Miss Forensics – Chapter 39
by Little PandaPart One
Goodbye
So what if I’m a greenhorn? I may not have eaten pork, but I’ve seen a pig run before.
“Did you bring your phone?” Halfway down the mountain, with the designated rendezvous point almost in sight, Song Yuhang suddenly remembered something and brought it up.
Lin Yan went on alert, brushing off the hand resting on her shoulder, and struggled forward on her own, limping with every step.
“I didn’t bring it.”
Song Yuhang wasn’t about to let her get away with that. The arm looped around her waist didn’t loosen — she pulled Lin Yan right back, ran her right hand down from top to bottom, slipped past the waistline, and fished the phone out of her right pants pocket.
Lin Yan’s teeth were about to crack from grinding so hard. “Song Yuhang!”
She lunged to snatch it back, but the other woman floated back a step with effortless ease. “To prevent you from going off the grid again, I think we should save each other’s phone numbers.”
Never mind who it was that had said it was unnecessary just a while ago.
Lin Yan genuinely wanted to ask her: does your face hurt from that slap?
But Song Yuhang wasn’t overthinking it. Back then, they hadn’t been close, and she’d only found Lin Yan’s arrogant, overbearing personality extremely irritating. But after spending enough time together, she’d discovered that occasionally, Lin Yan could be rather endearing — like right now, that stubborn drive to lunge over and grab the phone even knowing she couldn’t win.
They exchanged a few more moves. Lin Yan was locked down tight, panting heavily. “Who the fuck wants to save your phone number? Give it back!”
Looking at her face, inches away, the corners of her eyes reddened with fury, Song Yuhang felt an inexplicable impulse to tease. She held the phone above her head, a smile playing at the corners of her lips.
“Come get it yourself. If you can reach it, it’s yours.”
“I—” Lin Yan’s blood surged from the provocation. She lunged without thinking, only to be hit by a sharp stab of pain in her ankle. Before she could even leave the ground, she fell.
Song Yuhang’s quick reflexes caught her in an instant. Lin Yan tumbled into her arms, and they stumbled back several steps until they crashed against a tree and stopped.
Leaves drifted down all around them. Lin Yan clutched her shoulders — this time it genuinely hurt badly. Her small face had gone deathly pale.
Song Yuhang tucked a strand of hair that had fallen to her ear back up. “You okay?”
Lin Yan looked up with an expression of sheer resentment, laced with a hint of grievance. Her lips pressed into a pout, and there was something in it — the frustration of a tiger brought low and bullied by dogs, almost wanting to cry.
Song Yuhang smiled at the sight. But before she could savor her triumph for long, a gust from a palm came slicing through the air. She didn’t think to dodge — she just instinctively closed her eyes.
Yet that slap, inches from her face, stopped.
Lin Yan bit her lip, took one look at the bruise on her forehead and the scratch marks left by branches on her face, and couldn’t bring herself to swing.
Her eyelashes were long, if a touch unruly from lack of grooming, trembling faintly with each breath.
Every time she swallowed, her lips would press together slightly, and the feminine curve of her throat would roll up and down.
Her trapezius muscles were well-defined, setting off a neck that was both slender and powerful.
Her lip color was paler than her own, but full — it looked soft.
Lin Yan’s mind wandered for a split second. Her breathing grew uneven. She quickly pulled her hand back, climbed off her, and walked forward without looking back. “Childish!”
Song Yuhang picked up the clothes that had fallen to the ground and followed after her. “Hey—wait for me. Don’t you want your phone anymore?”
Lin Yan hollered into the woods: “Get lost! I don’t want it anymore! This old lady has plenty!”
That said, by the time they reached the rendezvous point, Song Yuhang still returned the phone to her. Lin Yan’s phone was brand new, the number freshly activated, and there was only one name in the contacts.
At this small detail, the officer’s lips curved up slightly. “From now on, just press the ‘#’ key to reach me.”
Lin Yan rolled her eyes and snatched the phone back. “Who wants to call you? Let me tell you — don’t you come looking for me either. I don’t have the free time to deal with you. I’ll delete it the second I get back.”
Song Yuhang didn’t mind. Deadpan, she said, “That’s fine. I’ll remember it.”
The driver in the front seat quietly slid down his sunglasses, observing them through the rearview mirror with his peripheral vision.
The veins at Lin Yan’s temple throbbed. “Song Yuhang, can you use that cleverness of yours somewhere else?! And why are you riding in my car? Get the fuck out!”
Song Yuhang blinked, looking rather innocent. “It’s two-thirty in the morning, out in the middle of nowhere. I can’t get a cab—”
Just as Lin Yan was about to blurt out, “I’ll get you a cab!”—
Song Yuhang smiled again, showing her canine teeth, the picture of harmlessness. “Friendly reminder — if we don’t get moving, the local precinct officers are already on their way.”
The driver stepped on the gas and shifted into gear. Lin Yan struggled in vain. “Did I tell you to drive?! Did I tell you to drive?! Throw her out of the car for me!”
Before she could finish, she was shoved back into the seat. Click — the seatbelt locked into place, pinning her fast.
Song Yuhang held her seatbelt with one hand and smiled. “Sit properly. Don’t stand up while the car is moving.”
Had the car’s windows not been soundproofed, Forensic Examiner Lin’s string of profanity would have sent every bird roosting in the nearby trees scattering into the sky.
The car drove all the way back to the sanatorium, passing the screaming police cars rushing up the mountain on the road below.
Song Yuhang let out a discreet sigh of relief and inventoried their belongings.
Extracted specimens — present.
Lin Yan’s forensic kit — present.
Fruit knife — present.
Her jacket — present.
Rope…
Her heart lurched. We’re done for. Neither of them had worn gloves on the way down. The friction between skin and fibers would definitely leave traces.
Lin Yan leaned lazily against the seat back and shot her a glance, a mocking smirk curling her lips. “You think I’d only arrange one person for backup?”
Song Yuhang froze. Impulsive as she’d been, the plan had been thorough: first cutting the power to paralyze the entire facility, then using the universal electronic passcode bypass device to crack the airtight mortuary door lock, and deploying two waves of backup in sequence. It was genuinely a display of both courage and strategy.
The only variable had been herself.
As if knowing what she was thinking, Lin Yan turned her head away, gazing at the white walls beyond the sanatorium. “But if it hadn’t been for you, I honestly wouldn’t have known how to get down from the third floor. I might have already…”
“Miss, we’ve arrived.” The driver pressed the brakes, pulling to a smooth stop by the roadside.
Song Yuhang hadn’t known such a place existed within the provincial capital — a sanatorium hidden deep in the mountains, nestled between hills and water, accessible only by a single winding, narrow path.
White walls and dark tiles, rustic eaves concealed behind lush, dripping-canopy trees. The iron gate required both fingerprint and iris verification to open — vintage and modern fused here seamlessly.
Several doctors in white coats came running out — no armbands, no ID badges. At the front was Lin Yan’s butler, who ushered them out of the car.
Her current condition made walking inadvisable. The butler supported her gently and helped her into a wheelchair.
Song Yuhang also got out of the car and watched her. She knew the moment of parting had arrived. Her disciplinary confinement period had ended; she had to report back to Jiangcheng tomorrow. And Lin Yan’s body needed proper rest and recovery — at least two or three months.
When they’d been apart, she’d been consumed with worry. Now that they were together, she found herself wishing time would pass more slowly.
The lingering warmth of her body still clung to her chest, but that faint fragrance was, after all, about to slip away.
In that moment, Song Yuhang looked at her retreating back and felt a surge of fierce reluctance. She wished this night could stretch longer, and longer still.
The ever-composed woman didn’t make a sound to interrupt. She simply watched her go in silence, even as stormy seas churned beneath the surface of her heart.
But then the wheelchair stopped. Lin Yan turned around amid the verdant mountain forest, her eyes and brows seeming veiled in a layer of mist.
She said, “Since you’re here, come in and get a checkup.”
The two-story building was small but fully equipped. The moment you stepped inside, the smell of disinfectant hit you. Through several open doors, the medical facilities rivaled those of any major city hospital.
The corridor was dead quiet. Before Song Yuhang’s arrival, Lin Yan had been the only patient in the entire facility.
Lin Yan climbed off the machine. The X-rays were already up — an ankle sprain, a hair’s breadth from a fracture. Another case requiring strict bed rest.
The doctor wrapped her with an elastic bandage in a figure-8 pattern. Lin Yan braced herself against the bed, her arm trembling slightly, a sheen of cold sweat on her forehead — but she didn’t let out a single groan.
When it was Song Yuhang’s turn, her injury was on her back — she needed imaging to check for spinal damage. The usually straightforward woman suddenly became fidgety.
“I… I probably don’t need one.”
Lin Yan looked up at her, puzzled. “Why wouldn’t you? Didn’t you cough up blood?”
“That was bloody phlegm… I’ll be fine once I cough it up. I’ve got thick skin, I can take a fall.”
“What, are you afraid of doctors1 now?” Lin Yan put her own clothes back on and, supported by the butler, climbed down from the bed.
Song Yuhang reached out to help her, but seeing the butler already had her, pulled her hand back. She rubbed her nose and, under everyone’s scrutinizing gaze, reluctantly removed her jacket. Just as she was about to step onto the machine, the doctor stopped her.
“Ma’am, that won’t do. Your undergarment has underwire — it will interfere with the scan results.”
Song Yuhang’s face flushed crimson. Changing clothes in front of so many people — especially with Lin Yan right there — was something she absolutely could not bring herself to do.
“But Lin Yan just…”
The bespectacled doctor adjusted his frames without mercy. “The Miss injured her foot. You injured your back.”
Lin Yan regarded her with mock sympathy, spreading her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “What can you do? Once a person enters the hospital, they’re just meat on the chopping block, at the mercy of others.”
She hobbled over to her side, took one look at her flushed face, and immediately began clucking her tongue, eyeing her up and down. “Don’t tell me I hit the nail on the head. You really are a—”
The word “greenhorn” hadn’t even left her mouth before Song Yuhang shot her a vicious glare. “Shut up. Get out.”
For some reason, seeing her angry just made Lin Yan happier. “Oh my, we’re not even allowed to say it now? Some people, at their big age, not only have no sex life but can’t even change clothes for a checkup without getting all shy and twitchy.”
Before she could finish, Song Yuhang hooked an arm around her neck, pulled her close, and pressed forehead to forehead. To anyone watching, it looked like two close friends sharing a whisper.
Only Lin Yan knew what those burning breaths against her ear were actually saying.
“So what if I’m a greenhorn? I may not have eaten pork, but I’ve seen a pig run before. I can still make you see heaven and die of ecstasy.”
With that, she was shoved out the door and caught by the butler.
Lin Yan watched in disbelief as Song Yuhang teased her and then shut her out. She exploded. “Fuck your mother, Song Yuhang! This old lady never should have let you in!!!”
The butler supporting her smiled faintly — and was immediately caught. “What are you smiling at? What are you smiling at? What’s so funny?!”
The butler guided her toward the ward. He was in his fifties, had practically watched Lin Yan grow up. There were things others couldn’t say, but he could.
Lin Yan pressed him relentlessly, so he answered honestly. “When the Miss is with Miss Song, you come alive.”
This “alive” was meant in every possible sense — not just the eyes, the expressions, the body language. That anger or joy that welled up from the heart — he could feel all of it.
As a young child, Lin Yan had been cautious and vigilant, terrified that one misstep would cost her life.
By the age of six, she already knew how to protect herself.
In her teenage years, Lin Yan took up martial arts. Emboldened by her skills and her family’s status, she became wild and overbearing. She transferred schools constantly, each time because she’d hit someone and been disciplined. She became the notorious “transfer student” across Jiangcheng’s schools — until she met Chen Chunan.
From middle school through high school, those six years should have been her happiest.
As an adult, Lin Yan donned a mask of hypocrisy, debauchery, cold detachment, and caustic sharpness. She habitually hid behind all manner of fake smiles. Few things could genuinely make her angry, and almost no one could make her happy from the bottom of her heart.
But when that Officer Song had agreed to come in, he had distinctly seen a knowing smile cross the Miss’s face. Even when the two were bickering, her expression was unfiltered — raw laughter and fury, the whole person vivid and alive.
This was good. It made one’s heart glad just to see it. It had been a long time since there’d been this much liveliness around the Miss.
Lin Yan froze, then touched her own face with a hint of dismay. “Did I? I clearly didn’t—”
The butler smiled, pressing his lips together, but didn’t dare say more: You didn’t, indeed — your emotions are written all over your face.
While Song Yuhang was undergoing her physical examination, in a dim room in Jiangcheng, another kind of examination was taking place — on a corpse.
The man used a knife to slice from the head of the body lying before him all the way down, splitting it open from sternum to pelvis. Blood welled up and dripped, drip by drip, from the autopsy table. After a series of low, muttering sounds, he cradled a blood-soaked organ in both hands and studied it.
He gazed at this fragment of human anatomy in his palm with rapt fascination, his expression bordering on ecstatic delirium.
But within moments, the blood went cold.
The man’s lips slowly went slack. He seemed still lost in a beautiful dream, unwilling to wake. He carefully picked at the organ, cradled it as though it were a precious treasure, and tucked it against his chest. He looked around for something to store it in — and in one careless moment, the slippery thing slipped from his grasp and rolled through the dirt.
“Ahhh!” the man roared. He lunged to scoop it up, only to find it was already dirty. Already cold.
His eyes turned blood-red.
From the doorway came the sound of banging — bang, bang, bang — the knocking echoing with particular menace in that quiet, rainy night.
When the woman burst in, she found him raising the knife high and bringing it down on the body on the table, chanting under his breath: “Useless thing. Die, die, die.”
Flesh and blood flew everywhere. A slick, viscous scrap of organ landed right at her feet. The woman screamed, collapsing onto the floor.
The man turned around with the knife in hand, a sinister smile spreading across his lips. “You’re just in time.”
Song Yuhang sat through her examination, studying the room’s furnishings. It felt less like a modern hospital and more like a secret base’s field hospital.
The heavy security at the entrance aside, even the doors and windows were bulletproof. She had her doubts. “What is this place?”
How was it not marked on any map?
The by-the-book doctor shut off the machine and wrote up the examination report. “The patient is in good health with no major concerns — just soft tissue contusions and subcutaneous bruising. The laceration on the right hand from the glass is minor. I recommend debridement, suturing, and hemostasis. Exit left and turn.”
As he spoke, he handed her a form — also devoid of any logo, bearing only the doctor’s wild, cursive handwriting.
Song Yuhang knew that without Lin Yan’s say-so, the people here likely wouldn’t answer any of her questions.
She put on her jacket and walked out with the form, just as Lin Yan’s butler — having escorted her back to the ward — came walking over.
“Miss Song, heading to the treatment room? Right this way.” The butler paused specifically to guide her.
Song Yuhang glanced at the silver threading through the old man’s hair. She had seen him before, on that rainy night at the Lin family villa.
The butler smiled faintly, as though reading her thoughts. “I haven’t introduced myself. My surname is Lin. I’ve been at the Miss’s side since she was young, watching her grow up. You can call me Butler Lin.”
“This is Secret Base No. 03, the Miss’s private sanatorium. We’re honored to welcome its first guest.”
Song Yuhang started, her attention snagging on the word “private.” The butler continued walking as he led her forward. He couldn’t say too much about the Lin family’s internal conflicts, so he simply repeated himself.
“Yes. Private.”
Which meant it was Lin Yan’s personal property — unaffiliated with the Lin family estate, inheriting nothing from her father.
She was guarding against Lin Youyuan — and against all the others who bore her ill will.
She was only thirty-two. This base’s security, personnel, and infrastructure were already fully formed. How many years ago had she begun building all this? And this was merely No. 03. Were there a No. 04, a No. 05, a No. 06… or even more?
What kind of deficit in security would drive a person to become what she was today?
And thinking back to every time she appeared at Lin Yan’s side — as long as she wasn’t approaching head-on, Lin Yan’s strikes were always lethal. Song Yuhang’s heart grew heavier and heavier.
These thirty-two years — she must have had a very hard time of it.
They soon reached the treatment room. Song Yuhang gave the butler a small bow and walked in alone with the form. “Thank you.”
The night passed without further conversation. Lin Yan slept deeply. She had always suffered from insomnia, so her medication included a sleep aid, and combined with her injuries, her body was especially fatigued.
By the time she woke, Song Yuhang had already left. What she didn’t know was that Song Yuhang had come to see her before departing.
The tall, striking officer stood bathed in morning sunlight, pressing carefully against the glass of a single door, watching her comrade and colleague lying peacefully asleep in bed. In her heart, she said: Lin Yan, goodbye. I’ll be waiting when you come back.
The author has something to say:
Thank you for reading.
Yanyan is recuperating. Xiao Song is temporarily holding down the fort alone.
Thanks for following along, everyone. Muah.
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