Secrets Resting Six Feet Under

CHAPTER 2

[2020 JANUARY 24th, XIN ZHU POLICE STATION]

"You tell me what happened to that face of yours, Yuan." Deputy Chief Zhang Mei spoke in an almost inaudible tone, her back facing the two captains as she picked up the few pieces of paper that she accidentally fell on and scattered on her office's floor.

Chang Yuan, whose mind was busy nursing his thoughts on their latest findings, absentmindedly took the chair beside her table and dully dropped his body into the soft material of the chair's seat. The creaking sound of the metallic base of the chair echoed through the room. Bai Shen, who stared at Chang Yuan when he carelessly dropped himself into the chair, had his brows furrowed at the sight as he followed suit and took the empty chair in front of him.

Chief Zhang shook her head when she heard no answer from him. Finally settling the papers neatly in the file cabinet, she rounded the table and knocked her knuckles three times on the bare surface of the wooden desk to get the man's attention, and that's when he finally looked up at her with a baffled expression. "Uh, yes, chief?" He asked as he shifted his gaze and adjusted the crook of his black jacket. A yawn made its way out of his mouth as the blur in his mind slowly lifted itself, and he was once again feeling the morbid coolness of the lieutenant's office.

"Tell us what happened to your face." She repeated herself and took her seat while her eyes did not leave his.

For a second, Chang Yuan stared at her with confusion all over his face until, after a few seconds of remembering, a fresh memory quickly flashed in the back of his head, which made him break his gaze at her and stare somewhere in the room. His hand involuntarily rubbed the back of his neck as he tried to think of an excuse to tell the lieutenant and the person in front of him. "Uh, it's nothing; I just scratched my face, haha," he muttered almost unintelligibly and produced the fakest chuckle he could manage while his voice mercilessly cracked in every word he had spouted out. Now Chang Yuan had really hoped for her to stop pressing further, as the seemingly little hatred he had towards the undercover officer was still in his chest. But, of course, what he wished for didn't happen at all.

"Are your fingernails as sharp as the edge of a knife now? Or perhaps those are the blades of Death's scythe?" She pressed seemingly innocently, though sarcasm was hardly evident in her tone. Chang Yuan looked at the man in front of him, who was still wearing the same unbelievably unwavering expression from the minute they entered the office, but the intensity this time wasn't as intimidating as it was back in the meeting room. And Chang Yuan was somehow relieved by that.

Though Chang Yuan knew he wouldn't get away with the topic unless he told them what happened to his face, he let out a sigh of defeat and slumped his shoulders back on the couch as he tried to recall the face of the undercover who visited him a couple of hours ago, feeling nostalgic as the scene she made once again played in the back of his head. 'Damn faces, looking familiar and all that, and yet I can't even recall one memory of them,' about the undercover and the Campe brigade's team captain, Yuan inwardly thought to himself. "An undercover from the surveillance division came here hours ago," he muttered, his eyes fixated on a plastic white rose in the far corner of the room.

"Don't tell me you got beaten again." Lieutenant Zhang beamed, suddenly feeling the urge to laugh at the thought of it but stopping herself just in time. And her assumption was only confirmed when she didn't receive any reply but a sigh, and when she looked at the man, the dissatisfaction on his face was almost impossible to miss. "This thing has been going on, but not occasionally anymore. I'm starting to believe there must be something going on between you two, but you're just not telling."