Capturing My Demon King Costar

MY COSTAR AND I HIDE FROM THE POLICE

The first thing Yao Shen notices about Gao Wu's room is that it's very messy, considering he had just arrived in Hengdian.

"He didn't have any scenes scheduled on the first day of shooting, which means he arrived yesterday." He waves around at the disorganised state of the room. "Not even you could have done so much damage in such a short time."

Xin Hulei shoots him a pointed look. "I'd wager I could."

Yao Shen can't help the wave of fondness that bubbles up inside him. He likes that Xin Hulei can be competitive even about negative things.

They start searching through everything, for Gao Wu's cellphone in particular, but for anything that can give them a clue too.

"Wear this if you touch something," Xin Hulei says, taking a pair of silicone gloves from his pocket and handing them to Yao Shen.. "I won't leave any fingerprints, but you will."

"You don't have fingerprints?" Yao Shen asks, two parts amused two parts horrified about it.

"I have them, but they won't be able to extract any useful information from them."

Yao Shen doesn't even want to know. He puts on the silicone gloves and goes back to rummaging through Gao Wu's stuff. It feels very disrespectful to go through a dead person's belongings like this, but Yao Shen tells himself it's for a good cause.

They've been looking for less than five minutes when Xin Hulei finds something. "Look at this."

He shows Yao Shen a crumpled piece of paper he took out from the trash can where they can read a few scrambled annotations in Gao Wu's chicken scratch.

Yao Shen struggles to make sense of the random notes, which seem to be mostly work-related appointments, but then he notices what drew Xin Hulei's attention.

[Find a way out from meeting at 20:30 think of excuse or he'll go after you]

"Who's 'he'?" Yao Shen asks, inspecting the rest of the paper for any more useful information. "Could it be the person who killed him...assuming that's what happened?"

"Ye Fang found him outside at night, maybe the overgrown garden was their meeting point," Xin Hulei suggests.

In a way it makes sense; according to Ye Fang it's a secluded spot only used by the drama's crew and cast, but it's not exactly private. Ye Fang heard about the spot from someone who used it regularly, and only minutes after she happened upon Gao Wu's body, someone else got there too.

He tells this to Xin Hulei.

"Maybe that's exactly why he chose that spot." He underlines the words 'he'll go after you' with his finger. "Maybe he thought it would be a safe place to meet "him"."

Yao Shen grimaces. "Bad gamble."

They're still working based on suppositions and guesses, but Yao Shen has a bad feeling about the whole thing. He's becoming more convinced that Gao Wu's death wasn't natural at all.

"Should we take that with us or leave it here for the police to find?" 

"Leave it, let's just take his phone if we can find it."

Yao Shen crumples the piece of paper again inside his fist, in the same way Gao Wu must have done, and throws it in the trash.

They keep searching but don't find anything useful. When Yao Shen is about to give up and suggest they stop, his eyes catch on something black and reflective shining from between a pile of discarded clothes on the floor.

He recognises Gao Wu's mobile as soon as he sees it. 

"The battery is drained," he tells Xin Hulei trying unsuccessfully to turn it on.