“She just loved you too much.”
I’d heard that sentence countless times before.
The first time was when Lin Xu waited for me downstairs at the office until midnight because I hadn’t written down everyone’s name on the dinner-party guest list.
The second time was when she logged into my social media account and blocked one of my college classmates for me.
The third time was when her mother saw the marks from fingernails on my wrist, shoved a tube of ointment into my hand, and told me that Xu Xu was insecure, so I needed to give in to her more.
Every time, someone put “loved too much” in front of the wound.
As long as they said love first, whatever came after seemed less serious.
Lin Shufen was still crying on the phone.
“Ever since she died, I dream about her every night. She just stands outside my bedroom door and asks whether I’ve been taking good care of you.”
I stared at the emergency-room curtain.
Cheng Xiaoqing was outside. She hadn’t come any closer.
But I no longer dared believe I knew what it meant when something stopped.
Lu Bo'an asked, “Ms. Lin, where did Mr. Gu leave his phone yesterday?”
“In Xu Xu’s room. On the charging dock beside the desk.”
“Was the phone turned on?”
“It’s always on.”
My right ring finger gave a sharp throb.
“Who charged it?”
There was silence on the other end.
“It can’t run out of power by itself,” Lin Shufen said.
Lu Bo'an looked at me.
I shook my head.
I wasn’t denying it.
I just didn’t want to hear any more.
“We’ll come over tomorrow morning to verify it,” he said.
“Yanchuan is coming too.”
“Whether he needs to be there is up to him.”
Lin Shufen’s sobbing stopped.
For a moment, I thought she had become Lin Xu.
But when she spoke again, it was still her own voice—just a little colder.
“He’ll come. He knows Xu Xu’s things best.”
The call ended.
The emergency room was once again reduced to the sounds of machines and footsteps.
I hadn’t agreed to go.
Yet at nine the next morning, I was standing outside Lin Xu’s mother’s apartment.
Not because she was right.
Because I didn’t know how much that phone knew about me.
And because I hadn’t slept all night.
The hospital had examined my right shoulder and knee. There were no fractures, only bruises and strains. My ring finger was swollen, but the blood flow was fine. I refused to have the ring removed, and the medical staff didn’t force the issue. Later that night, they put me in an observation bed. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Cheng Xiaoqing stepping over that seam between the floor tiles.
After she recovered, she remembered walking toward me.
She didn’t remember saying anything.
She asked whether I was hurt. I shook my head, and she sat in the farthest chair in the hallway without coming back in for the rest of the night.
She was downstairs now too.
She hadn’t followed us up. She’d only sent a note to Lu Bo'an: If Gu Yanchuan needs me, I’m outside the main entrance. If he doesn’t, I won’t come in.
I folded the note into the pocket of my hospital clothes.
I was wearing the dry clothes she’d brought me yesterday: loose sweatpants and a gray shirt from a convenience store. The shirt was one size too big, so it wouldn’t rub against my injured shoulder.
She’d chosen it after asking the store clerk.
She hadn’t said it was for my sake.
The door opened before we could ring the bell.
Lin Shufen stood inside.
She was wearing black loungewear. Her eyes were swollen, and she held a pair of house slippers I’d worn before.
“I knew you’d come.”
She crouched down and set the slippers beside my feet.
The toes pointed inward, the left and right lined up perfectly.
They were arranged exactly the way Lin Xu always placed my shoes.
I didn’t change into them.
Lin Shufen glanced at Lu Bo'an and forced a smile. “Yanchuan doesn’t like wearing outdoor shoes inside.”
I really didn’t.
Because Lin Xu said outdoor germs would get tracked into the room. Once, when I forgot to change my shoes, she wiped down the entryway three times.
“I’m not going into the bedroom today,” I said.
The moment my own voice came out, my heart began racing.
Lin Shufen’s smile froze.
“The phone is in Xu Xu’s room.”
“Please bring it out,” Lu Bo'an said.
“That’s one of her belongings.”
“It’s also an item the police need to examine.”
“You cremated her, and now you want to take her phone too?”
Her voice rose. At once, the sound of a chair scraping across the floor came from one of the rooms inside.
I took a step back.
Lu Bo'an had heard it too.
“Who else is in the apartment?”
“My younger sister,” Lin Shufen said. “She stayed with me last night.”
A middle-aged woman peeked out from the end of the hallway. She looked at me, her gaze stopping on the silver ring, and let out a relieved breath.
“Good. You’re still wearing it.”
I turned to leave.
Lin Shufen gripped the doorframe without touching me.
“Weren’t you here for the phone?”
I stopped.
“Come inside, and I’ll show you everything.”
The air inside smelled of sandalwood and laundry detergent. Whenever I’d visited before, Lin Xu would open the windows first and say her mother’s place was too stuffy. Now every window was shut, and the curtains were open only a crack.
I saw four people reflected in the glass.
Me, Lu Bo'an, Lin Shufen, and her sister.
I counted again.
There were still four.
I changed into the slippers.
The soles still held the shape of my feet.
Lin Xu never let anyone else wear this pair. Even when her mother grabbed them by mistake, she would wash them immediately. A faded label was still stuck to the top shelf of the shoe cabinet. It was written in her handwriting: For Yanchuan only.
I slid my feet inside, as if stepping back into a place that had been reserved for me long ago.
On the coffee table sat the unsweetened tea I usually drank. The cap was still sealed. Beside it were a box of stomach medicine, a pack of wet wipes, and the charging cable I used whenever I stayed overnight.
“You must not have eaten anything last night,” Lin Shufen said. “Have a little to drink first. Xu Xu always worried about your stomach hurting.”
I didn’t touch it.
Everything was so considerate.
And everything proved that they had already decided I would walk through the door, where I would sit, and what I would need.
Lin Shufen didn’t take us to the living room. She walked straight toward Lin Xu’s bedroom.
A white satin ribbon was tied around the doorknob. It was left over from the funeral. Her fingers trembled violently as she untied it.
The bedroom door opened.
The lights were on inside.
So was the air conditioner.
The temperature was set to seventy-five degrees, the number Lin Xu always used when she slept. The bed was neatly made, the windowsill dust-free, and the room freshener she often used sat beside the wardrobe. There was a faint sweetness in the air, the same scent as when she leaned close to my collar.
I knew it was only a room.
My body believed she was inside before my mind could catch up.
My right knee wanted to retreat, but my left foot was still trapped in the slipper with my name on it. It wouldn’t lift, as if the sole had stuck to the floor.
A white phone stood on the charging dock beside the desk.
The battery indicator was full.
There was no charging cable attached.
I stopped outside the door, the back of my neck growing rigid inch by inch.
“It was full when I saw it last night too,” Lin Shufen said. “Xu Xu would never let her phone run out of power.”
Lu Bo'an put on his gloves, took photographs first, then stepped closer.
The screen suddenly lit up.
The wallpaper was a side profile of me asleep.
The picture had been taken from the other side of the bed. My right hand was pressed against my chest, the silver ring exposed outside the blanket. The date was in the bottom-right corner: three days before Lin Xu died.
I hadn’t known she’d taken it.
No notification appeared on the phone.
It simply woke up on its own, as if it knew I had entered the room.
Lu Bo'an pressed the side button, and the screen went dark. He placed the phone and charging dock together in an evidence bag.
Lin Shufen immediately grabbed the mouth of the bag.
“You can’t take that.”
Lu Bo'an didn’t pull against her.
“Ms. Lin, let go.”
“That belongs to Xu Xu.”
“It’s also an item issued under Mr. Gu’s name. His report is now involved.”
“He wouldn’t report Xu Xu.”
She looked at me, her eyes full of certainty.
“Right?”
I wanted to say I didn’t know.
But she stepped closer before I could speak.
“You two were just fighting. Xu Xu tracked your location because she was afraid something would happen to you. She looked at your phone because you refused to tell her anything. She knocked on the door in the middle of the night because you deliberately ignored her messages.”
Every sentence had a reason.
Every reason pushed me back toward the wrong person.
“She unlocked my phone with my face,” I said.
Lin Shufen answered immediately. “What’s there for a couple to keep from each other?”
“She wouldn’t let me see my friends.”
“Those people would only teach you to break up with her.”
“She waited downstairs at the office until midnight.”
“She was afraid you’d get drunk with no one to take care of you.”
“She scratched me.”
Lin Shufen’s gaze fell on my wrist.
There were no marks left now.
“Xu Xu was emotional, but she never truly meant to hurt you.”
Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe.
Not because she had become Lin Xu.
She hadn’t.
She was simply using her own voice to turn, one by one, the things I had needed so long to dare call harm back into love.
The objects in the room began to come into painfully sharp focus.
Two pillows on the bed. Lin Xu’s was against the wall, mine on the outside. On the bookshelf were books I didn’t remember giving her. My old tie hung from the wardrobe handle. Three boxes of colored index tabs sat on the desk, each arranged by shade.
There was a clear file box beneath the desk.
It was stuffed with folders.
Every book spine had a date written on it.
January of last year. February. March.
All the way to the month she died.
I crouched down.
Pain shot through my right knee, and I grabbed the corner of the desk to keep from collapsing.
The first folder had my name on it.
Gu Yanchuan | Daily Life.
I didn’t touch it.
Wearing gloves, Lu Bo'an pulled out the folder and placed it on the desk.
The first page was a printed chart.
Date, time of waking, clothes worn outside, breakfast, arrival at the office, lunch companion, time off work, time arriving home, shower, lights out.
Every column had something written in it.
Some entries were in Lin Xu’s handwriting. Some were screenshots from a location-tracking app. Some were pictures I had sent her.
On the page for September 17 of last year, there was a red circle beside 11:42 p.m.
The note read:
**Emotional avoidance. Possibly influenced by a coworker. Phone check confirmed he intended to move out. Backpack dealt with the next day.**
My hand slipped against the desk corner.
She hadn’t washed my backpack by coincidence.
She knew.
She hadn’t put my identification documents back in the drawer to tidy up. She had done it so I couldn’t leave.
“She just has a good memory,” Lin Shufen said from behind me.
I turned to look at her.
“That’s not a good memory.”
My voice was shaking.
“That’s surveillance.”
Lin Shufen’s lips moved.
Outside the bedroom, her sister suddenly said, “Xu Xu was afraid you’d disappear without warning.”
I looked toward the doorway.
The woman still had her own face, but her voice carried Lin Xu’s pauses.
Lu Bo'an pulled the bedroom door almost shut, leaving only a crack.
“Don’t upset her,” Lin Shufen said.
“She’s dead,” I said.
“That’s why you have to be even more careful not to upset her.”
That made me laugh once.
Not because it was funny.
My chest was too tight, and the air leaking from my throat sounded like laughter.
Lin Shufen’s face went pale.
“How can you laugh in her room?”
I immediately swallowed the sound.
In the photographs on the wall, Lin Xu watched me from different years of her life.
I opened another folder.
This one wasn’t organized by month.
The cover read: People in Contact.
Manager Fan, Cheng Xiaoqing, college classmates, convenience-store clerks, the landlord, taxi license plates.
Next to every name was Lin Xu’s own rating of how dangerous they were.
Cheng Xiaoqing’s page had a photo from the office dinner taped to it. Her face was circled in red ink, with a note beside it:
**Will touch his shoulder without being invited. Keep an eye on her.**
The photo was from six months ago.
In the first chapter, at the office, she had only steadied me for a moment, and forty-one people had all looked at her.
Lin Xu had chosen who to be jealous of long ago.
Lu Bo'an pulled another black binder from the bottom of the box.
This one wasn’t about daily life. It was filled with printed drafts of social-media posts.
The titles included “If One Day I’m Gone,” “Please Take Care of the Person I Love Most,” and “He’s Not Good at Asking for Help.” Every page portrayed me as emotionally unstable, easily led away by bad friends, and incapable of making my own decisions.
Some sentences had been revised more than a dozen times.
One page read:
**He’ll call fear wanting to break up. Please don’t believe his refusal in the moment.**
Several examples were listed below.
Work stress. Drinking. Influence from friends. Lack of sleep.
Every one of them could explain why I said no.
There was only one possibility missing: that I truly didn’t want to.
“What are these?” Lin Shufen asked.
She genuinely didn’t know.
I turned to the last page.
There was only one line, with a vast stretch of blank space beneath it.
**If I’m not here, who will watch over him for me?**
To the right of the words was a draft of a gray button.
**I will.**
A chorus of phone notification sounds suddenly came from outside the door.
One.
Then another.
Across the entire building, lights came on one floor after another, from nearby to far away.