Chapter 280 - 122: Night of Drifting Rain (4)

Chapter 280: Chapter 122: Night of Drifting Rain (4)

These photos were taken at least four years ago, because the short-haired girl in them had died four years prior. You can imagine the quality of phone cameras from back then—to put it bluntly, they were utter garbage. While the images might have looked passable on a small two or three-inch screen, now that they were developed into prints and blown up many times their original size, they were completely blurry.

Those memories must have grown just as blurry.

He glanced again at the photos in the room, a bitter taste filling his mouth on Song’s behalf. Life on the island was dreadfully dull, distinctly divided into two parts: going to work and coming home. Aside from driving around aimlessly, the man had little social life or entertainment. Every time he came home, he was greeted by these photos, all alone in this room. Just imagining it was enough to weigh heavily on Zhang Shutong’s heart.

’But I can’t get into the why of it right now. I have important things to do. When this is all truly over, I’ll buy a ton of beer and get plastered with my teacher. Underage drinking? To hell with that.’

And speaking of beer, he did see a few scattered cans on the desk, along with some Red Bull. The containers were piled on the windowsill. The metal window frame was heavily rusted and the window wasn’t shut tight. The corner of an exam paper on the desk had been lifted by the breeze, and Zhang Shutong had to struggle to fold it closed again.

He now found the second drawer under the desk. Inside were cartons of cigarettes laid out in rows, with an ID card placed on top. This ID card was definitely not what he was looking for.

’Maybe it’s not a physical object at all?’

Zhang Shutong looked at the photos around him. He had to admit they moved him, but that couldn’t be all there was. ’Was this all just a false alarm?’ he wondered. ’I was so sure there was an important clue in this dorm, but maybe there really isn’t.’

Zhang Shutong pinched the bridge of his nose. He thought about that dream again—the flashes of a man lying in a pool of blood. ’Is the killer even stronger than I imagined? Are all those bodyguards no match for them?’

’But I distinctly remember dreaming of a gun, too. A man holding a gun... a suicide...’ His mind was a complete mess. He sat on the bed, preparing to sort out his thoughts. Lord knew how rushed Zhang Shutong had been; he’d come straight to the dorm the moment he woke up and hadn’t stopped for a second. Only now did he have a moment to catch his breath.

The bed beneath him was a hard, iron-frame one, yet at its head stood a small, solid wood cabinet that seemed completely out of place.

A thought suddenly struck Zhang Shutong. He looked at the nightstand. It had two drawers.

If Du Kang had relayed the message correctly, Song had said the thing he’d left for him was in the "second drawer," but he hadn’t specified the second drawer of *what*. At the time, Zhang Shutong had figured it was a miracle Song had woken up through the anesthesia at all; forgetting a few details was only natural.

But he was only just now realizing the reason Song hadn’t needed to be more specific was simply because there were only two pieces of furniture in the room with drawers.

One was the desk, which held his ID card and the cigarettes he was never without.

The other was the nightstand, its contents as yet unknown. Or perhaps... ’He left the choice to me.’

’For a man, his desk might hold secrets vital to his life and fortune. But no matter how important they are, they can never compare to what’s in his nightstand. Barring underwear and condoms, anything you can reach out and touch every night before you fall asleep must be a secret from the softest corner of your heart.’

Zhang Shutong pulled open the nightstand’s second drawer. A notebook lay inside.

The notebook had a black, faux-leather cover and looked like the kind they handed out at school meetings. He ran his hand over the cover; it had grown sticky and stiff with age.

Zhang Shutong opened it to the first page. The handwriting was familiar. This had to be Song’s diary.

The first sentence read—

"Yun, I saw you again today."