The man was about to enter the hair salon when I yelled, “Stop!”

He turned around and angrily yelled, “Who the hell are you? How dare you tell me to stop!”

I was sure then that this guy was a gangster. I showed him my badge. The words “Nanjiang City Police” were enough to deter him. His tone softened immediately.

“Ah, forgive me, officer!” he said. “I was just going to get myself a haircut.”

I glanced at his short-cropped hair and sneered, “A haircut, huh?”

He smiled and continued, “Ah, well I haven’t gone inside, have I? That means I haven’t committed any crimes, right officer?”

“Forget about that,” I waved my hand. “I’m going to ask you some questions.”

“Fire away, officer!”

“Do you know Zhang Qiang?”

“Of course I do! We grew up together! You see these pants? He made them! Why do you ask, officer? You know, if he committed a crime, his shop is right there. Why don’t you go ask him yourself?”

A police officer would not answer every question. I stared straight at him without saying anything until his guilty conscience made him look away. I learned this trick from the other police officers.

“Do you know his wife Li Qin and his friend Cao Dazhuang?” I asked him.

“Sure do,” he replied. “they all grew up together. Are you investigating Dazhuang’s disappearance? That bastard hasn’t contacted me for more than half a year!”

“I won’t answer that question,” I said sternly. “What was Li Qin’s occupation in the past?”

The man had a contemptuous smile on his face as he pointed at the hair salon behind him and said, “She did that!”

He went on to say that Li Qin was the prettiest girl in town when she was in school. Plenty of boys in the class had a crush on her, but Zhang Qiang loved her most earnestly.

The man was Zhang Qiang’s roommate in the school dorms back then. Zhang Qiang would talk about Li Qin every night after the lights were turned off. Li Qin herself paid no attention to any of the boys at school, so Zhang Qiang always believed that he had a chance with her.

The year Li Qin graduated from high school, she took the 300 yuan that she saved up and moved to the city. When Zhang Qiang heard that she was about to leave, he borrowed a motorcycle and rushed over to the bus station to meet her. When he got there, he finally confessed his feelings to her.

Sadly, Li Qin bluntly told him that she didn’t want to spend all her life in this small town. She hated everything here, including Zhang Qiang.

Those words pierced Zhang Qiang’s heart. He became depressed for months after that.

Unfortunately for Li Qin, the outside world was cruel and uncaring. At first, she wanted to become an actress, so she worked in the film and television industry for a few years. Then she went on to become a model when acting didn’t work. She was the prettiest flower in the small town, but in the city, she couldn’t compete with the other women at all! In order to get ahead in her career, she started to turn to facelifts and plastic surgery. In the end, modeling failed too, so she had to turn to less and less dignified jobs. She then started dating rich old men, but all of them basically just treated her like a plaything.

In the eyes of the tall and muscular man, what Li Qin did was no different from prostitution. In fact, she was even worse than a prostitute, since some prostitutes returned from the city with enough money to set up a small shop, yet she came back completely penniless.

“Get to the point!” I interrupted him.

The man apologized, then added that as Li Qin got older, it became harder and harder to find jobs in the city. She got more and more plastic surgeries until her face was botched.

At the same time, she had used up all of her savings, and she was left with no choice but to return to the small town. All her friends had their own careers and families by then, and they all thought of her with both sympathy and contempt when they saw her return as a failure.

Most people even thought that she deserved everything she got, but Zhang Qiang was different. He accepted her regardless of what she went through and even took out his own savings to help her. Later, they got married and opened a tailor’s shop together. Li Qin worked herself to the point of exhaustion when she was in the city, and as a result, she couldn’t get pregnant. Thus, the couple remained childfree to this day.

The townsfolk didn’t agree with their marriage. Most of them couldn’t understand why Zhang Qiang would ever accept a woman like Li Qin. Yet, no matter what the others said, Li Qin remained the perfect woman in Zhang Qiang’s heart. In fact, if anyone dared to mention Li Qin’s past in front of him, he would instantly get angry and confrontational.

“I wouldn’t take a woman like that even for free!” croaked the man. “I feel bad for my buddy, though. So, was my information helpful to you at all, officer?”

I nodded. “You can go now!”

“Thank you, officer! Perhaps we can have a drink together the next time we meet!”

Bingxin and I turned around and walked out of the alley. I sighed and remarked, “It’s a familiar tale, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” replied Bingxin. “That woman is pitiful. She should’ve just focused on her studies when she was in school!”

“Not everyone is like you, being at the top of the class every year!”

“That’s not true! I once was second in class. I was so sad my dad had to comfort me for days…”

I wondered how many girls ended up like Li Qin in this country. They were born into ordinary families and limited opportunities. They would try desperately to change their destinies, but most of them would only return home having lost everything just like Li Qin.

Perhaps one in a thousand of them would succeed and become famous actresses or celebrities, but who could imagine what they had to go through and what they must sacrifice to reach their goals?

“Don’t you think her name is too plain for a model, Song Yang-gege?” I heard Bingxin ask when I was still deep in thoughts. “She should’ve changed her name if she wanted to be famous!”

Bingxin’s words made me realize something. I ran back to the salon as Bingxin shouted, “Where are you going, Song Yang-gege?”

The man was still at the salon door, bargaining with a woman. He was stunned when he saw me.

“W-Wait, officer! I haven’t agreed to anything yet so it’s still not a crime, right?”

The woman in heavy makeup beside him anxiously cried, “What are you talking about? This is a hair salon! We don’t do anything illegal here!”

I was not in the mood to argue with them, so I bluntly asked the man, “What was Li Qin’s name when she worked in the city?”

The man scratched his head and muttered, “Um… Well, it was a catchy name…” He thought about it for a few seconds and finally remembered, “Right! She was called Li Rumeng!”

“Thank you!” I patted him on the shoulder.

I then left the salon. When I looked back, the man actually entered the hair salon again, so I called Director Feng and reported them.

“What did you find out, Song Yang-gege?” asked Bingxin when she saw me. “You look so happy!”

“It’s all thanks to you, Bingxin! Li Qin did indeed change her name when she was in the city. No wonder we couldn’t find any medical records on her!”

I called Yuanchao and asked him to go back to the major hospitals in the province and ask for Li Rumeng’s medical records.

When we returned to the tailor’s shop, Xiaotao was standing at the entrance, one hand holding a jacket and one hand on her hips, looking very impatient.

“What took you so long?” she complained.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” I replied. “Did you find out anything?”

“I chatted with the couple for a while. They told me they had known each other since childhood. They were too busy with work so they don’t have any children. Their lives were peaceful and uneventful according to them.”

Sure enough, we wouldn’t discover anything had we asked Zhang Qiang directly.

Xiaotao looked at me with narrowed eyes and asked, “You look suspiciously cheerful! What did you discover?”

“I’ll tell you everything when we get back to the station!”