"After confirming that there was something wrong with the umbrella, I became more alert and began checking the other things in the corridor more carefully. The first thing I looked at was the old shoe cabinet."
"The cabinet door wasn't locked, and it opened easily. It had four shelves, all filled with very old shoes—leather shoes, cloth shoes, and the like. The strange thing was the bottom shelf. There was only one pair of shoes on it." Tang Qisheng paused. "A pair of women's high heels. Red high heels."
The moment he heard that, Jiang Cheng remembered something. In the story Yao Shunyu had retold, the child who left behind the notes had also mentioned red high heels. The child's father had been taken away at night by a nurse wearing red high heels, but the doctors at the hospital had said that there were no nurses wearing red high heels there. It wasn't allowed.
Tang Qisheng's voice dropped as he continued, "Those red high heels were unusual. It wasn't just their color and style. They were brand-new—much newer than all the other shoes—and there wasn't a speck of dust on them. It was as if... as if their owner had just taken them off and shoved them in there."
"But that was impossible, because the shoe cabinet was old and had clearly been abandoned for a long time. Even its handles were covered in dust."
"I didn't move the high heels. I was a little scared." Tang Qisheng's fear over the phone was palpable.
"But I remembered them, along with the umbrella. I first checked those things at around three in the afternoon. When my free time was over, I went back and told Zhu Jie what I'd found, and warned her to be careful."
"But that very evening,