Miss Forensics – Chapter 37
by Little PandaPart One
Reunion
“Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile — now you know roses have thorns?”
Lin Yan bit down on a strip of gauze and wound another loop around her shoulder, tying it off with a dead knot before pulling on her clothes. She tilted her head back before the mirror — the wound on her neck was still there. She dabbed ointment on her fingertip and smoothed it over the cut, then pressed a sterile dressing in place and secured it with medical tape. She frowned at her reflection — ugly as hell. Like a cake riddled with holes from a thousand forks.
Oh well. It would heal eventually, given time.
With that thought, Lin Yan reached instinctively for the small of her back where her mechanical baton used to sit, only to remember she had already thrown it away.
She paused, then grabbed the fruit knife off the table instead, giving it a few test flips. Not bad — felt decent enough in hand. This would do.
Once fully dressed and ready, Lin Yan put on a face mask, pulled her cap low, slung her backpack over her shoulder, and strode out the door.
The car was already waiting at the main entrance of the Lin Family Convalescent Home. When she got in, the driver said in a low voice, “Miss, I’ve checked it out. The funeral home is heavily guarded — patrols rotate every 30 minutes, cameras cover the entire grounds with no blind spots.”
Lin Yan lounged against the backrest, scrolling through the tablet in her hand with a fingertip, mentally familiarizing herself with the facility’s layout.
“5 minutes is enough. Can you cut the power for 5 minutes?”
The driver thought for a moment. “Yes, that’s doable. But if the Old Master finds out…”
He looked at her through the rearview mirror. Lin Yan was curled in the seat, her face pale from recent illness, her body still bearing wounds. This was far too dangerous.
Lin Yan curled her lips into a smile and sat up a little straighter. “How long have you been with me?”
“7… 7 years, Miss.”
The driver couldn’t get a read on her and stammered slightly.
“Since you’re an old hand, you should know that what I hate most is living in one camp but loyal to another1. I am me, and Lin Youyuan is that old bastard Lin Youyuan. If you want to go back to Jingtai, I won’t stop you.”
Lin Yan delivered this coolly, then closed her eyes to rest.
The driver’s whole body went rigid. He swallowed hard — and that wasn’t even mentioning the leverage Lin Yan held over his family’s privacy and lives. Just from the fact that she had used suicide to threaten Lin Youyuan this time, what looked like mutual destruction on the surface was actually a narrow victory for Lin Yan.
As long as she didn’t die, she was Lin Youyuan’s sole heir. That was an ironclad fact, and a destiny she could never escape.
When Lin Youyuan passed away, let alone him — all of Jingtai would…
There was nothing to gain from crossing her now.
“I wouldn’t dare. You are my only master, Miss.”
The scenery outside the car flew by. The sky had gone completely dark. The Binhai Provincial Funeral Home was built on a hillside in the suburbs, surrounded by mountains and water, in a desolate, unpopulated area.
Halfway up the hill, Lin Yan told him to stop. She got out and started on foot, checking her wristwatch — it was 11:30 p.m.
“Cut the power on my signal.”
The driver stood at attention, practically ready to salute. “Yes, Miss. I’ll wait at the halfway point of the hill to extract you once you’re done.”
Lin Yan nodded and vanished into the pitch-black forest with her backpack.
She avoided the main road to dodge passing vehicles and surveillance cameras. If anyone saw her at this hour, it would be hard to explain.
After scrambling up the mountain path for a while, Lin Yan braced her hands on her knees, gasping for breath. Her wounds throbbed with a dull ache.
She gritted her teeth, looked up at the brightly lit funeral home ahead, and slung her backpack back over her shoulder. She kept climbing.
Pushing through dense brush, her face scraped raw by branches, Lin Yan crouched low and crawled forward. When the searchlight swept toward her, she went limp and dropped flat on the ground, her black trench coat blending seamlessly into the night.
She counted to 3. The searchlight moved on. Lin Yan sprang from the ground and lunged like a panther to the base of the wall, pressing herself flat against it, her body a rigid line.
She tapped her video wristwatch and whispered urgently, “Cut!”
The entire building plunged into darkness in an instant. The monitors in the surveillance room went black.
The searchlights stopped too.
Duty personnel ran out: “What happened? What happened? A sudden blackout?”
“Guards! Guards, go check it out!”
Amid the chaos, a head popped over the wall. Lin Yan vaulted over, but her landing — technically sound — was undermined by her depleted strength. Her body tilted, her ankle twisted, and beads of sweat broke out on her forehead. She struggled to her feet.
“Who’s there? Who is it?!” Flashlight beams swept toward the sound as several guards carrying guns came running over, but the base of the wall was already empty.
“Damn it, I clearly heard something. Are we seeing ghosts?”
The man in the lead slapped the speaker on the back of the head. “Don’t fucking say things like that. Look where we are — your eyes playing tricks on you?”
By the west wall, Song Yuhang pulled her hood up. That power cut was far too convenient.
She slipped through an open window while the guards were distracted, then quietly closed it behind her.
This appeared to be an office. She switched on the faint glow of her wristwatch and surveyed the room. Finding no danger, she pulled the facility map from her pocket, locked onto her target, tapped the spot twice with her fingertip, and put it away. She eased the door open and slipped into the corridor.
Lin Yan pressed a hand to her shoulder wound, gasping as she tried to steady her breathing. She pressed herself below the windowsill, listening to the commotion outside. Flashlight beams bounced wildly, casting light through the windows into the room.
Lin Yan didn’t move a muscle. She waited until the footsteps outside gradually faded into silence.
She pulled the fruit knife from her backpack and held it for protection, then eased the door open just as quietly.
She had only 5 minutes to cross the corridor and find the morgue. After 5 minutes, the corridor cameras would capture her position instantly.
Fortunately, she had already studied the floor plan before coming. Lin Yan navigated with practiced ease. She had just reached the stairwell when a squad of guards with flashlights came up.
“How come the power went out at such a perfect time? Come on, let’s check the control room.”
Lin Yan dodged sideways into a stall in the women’s restroom. The group passed and faded into the distance, and she slipped back out along the wall.
Third floor. The morgue was right next to the cold storage unit. Lin Yan climbed the stairs, scanning up and down. The funeral home at night was completely deserted — every room pitch black.
She swallowed, rubbed her bare arms for warmth, and when she looked up again, she finally saw the floor marker: 3.
Lin Yan pushed through the stabbing pain in her ankle and broke into a quick run, her flat shoes silent on the floor.
Her wristwatch buzzed faintly, warning her that time was almost up.
Lin Yan pressed the bypass device against the airtight door and tapped her wristwatch, working quickly. The numbers on the countdown ticked down rapidly.
5.
4.
3.
…
Fine beads of sweat formed on Lin Yan’s forehead. Finally, a soft electronic beep reached her ears — the airtight door opened.
She quickly detached the bypass device and pushed through. At the same instant, a dark silhouette lunged toward her, following her through the morgue door almost on her heels.
The cameras in the corridor flickered back to red. The airtight door sealed shut.
In the darkness, a flash of cold steel — Lin Yan’s fruit knife was already drawn, thrusting toward the figure’s throat at a vicious, impossible angle.
Song Yuhang tilted her head to dodge, seized her wrist, and pressed it down, pulling her close. “It’s—”
Lin Yan didn’t hesitate — a sweeping kick. But her depleted strength gave Song Yuhang an easy opening. As Lin Yan bent to retreat, Song Yuhang dropped low, wrapped her arms around her waist, and drove her against the wall.
Lin Yan swung an elbow at her head.
“It’s me!”
The elbow stopped 1 centimeter from her temple.
Lin Yan’s eyes went wide, staring in disbelief.
Song Yuhang yanked down her face mask. Their eyes met, and a faint smile crept to her lips. “It’s me. Song Yuhang. We meet again, Forensic Examiner Lin.”
It had been over 2 months. To meet again here, of all places. Lin Yan looked at her smile, at the eyes that glittered in the dark — perhaps because they had been through life and death together, she didn’t feel the least bit estranged.
Especially not in this position. Not estranged at all — in fact, very… intimate.
Her knife hand was pinned high against the wall, immovable. Her other arm was trapped by Song Yuhang’s, unable to shift an inch. Toe to toe, belly to belly — when she spoke, it was like a tickle across her face.
Lin Yan gritted her teeth. “You’re not dead?”
Song Yuhang wasn’t annoyed. “Didn’t you tell me not to die?”
“I—” Lin Yan choked on her own breath and nearly suffocated.
Song Yuhang smiled again, her grip on her wrist tightening sharply. “I’m very obedient.”
Lin Yan winced. The knife was already out of her hand, tucked into Song Yuhang’s pocket. “As long as you don’t point a knife at me — dangerous. Confiscated.”
“I—” Lin Yan was livid, struggling to push her away, but Song Yuhang clamped a hand over her mouth, lifted her, and pressed her against the wall.
Song Yuhang slid one leg into the gap between them. Lin Yan’s entire back was flush against the wall, and Song Yuhang was flush against her.
“Mmph—” Lin Yan shook her head frantically, trying to break free. Song Yuhang cradled her head and whispered in her ear, “Don’t talk. Someone’s coming.”
Several flashlight beams swept beneath the airtight door.
Every hair on Lin Yan’s body stood on end.
“No way — are we really seeing ghosts tonight? The power finally comes back on, we hear something over here, rush over, and there’s nothing?”
Through the iron door, one voice said.
Another spat 3 times. “Spit, spit, spit — jinx! Do you know what’s in here? If there were actually any movement, that’d be a disaster!”
“Exactly. Pitch black — you must be paranoid. Let’s go back to sleep.”
The men lingered, skeptical, and inspected the airtight door. The lock was intact.
The first speaker straightened up and scratched his head. “Did I really hear things? But I could’ve sworn I heard someone talking in there.”
His companion glanced at the pitch-black room and shuddered. “You’ve been watching too many fucking ghost movies.”
The men grumbled and started back.
Lin Yan let out a breath.
Before she could fully relax, the first speaker came back. “No, I still need to go in and take a look to put my mind at ease.”
He was already reaching for the electronic keypad on the airtight door.
The electronic beeps sounded inches away. Cold sweat broke out all over Lin Yan’s body. She could feel Song Yuhang holding her tighter.
Her heavy breathing brushed warm air past Lin Yan’s earlobe, grazing it with an oddly inappropriate tingle. Lin Yan, mouth covered, couldn’t speak — her lips and teeth filled with the scent of Song Yuhang’s palm.
A hint of sweat, and that sun-warmed smell that clung to her.
Lin Yan narrowed her eyes slightly. Song Yuhang knew — she was about to do something.
Sure enough, a sharp burst of pain shot through the web of Song Yuhang’s thumb. She nearly cried out in front of the guards.
Lin Yan was ruthless — bit down without the slightest mercy, treating it like a teething toy.
Little wolf cub.
The phrase popped into Song Yuhang’s mind just as the airtight door opened.
Several flashlight beams cut through the swirling fog and projected straight in.
Song Yuhang’s body went rigid. She and Lin Yan stood in the shadow behind the door, backlit by darkness. If the guards took 1 more step forward, just 1…
She swallowed hard. Their breathing and heartbeats were nearly synchronized.
Strangely, in such a tense moment, she still had bandwidth to register the strange sensation of Lin Yan’s tongue grazing the web of her thumb.
The sensation was too novel.
So novel that the sweat rolled down the forehead of someone usually so calm and composed.
Perhaps from swallowing so frequently, Song Yuhang’s throat felt inexplicably dry.
The faint floral scent enveloping her grew stronger. Song Yuhang nearly buried her head in the crook of Lin Yan’s neck.
A bandage there stabbed her eyes with a deep sting. If the guards weren’t still there, she would have torn it off on the spot to see for herself.
Her curiosity about Lin Yan was evident.
For every inch Song Yuhang pressed closer, Lin Yan bit down harder — mutual retribution, neither letting the other off.
The door drew closer. Flashlight beams inched across the floor, advancing step by step, until they landed on the wall beside them. 1 more inch and—
Clattering footsteps erupted in the corridor. “What are you doing?! Opening the morgue door in the middle of the night — you’re letting all the cold air out! Close it! Don’t you know the control room breaker’s down? Get it fixed!”
The beams withdrew. The guards nodded and bowed, closing the airtight door again.
“Yes, yes, you’re right. On our way, on our way.”
The world sank back into darkness. Lin Yan exhaled. By the time the footsteps fully faded, her tongue had already tasted a thread of iron.
She was spent, her jaw muscles aching. She released first.
Song Yuhang withdrew her hand.
Lin Yan gulped several breaths of cold air and shivered. “Hey, you can—”
She looked up and met Song Yuhang’s gaze. The rest of the words died in her throat.
It was an expression she had never before seen on Song Yuhang’s face — pity, heartache, regret, self-blame, and a thread of something she herself didn’t even recognize: possessiveness.
That last one, Lin Yan knew all too well. Nearly every man and woman who had ever been intimate with her had worn that look.
Her heart jolted. She looked away without a change in expression and switched tones. “What, is Captain Song planning to hold me in the morgue until the end of time?”
She always used banter to cover her guilt.
Song Yuhang didn’t mind. She just stared at her face and said, word by word, “You’ve lost weight.”
Lin Yan raised an impatient eyebrow. They were too close. She didn’t like it.
This kind of proximity would push any normal conversation toward an ambiguous direction.
It wasn’t so much that she disliked Song Yuhang’s closeness — it was more that she disliked anything moving in a direction she couldn’t control.
Song Yuhang was an anomaly — one accident after another.
“Isn’t losing weight a good thing? Can’t I be on a diet?”
“That’s not a diet — that’s… that’s a hunger strike!” Song Yuhang hissed the words in her ear. The moment she had held her, she had known — nothing but skin and bones.
The Lin Yan standing before her now was a hollow shell, all facade and no substance. She couldn’t take more than a few hits.
Lin Yan caught the tremor at the end of her words. What had started as a careless glance caught the sheen of moisture in her eyes. Something lurched in her chest. She bit down on her lower lip and said nothing more.
“You told me not to die… yet you went and sought death yourself. Lin Yan, what’s the point?”
She finally said her full name — not Forensic Examiner Lin this time — but under these circumstances.
“You said He Miao shouldn’t have died in vain — what about you? You’re only 32. Brilliant, gifted, young, with a limitless future ahead of you! Are you… content with this?”
Lin Yan finally looked up and met her gaze — but hers was one of contempt, mockery, disdain.
With her free hand, she tapped her own chest, enunciating each word: “The real Lin Yan died at the age of 6. What’s alive now, what’s standing in front of you, is a shell and a devil.”
She had lived, once — briefly — dragged up from the abyss. She had chased that ray of light, tried to become a better version of herself, only to be slammed back down into a deeper, colder swamp.
Lin Yan died. “She” lived.
Reborn, wearing a new mask of ruthless resolve.
Worn so long she had nearly forgotten what the original looked like.
“I’m not content! Shell or devil — I don’t care! All I know is that you are Lin Yan. Lin Yan, forensic examiner of the Technical Investigation Division at the Jiangcheng City Public Security Bureau. Lin Yan, standing right in front of me, flesh and blood. Lin Yan, the comrade who has been through life and death with me, Song Yuhang!”
Life and death. Comrade. How beautiful those words were.
So beautiful that just thinking of them made the world feel bathed in sunlight.
The heavy clouds over Lin Yan’s heart were gently blown open a crack. She stared at the young officer’s face before her.
So full of spirit, so vibrant. When she was quiet, she was like blue sky and white clouds drifting slowly across the horizon.
No anxiety, no haste, no striving. She could stay in the same position for years without complaint.
Yet she also burned with righteous fury — even when her views clashed with Lin Yan’s, she would find her own way to uncover the truth.
When she moved, she was lightning and thunder, fists whipping up wind as they slammed into an enemy’s face, carving a path of escape with flesh and blood.
Full of righteous integrity, and fiercely loyal.
She didn’t care which “Lin Yan” she was. She only cared that she was Lin Yan — the Lin Yan standing before her, the Lin Yan who had been through life and death with her.
As if they had once traded eyes.
In the dark, their eyes held each other for a long time. It was so quiet that only their breathing remained — even the hum of the morgue’s refrigeration seemed to fade.
Lin Yan’s lips twitched. She turned her head away, and was pulled into an embrace. Song Yuhang cradled her head, pressing it into her chest, her voice strained, half plea.
“Don’t die… don’t die.”
She had finally said it.
Lin Yan closed her eyes. Her barely visible throat bobbed. She raised a hand as if to return the embrace — and then it fell, powerless.
“I’m sorry… I can’t promise you that.”
Her ending had been written from the start. She would spend her life pursuing the truth — including giving her life for it.
“That’s okay. You don’t have to answer now. I just hope that someday, in a moment when you want to end your life, you’ll think of me — remember what I said today — and wait. Pause.”
“Lin Yan, you’re not alone in this world. There are people who want you to live. You have the right to choose — but once you press that death switch, everything zeroes out. The game ends forever. You never get a second chance.”
Song Yuhang hadn’t said everything she wanted to. But she felt Lin Yan’s body go rigid, felt her wordless resistance.
She thought the rest might be too abrupt. But she understood, and that was enough.
If that moment ever came, she would seize that instant of Lin Yan’s hesitation and drag her back from the grip of death — back to her side.
Not just Lin Yan. Anyone who tried to take their own life in front of her — she would do the same. She had always believed that living took more courage than dying.
And living meant seeing tomorrow’s sun. Something good would come, eventually. Wouldn’t it?
Lin Yan had never imagined she and Song Yuhang would one day make peace, let alone hold each other. And she had certainly never imagined their first real embrace would happen in a morgue.
Absurd and laughable — yet it had happened.
When she felt that small hand clutching the fabric at her back, Song Yuhang’s lips curved up. Elated, she said, “Let me see the wound on your neck.”
She reached for the bandage at Lin Yan’s neck. Lin Yan tried to block her but couldn’t — instead, her hands were caught and pinned above her head.
Furious and mortified, Lin Yan drove her knee upward.
Song Yuhang’s face went green. She clutched her groin and stumbled back several steps, her expression twisted in agony, trembling as she pointed at Lin Yan, unable to speak.
The Lin heiress slung her backpack over her shoulder and blew a cocky puff of air at the bangs falling across her eyes. “Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile — now you know roses have thorns?”
Song Yuhang watched her walk toward the body storage units and limped after her. “You… you’re ruthless! Just you wait! You… hiss—”
The author has something to say:
Borrowing a line from one of you little angels: same chapter means sugar, eye contact means bed, one interaction means three days not leaving it.
Please memorize and recite. Thank you.
Quietly: hitting a girl there also hurts like hell (don’t ask me how I know, I’m just a soulless word-churning machine is all).
Captain Song: Target’s too tough — she bites!
two peas in a pod
two peas in a pod
LMFAOOO