Discomfort coiled inside Xingyu’s stomach. He didn’t want to keep pressing—actually, he wanted to remove Xiao-Xiao from this situation entirely, take him and hide him far away like Xiao-Xiao had done to his little secretary, not dig up more details about every twisted thing this Bai Xue had ever inflicted upon his didi. But this couldn’t be avoided. Not now. “There must be something,” he said. “What did he eat? Did he ever take out his phone and have conversations? Did you ever see something in his clothing that could point to a personal tailor?”

Xiao-Xiao thought seriously for a while. They were all in the Liu estate still, riding out the arrests in isolation while remaining available for questioning, and had made themselves comfortable in the living room with some more takeout piled on the coffee table in front of them. Sun Yue was also somewhere in the house—probably in her room—but she hadn’t made any appearances in front of them, and Xingyu suspected on some level that she was just waiting for the police to show up for her too.

Xiao-Xiao said after his deliberation, “He ate a variety of foods. Sometimes he would bring over food and just want to eat and talk for the majority of his appointment. He always wore these soft cashmere sweaters and slacks, and I could tell they were expensive, but they never had brands. I never saw a phone on him. He never spoke about anything related to business, which I found rare enough that I suspected he’d already retired and was maybe just a major shareholder in a List-related company. He…wanted to go on dates with me, but he never acted on them. That’s the only information I have.”

Xingyu’s hands had curled into fists. “The dates,” he said, “did he ever say where he wanted to take you?”

“Never anything specific. I don’t think there’s anything to gain from those conversations. They were only ever fantasies.”

His fantasies, Xingyu wanted to ask, or yours?

“I’ll keep thinking on it, in any case,” said Xiao-Xiao. “But you should know that, if I do figure it out, I certainly won’t be telling you how to find him.”

Xingyu knew he wouldn’t. He glanced at Weiran, who had curled up on the couch with a blanket on his lap and a glass of some kind of clear alcohol dangling from his fingertips. He’d been paying rapt attention to the entire conversation, reacting appropriately to each word, and as Xiao-Xiao said this he’d looked right at Xingyu too, and a wordless exchange passed between them—an agreement. They wouldn’t let Bai Xue get away, and they wouldn’t let him hurt Xiao-Xiao again.