[Cloud City · Police Station · Conference Room]
"I didn't cheat."
When Su Xiaoqing said this, her hands lay flat on the table, fingers pressed down so hard the tips had gone white. Her eye sockets were red, but she wasn't crying. The tears had already been spent. What remained was only exhaustion and the stubbornness of someone backed into a corner.
She wore a thin black jacket over her KTV uniform—she'd come straight from the night shift. Her hair was gathered loosely with a rubber band, a few stray strands falling around her ears. Her makeup had smeared, but she hadn't bothered to wipe it away.
Beside her sat a middle-aged man in a crisp suit. The lawyer. Yin Wuwang swept a glance over him—impeccable posture, briefcase with document edges visible, ready to handle any question that might arise.
Not a cheap lawyer. This wife was willing to spend good money on legal counsel, which meant she wasn't just going through the motions—she truly believed her husband hadn't committed murder.
Little Deer Assistant whispered in Yin Wuwang's mind: "Su Xiaoqing, KTV manager, night shift. The original setting is 'did not have an affair.' But Zhang Yunxiang was absolutely convinced otherwise... that gap between perception and reality is exactly what we need to investigate."
The conference room was larger than the interrogation room, with a different atmosphere. Su Xiaoqing was a witness, not a suspect—she didn't need to sit in the interrogation room's iron chair at the iron table. But even in an ordinary office chair, her body was wound tighter than Zhang Yunxiang's had been during his interrogation.
Yin Wuwang leaned against the wall by the door, arms crossed. Xie Qingyan sat across from Su Xiaoqing, opening his notebook.
"Ms. Su," Xie Qingyan's tone was steady, "regarding what your husband Zhang Yunxiang mentioned in his statement—"
"I know what he said." Su Xiaoqing cut him off, her voice low and hoarse but clear. "He said I was having an affair with Chen Wan. I'm telling you now—that's false."
Xie Qingyan wasn't thrown by the interruption. His pen tip paused on the paper for a second, then continued writing.
"What was your relationship with the deceased, Chen Wan?"
"Bartender and customer." Su Xiaoqing said. "I went to drink, he poured drinks. Nothing more."
"How often did you visit Night Wanderer Bar?"
"Two or three times a week." She paused. "Sometimes more."
"Did Zhang Yunxiang know you went?"
"Yes. Sometimes we went together, sometimes I went alone." Su Xiaoqing's tone shifted slightly. "I work the graveyard shift. By the time I get off, it's already two or three in the morning. Having a drink at a bar before heading home is pretty normal, isn't it?"
Xie Qingyan nodded, noting this down.
Yin Wuwang listened from the side, his eyes never leaving Su Xiaoqing's face.
When she said "I didn't cheat," her breathing rhythm was steady, pupils didn't contract, shoulders showed no excess movement.
Truth.
But when she said "pretty normal, isn't it?"—her voice rose slightly at the end. Not the uptick of a rhetorical question, but the uptick of self-justification. She knew how it looked for a married woman to frequent bars alone, so she was instinctively seeking validation.
Not a lie. Concealment. She was hiding something unrelated to an affair but didn't want to be questioned about it.
Yin Wuwang didn't rush to speak.
Xie Qingyan continued: "Ms. Su, when did your husband first start suspecting you of having an affair?"
Su Xiaoqing's fingers curled slightly.
"About... six months ago." Her voice dropped. "He started acting strange. Before, he never cared where I went. Then suddenly he was asking about everything. What time I got off work, who I was with, whether I'd been to the bar. Asking constantly—but not in a caring way. More like... verification."
"Verifying what?"
"Whether I was lying to him." Su Xiaoqing gave a bitter smile—no happiness in it whatsoever, only the self-mockery of someone who'd reached the end of the line. "Later, one time he came home drunk and asked me directly if I was with Chen Wan. I said no. He didn't believe me."
"How did you respond?"
"We fought." Su Xiaoqing said. "Fought many times. Every time he came back from drinking, he'd bring it up. Sometimes accusing, sometimes crying."
She paused, pressing her lips into a thin line.
"I told him over and over—I wasn't cheating. Chen Wan was just a bartender. I went there just to have some quiet time alone." Her voice dropped even lower. "But he wouldn't listen. He'd already made up his mind."
The conference room fell silent for several seconds. The air conditioning vent emitted a faint hum.
Xie Qingyan didn't pursue "why she wanted quiet time alone." Yin Wuwang noticed this choice—Fuguang had precisely skipped that personal question because it wasn't relevant to the case. Su Xiaoqing's marital issues weren't what they were investigating.
"Ms. Su," Xie Qingyan shifted direction, "did Zhang Yunxiang ever mention how he learned about this affair?"
Su Xiaoqing froze.
"How he learned...?"
"The source of his suspicion that you were cheating." Xie Qingyan set his pen on the table, leaning forward slightly. "Did he see something himself, or did someone tell him?"
This question changed Su Xiaoqing's expression.
Not anger, not grievance. It was the urgency of someone who'd been wanting to say something for a long time but never had the chance.
"Someone told him." She answered almost immediately, speaking faster than before. "When he was drunk, he told me—there was a woman at the bar who said it. Every time he went drinking alone, that woman would come over and whisper in his ear."
Xie Qingyan's pen tip stopped.
"Every time?"
"That's what he said. Not just once." Su Xiaoqing's hands finally left the table, gripping her own arms as if controlling some emotion. "At first he half-believed it. After hearing it enough times, he believed it completely."
"Did Zhang Yunxiang ever describe what this woman looked like?"
"No." Su Xiaoqing shook her head. "He said he couldn't remember clearly. Every time she appeared, he'd already had a lot to drink and couldn't see her face. He only remembered—"
She paused.
"Her voice was very pleasant."
Those four words fell into the conference room like a coin dropping into a deep well.
Yin Wuwang's gaze shifted.
Exactly the same as what Zhang Yunxiang had said in the interrogation room. Not a coincidence. When the same detail was repeated by two different people in two different settings, using nearly identical phrasing—it wasn't because the impression was strong. It was because that characteristic was so distinctive that even a drunk person couldn't forget it.
Xie Qingyan noticed too. He didn't show it, just made a mark in his notebook.
[End of V2_Chapter 19]
Next: An alibi, a confession at dawn, and a ring that carries more weight than any storage artifact.