Kiwi Beyond the Cage 014

**Honeyed Blade (III)**

"Classmate, may I ask your name?"

"He Xiaoyuan."

"……"

"Classmate He Xiaoyuan, what’s your favorite animal?"

"Kiwis."

"What’s that?"

"A bird without wings. They have one partner for life. Despite hardships, they stay curious and passionate. It’s said… they even mourn their deceased partners."

"Hmm? Are you implying something?"

"I-I’m not… Sheng Linrong!"

Late at night, in the police station’s office, only a dim desk lamp cast light.

The vintage camera rewound to a sweltering summer years ago. A girl in a neat uniform, with jet-black hair, frolicked under a tree with a boy holding a camera. Her pure, radiant smile caught the lens as she tried to grab the camera, only for the boy to dodge.

"Stop filming!"

"Just one last question." Let it be their testament.

"Classmate He Xiaoyuan, will you be my girlfriend?"

"……"

"……"

This was the fourth time Ou Yang Lin had watched the footage tonight.

"He Xiaoyuan… found her!" Zhao Liang stayed late with her.

The video confirmed the identities: the cameraman was Sheng Linrong, and the girl was Ji Wei’s late mother. Zhao pulled up records, “He Xiaoyuan, local resident, attended the same high school as Sheng Linrong, same class. But…”

Zhao had verified with the school, “He Xiaoyuan didn’t take the college entrance exam back then. Heard there was family trouble. Three days before the exam, the family vanished, unreachable.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Tax issues, company bankruptcy. Her father died in a car crash on the way home. No further info—she left the city. Registered again a decade later, by then she had Ji Wei.”

“Never expected Sheng Linrong kept this footage all these years.” The baffling case began to clear. “From the video, Ji Wei resembles her mother. So Sheng Linrong’s stalking Ji Wei… was due to lingering feelings for He Xiaoyuan, treating her daughter as a stand-in?!”

Zhao speculated, “Meng Qingde was deeply obsessed with Sheng Linrong. Could she have found the camera in the safe and despaired into suicide?”

Possible, but one thing stood out: “If she’d given up on Sheng Linrong, why did her final ‘artwork’ target Sheng Long, not Sheng Linrong?”

Zhao was stumped, scratching his head. “What’s your take, Captain Lin?”

“This footage might be part of her suicide plan, but not the core,” Ou Yang Lin tapped the desk. “She must’ve seen or discovered something linked to her son—a shock to her psyche, collapsing her mental defenses… leading her to…”

He Xiaoyuan’s emergence tied the serial killings together. Yet Red Hair’s death seemed unrelated.

“Check this too.”

Ou Yang inserted the D-card into the camera. Zhao leaned over. “Another video?”

The card held no photos, only a lengthy video. Noting the date, Zhao quickly cross-referenced: “This is the second year after He Xiaoyuan returned to the city, married!”

Ou Yang hit play.

“Xiao Wei, know what this is? It’s a kiwi bird—they can’t fly.”

The video opened with a blurred hotel floor. After running footsteps, the camera dropped on a bed, revealing a little girl’s soft face. In a childish voice, she said, “Peach, it’s a peach, Muzzy Peach.”

The woman off-camera gently laughed, “Right, they look like kiwifruit… Muzzy Peach.”

“One day, a kiwi bird was locked in a gilded cage. It didn’t understand—without wings, it couldn’t fly. So why trap it?”

The woman narrated like a fairy tale. The little girl listened intently, asking, “Why?”

Then, leaping thoughts: “Cage, okay, has a big bed and toys.”

“The cage may be gilded, but it deceives your senses, making you think you have the whole world. Doesn’t Xiao Wei want to see beyond the cage? Even without wings, one can yearn for the sky.”

The first half-hour was storytelling. In the end, the kiwi bird escapes the cage, wingless yet soaring, “No one can trap it again.”

Zhao yawned, exhausted from late shifts.

Catching his superior’s glance, he straightened and stated the obvious, “It’s He Xiaoyuan and Ji Wei.”

*Knock, knock, knock—*

The warm scene in the video was interrupted by a sudden knock.

He Xiaoyuan put away the storybook, patted little Ji Wei’s head, and said, “Stay put in the bedroom, sweetheart. Mom’s going to check.”

As the knocks grew urgent, she covered Ji Wei with a blanket, enveloping the camera too, “Promise me, no matter what you hear, you stay put.”

*Click.*

The bedroom light went out.

In the pitch-black room, little Ji Wei, likely frightened, hid under the bed with her beloved camera.

The blanket muffled the camera’s “eyes” and “ears.” Ou Yang turned the volume up, but even then, the dialogue was indistinct. Zhao wished he could crawl into the video. “Sounds like an argument.”

*Bang—*

A violent crash startled Zhao.

Cupping his nearly deafened ears, he shrank back—a foot had kicked the bedroom door open, dragging He Xiaoyuan inside. The camera jolted, likely scaring little Ji Wei too.

“You never stop, do you?!”

“I said, we’re impossible!”

Voices fluctuated in pitch and volume, incomprehensible. The person arguing with He Xiaoyuan remained unseen. Zhao, growing anxious, saw a hand suddenly appear in the lens.

The hand slowly pushed aside the blanket, aiming the camera beneath the bed, capturing a pair of women’s slippers and men’s leather shoes.

The muffled voices became clearer. “Sheng Linrong, we both have families now. Don’t make me regret liking you in my youth…”

“Liked me?” The man sneered. “You call that liking? You disappeared without a trace, skipped the college entrance exam, didn’t go to university. You were gone for ten years, then came back to work as a cleaner at my family’s company. What do you think I am? Is this your idea of liking me?”

The slippers and shoes chased each other across the frame, a fierce struggle unfolding. “Let go, Sheng Linrong, let me go!”

The leather shoes pinned the slippers, nearly touching the lens. Zhao grew tense; viewing this past event from such a perspective felt as if he were hiding under the bed too.

“What kind of marriage is that? Your husband ran off with gambling debts, leaving you to repay creditors by working. What can he give you?”

“Xiaoyuan, divorce him. I can give you a worry-free life.”

He Xiaoyuan, likely concerned for Ji Wei, assumed her daughter was still in bed. She dodged Sheng Linrong’s advances several times, steering him toward the balcony. “Sheng Linrong, get out!”

At this moment, Zhao genuinely admired Ji Wei.

Had it not been for the occasional camera shake, he’d have forgotten Ji Wei was there. Despite her young age and fright, she obeyed, stayed silent, and even dared to film.

This alone was remarkable.

The bedroom voices faded as the balcony argument intensified. Hearing no sound from her mother, little Ji Wei grew restless. She tried to crawl out from under the bed several times, bit her lip to stay quiet, and finally, trembling, aimed the camera at the balcony.

The slightly open bedroom door let in faint light. The moonlit balcony outside was bright enough for the lens to capture useful images.

Ah—

The woman’s desperate scream faded.

The two figures on the balcony became one as He Xiaoyuan fell over the edge.

“Ugh… Mommy…” Zhao stood abruptly, hearing Ji Wei’s tiny sobs.

Ou Yang Lin held her breath, anxious for little Ji Wei under the bed.

The video continued to run, the room falling silent for a long while. The shadow on the balcony remained motionless. As it turned to leave, Ji Wei grabbed the camera and scurried back under the bed. The flipped camera captured her small face—sweat-soaked, tears streaming, blurring the lens.

Click, clack—

The sound of leather shoes on the floor.

Clear, slow, pausing briefly by the bed, then exiting the bedroom and closing the door. In the seconds before recording auto-stopped, Ji Wei dropped the camera and crawled out from under the bed…

Where she went, whether Sheng Linrong found her, and what happened next… they didn’t know.

The video ended. Ou Yang Lin and Zhao Liang, one seated and one standing, remained immersed in the footage. After a while, Ou Yang snapped back, “What was He Xiaoyuan’s cause of death?”

Zhao hastily checked archives, “As we saw before, accidental death…”

“What kind of accident?”

Zhao found it, “Died during a hotel vacation, fell from the fourth-floor balcony.”

“Fourth floor?”

“The balcony He Xiaoyuan was on overlooked a lawn. Her head struck a lawn sprinkler upon impact, causing fatal internal bleeding…”

It sounded like a genuine accident.

If Ou Yang hadn’t seen the video.

“She was pushed by Sheng Linrong.” Though blurry, the video documented Sheng Linrong’s harassment, threats, and the moment he shoved He Xiaoyuan after choking her.

The chaotic, frenzied threat echoed in the police office, looping: “Break her legs, then I’ll support you.”

In response to Sheng Linrong’s actions, the woman’s desperate scream rang out, along with a helpless, blurred plea: “Mommy…”

This was the fourth soul uncovered in the wake of Sheng Linrong’s murder case.

.

With heavy dark circles, Ou Yang Lin retrieved her car keys at eight in the morning.

Zhao Liang, carrying breakfast, caught up to her, “Eat something… Slow down, sister… You’ve been up all night. This isn’t good!”

Ou Yang had no appetite. Last night’s videos sat heavily in her mind, urging her to uncover the truth. But when they arrived at the hospital, they were met with another visual shock.

“Captain Lin…” The two froze in the doorway.

The morning ward was bathed in sunlight.

Warm light fell on fingers holding a bowl of congee, slender and pale. If one ignored the long scratch on the back of the hand… scratch.

Ou Yang Lin lifted her gaze, slowly focusing on the owner of the hand—

Sheng Long.