Memory Lost

The afternoon of next day.

The fifth day of T’s assassination plan.

The Black Shield Team’s office phone suddenly rings. It’s the District Chief calling from the East City district station.

“Han Chen!” The chief’s voice is full of seriousness and anxiousness, “A new victim has appeared on this side. And there are two of them!”

At the new commercial area of the East district. On the top level of a low story office building.

Two men in suits are lying on the floor. Blood has seeped through both of their chests. Their eyes are open but have no vital signs. And outside of the police tape is a group of frightened office employees.

The Black Shield Team members are all at the scene. Han Chen, wearing black gloves, is standing outside of the window, looking at the several tall infrastructures across the building. His expression is solemn.

Jin Xi, on the other hand, has found the human resource manager of the company to ask a few questions, “Therefore, they are your company’s general manager and vice general manager?”

The HR manager nods with his pale face.

Chatterbox is taking pictures of the company’s plaque that’s hanging on the wall. Jin Xi looks up at it; there are two registered names——

“Hua Xia Generous Treasure pawn Shop”

“Prosperous Treasure Loan Company.” 𝙛𝘳𝘦e𝓌e𝗯n𝗼ѵ𝙚l.𝒄𝚘𝑚

Chatterbox comes over and whispers in her ear, “A loan shark company. There are quite a lot of these in the East district. All hidden in office buildings.”

Xiao Zhuan swipes a few times on his tablet and then lifts his head, “On the White Crane of Yangtze BBS, there aren’t any posts related to this company or accusations made against these two people. They aren’t among the suspected targets either. How did T pick them?”

The answer is revealed soon.

In the deceased password locked computers, the IT officer has found a few evidence. There is actually a member of the BBS writing a post accusing this company of high interests and using violence to press for payments, forcing many to commit suicide. Reports from a private detective have revealed the post writer’s name, his photo, address, and where he works.

Chatterbox immediately requests to speak with the highest authoritative person of the company——the Finance Manager. After being pressed by the police, he finally admits that there was someone posting “hate” posts about their company. As a result, the two general managers used some extraordinary methods to force the person to keep quiet. They also “communicated” with the forum to remove the posts and threatened the forum admin to not mention any of this to anyone, especially the police.

This explains why the police missed these two “potential targets” when they obtained the forum information from the administrator. And if T has been monitoring the forum since a long time ago, it’s possible that he read the post before it got deleted.

Nonetheless, the reason is clear to everybody now. The Black Shield Team stares at the two bodies on the floor; no one comments.

Chatterbox curses in the end, “They’ve done it to themselves.”

……

They’ve let T succeed again.

Five days; five victims.

Everything seems to be running its course according to fate.

Jin Xi raises her head and stares at Han Chen by the window who has his back towards everyone.

The image of him half-consciously embracing her this morning flashes across his mind. He scrunches his eyebrows, showing a determined face; his dark brown eyes are bottomless.

After a split second of being in a daze, he collects his emotions, turns around, and his eyes meet with hers. He takes off his gloves while saying, “Jin Xi, come over.”

Bai Jin Xi goes over to him.

“What are your thoughts?” he stuffs the gloves into his pockets, exposing a small black edge of it. He also puts his hands into his pockets.

Jin Xi looks at the buildings outside the window with him, and answers, “If we look only at the choice of victims, T is still insisting on finding his targets via the forum. It’s just that he has now killed five people. It’ll be impossible for him to pick another potential target that we’ve missed to identify. And we’ve already taken action in protecting the remaining targets. What will he do next? And what can he do?”

“I’ve said before that T has a plan,” Han Chen says, “Thinking about it now, every step he has taken has been planned.” He smiles slightly, “After the first two victims, this case was labeled as a serial killing case. We started investigating people who were related to the victims through other cases of deaths. But we weren’t able to contact them that night……”

Chatterbox, who has appeared beside them out of nowhere, interrupts, “……Leader, are you saying that it was T who arranged for the Zhou Family to stay at the hospital, as well as stopping Zheng Cheng Da from taking the train, which made them unreachable?”

Jin Xi says in a serious tone, “This is possible. It was Zhou Si Lin who was sick that night. If T had hinted them about something beforehand to make them avoid contact with anybody, it’s very doable. And then they found out that the person whom they despised died, so obviously they wouldn’t mention anything about it when asked in order to avoid suspicion. Tell Xiao Zhuan to confirm this with them right away!”

Han Chen continues, “If this hypothesis is true, everything can be explained. Since the police were unable to contact these two individuals, T had enough time to kill the third person, Chen Can Lan. And at that time, we came to know about the link between the three victims, which was the forum. Chen Can Lan’s incident was the catalyst for the outburst on the forum, causing the public to learn about everything that had happened. What does this all mean? This means that regardless of whether it’s the media or the police taking preventive measures, he will not let the ten or so people that he has chosen off due to the pressure of the forum.”

“Which means that even though he has only punished the first three people, all the others that he has chosen will receive punishment in the future. These people will definitely turn themselves in because they would rather go to jail than be gunned down out on the streets,” Bai Jin Xi says, “He has already achieved his plan!”

“Yes. And he personally took down these two scums, or missed targets, today——” Chatterbox snaps his fingers, “That rounds everything up!”

All three of them keep their silence for a while.

Chatterbox asks, “Based on this inference, does this mean that T’s plan is complete? Is he going to stop and disappear now?”

“No.”

“No.”

Bai Jin Xi and Han Chen say at the same time.

Han Chen glances at her, and says, “He left behind a bullet shell last time. If he only wanted to be a hero and punish ten or so people, there’s no need for him to disregard his life like this.”

Jin Xi nods, “That’s right. And I’ve said before that for a professional killer like T to carry out punishment on ordinary people like this, he must have experienced some kind of emotional impact. How is he punishing these ten or so people? Death threats, announcing to the world, and having them plead guilty. What about the outcome of the person who has harmed him? We still don’t know yet. Therefore……” she pauses, “I have a feeling that this is just the prologue. His real punishment and revenge will start in the next few days to come. And with what has happened so far, the public’s emotion has already been stirred up. The people that he is going to punish will be hang up high on the city’s pole of shame with everybody’s eyes on them. At the same time, there will definitely be a more tragic ending to this!”