Otherwise, if someone went missing for three months and their family had no reaction, not even contacting their workplace to ask, that wouldn’t make sense.
Qi Min thought this to himself, but didn’t voice his suspicions out loud.
After all, it was just him and the team leader speculating wildly, which couldn’t prove anything.
He lifted his head and looked towards the brightly lit interior.
Miao Lijun had finished taking out the trash, and had started mopping the floor again at some point.
The floor near the entrance was gleaming, probably having been mopped many times over. It was even a bit slippery to stand on.
Miao Lijun was usually quite quiet, but he was an honest and hardworking person – the type of colleague everyone likes.
In contrast, Zhang Dingwen had been glaring from the front desk since the beginning, like some great malcontent.
His dissatisfaction was practically spilling out the shop door.
Qi Min’s mouth twitched.
Turning back, he patted the shoulder of the team leader beside him, who had a look of “the more you think about it, the more terrifying it becomes” on his face. He consoled him: “Boss, don’t overthink it. Maybe Feng Xiaoyun just had an urgent matter and didn’t have time to take her things…”
“It’s also possible the clothes in the wardrobe have nothing to do with Feng Xiaoyun, and were left by someone else…”
“As for the employee uniform… Kaifeng restaurants are popping up all over the city center, so the uniforms are everywhere too… Maybe the person who left the clothes wasn’t even a woman, could’ve been a crossdresser for all we know!”
“After all… times are different now compared to before…”
The last meaningful remark left the team leader, who had been standing there lost in thought, as if struck by lightning.
Leaving the team leader to reconstruct his worldview, and ignoring Zhang Dingwen’s resentful gaze, Qi Min returned to his position at the counter.
Sighing, Qi Min thought to himself: Boss, I’m just thinking of your future sleep quality…
Another good deed done! Today’s merit is secured, feeling one step closer to heaven…
The night shift had drained all the vitality from Qi Min, a strapping young lad.
Facing the morning sun at 6 AM, Qi Min waited palely at the bus stop, not wanting to take one extra step.
Back at the apartment, he collapsed onto the bed again without even showering.
He reasonably suspected he had passed out in the end.
Sleeping until noon, Qi Min was awakened by the heat.
Scratching his forehead covered in mosquito bites, Qi Min turned on the air conditioning. Now fully awake and unable to fall back asleep, he got up and walked into the bathroom.
After brushing his teeth, washing his hair and showering, he spent a long time searching for a towel with his eyes closed.
Coming out of the bathroom, Qi Min remembered he had washed his clothes yesterday and they were still drying on the rooftop.
Qi Min didn’t go to get them immediately, but instead opened the wardrobe and began examining the women’s clothing inside.
Don’t misunderstand, he just wanted to confirm if the red short-sleeved shirt he had seen earlier was indeed an employee uniform.
Black collar, red T-shirt, with black English letters for “Kaifeng” printed on the left chest.
Except for being two sizes smaller than his own, everything else was the same.
Confirming this, Qi Min didn’t stop there, but continued searching.
For convenience of changing, the Kaifeng restaurant issued two sets of uniforms to each employee.
Qi Min searched for a while, even opening the drawers at the bottom of the wardrobe, but still couldn’t find the other uniform.
This meant that when Feng Xiaoyun left in a hurry, she was either wearing the employee uniform.
Or…
Wearing shorts and putting on his own sweat-stained work shirt, Qi Min carried a basin and climbed the stairs to the rooftop on the fifth floor.
First he wandered around in a circle, but didn’t find the slightly faded employee uniform he had imagined.
This suggested a high probability that Feng Xiaoyun was wearing the employee uniform when she left.
Returning to the entrance, Qi Min stood at the western edge of the rooftop with the basin, looking down.
Below on the right was that cluster of abandoned buildings, a desolate and dilapidated construction site.
The pits dug years ago for foundations and drainage gaped like big mouths towards the sky, filled with weeds like maggots.
To prevent accidentally falling into the pits, or having the thriving insect population crawl up pant legs or into collars via the tall grass, people generally didn’t pass through the back of the abandoned buildings.
Some restaurants at the front even dumped their garbage here out of laziness.
All sorts of plastic bags and product packaging made it look like a landfill from afar.
Qi Min surveyed it for a while, then shifted his gaze to the distant scenery, his head tilting slightly.
At that moment, from the corner of his eye, he suddenly glimpsed a black shadow quickly flashing past from under the water tower on the left.
“Who’s there!?”
Turning quickly, in a flash he only saw the hurried hem of clothing entering the stairwell.
Of course Qi Min wouldn’t yell something like “Stop!”
Generally in this kind of situation, the other person would only run faster.
Only an idiot would stop!
He walked quickly over, but there was already no one in the stairwell.
Standing by the railing looking down, he went down another floor.
Still no one.
Qi Min: “…”
Damn, they ran fast! Did they fly down?
In such a hurry, how did they not fall to their death!
Running so urgently, this person must be up to no good!
Too bad he didn’t see their face again.
Huh? Why did I use “again”?
Such a familiar scene, plus the other person’s agile movements, Qi Min couldn’t help but think of his socially anxious neighbor in room 209.
No good, next time he must get a clear look at the person’s face. If they really were a wanted criminal, he’d report them right away.
After interrogation, it would be like pulling up a radish and bringing up the soil with it – they’d have to confess everything they’d done before.
Otherwise being startled like this all the time, how could he focus on his part-time job!
Blaming his reluctance to work entirely on his suspicious neighbor, wage slave Qi Min finally felt a bit better.
Carrying the basin back to the rooftop, Qi Min collected his hanging employee uniform and a set of summer clothes.
Suddenly thinking of something, Qi Min turned and walked to where that person had been hiding by the water tower earlier.
There he saw a clearly personal clothesline set up between the rooftop and the pipes extending from the water tower.
The rooftop was very large, equal to the total area of all the rooms on each floor, overall a long narrow rectangle shape with uniform clotheslines placed all around.
But because there were many residents, the lines were basically full of clothes and bedding, with some even draped directly on the railings at the edge of the rooftop.
To dry their own laundry, some tenants had bought their own clotheslines and set them up in the walkways.
The entire rooftop had bedding spread out even on top of the water towers.
Because of the obstruction from clothes and bedding, plus the inherently hidden location, Qi Min hadn’t noticed there was actually another clothesline here before.
The line was very short, only enough to hang two or three items of clothing.
There was dust on both ends, but the middle was very clean, indicating that for a long period of time before, there had been one or two pieces of clothing hanging here.
Until just now.
Qi Min thought of Feng Xiaoyun’s other employee uniform that he had never found, which was likely one of them.
So someone had been here before him…
No, if they had been hiding on the rooftop before him, they would have had plenty of time to go downstairs while he was walking inside.
So this person must have come up to the rooftop right after him.
While he was walking inside looking for clothes.
The other person, taking advantage of the cover provided by the hanging laundry on the rooftop, discovered the clothes in the hidden corner first and took them, but didn’t have time to escape before he came back.
They had no choice but to keep hiding in that corner, hoping to come out after he left.
They just didn’t expect him to suddenly feel poetic and want to look at the view of the abandoned buildings, and even worse, stand right next to them.
Their plan backfired and they nearly got caught.
Actually, the other person had no need to take such a big risk to remove the clothes.
Even if that uniform was really hanging on the rooftop, with that whole closet of clothes before, it wouldn’t have made much difference or proved anything more.
The reason Qi Min came up to look was just to confirm what Feng Xiaoyun was wearing when she left.
Instead, it was the other person’s deliberate following and sneaky removal of the clothes that was highly suspicious!
They probably saw him searching for something on the rooftop, and already feeling guilty, panicked and had a drop in IQ, instinctively taking the clothes away.
This indicated the person was extremely familiar with Feng Xiaoyun. Even if they didn’t know her exact laundry spot, they knew her job and that she might have a spare employee uniform hanging on the rooftop.
It also meant this person had their eye on him now.
At this point, Qi Min was basically certain that Feng Xiaoyun had met with foul play.
However, there was still one thing Qi Min couldn’t figure out.
But that would have to wait until after asking the landlord. For now…
Qi Min stared at the water tower beside him.
The apartment’s water tower was vertical, with a locked lid on top that ordinary people couldn’t open.
Fumin Apartments were built decades ago. In the past, there were often issues with insufficient water pressure or water outages, so older buildings generally had water towers to ensure the water supply.
However, these types of water storage facilities were gradually being phased out now.
Because they were easily contaminated, making it difficult to guarantee the quality of tap water.
Some water tower lids weren’t even locked, or would come loose from wind and sun exposure, allowing dust, leaves or passing birds to fall in and contaminate the water.
There was even a case before where a corpse was hidden in a water tower. Residents drank the corpse-tainted water for a week and a half before the case was discovered – truly the worst of luck.
Qi Min walked around – all four water towers had locks on them.
Qi Min lifted up the bedding and hanging clothes to climb up and take a look, twisting the lock a couple times.
It probably wasn’t opened often, as the lock core was a bit rusty.
But it was still intact, locked very securely with no scratch marks. It hadn’t been pried open.
That made sense.
It had been three months since Feng Xiaoyun quit her job.
In the scorching summer heat, if she was hidden in the water tower, there would have been a smell by now.
Fumin Apartments had many residents and the water towers were in constant use. It was impossible no one would have noticed.
Even so, Qi Min still went down to the fifth floor and asked a man walking in the hallway.
The tap water indeed hadn’t had any strange odors in the past few months.
Seeing Qi Min come down from the rooftop and ask about tap water odors, the man in floral shorts pondered for a moment, seemingly recalling something, and his face suddenly turned green.
Qi Min could tell he had misunderstood, but didn’t bother to explain.
The fourth and fifth floors were uniformly managed and charged by the original development company, who also managed the water towers.
Judging by the rust in the keyhole, it hadn’t been cleaned in who knows how long.
Water towers should ideally be cleaned every six months or year, otherwise they fill up with scale and algae.
So many microorganisms!
The man could motivate the management staff to open it up and take a look, clean it once at least.
Passing by the ashen-faced man, Qi Min couldn’t help but sigh: Another day of doing good deeds!
Merit +1!
