Kiwi Beyond the Cage 015

**Honeyed Cage (I)**

"Officer Ou Yang, we meet again."

As if oblivious to Ou Yang Lin’s gaze, Sheng Long gently stirred the congee, scooping a spoonful to Ji Wei’s lips.

No longer resistant, Ji Wei glanced up at him with lashes a-tremble. Meeting Sheng Long’s soft, lowered eyes, she hesitated, then parted her lips to take the congee, like a fawn.

Staring at Sheng Long’s hand for a moment, Ou Yang Lin suppressed her restlessness and remarked pointedly, “We’ll be seeing much more of each other.”

Sheng Long hummed in acknowledgment, his mind clearly elsewhere as he focused on feeding Ji Wei. “Looking forward to it.”

Looking forward to meeting the police again?

Had it not been for Ou Yang’s restraint, Zhao Liang would have cuffed Sheng Long on the spot to question him about the scratches on his hand. Ou Yang, however, remained composed, casually stepping closer to inquire about Sheng Long’s well-being, “You’re alright from yesterday?”

During Ji Wei’s episode, she had bitten Sheng Long’s right hand, wounds since treated. As for the conspicuous bruises on his neck, Sheng Long seemed indifferent, leaving them exposed above his collar. “I’m fine.”

“I’m relieved to hear that,” Ou Yang said with a smile.

Red Hair died between five and seven in the morning. Ou Yang had received intel that Sheng Long stayed at the company all night, rushing to the hospital at 8:30, just in time to encounter Ji Wei, who had run out of the hospital after receiving a call from Meng Qingde.

Did he have scratches on his hand back then? Ou Yang couldn’t recall.

“The scratches on your hand… were they also from Ji Wei yesterday?”

Sheng Long paused mid-action.

Glancing at Ji Wei, he emitted a faint “Mmm” by way of reply. Ji Wei promptly echoed with a concerned “Ah,” clutching his hand to her chest, “Did I scratch you, brother? Does it hurt?”

Sheng Long enveloped her hand in his, gently reassuring, “It doesn’t hurt.”

Zhao Liang’s eyes widened at Ji Wei’s odd behavior.

For the second time, Ou Yang heard Ji Wei use the term “brother.”

Clutching the recorder in his pocket, he was about to press further when his phone rang. Sheng Long glanced at the screen and sighed, “Excuse me,” before turning to leave the room.

Ji Wei’s state was highly unstable. Her memory seemed to have regressed to her childhood, delusionally regarding Sheng Long as her brother.

“Is this a delusion?” Ou Yang wondered aloud.

After Sheng Long left, Ji Wei sat docilely on the hospital bed, fiddling with the candy box in her hands. Zhao Liang prodded gently, “Why are you always holding onto that?”

Expecting no response, he was surprised when Ji Wei replied earnestly, “It’s a gift from my brother.”

“You have a brother?” Ji Wei’s file clearly stated she was an only child.

What Zhao Liang truly wanted to ask was why she called Sheng Long “brother.” Was it a lovers’ quaint term? Likely not so simple.

Ji Wei was stumped.

Given her current state, she probably couldn’t answer such a complex question. Ou Yang, fearing Zhao might upset her, was about to intercede when Ji Wei tightened her grip on the candy box and murmured confusedly, “Uncle Sheng told me to call him that.”

“Uncle Sheng?” Sheng Linrong?

Her father had vanished to evade debt, He Xiaoyuan had “accidentally” died, and records showed young Ji Wei was taken in by her paternal uncle. Could it be that she maintained contact with the Sheng family during that time?

Ji Wei’s subsequent words dispelled their doubts. “Mommy disappeared, and I couldn’t find her. Uncle Sheng took me to a big… birdcage. There, I met my brother. He’s three years older than me. Uncle Sheng told me to call him brother, so I did.”

That single word had been her call for over a decade.

Zhao Liang was baffled. “Weren’t you adopted by your uncle?”

“Uncle… ” Ji Wei tilted her head, searching her memory. “Uncle didn’t want me. Auntie did. Brother liked me.”

The smile on her face lasted less than a second before she seemed to recall something terrifying. Opening the candy box, she stuffed a piece of candy into her mouth. “She didn’t like me… she really didn’t.”

“Who is she?”

“Brother said she’s a stranger, told me to ignore her, but she’s really scary…” Ji Wei’s shoulders trembled. “Every time she saw me, she’d argue with Uncle Sheng. She’d scream, break things. After Uncle left, she’d hit Brother… lock us in the basement… It was so dark down there, nothing at all…”

Ji Wei still remembered the basement’s appearance.

Above the ceiling, vibrant flora thrived under glass, sunlight flooding in, blinding to the eyes. Beneath the ceiling lay a sunless hell, vast yet suffocatingly cramped. Ji Wei vaguely returned to the night her mother vanished, hiding under the bed in fear and tears, no hope in sight, no one to rescue her.

“It was only Brother who reached for my hand, stuffed candy into my mouth—so sweet…” Hell seemed less terrifying then.

How did they escape that hell?

Ji Wei was too terrified to remember.

Every time Sheng Linrong returned, she’d become anxious, her heartbeat racing.

Sheng Linrong’s return meant arguments would erupt again, and they’d be locked back into that dreadful hell. Countless times, she’d pleaded helplessly with her brother, “If this keeps up, I’ll die…”

But she didn’t want to die. She harbored a secret, unsure what to do yet, but determined to live, to expose the secret to the light.

Ou Yang Lin likely guessed what her secret was—the camera, the D-card, the sealed truth.

“So, Brother destroyed the greenhouse.”

When Meng Qingde tried to bury them in hell once more, Sheng Long kicked over the plant stand. It was the first time Ji Wei had seen her brother angry.

So gentle and even-tempered, he pressed a shard of porcelain to Meng Qingde’s neck, transformed, “Why go through the trouble?”

Coldly, he said, “You suffer, can’t bear us happy—why not join hell together?”

Ji Wei had never heard her brother call their mother “Meng Qingde.” The name, uttered by him, was icy and alien. “Have you seen true hell?”

The greenhouse, meticulously tended by Meng Qingde, shattered before their eyes. Sheng Long destroyed everything in a frenzy, no one dared approach him.

Pointing at the ruined greenhouse, he declared, “This is not hell.”

Then at the pitch-black basement, “Nor is that our hell.”

Where, then, was hell?

In the end, neither brother nor Meng Qingde spoke of it.

She was frightened by her son, sat dazed on the ground for a long while. After that, she never bullied him or Ji Wei again, converting the basement into an art studio, often painting there all day.

“What does she paint?” Ou Yang Lin thought of the painting.

That demon portrait was no six-day task. While searching for evidence, they found discarded sketches on the floor—all of Sheng Long.

Ji Wei shook her head, “I don’t know. I dare not look, and Brother won’t let me.”

“Brother says, she’s painting the hell in her heart.”

Ji Wei distinctly remembered Sheng Long’s smile when he said this—gentle, cold, edged with a sharpness that unnerved her. “She can’t paint it.”

“Why not?”

“Because she has no hell in her heart. Our hell contains them. But someday, it will all be returned.”

Zhao Liang’s jaw dropped.

Ou Yang Lin was momentarily speechless.

“So… all these years, you’ve lived with the Sheng family?”

Ji Wei nodded.

Recalling their earlier interaction, Ou Yang abruptly asked, “When did you and Sheng Long start dating?”

“What dating?” Ji Wei didn’t understand.

Ou Yang rephrased, “Isn’t he your boyfriend?”

“Are you referring to a relationship after moving out of the Sheng residence? Or don’t you like…”

*Click—*

The door swung open, abruptly halting the inquiry within.

The sudden silence, unintended, thickened the air with tension. Sheng Long stood in the doorway, having likely overheard their conversation. A faint chuckle escaped his nostrils, his face shrouded in shadow.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” his drawl lingered as he leaned against the threshold, “is it amusing to coax stories from a confused child?”

Zhao Liang forced a dry laugh. “Just making small talk.”

“Is that so?” Twirling his phone, Sheng Long’s expression was inscrutable as he regarded the two officers by the bedside. “How about some small talk with me? The stories I could tell might far surpass a child’s.”

Where should the story begin?

In the sealed conference room, smoke swirled.

Sheng Long held a cigarette between his fingers. With a crisp *click* of the lighter, he ignited it, the smoke curling from his nostrils dissolving his features.

“My birth was Meng Qingde’s attempt to win Sheng Linrong’s favor.”

She believed that having a child would bind Sheng Linrong to her, but she vastly underestimated men. When a man finds a woman neither profitable nor passionate, the child becomes a shackle.

The deeper Meng Qingde’s love, the more contemptible she became in Sheng Linrong’s eyes.

Did Meng Qingde truly not understand? She did.

What she clung to was never Sheng Linrong, but the illusion of a family that was hers. Yet Sheng Linrong’s heart was elsewhere, and her son became a burden. Every time she looked at Sheng Long, she was reminded of her delusions, her humiliation. Thus—

Sheng Long became the thorn in her eye.

“For eight years, no more, no less.” The abuse Meng Qingde inflicted on Sheng Long was spoken of as if time could be effortlessly bridged.

“At eight, Sheng Linrong brought Ji Wei home.”

Sheng Linrong claimed Ji Wei’s plight was pitiable, being the child of his high school classmate, and he wished to care for her.

“Is that what he said?” Zhao Liang interjected.

What else could he say?

Ou Yang frowned. “Wasn’t Ji Wei taken in by her paternal uncle?”

“On the surface.”

Sheng Linrong struck a deal with Ji Wei’s uncle’s family, sending monthly payments on the condition that Ji Wei stayed with the Shengs.

Initially, Meng Qingde disagreed, but once Ji Wei moved in, Sheng Linrong returned home more frequently and stopped his philandering.

Fatally, Sheng Linrong treated Ji Wei with exceptional kindness, as if she were his own daughter, offering her all the patience and warmth he could muster. His attitude toward Ji Wei reignited Meng Qingde’s suspicions, leading her to mistakenly believe Ji Wei was his illegitimate child, even going so far as to conduct a paternity test.

Once planted, suspicion grows roots. Even after confirming Ji Wei shared no blood relation with Sheng Linrong,

Targeting, insults, quarrels—once again filled this “home,” with every inch of space seeping with smoke, choking to the point of suffocation. In such an environment, Sheng Linrong’s attitude toward Ji Wei began to wane, often disappearing for days on end.

“Ji Wei told me that the reason Sheng Linrong treated her kindly was because he had ‘lost’ her mother.”

That night, after Sheng Linrong left, Ji Wei ran to the balcony, intending to find her mother.

She stood on a stool, unable to climb the high glass platform, and saw the dazzling colored lights downstairs, a crowd gathered on the lawn as if lifting something, noisy for a long while.

Ji Wei was too young to comprehend much, thinking her mother was merely helping downstairs, thinking that if she waited obediently, her mother would climb back through the balcony.

She retreated under the bed, clutching the camera, waiting and waiting until dawn, when a group rushed into the bedroom, calling her name.

She heard Sheng Linrong’s voice.

“Uncle Sheng,” Ji Wei crawled out without the camera, leaving it beneath the bed.

In Sheng Linrong’s stunned expression, she grasped his trouser cuff, lifted her small head, and inquired timidly, “Where’s Mommy?”

Sheng Linrong said he didn’t know.

But how could he not know?

Ji Wei was somewhat afraid of him, but for her mother’s sake, she pointed to the balcony, “Last night, there…”

Her words were cut short as Sheng Linrong covered her mouth.

Pausing here, Sheng Long glanced at the two across from him, “From that day on, the surveillance began.”

“So Sheng Linrong wanted Ji Wei to live with you not out of lingering affection or guilt for He Xiaoyuan, but because he feared she might reveal the truth?” Zhao Liang finally understood the aftermath of the video but still felt a chill.

A cigarette had burned down to the butt. Sheng Long extinguished it in the ashtray, his tone lightly mocking, “What lingering affection?”

“Just afraid of being haunted by vengeful spirits.”

Ou Yang Lin narrowed her eyes, “So you knew all along?”

Sheng Long curled his lips into a smile, revealing again, “The camera under Ji Wei’s bed was brought back by me.”

The camera hidden under the bed was never discovered. After days of back-and-forth, it returned to Ji Wei’s possession. Concerned the camera was too conspicuous, Sheng Long only retrieved the D-card. Even so, this incident aroused Sheng Linrong’s suspicions.

Sheng Linrong couldn’t help but be afraid.

In the dead of night, whenever he recalled that night, it brought with it the memory of Ji Wei crawling out from under the bed. As he personally pushed He Xiaoyuan off the fourth-floor balcony, her child witnessed it all from beneath the bed…

“He killed Aunt He, yet couldn’t bring himself to harm her child, so he kept her close, right under his nose.”

Sheng Linrong believed that if he treated Ji Wei well enough, He Xiaoyuan would forgive his “accidental killing.” He assumed children were forgetful; with enough indoctrination, that memory would vanish from Ji Wei’s mind. Even if, years later, Ji Wei unraveled the truth, growing up on the Sheng family’s provisions, she’d weigh a lifetime of material privilege against five years of mother-daughter bond and know which was heavier.

But he forgot that human nature is unpredictable, especially his own.

Ji Wei couldn’t forget. Not only did she remember, but the D-card remembered too, and Sheng Long remembered for her. The only one who forgot was Sheng Linrong.

“Ji Wei bears such a striking resemblance to Aunt He,” Sheng Long’s voice was flat as he looked at them, “Do you understand what I’m implying?”

Zhao Liang nodded.

Because of their similar appearance, Sheng Linrong’s desires were aroused, and his fading guilt was resurrected. Sheng Linrong felt Ji Wei was a gift from heaven, meant to compensate for the regrets of his youth, and also believed that He Xiaoyuan’s spirit had possessed Ji Wei, returning to haunt him.

Thus, Ji Wei’s room became filled with more and more “eyes,” constantly monitoring her every move. Sheng Linrong, often drunk, would mistake Ji Wei for He Xiaoyuan. Under such relentless and suffocating surveillance, Ji Wei fell ill—“She felt the whole world was watching her, everyone was monitoring her.”

So, once he had the means, Sheng Long took Ji Wei away from the Sheng family home to convalesce.

From there, the timeline connected to Huanmeng Jiayuan.

“If you had the D-card, why didn’t you report it to the police?” Zhao Liang voiced his confusion.

Sheng Long glanced at the closed ward door, “I always had to consider Wei Wei’s well-being.”

Not to mention what the D-card would imply about He Xiaoyuan’s death, but Ji Wei wouldn’t be able to stay with the Shengs either. “Her paternal uncle’s family only cares about money, and they have a good-for-nothing son.”

Sheng Long could foresee the kind of life Ji Wei would lead, and besides, they were both children caught in their own struggles at the time.

By the time Sheng Long had the means to do something for Ji Wei, the D-card had fallen into Sheng Linrong’s hands. The conversation paused here, interrupted by Ou Yang Lin, “If it was so important, why didn’t he destroy it and keep it in a safe?”

“So it was in the safe,” Sheng Long feigned understanding, “No wonder I couldn’t find it.”

As for why Sheng Linrong didn’t destroy it, that would have to be asked of him, but regrettably, he was dead.

“The story is almost done,” Sheng Long glanced at the time, “Are the police officers satisfied?”

The story Sheng Long told justified Sheng Linrong’s surveillance of Ji Wei and explained Meng Qingde’s hatred toward her. However, “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“Does this relate to Sheng Linrong’s death?”

“How do you know it doesn’t?”

Sheng Long looked at him, “If it does, both Ji Wei and I would be suspects in your eyes.”

“Have you ever suspected that Ji Wei and I conspired to kill?”

Officer Wang had indeed entertained this theory.

“It’s just to save you from going astray,” Sheng Long remained composed, “Besides, neither Ji Wei nor I wish to dwell on these past events.”

Ou Yang Lin still felt something amiss.

Exhausted from a sleepless night and overwhelmed with information, her temples throbbed, “We don’t need lessons from you on how to conduct an investigation.”

“What else are you hiding from us?”

“Hiding?” Sheng Long couldn’t bear such an accusation, lowering his lashes, the red mole on his nose revealed, “I’ve told you everything you wanted to hear.”

“And what about what we don’t want to hear?” Ou Yang Lin sensed he was still withholding something.

Under her piercing gaze, Sheng Long merely sighed, “I haven’t killed anyone.”

Does this count as what they didn’t want to hear?

From the very beginning, he had solid alibis for every murder. Wasn’t that enough?

Drip—

A message popped up on his phone, a forensic report.

**【The killer has been found.】**

The skin tissue under Red Hair’s nails wasn’t Sheng Long’s but belonged to someone everyone had overlooked—a person already dead.

“How could it be…” Ou Yang Lin couldn’t believe it, mentally reviewing all the victims and evidence, which surprisingly exonerated Sheng Long.

No time to argue further with Sheng Long, she grabbed Zhao Liang, “Let’s go!”