Lei Mi - Profiler

Unprepared, Fang Mu fell to his back on the floor of their room.

Before he could get up, Du Yu pounced on him and grabbed his collar.

"Fang Mu, who the hell are you?" The normally cheerful Du Yu instantly changed, his actions those of a man-eating lion, his tear-streaked face twitching with rage.

Fang Mu could only stare back. "What are you talking about?"

"I said who the hell are you?" Du Yu demanded and wrapped his hands around Fang Mu's neck and viciously shook him back and forth. "Just now you said that that person wants to kill you! What's that supposed to mean? That time when your old roommate visited, he said that a bunch of people died in your old dorm room. Why is all this happening? Now I'll ask you again; who the hell are you? Tell me now!"

Du Yu's hands closed tighter and tighter around Fang Mu's neck. Fang Mu could barely breathe, his face turning purplish-red.

Tai Wei intervened and quickly pulled Du Yu off of Fang Mu. Struggling, Du Yu wouldn't give up. "I want to hear it!" he roared. "Who the hell are you?"

Fang Mu sat up weakly, his body racked by a fit of coughing. Eventually he began to retch, spouting a thin strand of saliva that trailed from his mouth and to his chest. Tai Wei held tightly onto Du Yu, who continued to struggle, still yelling. "If you have something to say, then say it! No more fighting!" Tai Wei warned. "Otherwise I'm gonna stop being so polite!"

"All right!" said Du Yu, making a show of putting his hands up. "I'll stop. Now let him talk!"

Fang Mu slowly climbed to his feet, wiped the corners of his mouth and then took several deep breaths. "That's right. The killer is after me." He gasped for air. He's…testing me…I'm sorry…"

Du Yu glared at him, his jaw clenched. "So you're saying that everyone who was hurt or killed — Deng Linyue, Liu Jianjun, Meng Fanzhe, and…" he choked back a sob, "and Yaoyao… It was all because of you?"

Fang Mu said nothing, just returned Du Yu's stare. He quickly hung his head, nodding.

Du Yu pointed at Fang Mu, his arm shaking. "In other words, you've known for a long time that he was going to kill people," he said through trembling lips, "and probably people close to you. Is that correct?"

Tears fell from Fang Mu's eyes. "I'm sorry…"

Du Yu's pain suddenly burst open again. "Then why didn't you say something sooner? Why didn't you warn everyone? Why did you let so many people die?"

Shaking all over, Fang Mu just mumbled, "I'm sorry…I'm sorry…"

Du Yu rushed forward and grabbed Fang Mu's hair. He struck Fang Mu wildly across the face. "Speak! Speak up, goddamn you…!"

Tai Wei immediately reached for Du Yu, but before he got close, Du Yu abruptly shrunk back.

The dagger was in Fang Mu's hands.

There was a long tear across the front of Du Yu's jacket. He stared dumbstruck at the tear, and then at Fang Mu, who was bleeding from one corner of his mouth.

Du Yu laughed through his misery. "You want to kill me, too, huh? Then do it! Save the killer the effort. Come on!"

"No!" yelled Fang Mu, his voice hoarse. "It wasn't like that. I wasn't intentionally hiding it from all of you… I…"

"Give me the knife," said Tai Wei, stepping between them. "And you," he said, pointing at Du Yu, "do me a favor and get out of here!"

Du Yu glared viciously at Fang Mu, and then turned and left.

At once the room was quiet, the only sound Fang Mu's ragged breathing.

Fang Mu let the blade clatter to the floor and sunk to his heels. He squatted down and began to scream, pulling at his hair as the tears rolled down his face. The only sound was his angry, mournful wailing cry. "Aghh…!"

Tai Wei had never seen Fang Mu cry before, much less sob with the kind of extreme grief he now witnessed. Not knowing what to do, he just stood there, completely at a loss.

Fang Mu cried for a long time, the pent-up emotions releasing. When he had calmed down a little, Tai Wei helped him onto his bed, wrapped him in his blanket and poured him a cup of hot water. After thinking about it, he passed him a cigarette.

His face covered with tears, Fang Mu sat there expressionlessly, taking a drag every now and then from his cigarette. The cup of water he just held. He didn't sip it once.

"You need to change out of your wet clothes, otherwise you're gonna get sick." Tai Wei dug through Fang Mu's drawers and tossed him several pairs of clean clothes.

With much effort, he helped Fang Mu change into dry clothes. Fang Mu's spirits improved slightly after the change of attire and he no longer shivered so badly.

"I was wondering," said Tai Wei tactfully, pulling Fang Mu's chair over beside his bed, "that thing Du Yu just said about your old roommates dying. What was he talking about?"

Fang Mu took several deep drags from his cigarette and was silent for a long time. "When I was in college," he said slowly, "one of my roommates had an illicit relationship with one of the building attendants. Later she became pregnant and wrote him a letter to tell him. My roommate then mistakenly believed that he had placed this letter in one of the books that he had returned to the library. And because of some unkind treatment he received soon after, he suspected that someone must have read the letter and told people what it said."

"Then what happened?"

"He was the seventh person to have checked out the book," Fang Mu relayed. "To avenge himself, he decided to kill every person who checked it out after him. By the time he discovered that no one had actually read the letter, he had already begun to enjoy the feeling of control he found by ending other people's lives. I later discovered that check-out card and realized that someone was going down the list of readers, killing one after another. The victims included one of my other roommates, as well as the first girl I ever loved… I was the only survivor."

"Is this that murder case that happened at Changhong City Teacher's College? I heard that in the end the killer also died."

"That's right." Fang Mu trembled. "He was burned to death. I was…there at the time."

Tai Wei was silent for a moment. "That's when you became really interested in criminal profiling, correct? Everything you've done, all those cases you've cracked — it was all because of this experience, wasn't it?"

Fang Mu tossed away his cigarette. He grabbed his hair with both hands and tried to smooth it down. "I don't know the best way to say this. I've been having nightmares for the past two years. I'm scared of hallways, scared of the smell of roasting meat. I don't dare get close to other people. Only by ceaselessly investigating cases and ceaselessly helping the dead find justice am I able to get a measure of peace… Because," Fang Mu paused, and then his voice suddenly dropped, "in the final analysis, the deaths of all those people — they were because of me."

Tai Wei nodded. Out of all of the human senses, smell stayed in the memory longest. At last he now understood why Fang Mu was such an unusual person, and also why the pain he felt this time, with the killer challenging him by murdering all these people, was so unimaginably severe. "The victim was Du Yu's girlfriend?"

Fang Mu nodded.

"Are you certain that it's the same killer?"

Fang Mu shook his head, smiling wryly. "You still don't believe me." He stared at the floor. "It's definitely him. He understands me extremely well; he knows how important Du Yu's friendship is to me. This was number six. Regardless of whether or not I'm seven, he's trying to destroy me psychologically, bit by bit."

Tai Wei hesitated for a moment, and then said, "When I was at the scene just now, I noticed that the place where the victim had been tied underwater was at the end of lane six."

Fang Mu stared at Tai Wei for several seconds, and then threw off the cover and got out of bed. "Come on," he said. "Let's go to the scene."