The Last Video Clip

Waking up, Shen Xing found the hospital room empty; he had no idea when Xiong Wei had left.

Shen Xing hadn't woken up naturally, but was instead roused by the ringing of his phone. He grabbed the device from beside his pillow and saw the caller ID: "Officer Ma Jinlong."

He pressed the answer button and said into the phone, "Brother Ma, any news?"

Shen Xing's tone suggested they were quite familiar with each other. The voice on the other end was low and equally casual as it replied, "Yesterday, we managed to restore that surveillance footage from over three years ago, the one covering the area diagonally behind your apartment complex. I had two colleagues watch it all night. We went through the entire recording and found something suspicious—it's likely the last footage of your girlfriend before she went missing. Do you want me to send the clip to your phone?"

Ma Jinlong was the officer in charge of the disappearance case of Shen Xing's fiancée, Ye Ting. He served as the deputy team leader of the Missing Persons Unit at the Yungu City Public Security Bureau.

Because of Ye Ting's disappearance, the original owner of Shen Xing's body had frequently harassed the officers in the Missing Persons Unit. He knew almost everyone in the squad and had become quite close with Ma Jinlong and the others.

Before this, Ma Jinlong had never given up on finding Ye Ting. They had analyzed every lead they could find, yet they remained completely in the dark regarding her whereabouts. However, they couldn't waste manpower and resources indefinitely, so the Missing Persons Unit had been forced to inform the original owner that they would no longer continue the search.

It was precisely after receiving this news that the original owner of Shen Xing's body fell into a state of extreme agony and depression, eventually choosing to end his own life.

However, two months after Shen Xing transmigrated and was reborn, he received a call from Ma Jinlong. He was told that the Public Security Bureau had found another lead worth investigating: a hidden surveillance camera that had been operational three years ago behind the Ivy Apartments.

The hard drive for this camera was severely damaged, and even the technical team at the Public Security Bureau had spent a long time restoring most of it. Yesterday, the officers in the Missing Persons Unit began reviewing the footage and discovered something abnormal.

"Thank you, Brother Ma. Please send it over." Shen Xing nodded, exchanged a few more words with Ma Jinlong, and hung up.

Although they were both officers, Ma Jinlong worked on different cases and was unaware that Shen Xing had been dealing with the Homicide Unit and the Special Case Investigation Unit over the past two days.

Judging by Deputy Team Leader Ma Jinlong's tone, this surveillance footage seemed related to Ye Ting's disappearance, though it appeared to be merely suspicious rather than providing enough concrete leads.

Before long, a notification chime sounded, and a short video clip arrived on his phone.

After opening it, Shen Xing noticed the image quality was mediocre, though this was likely the result of technical restoration; otherwise, the distant scenes in the video would have been completely blurred.

The surveillance footage came from the area diagonally behind the apartment complex where he currently lived; it appeared to be a high-rise building.

In the video, if one counted up to the fourth floor of the building diagonally opposite, it should be the bathroom window behind his own rental unit.

The window was open, and it seemed to be winter in the video.

A long-haired woman was standing in front of the bathroom window—it was a blurry figure of Ye Ting. Her lips were moving, as if she were speaking to the air outside the window.

Seeing this, although Shen Xing felt a sense of unease, the suppressed longing from the original owner's memories surged up again at the sight of her.

A moment later, Ye Ting, standing at the window, clearly shook her head and said a few more things. The situation became even more bizarre; she suddenly tilted her head slightly, as if casting her gaze toward the direction of the surveillance camera.

Her delicate face seemed to be looking through the lens directly at Shen Xing as he watched the video.

Seeing this, Shen Xing's heart skipped a beat. The phone in his hand suddenly began to vibrate, the screen displaying: "Officer Ma Jinlong calling."

He answered the call, and Ma Jinlong's voice came through: "Did you watch the video?"

Shen Xing immediately replied, "I'm watching it now. Ye Ting's behavior is indeed very strange. How did she discover the surveillance camera over there?"

"Discover what?" Ma Jinlong asked.

"The surveillance camera! I just saw her in the video look up directly at the camera, as if she were looking right at me..."

Ma Jinlong's voice turned astonished, interrupting Shen Xing: "I don't know what you're talking about. I watched this video; Ye Ting was just talking to the air the whole time. She didn't look anywhere else."

Shen Xing's heart sank. He asked, "Are you sure she didn't look in the direction of the camera?"

"I'm certain she didn't. After she said a few words to the air outside the window, she closed it and never appeared again," Ma Jinlong said firmly.

"I see. Let me look again. I had just woken up when you called, maybe I saw it wrong," Shen Xing said.

He hung up the phone quickly. The video on his screen continued to play, and he immediately noticed that the fourth-floor bathroom window in the video was already closed; Ye Ting's figure was gone.

He played the video from the beginning again.

This time, he only saw Ye Ting say a few words to the air and then reach out to close the window. Just as Ma Jinlong had said, she never appeared again.

The moment where Ye Ting had looked up at him had completely vanished!

Shen Xing felt the temperature around him dropping, and his hands and feet grew cold.

He turned his head to look around the hospital room. It was a private room set up just for him; there were no other patients, and the room was deathly silent.

Refusing to give up, he played the video from start to finish two more times. He never saw Ye Ting look up at him again; she simply spoke to the air and closed the bathroom window.

Could that moment have been a hallucination?

Shen Xing thought it over carefully and shook his head. No, it wasn't a hallucination. The Ye Ting from just a moment ago had definitely looked at him in the video.

He made a mental note to check the bathroom when he returned to see if he could find any details he had previously overlooked.

It seemed that the original owner of his body had never found any news of Ye Ting's disappearance because he had been looking in the wrong direction all along.

Looking at the video now, it seemed more appropriate to have the Special Case Investigation Unit handle Ye Ting's disappearance case rather than the Missing Persons Unit.

In that case, he could take this opportunity to build a better relationship with the Special Case Investigation Unit and ask Li Naijing and the others to help him look for Ye Ting; it might be more effective than the Missing Persons Unit.

Of course, this was just Shen Xing's wishful thinking; whether they would take the bait remained to be seen. Besides, as it stood, he was the only one who had found anything strange in the video.

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