Chapter Thirty-Nine: Imagination

"Hmm? What's spreading around?" The counselor's face, which had just relaxed, immediately tensed up again.

"The news of Xu Wenrui's death!" Kang Ge looked at him, puzzled. "When we arrived on campus today, we heard a lot of students discussing it. They were even impressed by how quickly your university responded, finding the most prudent way to announce the matter! What? Isn't that what happened?"

"No, no! The university hasn't made this public yet! After all, Xu Wenrui died at home, not on campus, so whether we even need to respond publicly is still under consideration!" The counselor was starting to panic. "Has the news spread outside already? What are the students saying?"

"All sorts of reactions," Kang Ge replied, not giving much away.

Yan Xue, however, looked dissatisfied. "Look at this mess! Yesterday you told us to keep a low profile to avoid causing a stir or panic. We tried our best to cooperate with the university, even if it affected our work, for your sake. But in the end, you couldn't keep the secret yourselves and leaked the news? Now that so many students know, we can't say whether it will cause panic, and it's already affected our investigation! Yesterday, you were the only one at the university who knew about Xu Wenrui's death. Even when we questioned other students, we were very discreet. So the most likely source of the leak is someone inside your university. Think carefully: after learning about Xu Wenrui's accident yesterday, who did you tell?"

"I... I would never leak such news carelessly!" The counselor, still in his twenties, wasn't particularly strong under pressure. Suddenly questioned by Yan Xue, he flushed deeply and looked completely flustered. "I definitely reported everything to my superiors, but I absolutely did not spread it outside, absolutely not!" As he spoke, he instinctively raised his hand as if to swear an oath, then realized it was a bit much and awkwardly lowered it again.

"Alright, then you should report this situation to your superiors too. Since the news has already spread, if your response is too slow, you'll only be on the back foot," Kang Ge said kindly, nodding at him. "Get some rest—we won't keep you any longer!"

The counselor, looking utterly miserable, escorted them out of the office. He hurried back, likely rattled by the sudden turn of events and eager to inform those above him.

"Did we scare him on purpose, hoping he'd report it up the chain so the university would step in to control the spread and discussion?" Yan Xue asked once they had left the administration building, following Kang Ge's lead. "Yesterday, the only ones who knew about Xu Wenrui's death and were present at K University were the counselor and Gao Yang. Gao Yang was with us and isn't a K University student, so the leak almost certainly lies with the counselor."

"Exactly. He let the initial news slip, no doubt about it. The question is, during the subsequent spread, who was responsible, which we can’t possibly trace now. But what's interesting is that, overnight, the news spread rapidly among the students—specifically, within Xu Wenrui’s own department. If you ask me, I refuse to believe this wasn't intentional," Kang Ge replied.

"But by telling the counselor this, the university will surely try to suppress the spread. If the school cracks down, won’t it become even harder for us to find out who’s fanning the flames?" Yan Xue was puzzled.

"Not quite!" Kang Ge replied, a bit theatrically. "If a pond is full of muddy water, you can’t see anything. But what if you drain it? Then you can see which loach was stirring up the mud at the bottom!"

Yan Xue understood at once. "Good point. Let's hope the university helps us drain the pond soon!"

After this brief interlude with the counselor, they stuck to their plan and went to the K University security office to question staff about the incident Zhuang Fukai had mentioned.

Since the incident hadn't happened long ago, the security staff remembered it vividly. As soon as Yan Xue brought it up, the staff member's face turned sour.

"What is it? Is this a difficult matter to talk about?" Kang Ge asked. "If you feel pressured, don't worry—we won't make things hard for you."

"Oh, it's not that. It's just a bit ridiculous, honestly. That day was a real ordeal for us," the security officer, a man in his thirties with a straightforward, talkative manner, replied. "That guy—honestly, I don't know how to describe him. From what he said, he seemed to have a bit of a reputation on campus and insisted we take his concerns seriously and not brush him off."

"Wasn't he one of the well-known students at K University?" Yan Xue asked.

The staff member shrugged and pursed his lips. "Who knows! Maybe. We do have two or three students here who are really famous—tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of fans online, they say! If it were one of those, I’d recognize them, but the guy who came that day—I didn't know him. We in security don’t really get involved in student activities, so I’m not up on all that."

"What exactly did he want that day?"

"He came in asking if we had any connections with the local police station or could pull some strings. We asked why, and he said he feared for his safety—someone had been following and stalking him, trying to kill him! That startled us, so we asked if he’d called the police, what the stalker looked like, whether it happened inside campus or outside. We also notified security to step up patrols and watch for suspicious people. This is a big campus, and it's not completely enclosed, so we were worried something serious might happen."

"He said he was too scared to explain over the phone, so we helped him call the police. They said they were already aware and were sending someone to talk to him in person. We kept him in the security office until the police arrived, and we listened in to see if there was anything important we needed to know."

"But when the police came and questioned him, his story was all over the place. Honestly, not just the police—even we, two staff and three security guards, couldn’t make heads or tails of it. From what I gathered, he said someone was always following him, shifty-eyed, menacing, and appearing out of nowhere, but never spoke a word to him."

"Did he know who this person was? No. Why did he think he was being stalked and targeted? He didn't know—just a gut feeling! Did the man do anything besides follow him? No! How were we supposed to make sense of that? The police spent a long time trying to get details, help him recall specifics, but he just couldn’t say anything useful. It got more and more bizarre, and eventually he claimed the man wasn’t acting alone—there was a female accomplice, wearing some big dress, always appearing nearby and impossible to shake off."

"When the police left, they asked if our university had counselors or psychologists, because they felt Xu Wenrui needed that kind of help more than anything else."

"Did you agree? Did you arrange any psychological intervention?" Yan Xue asked.

The security officer gave a wry laugh and shook his head. "We agreed with the police, but all we have here is a well-equipped campus clinic—no psychiatry, no psychologists. We just couldn't arrange anything. I did observe the young man that day—he looked pale, with deep dark circles under his eyes. You could tell he hadn’t slept well in a long time. When we found out he was a senior, we asked if he was stressed about graduation, job hunting, or grad school exams."

"He didn’t like that at all—got very irritable when we brought it up, though he admitted he hadn’t slept well for ages. Said whenever he closed his eyes, he’d have nightmares. We could see his mental state was unstable—on the one hand, we worried about his health; on the other, he was so volatile we feared he might snap, do something rash, maybe even hurt others."

"So we contacted the student affairs office to get him a leave of absence, suggested he go home and rest, and if possible, see a doctor. If he kept going without rest, he’d end up with a nervous breakdown. We didn’t dare suggest a psychiatrist outright—didn’t want to set him off again. You should have seen him that day—extremely agitated, yelling at the police and at us whenever his requests weren’t met. We really were afraid of making things worse."