A verbal trap

The rented room was small. Less than twenty square meters, it reeked of moldy old furniture and the artificial fragrance of cheap shampoo.

Chen Lei stepped over the threshold.

Two armed officers stood guard outside, one on either side of the door, their hands resting on their holsters.

Kannazuki stood beside the water dispenser in a gray sweatshirt. He took a disposable paper cup and pressed the hot-water button.

The sound of running water was especially clear in the silent room.

Chen Lei did not rush to speak. He looked around.

His gaze passed over the thin quilt on the bed and the shriveled instant-noodle containers in the trash, finally settling on the computer desk. A yellow delivery helmet sat on it beside an old magazine.

Chen Lei walked to the desk. He reached out and pressed the back of his hand against the computer tower's ventilation grille.

Ice-cold.

"Haven't been online today?" Chen Lei withdrew his hand, pulled over a plastic folding chair, and sat down.

"Too tired." Kannazuki brought the hot water over and set the paper cup on the desk in front of Chen Lei. "I've been running deliveries all day. My bones feel like they're falling apart."

"Gahahahaha!" Ryuk hung upside down from the fluorescent tube on the ceiling, his enormous black wings almost covering half of it.

He looked at Chen Lei and split his fang-filled mouth into a grin. "This cop's like a dog sniffing around everywhere.

"Kannazuki, he suspects you."

Kannazuki did not even lift his eyelids. He sat on the edge of the bed, his hands folded on his knees.

"You didn't bring officers here in the middle of the night just to check whether I've been online, did you, Officer Chen?" Kannazuki looked at Chen Lei.

Chen Lei stared into Kannazuki's eyes.

He tried to find a trace of panic or tension in those black pupils, even a momentary contraction.

Nothing. They were a dried-up well.

"Something happened at Dongding Tower this afternoon."

Chen Lei leaned forward, his hands clasped over his knees. "Lin Yaodong died.

"He put a gun in his mouth and shot himself in front of all his executives."

Kannazuki nodded. "I heard from another rider on my way home. The world of rich people is a real mess."

"Before he died, he posted a hundred-million-dollar bounty on the dark web." Chen Lei's voice was low, but it cut straight through the silence.

"For the life of a delivery worker in a yellow outdoor jacket.

"Tonight, every loan shark, thug, and desperado in the city is hunting delivery workers on the streets.

"Three people are already in intensive care."

Chen Lei paused, watching Kannazuki's reaction.

Kannazuki sighed. He raised a hand and rubbed between his eyebrows.

"That's why I stopped taking deliveries at two thirty this afternoon."

Kannazuki spoke with the helpless resignation of a worker at the bottom of society. "My life's worth more than money.

"The station manager was yelling like crazy in the group chat, telling everyone to go offline.

"Officer Chen, shouldn't you police do something about this? If it keeps up, there won't be anyone delivering food in Linhai City tomorrow."

Chen Lei did not take the bait. He shifted position and leaned back in his chair.

"You certainly were lucky." Chen Lei took a cigarette from his pocket. He did not light it, only toyed with it between his fingers.

"But there's something I'm curious about. At three this afternoon, your delivery platform's dispatch system suddenly crashed.

"The Technical Section said it was a hacker attack. What were you doing then?"

Here came the trap.

If Kannazuki answered, "I was sleeping at home," or "I didn't know the system crashed," Chen Lei would immediately throw out his next question: if you had gone offline, why was your account still active at three oh five?

Kannazuki looked at the cigarette in Chen Lei's hand.

"I was downstairs getting my bike fixed," Kannazuki said evenly. "The battery was wearing out. It wouldn't take me far.

"After I stopped taking deliveries at two thirty, I went to Li's Repair Shop on the corner to replace the battery.

"It took over an hour.

"As for the system crash, I only found out when I read the riders' forum tonight."

Chen Lei narrowed his eyes. The repair shop. A perfect physical alibi. If the police checked, they would certainly find surveillance footage and a statement from the owner.

But that was not enough. Chen Lei had not come today to investigate physical evidence.

He had come to shatter the logic.

"Getting your bike fixed, huh?" Chen Lei smiled. "Bad timing.

"At three this afternoon, before the system crashed, the hacker altered the underlying data.

"To cover his tracks, he automatically issued fifty yuan in 'severe-weather compensation' to every rider whose status was 'online' at the time."

Chen Lei watched Kannazuki's face intently, speaking faster. "I checked the backend.

"When the system went down, your account hadn't logged out. It was only suspended.

"So those fifty yuan went into your account too.

"When you checked the forum tonight, didn't you take a look at your wallet balance while you were at it?"

It was an exceptionally vicious chain of traps.

Assumption A: Kannazuki was the hacker, and he knew that money did not exist.

Assumption B: Kannazuki was an ordinary rider, and hearing there was money to collect, he would naturally follow the lead and check.

If Kannazuki answered, "I didn't notice," Chen Lei would say: a rider at the bottom of society, indifferent to fifty yuan in free money? That doesn't fit the persona you're playing.

If Kannazuki answered, "I saw it, but I thought the system had sent it by mistake," Chen Lei would win outright.

Because there was no compensation payment!

The moment Kannazuki went along with it, he would be admitting he had lied.

"Gahahaha!" Ryuk rocked with laughter on the ceiling. An apple core fell from his hand, passed through Chen Lei's body, and hit the floor. "Kannazuki! He's lying to you! Human lies are so crude, but so entertaining!"

Kannazuki sat on the edge of the bed. He did not answer immediately.

The room was deathly silent. Only the clock on the wall went tick, tock.

Chen Lei tightened his grip on the cigarette. He waited.

Waited for the moment Kannazuki stepped into the trap.

Five seconds later.

Kannazuki stood. He walked to the desk and picked up his old phone, its screen cracked at one corner.

He unlocked it with his fingerprint and opened the delivery app.

Phone in hand, Kannazuki walked up to Chen Lei.

He thrust the screen right in front of Chen Lei's eyes.

"Officer Chen." Kannazuki's voice was utterly flat, as though he were stating a law of physics. "First, our platform has never had anything called 'severe-weather compensation.'

"It's called the Late Delivery Liability Waiver, and it takes money out. It doesn't pay money in."

Chen Lei looked at the screen.

"Second." Kannazuki slid his long fingers across the screen and opened "My wallet." "I don't know how your Technical Section checked the backend. But apart from the two yuan fifty left over after yesterday's withdrawal, not a single extra cent has appeared in my balance."

The huge "￥2.5" on the screen stung Chen Lei's eyes.

Kannazuki pulled back his phone and looked down at Chen Lei in the chair.

"Officer Chen," Kannazuki said calmly, "you barged into my home with guns in the middle of the night just to use a made-up subsidy to bluff a delivery worker who can barely afford to eat?"

Snap.

The cigarette broke between Chen Lei's fingers.

Loose tobacco fell onto his trouser leg.

He had lost.

Completely and utterly.

Chen Lei had tried to maneuver Kannazuki into a trap with sophisticated interrogation tactics.

But he had forgotten that a genuine low-income rider knew the platform's rules far better than the police. Kannazuki had not followed his logic and tried to defend himself. He had smashed Chen Lei's carefully woven trap with blunt common sense and an empty wallet.

If Kannazuki had something to hide, he would have considered how to make his lie hold up.

But he had not considered anything. He had merely shown a poor man's instinctive anger.

Chen Lei stood. He brushed the tobacco off his trousers.

"Sorry." Deep exhaustion seeped into Chen Lei's voice. "There have been too many cases lately. I've been wound too tight. Sorry for disturbing your rest."

"I understand." Kannazuki stepped back, clearing the way. "Take care. I'll let you see yourselves out."

Chen Lei reached the doorway. He stopped and glanced back at Kannazuki.

Kannazuki stood under the dim light, still looking utterly harmless.

The last trace of suspicion in Chen Lei's eyes finally died.

He turned and led the two officers into the dark hallway.

The security door slowly closed.

Click. The latch caught.

Kannazuki stood behind the door.

He listened as the footsteps in the hallway faded, until they disappeared altogether.

He walked to the desk, picked up the cup of water that had long since gone cold, and drained it.

"Gahahahaha!" Ryuk floated down from the ceiling and stood on the desk. "Kannazuki, that was far too risky.

"What if he'd actually produced evidence that you were at the scene?"

"He had no evidence." Kannazuki set down the paper cup and reached out to move the old magazine on the desk.

The black Death Note lay quietly beneath it. The dark gold lettering on its cover gleamed faintly under the light.

"Chen Lei's intuition is frightening.

"But he relies too much on logic." Kannazuki opened the notebook and ran his fingertips over the rough paper.

"When that logic collapses, his intuition becomes a tree without roots."

Kannazuki pulled open a drawer and took out a black rollerball pen.

Lin Yaodong was dead. Dongding Capital had fallen. But Linhai City's cancer had not been completely excised. A power vacuum would only breed even crazier monsters.

Kannazuki raised his head, looking through the narrow window at the city lights still flickering in the distance.

Chen Lei's suspicions had been dispelled.

Lin Yaodong's death had thoroughly thrown both the police and the gangs off track.

Now it was time for Cleaner to truly take over this city.

Kannazuki uncapped the pen.

Its tip touched the blank page.

"Ryuk." A cold smile curved Kannazuki's lips.