Both photographs had been printed from the household registration records at the local police station.
So neither photograph showed any signs of Photoshop editing, and neither girl was wearing makeup.
As everyone knew, people always looked bad in their ID photos.
Yet the girls in these two photographs were photogenic, clearly natural beauties.
Judging by the photographs, both girls were exceptionally good-looking, each beautiful in her own way.
Their bearing, however, was different.
On closer inspection, the missing girl, Liang Yi, had a reserved, stiff expression, and her eyes gave an impression of insecurity.
Judging by her facial bones, she had a rather heavy bone structure, yet her cheeks were somewhat hollow and her skin sallow, signs of malnutrition.
By contrast, An Yutong, who lived on the thirteenth floor, had bright, lively eyes in her photograph, with a full, rosy face. At a glance, she was clearly a confident girl from a well-off family.
Looking back at Liang Yi, she was a university student who had suffered from long-term malnutrition. But no matter how poor a university student was, surely she would not be so poor that she could not get enough to eat. If things had reached that point, her family had to be far poorer than most.
Some people said students should not dwell too much on wealth and poverty. As long as they studied hard and endured hardship for a while, they could rise above others in the future.
But the truth was that being too poor bred insecurity and vulnerability. Especially at school, anyone poor enough was bound to feel inferior.
An Ning had that same insecurity. When I first met her, she was still with Du Yuwei, and she had not been insecure then.
After she came to our branch, she kept showing signs of