I Refuse to Log Off - Chapter 4

When Lin Shuying saw me come home, surprise flickered across her face. She quickly hid it.

She rushed over and seized my hand, her eyes brimming with concern. “Mingyue, you were gone all night! You didn’t answer any of my calls. I was worried sick.”

“If you hadn’t come back soon, I was going to call the police.”

In the original plot, she did call them. At the brigade headquarters, she ran into the medical examiner, Qin Mubai, just as he finished a meeting and was about to leave.

She accidentally knocked a photograph out of his folder. The picture showed Zhou Mingyue’s severed arm.

Lin Shuying gasped. “My friend has a birthmark just like that on her wrist.”

As the victim’s friend and roommate, she naturally became involved in the case.

But I was alive now. She had not gone to the brigade, delaying her meeting with the male lead.

I studied her without making it obvious.

In the novel, Lin Shuying claimed she had followed Zhou Mingyue when she left, intending to save her before the killer struck. The serial killer misdirected her along the way, however, and sent her searching in the wrong place.

She searched outside for hours, but ultimately arrived too late. All she could do was call the police and place her hopes in them.

The author took special care to describe her perseverance: she refused to give up even after the cold left her stiff and numb. Yet did she look like someone who had spent the entire night running around outside?

I pulled my hand away. “Why would anything happen to me? Not only am I fine, I helped the police catch a murderer.”

“You know—the serial killer they couldn’t catch for seven years? He tried to attack me. Fortunately, I kept my wits about me and sent him straight to the Criminal Investigation Brigade.”

Her face stiffened. Instead of joy, something that looked almost like… resentment flashed in her eyes.

Wasn’t she supposed to be consumed by regret after Zhou Mingyue’s death? Why did she look as if she desperately wished Zhou Mingyue had died?

In the original plot, she burst into tears of joy when the murderer was arrested.

“Wow, really? That’s amazing.” Perhaps my suspicions had colored my judgment, but the praise sounded hollow.

I touched the red scarf around my neck and deliberately said, “This scarf really did bring me good luck. Thank you, Shuying.”

“No need to thank me.” She abruptly changed the subject. “Did you meet your blind date?”

My blind date?

“Crap. I completely forgot.”

Maybe I imagined it, but Lin Shuying seemed to relax when I said that.

What was she relieved about? Did she not want me to meet him?

If that was true, then I absolutely had to.

I hurried to plug in my phone.

Most people checked their battery before leaving home. Zhou Mingyue might have been cannon fodder, but surely she had not lacked that much common sense.

Had her phone really died the moment she left merely because the plot required it?

As soon as the phone came on and I opened WeChat, a string of messages from “Q” appeared.

The most recent had arrived moments ago: *Your parents are really worried. We’re all looking for you.*

The earlier ones said:

*Are you coming?*

*Still not here?*

*You’re half an hour late. Stuck in traffic?*

*I’ll wait another half hour. If you don’t come, I’m leaving.*

*The restaurant is closing. When will you get here?*

*And now your phone’s off. Are you trying to dodge the blind date? I’m telling your parents.*

He had not even cursed me out. I sighed in relief and was about to reply when my mother called.

“Where have you been? You didn’t answer messages or pick up your phone. Do you know your father and I were so worried we didn’t sleep all night? If you hadn’t answered this call, we were going to the police.”

“If you didn’t want the blind date, you could have said so. Would we force you? You agreed, then stood him up. What were you thinking? Zhou Mingyue, explain yourself…”

Her voice was hoarse and choked with tears. Worry clearly outweighed anger. I could hardly imagine the pain and despair they must have felt in the original plot when they learned their daughter had been dismembered.

The novel glossed over their grief. They only appeared later, when the heroine visited them. The scenes focused on Lin Shuying’s guilt and sacrifice, while their coldness toward her made them seem unreasonable.

But their only daughter had died.

And she had died horribly. How could they possibly let that go?

My nose stung. I hurried to explain. “Mom, I’m sorry. I didn’t turn off my phone on purpose. Something went wrong with it. Listen, last night…”

Once I finished, the old couple were so shaken they insisted on coming over to see me for themselves.

The moment we hung up, Mom Zhou transferred ten thousand yuan to me and told me to buy a new phone.

With my parents reassured, I resumed my campaign of apology.

It took me three hundred Chinese characters to explain why I had missed the date.

I ended with: *I’m really sorry. I swear I didn’t stand you up on purpose. How about this—next Saturday at six, same place. Dinner’s on me!*

The reply came instantly.

*Fine.*

Then another message followed.

*So you’re the heroine who rid society of a menace. Respect.*

I sent him a sticker of a panda posing proudly with its paws on its hips. *It was nothing.*

In the original plot, Zhou Mingyue never met this blind date, either.

She climbed into the serial killer’s car on her way to meet him, and the man was never mentioned again.

That made no sense. As the last person the victim had planned to meet, how could the police not investigate him?

The author’s logic needed work.