S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 6 Chapter 58

The Culinary Murderer 10 – Strange Coincidence

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Zhan Zhao was still a little concerned when he heard the name "Guan Mei".

Was it a coincidence? Just someone with the same name as his old maths teacher? Could it really be that much of a coincidence? Two familiar names had come up that afternoon, one Guan Xiaohong, the other Guan Mei. The two names belonged to a mother and daughter. They had both appeared on the same day, and both were dead...

But why had Guan Mei's appearance changed? For an adult, if their body shape hadn't changed significantly, it shouldn't have been possible to become completely unrecognisable within ten years, should it?

Zhan Zhao felt somewhat concerned and wanted to find out more about Ms Guan, but for the moment couldn't think of anyone he might ask.

Zhan Zhao quietly glanced at Bai Yutang – There's his childhood sweetheart right in front of him, but if he didn't know, chances were Bai Yutang wouldn't either.

Bai Yutang didn't even need to look at Zhan Zhao to know what he was struggling with.

When he saw Zhan Zhao glance over, Bai Yutang gestured towards Mia, who was sitting at the table playing a game.

Zhan Zhao looked over at Mia and thought it might be a solution – Isn't this technical support?

Zhan Zhao waited until Mia finished her round and stood up to grab a drink, then beckoned to her and asked if she could help look something up.

When Mia heard Zhan Zhao talk about the situation with his former teacher, Mia waved a hand – No problem, super easy.

Zhan Zhao waited about the time it took to finish a cup of coffee, and Mia had already found all the publicly available information on Guan Mei and sent it to him.

Zhan Zhao opened the file and first looked at recent photos. He found the teacher had aged quite well, not looking much different from how he remembered. She looked nothing at all like the dismembered victim Ai Hu had just sent him, and he finally breathed a sigh of relief... Looked like it really was just a coincidence.

He skimmed through her recent history: after her second divorce, Guan Mei resigned from her job and met her third husband while travelling to clear her head. He was her current husband, a fairly successful businessman.

After the marriage, there was very little information about Guan Mei. The occasional photo had been found by Mia on her former students' social media pages, apparently taken during class reunions.

As for Guan Mei's daughter, Guan Xiaohong, she indeed repeated her final year of high school, but her second attempt at the university entrance exam still hadn't gone well. In the end, she went abroad to study fashion design. She was now quite a well-known fashion designer. Judging by the photos, she wasn't the same person as the Guan Xiaohong who had just jumped from the building.

Zhan Zhao scratched his head. After all that, is there really no connection at all? Had we just happened to run into two people with the same names that afternoon? That Zhang Wei was probably an old classmate.

"Tsk." Zhan Zhao shook his head, thinking he was probably just showing signs of occupational burnout, letting his thoughts run wild.

Shutting off the tablet, Zhan Zhao decided to get some proper rest and stop overthinking everything.

Bai Ye received a phone call from the dealership manager. Most of the paperwork for the car had already been sorted earlier, but they hadn't managed to complete the handover.

The manager was quite apologetic and offered to bring the car over to Bai Ye himself. They could install the charging equipment at the same time, and he'd give a discount on the drone too.

Bai Ye thought that sounded good and arranged an appointment for the following morning.

Before hanging up, Bai Ye asked about what had happened earlier.

On the other end, the store manager sighed and said that there were now rumours online claiming their dealership had bad feng shui, used to be a cemetery, or was haunted from time to time... In short, he felt it was bound to affect business. He'd been the manager there for years, but this was the first he'd heard of all the local urban legends. Earlier, a few more timid employees had even said they wanted to quit, and he wasn't sure if he'd be able to hire anyone new.

Bai Ye listened as his old friend rambled on and tried to reassure him, saying that news spread quickly in this day and age, after a week or so, the buzz would die down and everyone would forget about it. He told him to focus on his work and not worry, things would work out in the end.

Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao had been eavesdropping nearby and thought Uncle Ye was really good at comforting people! Just listening to him made one feel at ease.

Zhao Jue looked at the two of them speechlessly – Why haven't you gone home yet? With filters that thick, can you even see where they were going? Better watch out or you'll fall into a ditch.

Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang still didn't leave. They stayed with Bai Ye in the courtyard, playing with the dogs, and only strolled back home after dinner.

At home, the others were already back.

Bai Chi and Gongsun were opening packages, Zhao Zhen was dozing off, Bai Jintang was sitting on the sofa watching TV, and the twins were on the phone with expressions full of existential dread.

Zhan Zhao went over to see what Bai Chi and Gongsun had bought, while Bai Yutang sat down beside his oldest brother, then glanced back at the grumbling twins, curious about what had happened.

Bai Jintang told him, "It's about that jumper at the dealership this afternoon..."

Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao were both puzzled – What did this have to do with the twins?

Big Brother Bai also looked rather helpless. "Didn't that man cheat with a rich mistress and end up planning to break up with his girlfriend before the whole tragedy happened? The mistress's identity was dug up by netizens, I can't recall her real name, but her online name is ‘Mimi Beibei'."

Bai Yutang didn't follow and looked rather blankly at his older brother.

But Zhan Zhao and Bai Chi both turned around in surprise. "Mimi Beibei? The famous mochi brand?"

Bai Yutang looked even more lost. "Mochi?"

Gongsun, on the other hand, was quite familiar with the name. The fridge in the forensics room was always stocked with snacks that Ma Xin and Xiatian brought in. They both loved that brand of mochi and had filled an entire shelf with various flavours, all bearing those four characters on the packaging.

Xiao Ding hung up the phone and said helplessly, "That girl's an internet-famous food blogger. She developed her own sesame mochi, turned it into a brand and dessert chain, and made quite a lot of money. She's just opened a shop in the food city to take part in the competition, and it's really popular! Now it's a mess. People online have already started calling for a boycott of her and her brand. The problem is, the competition's about to begin, and there's no time to find a replacement. Then there are all the franchisees and advertisers to deal with. In short, it's a headache."

Zhan Zhao was rather curious after hearing all that and asked the twins if they had a photo, he wanted to see what she looked like.

The twins showed him a photo and said, "This girl's got money and looks, no idea what was going through her head getting involved with such a scumbag, was she tricked or something?"

Zhan Zhao opened the photo and immediately felt that she looked familiar. After a closer look, he suddenly grabbed Bai Yutang. "Hey, Xiao Bai, isn't this our classmate?"

Bai Yutang was already feeling bewildered, Why are there so many classmates today?

Taking a look at the phone, Bai Yutang recognised her straight away. "Isn't that Fang Beibei?"

Zhan Zhao nodded. "Right!"

Bai Yutang had a vague impression of this girl from school, and not a good one. She'd always been rather mean-spirited, the type to bully others.

They scrolled through her social media and watched a few interviews. She now came across as all gentle and kind, a perfect sweetheart type. But knowing what she'd been like back at school, both Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Was this what people meant by "constructing a persona"?

The memories stored in Zhan Zhao's brain began replaying in his mind one by one, as if he had travelled back to the time when he was studying...

Bai Yutang always loved combat sports since he was little, and his father often found him all sorts of venues to try out new and exciting things.

Back then, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu club had just opened in S City. At the time, the sport wasn't as popular as it is now, and training gyms were few and far between.

As it happened, the owner of the jiu-jitsu gym was the father of a girl from their school. She had been practising combat sports since she was young, with a very athletic build and a tall frame, in short, not the sort of image people typically associated with a "beauty" in the traditional sense.

The funniest part was that her father's surname was Wen, and he was so obsessed with jiu-jitsu that he named his daughter Wen Xiaorou, so the contrast between her name and her appearance was rather extreme.

Zhan Zhao often accompanied Bai Yutang to the jiu-jitsu gym to train, and before long, the three of them became good friends.

Wen Xiaorou was especially skilled in combat techniques and had a forthright, cheerful personality. Both Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang thought she was really good.

Once they got to know each other, they began bumping into each other at school all the time. The three of them often shared a table in the cafeteria, eating and chatting together. Bai Yutang would even ask her to play badminton with him on weekends.

Zhan Zhao remembered those weekends vividly, he'd sit at the edge of the court with a book in hand, flipping pages while all around him came the sound of thwack~ swoosh swoosh swoosh, thwack~ swoosh swoosh swoosh. Just by listening, he could tell who had scored the point.

As it often happens with friendships among peers, one day Zhan Zhao suddenly discovered that Wen Xiaorou had been given a nickname, Wen the Beast.

Zhan Zhao had always been quite observant, so he looked into it and found out that the nickname had actually been coined by Fang Beibei. Apparently, during lunch in the canteen, Fang Beibei pointed at Wen Xiaorou, who was sitting opposite Zhan Zhao and Bai Yutang, and quietly started singing Beauty and the Beast to her friends, joking that it was a gender-swapped version of Beauty and the Beast.

After that, quite a few people around school began calling Wen Xiaorou that nickname behind her back.

Zhan Zhao was quite angry and told Bai Yutang about it.

But Bai Yutang didn't quite get it at first. He wondered why they were the "beauty" in the story. Did that mean people thought the two of them were weaklings who couldn't beat Wen Xiaorou? Zhan Zhao might not be able to take her, but he definitely could!

Wen Xiaorou took it even further. All combat athletes had nicknames, didn't they? She thought The Beast sounded incredibly cool, far more badass than Wen Xiaorou!

What's more, the scoreboard at the venue where she often competed had a display issue: one of the segments didn't work, right in the middle of the screen, so it blocked out the middle character of her name. If the referee wasn't paying attention, they'd call out, "Wen Rou! Which one is Wen Rou?" (Angel: 温柔, or wen rou, is an adjective generally used to describe women, meaning gentle, soft, or sweet.)

And every time, the whole audience would erupt into laughter.

This incident passed without much fuss, thanks to Wen Xiaorou's extremely thick-skinned nature. But in Zhan Zhao's memory, Fang Beibei had bullied others too. Some classmates weren't as mentally resilient, although they hadn't suffered any physical harm, they had been psychologically tormented, and some might even have been left with lasting trauma.

Sure enough, in the comments sections related to Fang Beibei, some revelations began to surface about her bullying classmates back when she was still in school. This time, her public image truly collapsed beyond repair.

Thinking of this, Zhan Zhao suddenly slapped his own forehead. How muddle-headed was he? If he wanted to find out about their old classmates and teachers, wasn't Wen Xiaorou the perfect person to ask?

She was still their colleague now, the only female captain among the four team leaders in the SWAT team. She was an absolute powerhouse; it only took her one hand to knock Zhao Hu flat.

Funny thing was, back at school, Wen Xiaorou had been mocked every day by her classmates for being a tomboy. But now, at the police station, she had more fangirls than even Bai Yutang. Had the world changed? Zhan Zhao didn't think so, he just felt that once you grew up, you realised the world was a lot bigger than school.

Zhan Zhao told himself not to overthink things, Guan Mei and Guan Xiaohong were probably just coincidences, but now Zhang Wei had shown up, and Fang Beibei too...

S City had a population of tens of millions, how many students did their school have? And yet everywhere they turned, they ran into former classmates. How could this possibly be a coincidence?

The more Zhan Zhao thought about it, the stranger it seemed. He nudged Bai Yutang and told him to message Wen Xiaorou to see if she was free to drop by the SCI office tomorrow, they'd buy her lunch.

Bai Yutang sent the message, and Wen Xiaorou replied almost immediately: "Want to ask about Zhang Wei and Fang Beibei, right? And the girl who jumped was called Guan Xiaohong! Isn't that way too weird? I knew it wasn't just me overthinking!"

Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao exchanged a smile – They weren't the only ones who thought something was off!

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: May 16, 2025 by Angel

Edited: August 5, 2025 by Soojin