The goal was survival

Shao Lan thought for a moment, then looked at Jiang Mingran.

"You're from the Institute of Competitive Sports?"

Caught off guard by the question, Jiang Mingran nodded blankly. "Uh, yeah."

"Can you run fast?"

"A hundred meters in exactly eleven seconds, I think..." Jiang Mingran scratched his head. "Why don't you just tell me what you need me to do?"

Shao Lan glanced at Jiang Mingran, a little surprised that he had caught on so quickly.

"I'm used to it." Jiang Mingran rubbed his head. "Everyone around me has treated me like a pack mule since I was little."

"..."

Shao Lan asked Jiang Mingran to go into the living room and quickly check whether the old landline worked.

Generally speaking, there were only a few options when faced with a serial killer: 1. Run away. 2. Call the police. 3. Fight head-on.

Shao Lan did not want to fight head-on, and escape had already proven impossible, so calling the police was the option they most needed to try.

Especially since the newspaper had even provided the task force's phone number. That could not be a useless clue.

And the only thing in the entire apartment that could make a call was that old landline.

"Sure." Jiang Mingran nodded.

Shao Lan raised his eyebrows in surprise. Jiang Mingran had agreed a little too readily.

It sounded simple, but it was actually an extremely dangerous job. Only a door separated the living room from the kitchen. If the woman in the kitchen came out, Jiang Mingran would have nowhere to hide-he was a whole size bigger than Shao Lan and would not fit beneath the sofa.

Jiang Mingran scratched his head. "It's fine. I've trained in Free-Style Kickboxing. If the killer comes out, maybe I can subdue her on the spot."

Shao Lan considered it.

He did not share that optimism.

"It's fine. Even if I really die, I've still got two lives left, right?" Jiang Mingran pointed at the little goldfish in the tank. "Your reasoning skills are way better than mine, Shao Lan. If I buy you more time, it'll be easier for us to clear this later."

Shao Lan glanced at the kitchen and patted Jiang Mingran on the shoulder.

"Don't make a sound," Shao Lan wrote on the paper. "If there's nothing wrong with the landline, bring me the living room trash can."

Jiang Mingran raised his eyebrows in puzzlement, but did not ask why.

He took off his shoes, silently opened the bedroom door, and headed toward the old landline.

The living room was utterly silent. Shao Lan cautiously poked his head out and glanced toward the other bedroom.

That was Pancake Uncle's bedroom. Its door was closed, and all was quiet.

Suddenly, a creak came from farther away-

The kitchen door opened.

Shao Lan jolted in alarm. Jiang Mingran froze in the living room, his body going rigid in an instant.

Cold sweat covered both their backs almost immediately.

Had they been discovered?

One second passed, then two.

The rush of running water came from the kitchen, followed by the sound of the stove being lit.

The woman did not come out. She seemed to be cooking something and had merely opened the kitchen door to let out the heat.

Shao Lan wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and beckoned to Jiang Mingran.

Jiang Mingran had already checked the landline's cord. He picked up the trash can and hurried back to the bedroom.

They closed the bedroom door and sat down against it, trying to calm their racing hearts.

"I checked. The landline's plugged in, so it should work," Jiang Mingran wrote on the paper. "But we can't move it in here. There's no phone jack in this room."

The trash can was the only thing he could bring in, though Jiang Mingran still had no idea why Shao Lan wanted it.

"I checked the living room last round. There weren't any clues. This was the only thing I didn't search." Shao Lan pointed at the trash can. "We have the police number and a landline. Now we're missing just one thing."

"What?" Jiang Mingran anxiously wiped the sweat from his forehead. He could not think of what else they needed.

Shao Lan glanced at him. "Do you know where we are?"

Jiang Mingran froze.

No, he did not.

Both of them had been moved here while unconscious. When they woke up, they were already here.

The last thing they lacked was an address.

Shao Lan had already begun rummaging through the trash can.

Soon, a faint smile appeared on his lips.

"Found it."

Shao Lan held several scraps of paper. He pieced them together, reconstructing half an electricity bill.

"Electricity charges for this billing period: xx yuan. Payment deadline: xx/xx/xxxx. Mailing address: Happiness Residential Community Building 7."

The text after "Building 7" was missing.

Shao Lan searched the trash can again, but could not find the other half.

He went to the window and leaned forward to look down.

The rain shrouded everything around them in a white haze. Visibility was less than five meters. He could see neither the opposite building nor anything below, so he could not tell which floor they were on.

They had run into the stairwell during the first loop, but even after racking their brains, neither Shao Lan nor Jiang Mingran remembered seeing any numbers on the walls.

"Never mind. Happiness Residential Community Building 7 should be specific enough," Shao Lan wrote. "The police can pinpoint the complex and the building, then check the residents one by one. It shouldn't take long to find the murderer."

Their next step was to call the police.

This was the hardest part.

They could not move the landline into the bedroom, so making the call meant going into the living room.

But if they spoke in the living room, [she] would probably hear them.

Especially now that she was cooking soup with the kitchen door open.

Shao Lan pushed the door open a crack and looked toward the kitchen.

A large number of dark yellow paper bags were piled outside the kitchen, stacked into a small mountain. He could not quite make out what they contained.

But their contents did not matter. What mattered was that the gap between that little mountain and the corner of the wall was just large enough to hide a grown man.

"I have a plan." Shao Lan turned back and picked up the pen and paper.

"We'll leave the bedroom together. I'll go to the living room and make the call. You'll hide behind that pile of stuff beside the kitchen door."

"Best-case scenario, [she] won't hear me on the phone and will stay in the kitchen. In that case, once I've called the police, we'll both retreat to this bedroom."

"But if [she] leaves the kitchen..."

Jiang Mingran's gaze sharpened, and he mimed a vicious strike to the chest. "I'll ambush [her]!"

Shao Lan shook his head. "No. Just give me a signal."

"[She] can't see. As soon as I get your signal, I'll stop making noise and move away from the landline. Then [she] won't be able to pinpoint me right away."

"You should leave your hiding spot immediately after signaling, too. After that, it'll be a game of hide-and-seek. As long as we stay quiet, there's a good chance we can stall until the police arrive."

"Even if we really have to fight, hold off until there's absolutely no other choice," Shao Lan said. "Remember, our goal is survival."

Jiang Mingran nodded, thoroughly convinced by Shao Lan.

But Shao Lan would not be able to see the kitchen door while making the call, so the signal had to be a sound.

A sound that would not arouse [her] suspicion.

"I've got it." Jiang Mingran's eyes lit up. "I can imitate a mouse."

Before Shao Lan could stop him, Jiang Mingran let out two squeaks. They were remarkably convincing.

Shao Lan glanced toward the kitchen door. Everything was unchanged. The woman had not come out to investigate.

It seemed that mouse squeaks would not attract [her] attention.

"All right. That's settled, then." Shao Lan nodded.

This was the best plan they had for now.

The night was silent, broken only by the bubbling of soup in the kitchen.

Jiang Mingran slipped behind the pile without trouble. He gave Shao Lan an OK sign, then sucked in his cheeks to imitate a little mouse again.

Shao Lan gestured back to show he understood, then headed into the living room.

The old landline sat on the small coffee table beside the sofa.

Shao Lan lifted the receiver and quickly punched in the number.

Whether because the parts were old or because of Shao Lan's nerves, the buttons made distinct clicking sounds that seemed especially loud in the stillness of the night.

The call connected after a single beep.

"Hello, Municipal Bureau Special Task Force."

Shao Lan breathed a sigh of relief and spoke hurriedly. "Happiness Residential Community Building 7."

Despite keeping his voice as low as possible, it still sounded exceptionally clear in the night, just like the clicking buttons.

The person on the other end seemed unable to hear him clearly. "Hello? Could you repeat what you said?"

Fortunately, there had been no mouse squeaks or sounds of a struggle, which meant the person in the kitchen had not come out.

Shao Lan raised his voice slightly. "Happiness Residential Community Building 7. Right now. Threatened with a knife."

As he spoke, he kept watch on his surroundings.

Everything was quiet on Jiang Mingran's end. No signal came.

The response from the receiver was swift. "Understood. We..."

Shao Lan hung up.

That was enough. The most important details in a police call were the time, location, and nature of the incident. The knife threat he had just reported was the kind of emergency that would prompt the police to dispatch officers immediately.

Now he needed to return to the bedroom and have Jiang Mingran withdraw from his lookout position as well.

Suddenly, Shao Lan sensed that something was wrong.

A cold current of air brushed the back of his head, like a night breeze blowing through a window.

But the window was right in front of him, and it was firmly shut.

So it was not the window.

Someone was standing silently behind him, breathing cold air onto his body.