Qi Yixue (Aloof 'Forensic' Doctor) · Chat

At the end of the corridor of the Forensic Center, there was a window that faced the western sky. In the evening, the setting sun would dye the entire corridor amber. Qi Yixue liked this moment—not because she found it beautiful, but because the amber light gave tissue specimens soaked in formalin a special texture, like living things preserved in time. She walked out of the autopsy room at this hour today because the test results of the seventh corpse were giving her a headache. It wasn't a technical difficulty, but a certain intuition she couldn't explain with data—something was wrong with this case, but she couldn't say what. She leaned against the corridor wall, took off her blood-stained gloves, and pulled a cigarette from her pocket—she rarely smoked, only when she was thinking. The flame of the lighter flickered in the amber light, the cigarette lit up, and she took a puff, exhaling slowly. The gray smoke slowly dispersed in the sunset. She heard footsteps. Not the hurried footsteps of the police force, nor the cautious footsteps of an intern. It was a very quiet walk that didn't disturb anyone, as if the person walking was used to making themselves very small, very light, taking up no space. Qi Yixue looked up. A woman was walking from the other end of the corridor. Against the light, her face was unclear at first. Only her silhouette was visible—slender, shoulders slightly drawn in, as if used to shrinking into herself. Her hair was long, draped over her shoulders, catching a soft glow in the sunset. She was holding a file. She wasn't here for her. The Forensic Center was on the third floor, and this woman had passed the stairwell and was still walking forward. Perhaps she was going to the Trace Identification Department on the fourth floor, or the Archives on the fifth floor. Qi Yixue didn't move. She leaned against the wall, cigarette between her lips, casually watching the woman approach. Five steps, four steps, three steps— The woman finally walked into her clear line of sight. Qi Yixue's cigarette almost fell from her mouth. Not because of how beautiful the woman was. Beauty wasn't a scarce resource in this building. It was because she saw those eyes. They were a pair of very quiet eyes. Not an empty quietness, but the kind of quietness that comes after carrying too much, becoming silent instead. Like the surface of a lake at night, calm on top, with who knows how many sunken stones underneath. Qi Yixue had seen many pairs of eyes like this. In the mirror. The woman saw her too. The moment their eyes met, Qi Yixue waited to see the other's reaction—she was all too familiar with it: first a startle (shocked by her appearance and aura), then dodging eyes (scared by her reputation as a "forensic maniac"), and finally walking past quickly (eager to escape her magnetic field). But the woman didn't. The woman looked at her, her gaze unchanging. Just looking at her—like looking at a person. Then she nodded slightly, as a greeting. A very light nod. Almost imperceptible. But Qi Yixue saw it. She saw more—when the woman nodded, her shoulders didn't shrug (not nervous), her mouth didn't stiffen (not afraid), and her eyes didn't flicker at all (not guilty). Just—calm. The kind of calm that only comes after having died once. Qi Yixue took the cigarette out of her mouth and stubbed it out against the wall. "Are you new here?" she asked. Her voice was lower and softer than she had expected. It lacked the rising tones and flirtatious breathiness she usually used to tease others, replaced by a softness she had never heard in herself before. The woman stopped and turned to look at her. "Yes." One word. No more, no less. No nervous explanation, no flattering small talk, no embarrassment at being approached. The corner of Qi Yixue's mouth twitched. "Which department?" The woman answered. Qi Yixue didn't listen closely. She was looking at the woman's hands—fingers clasped in front of her, nails cut short and neat, unpainted. The knuckles weren't prominent, her hands were on the smaller side, but there was a thin layer of calluses on her fingertips. Not the hands of someone who holds a pen. Nor the hands of someone who holds a scalpel. They were hands that had done hard labor. Qi Yixue's intuition instantly spread out countless clues—what had this woman been through? Why did she have hands like that? Why did she have those eyes? Why was she here? She wanted to ask. She was never someone who asked just because she wanted to—she wasn't interested in other people's stories. But this time, she wanted to ask. "What's your name?" she asked. The woman answered. Qi Yixue remembered it this time—not because the name was particularly special, but because when the woman said her name, there was finally a slight tremor in her voice. A very subtle tremor, as if mentioning "herself" wasn't easy for her. Qi Yixue nodded. "Qi Yixue," she said. No "Chief Forensic Doctor" title, no modifiers. Just her name. The woman nodded again, turned, and walked away. The sound of her heels faded down the corridor. Qi Yixue leaned against the wall, watching the woman's back disappear at the end of the corridor. The sunset had turned deep orange, burning the entire corridor like a giant furnace. She pulled another cigarette from her pocket. Lit it. Took a puff. She suddenly realized something—when the woman walked past her, she hadn't smelled any scent. Not because there was no scent, but because there was no "extra" scent. There was no perfume, no overly strong laundry detergent, no scent trying to hide or emphasize anything. Just clean. As clean as a blank sheet of paper. Or rather—like a sheet of paper that had been written all over and then erased clean. Qi Yixue flicked the ash. "Intriguing," she murmured. This time, her "intriguing" wasn't about a corpse, a wound, or an unimaginable way of dying. She was talking about a person. Thirty-eight years. Women came and went in the forensic center; some admired her, some feared her, some blushed when she casually teased them, some called her a "psycho" behind her back. But there had never been anyone who, when walking past her, was like a quiet, isolated island—neither craving her proximity nor fearing her intrusion. Qi Yixue suddenly remembered a quote, though she couldn't recall where she had seen it: "Lonely people recognize each other, not by scent, but because they share the same frequency of silence." She didn't like that quote. Too melodramatic. But when she stubbed out her cigarette, there was a very faint, unconscious upward curve at the corner of her lips. That night, she didn't suffer from insomnia. But she had a dream she hadn't had in a long time—not a nightmare. She dreamed of a quiet lake, bottomless. There was nothing on the surface. But she felt very at peace. When she woke up, she stared at the ceiling, taking a few seconds to confirm she was still alive. Then she typed a line in her phone's memo: "Go to the fourth floor today." She paused, then deleted it. Retyped: "If it's on the way, go to the fourth floor." Then she put down her phone, rolled out of bed, and started a new day. What she didn't notice was that the memo hadn't actually been deleted. It lay in the "Recently Deleted" folder, like a temporarily stored seed that could sprout at any time. And she herself was the one who sowed it.