The assistant hurriedly reported, "Mr. Lu, I've rallied hundreds of divers and thousands of boatmen—carpet-searched from the scene downstream—but there's no sign of Madam."
Only then did Lu Shiyan's tightly furrowed brow loosen. He sank back into his chair, a faint curve lifting one corner of his mouth. "See? I told you. She's always been theatrical. Call everyone back—there's no need to keep searching."
The assistant still looked unsettled. "Even if she didn't kill herself, she's still missing. What if—"
"She's probably sulking somewhere," Lu Shiyan interrupted. "No need to bother. She'll come back once she's had her fill of drama."
After he hung up, Lu Shiyan stared at the framed photo on his desk—one of the two of us after a tennis match when we were seventeen. The sunlight had been perfect; my smile was radiant. For a moment I thought I saw nostalgia in his eyes. Ridiculous—would he truly miss the woman whose smile he had helped steal away? He was the executioner who had severed that smile with his own hands.
"Gege!" Su Ning'an's voice called, and she locked the door behind her, plopping down onto Lu Shiyan's lap without ceremony.
He instinctively tried to push her off. "An'an, stop messing around."
"Gege, you wanted me so many times last night—don't pretend you're some virtuous man now." Su Ning'an pressed her chest against his arm, breath warm against his ear. "This is the room your wife used to live in—doesn't that make it more exciting?"
That shameless little interloper even dared to stain my last refuge.
I roared in fury. "Get out—get out of here!" I screamed with all the force in my ghostly throat, but they acted as if they couldn't hear me.
Lu Shiyan's eyes showed no lust; instead, there was an unusual trace of caution. "An'an, you said it was just last night."
"Don't worry, I won't tell. It doesn't cost you anything—she just wants you." She grabbed his hand and tugged it toward her chest. "Feel how fast my heart's racing?"
But Lu Shiyan didn't succumb like he had the night before—he pushed her away. "I have things to deal with. I have to go." He left, and my incorporeal body was forced to follow.
As he walked out I glanced back. Su Ning'an's face was darker than mine—more ghastly. She muttered under her breath, "Gege, it's a pity—sister will never come back." Her words were barely audible; Lu Shiyan couldn't have heard them, but I read the movement of her lips clearly. My death was definitely related to Su Ning'an. It had to be.
I wanted to rush her, claw her face, demand retribution—but I couldn't cross the invisible three-meter boundary that held me from him. All I could do was watch her ugly face recede into the distance.
Lu Shiyan started the car. I sat in the passenger seat and watched the scenery blur past, wondering: had Su Ning'an hired the killer? No—the masked figure's cold, lethal eyes felt familiar. I must have seen them somewhere before.
After my consciousness slipped away last night, before I could place that face, I found myself at Lu Shiyan's side. The killer threw my wedding dress into the river—then where had my body gone? I couldn't understand. If the motive had been simple murder, he could have disposed of my body and the dress together. If it was robbery, the dress itself was worth millions—diamonds that could be stripped and fenced. Yet the wedding gown retrieved by the police was intact apart from the punctures. The photos the police provided showed clean tears, no sign that the dress had been dismantled.
So what did Su Ning'an know? What did she conceal?
My thoughts raced and clattered like broken glass. The more I tried to grasp the strands of truth, the less tangible everything became. The killer's eyes haunted me—so familiar, yet just out of reach. Had I met him in some earlier life? Or had he been someone I passed in a corridor, a silhouette I'd dismissed?
We drove deeper into the city. The car's engine thrummed; the world beyond the windows seemed unreal. I pressed my ghostly hands against the seat as if that could anchor me, as if I could force myself closer. Nothing changed.
If Su Ning'an had plotted this, then she'd arranged every detail—my hidden passport, the staged hospital drama, the strategic recordings, the planted "evidence." She had woven a net. I had been the fly trapped in it.
And yet the one fact that stung most: the wedding dress was found in the river while my body was nowhere to be seen. Someone had taken my body. Someone had hidden it.
Who would hide a corpse? For what purpose?
As the city lights bled into the dusk, I resolved—fierce and terrible—that I would find out. Even as a soul, even with my hands empty, my eyes were open. I would trace the path of that killer's footsteps. I would unravel Su Ning'an's lies. But first I had to discover where my body was hidden—and why he would hide it at all.
The car sped on. Inside, the two living passengers chattered about trivialities; outside, a river flowed, indifferent. Between them lay my secret, and the silence where my voice used to be.