparison, Officer Han would have readily believed that the driver had attacked Jiang Yue. He wasn't so sure he could believe that Jiang Yue had attacked the driver.
"Tell me what happened, and I'll write it down," Officer Han said amiably.
There was no need for tricks. Jiang Yue recounted everything exactly as it had happened. He didn't change a single word of the conversation in the car.
When Jiang Yue mentioned the incident at Star City Second Hospital where someone had jumped from a building, Officer Han's pen paused.
To someone as observant as Jiang Yue, that tiny detail was unmistakable supporting evidence.
Could something really have happened at Star City Second Hospital then? What kind of major incident would have caused traffic control along the entire route?
Officer Han tapped the table with his pen. "Why did you say, 'You're in big trouble'? That doesn't look good for you. What made you say it?"
Before you continue