“I’ll stay with you all night.”
I opened my eyes and lunged for the car door.
I pulled once.
The handle sprang back into place.
I pulled again.
Still locked.
I switched to the window controls, but the glass didn’t move an inch. The police car was turning, and my shoulder slammed into the door, sending a sharp stab of pain through my right side. My knee also knocked against the back of the front seat, reawakening the dull ache from when I’d hit it on the stairs.
The driver looked at me through the rearview mirror.
His face belonged to an unfamiliar man.
But his eyes were the same eyes Lin Xu always gave me when I threw a tantrum.
“Sit still,” he said.
I pounded on the window with my fist.
“Pull over!”
The driver didn’t slow down.
The young officer in the passenger seat whipped around. His seat belt caught across his shoulder, halting him for a moment, as if I’d genuinely startled him.
“Sir, please don’t hit the door.”
It was his own voice.
“He’s not himself,” I said.
The young officer looked at the driver.
“What?”
“Please, pull over.” I grabbed the back of the front seat, my fingers sliding over the plastic. “Let me out. He just—he used her voice—”
The driver turned on his signal and smoothly merged into the right lane.
“He’s been through a shock today,” he said in an ordinary man’s deep voice. “We’ll take him back and question him slowly.”
I froze.
His voice had changed back.
The young officer looked at me again, his brows drawing together slightly. A name tag was pinned to his chest, white lettering spelling out “Lu Bo'an.”
“Who is this ‘she’ you’re talking about?” he asked.
“Lin Xu.”
The driver’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel the moment the name left my mouth.
“She was my girlfriend.”
My tongue felt stuck to the roof of my mouth. I had to tear each word free to keep speaking.
“She’s dead. Seven days ago. But the people at my office, my neighbors, and now him—”
“Yanchuan,” the driver said.
Lu Bo'an turned his head.
All the blood in my body seemed to turn cold at once.
The driver was still looking straight ahead, but his voice had become clear and soft.
“Don’t tell other people I’m dead.”
Lu Bo'an didn’t react right away.
He stared at the driver’s profile, as if he couldn’t understand why those words had come out of a middle-aged man’s mouth.
“Senior?”
The driver blinked.
“What is it?”
It was his own voice again.
“What did you just call him?”
“Call who?”
Lu Bo'an glanced at me.
The look was brief, and there was no trace of Lin Xu in it.
I seized that pitifully short moment of clarity.
“Open the door,” I said. “You heard me. Let me out.”
He reached for the controls.
The driver grabbed his wrist and pinned it down.
“You can’t open the door while we’re moving.”
“Pull over.”
“We’re almost there.”
“Where?” I asked.
No one answered.
The police car smelled of overheated plastic, damp uniforms, disinfectant, and the rainwater soaking my clothes. Suddenly, the air felt thin. Every breath only made it halfway into my lungs; the rest caught below my throat.
I looked out the window.
The roads outside were familiar, but we weren’t heading toward the nearest police station.
We had just passed a twenty-four-hour pharmacy. After turning right, we should have reached the river embankment. Whenever Lin Xu was in a bad mood, she used to make me drive her along this road, around and around, until I guessed which thing I’d said had upset her.
“Where are you taking me?”
The driver said nothing.
Lu Bo'an tugged at his hand, but he couldn’t pull it free from beneath the driver’s palm.
I lowered my eyes to my right hand.
The silver ring was still on my ring finger.
My skin had gone white from the rain, but a red band circled the base of my finger. The ring felt tighter than it had that morning, pressing into my flesh with every beat of my pulse.
The first time everyone had turned to look at me was because I wasn’t wearing it.
If I took off the ring, maybe they would stop.
The thought made no sense.
Still, I pressed my thumb against the silver ring and pushed upward.
The ring moved a little.
It caught just before my knuckle.
The driver immediately looked up at the rearview mirror.
“What are you doing?”
I didn’t answer. I grabbed it with my other hand too. My fingertips were too wet and kept slipping. I wrapped the ring in the hem of my shirt and pulled again.
My knuckle began to hurt.
The pain only made me pull harder.
“Don’t take it off,” the driver said.
I kept pulling.
The police car suddenly braked.
I lurched forward, nearly hitting my forehead against the partition. Lu Bo'an turned and reached for me, but stopped with his hand a few inches from my wrist.
“Don’t force it. Your finger’s already swollen.”
“Don’t touch me.”
“Okay. I won’t.”
His hand really did stop.
But the driver said coldly, “Help him put it back on.”
Lu Bo'an didn’t move.
“He said not to touch him.”
“He can’t think clearly right now.”
“That still doesn’t mean you can just—”
The driver turned to look at him.
The car was stopped at a red light, and the wipers swept rhythmically across the windshield. Once. Then again.
Lu Bo'an never finished his sentence.
His shoulders slowly relaxed, and the hand suspended in midair reached toward me again.
“Yanchuan.”
I shrank back.
My back was already pressed against the car door. There was nowhere else to retreat.
Lu Bo'an’s fingertips touched the back of my hand.
“It won’t hurt once you put it back on,” he said in Lin Xu’s voice.
I kicked the front seat.
The sole of my shoe slammed into the backrest. Lu Bo'an recoiled and pulled his hand back. I lunged for the door on the other side and desperately yanked at the handle.
“Help!”
Through the glass, my voice sounded muffled, like it was trapped underwater.
“Someone kidnapped me!”
A motorcyclist had stopped in the lane beside us.
He heard the commotion and turned to look.
I slapped the window with my palm and pointed at the door lock.
“Call the police!”
Only after I said it did I realize I was already inside a police car.
The motorcyclist lifted his helmet visor.
I couldn’t see his mouth. I only saw him slowly raise his left hand and point at his ring finger.
The bus beside us pulled over.
A row of passengers turned toward me through the windows.
Some lowered their phones. Some took off their earbuds. One person stood up with a backpack in their arms. They didn’t crowd the window. They only stared at my hand through the rain-streaked glass.
At the silver ring I had pulled up to my knuckle.
The woman in the last row of the bus raised her hand.
She pointed at her own ring finger too.
Pedestrians on the sidewalk stopped.
One.
Three.
More than a dozen.
Some held umbrellas. Some carried takeout. Some walked dogs. Rain pattered against the umbrellas, and the whole street was full of sound, yet all I could hear was my breathing growing faster and faster.
They were all looking at me.
“Don’t,” I said.
No one outside moved.
“Don’t look at me.”
The motorcyclist reached for the rear door of the police car.
The passengers on the bus began moving toward the front door.
The pedestrian signal was still red, but one person after another stepped off the sidewalk.
They weren’t coming to save me.
They were coming to put the ring back on for me.
I let go.
The silver ring remained caught beside my swollen knuckle instead of sliding back into place on its own.
“Okay,” I said too quickly, the words nearly running together. “I won’t take it off. I’ll wear it. I’ll put it back on.”
Six seconds remained on the red-light countdown.
The people outside had already reached the car.
With two trembling fingers, I pushed the ring back. My skin bunched into a red welt. The ring passed over the most painful spot and settled back against the base of my finger.
Everyone stopped.
The motorcyclist lowered his hand.
The bus passengers sat back down.
The pedestrians beside the car turned around, as if they had suddenly remembered where they were supposed to be going, and each returned beneath an umbrella or into the shelter of the arcades.
The light turned green.
The police car continued forward.
I hid the hand wearing the ring beneath my armpit and curled up in the corner of the back seat. My teeth chattered nonstop, and I couldn’t clamp them together. The spot rubbed raw by the ring was hot and painful. Even bending my finger reminded me that it was still there.
Lin Xu had forced me to put the ring back on before.
That time, it had only been while I was washing dishes.
Soap had gotten stuck inside the ring, so I set it beside the sink. When she came home and saw it, she didn’t say anything. She just sat at the dining table and stared at the ring.
I asked her what was wrong.
She said it was nothing.
An hour later, she was still sitting in the same spot.
In the end, I dried my hands and put the ring back on in front of her. Only then did she stand up and hug me, saying she was just afraid that one day I would casually set her aside too.
I had even apologized to her then.
Now every person outside the window was waiting for that same apology on her behalf.
“Are you okay?” Lu Bo'an asked.
I looked up.
His voice had changed back to his own.
He looked at me, his face even worse than before, as if he had no idea he’d touched my hand.
“What did you just say?” I asked.
“I told you not to pull the ring so hard.”
“The sentence after that.”
“What sentence?”
I wanted to tell him that he’d called my name in Lin Xu’s voice.
But when the words reached my lips, I saw his hand.
His palm was facing upward beside his knee, his fingers gently curling and uncurling against his will.
As if he were stroking an invisible hand.
I didn’t dare say anything else.
Lu Bo'an glanced at the driver, then at me.
He pulled a small notebook from his uniform pocket and turned to a blank page. He wrote a few words.
The tip of his pen lingered for a long time.
He held the notebook against the back of the passenger seat, showing it only to me.
**Did I just say something in a woman’s voice?**
My gaze remained fixed on the words.
Lu Bo'an still held the pen in his hand, his knuckles white from gripping it so hard.
I nodded.
He immediately tore off the page and crushed it in his palm.
“What are you writing?” the driver asked.
“The license plate number,” Lu Bo'an said. “There were too many people crossing the street illegally just now.”
The driver didn’t ask anything else.
Neither Lu Bo'an nor I spoke.
The only sound inside the car was the scrape of the wipers.
This time, every pass sounded like someone dragging a fingernail across the glass.
The police car didn’t head toward the river embankment.
At the next intersection, the driver suddenly turned left. When the blue-and-white sign of a police station appeared ahead, I couldn’t believe it at first. I watched it draw closer and closer. Only when the police car actually turned into the driveway and stopped beneath the covered arcade did the pressure in my chest ease by the tiniest amount.
The driver turned off the engine.
I immediately reached for the door.
It was still locked.
“Open it.”
The driver didn’t move.
“We’re here,” I said. “Weren’t you taking me to the police station?”
He looked at me through the rearview mirror.
“It’s still raining outside.”
I couldn’t tell whether he had said it or Lin Xu had.
Lu Bo'an reached over and pressed the unlock button.
Click.
This time, the driver didn’t stop him.
I pushed the door open and stepped onto the arcade’s wet tile floor. My knee buckled. The officer on duty at the entrance saw me and immediately stood up from behind the desk.
“Sir?”
I didn’t wait for him to approach. I ran into the police station.
Inside, someone was giving a statement, someone else was sorting documents with their head lowered, and the water cooler in the corner hummed as it heated. The fluorescent lights were too bright. Every face was perfectly clear.
That only made me more afraid.
I didn’t know which one would become her first.
“I want to report a crime.”
The officer on duty stopped two steps away.
“Okay. Sit down first.”
“Don’t close the door.”
He looked at the open glass door behind me.
“Don’t close it,” I said again. “Please.”
“Okay. I won’t.”
No one touched the door.
For the first time today, after I said no, something actually stayed the way it was.
I sat down, clamping both hands tightly between my knees so no one could see the ring. Lu Bo'an followed me in, but he didn’t sit beside me. He stood where he could see both me and the driver at once.
“Name?” the officer on duty asked.
My throat tightened.
A few dozen minutes ago, just someone saying my name had made the entire building turn to look at me.
“Gu—”
I stopped for a long time.
“Gu Yanchuan.”
The officer typed in my name.
A few keystrokes later, his hands suddenly stopped.
“What is it?”
“You’ve already filed a report today.”
I stared at him.
“No, I haven’t.”
“At 1:42 p.m. The call came from your cell phone.”
1:42 p.m.
At that time, I had been locked inside the taxi, my phone screen showing nothing but “Together.” I had tried to call the police, but I couldn’t even find the emergency-call icon.
“That wasn’t me.”
The officer turned the monitor slightly, then seemed to realize I might not be able to see it clearly and played the call recording instead.
Rain came through the speaker first.
Then someone took a breath.
“Hello, I want to report a crime.”
My entire body went rigid.
It wasn’t Lin Xu’s voice.
It wasn’t the voice of a coworker, a neighbor, or the driver of the police car.
It was my voice.
The Gu Yanchuan in the recording spoke calmly. He wasn’t crying or out of breath, and not a single word caught in his throat.
“My girlfriend is dead.”
“I might say someone is following me, ask to be alone, or try to take off the ring.”
“Please don’t believe me.”
“I’m not fit to be alone right now.”
“If I resist, please take me somewhere safe.”
The recording paused for two seconds.
Finally, the voice that sounded more like a normal person than I did said:
“The person who called the police is me.”