CH 110

“What about the roses?” The teenager on the opposite side of the table suddenly raised his head and asked.

It was probably because they had encountered too many cases recently that Wang Chao’s reasoning was increasing day by day. In other words, when encountering too many things, even the purest mind would gradually become sharper.

Lin Chen felt that the matcha ice cream in his mouth had a slightly bitter taste, and he thought that Xing Conglian probably felt the same way.

“Mr. Wang, you seem to be asking a lot of questions lately,” Xing Conglian said.

“Wait… Rose, warbler?”

It seemed like he finally connected the dots. After reading these two keywords, he grabbed the laptop and typed it.

Although the laptop wasn’t facing them, Lin Chen still guessed from the boy’s stiff face that he probably discovered the thing they wanted to hide from him.

“Why are you hiding it from me?!”

The teenager suddenly turned his laptop over, and photos of different sizes appeared on the screen.

In each photo, there were various birds.

Those birds had gray-brown feathers and equally gray-brown beaks. They were either flying in the sky or perching softly on branches, and one of them had been stabbed to death by rose stems.

There was even an English writer who wrote a very sad and beautiful fairytale about the bird that was stabbed to death by a rose.

Lin Chen moved his gaze to the search bar. Looking at the results that the teenager found, he couldn’t help but feel that if this continued, Wang Chao could probably take charge on his own.

There were only one word in the search bar, which was the name of a bird: [Nightingale*].

*Clarity: Liu Ying/Wandering warbler/prostitutes are also known as nightingales.

The nightingale generally wasn’t a beautiful bird, but it had a very wide range of sounds. Unlike other birds, the nightingale was a rare bird that sang at night. Therefore, this was the reason why it was called a nightingale.

In fact, if it were just a dead nightingale, it wouldn’t give Lin Chen such a chill.

He was shaken entirely because of a famous fairytale written by Oscar Wilde*, an English writer.

*An Irish poet and playwright. The fairytale they are referring to is The Nightingale and the Rose.

He hadn’t read that story for a long time. Specifically, he had only read it once when he was young, but to this day, he could still clearly remember every detail of it.

The story originated with a young student who wanted to invite his favorite girl to the dance.

The girl’s request was simple. She said that if he picked a red rose for her, she would agree to dance with him at the prince’s dinner until dawn.

But in the middle of winter, where could the young student find a red rose?

As a result, the young student cried in his garden. Like most of Wilde’s fairy tales, a little nightingale heard the object of his crying all night in the garden.

Seeing his originally beautiful face so sad, the little nightingale thought, ‘Your love is so deep, and you just want a rose. I’ll find a red rose for you.’

The bird encountered white roses that were as white as the foam of the sea and yellow roses that were as yellow as the blond hair of a mermaid, but there weren’t any red roses.

In the end, the little nightingale came to a withered red rose.

However, the red rose’s rhizome had been broken by the storm, and the vessels had been destroyed by the winter’s cold. The red rose wouldn’t be able to bloom unless something horrifying was done.

Lin Chen once again recalled the scene where Xing Conglian opened the bouquet of roses.

The sharp rhizome of the rose pierced the body of the nightingale, which was the only way to make the red rose bloom in the story.

Wilde was truly cruel yet tender.

The red rose told the little nightingale that its singing in the night could bring it into being, and unless it was soaked in blood, the rose wouldn’t turn red.

Life was precious, the nightingale thought, but how could its small heart compare to that of a human’s?

Therefore, the nightingale agreed to the rose’s request. When moonlight fell, it flew into the rose and pressed itself against the rose’s spikes. It opened its beak and began to sing all night. The thorn pierced deeper into its body as the blood continued to pass through. In the end, the pain penetrated deep into its bone and finally into its heart.

The little nightingale exchanged its life for a red rose for the one that it loved.

But this was not the end.

After all, the young student’s love hadn’t yet been explained.

Lin Chen recalled that at the end of the story, the unsuspecting young student took the rose and sent it to the girl he loved.

But the girl said, “Your one rose can’t compare to the many treasures I have received today.”

The young student became angry and threw the red rose to the ground. The wheels of a carriage happened to pass by and crushed it, concluding the story.

Lin Chen thought that this was an extremely beautiful story.

He rubbed his brows and raised his head only to see Wang Chao’s eyes moisten. The boy’s eyes widened greatly as he stared at the person opposite of him.

Perhaps when Wang Chao was young, he sat on his mother’s lap as he heard this story, or perhaps on a rainy night after Xing Conglian adopted him, someone sat by his bedside and recited the fairytale to him.

But fairytales were still fairytales. Only a true psychopath would try to turn this fairytale into reality.

“I’m not hiding it from you.” Xing Conglian pushed away the ice cream bowl. He lit his cigarette with annoyance. “I just thought it would be annoying if you found out. Besides, I didn’t know much earlier than you did!”

“Captain, do you think this is protecting me?” The teenager noticed the key problem.

As if he had been poked in the heart, Xing Conglian slammed the table. “Why are you so bothersome?”

“We agreed to solve the case together, so how can you hide something from me!” Wang Chao shouted.

“You’re not paying me, so why should I tell you?” Xing Conglian said coldly.

“Why do you still treat me like a child?!”

“Ah, Mr. Xiao Wang, do you not feel your elder’s love?”

The two of them had a tendency to quarrel fiercely. Lin Chen continued scooping up the matcha ice cream spoonful after spoonful as he carefully looked at the content on the webpage and didn’t bother interrupting them.

In the end, the arguing finally stopped.

Lin Chen looked up and found that the two were looking at him with the same depressed eyes.

“What’s wrong?” he asked absentmindedly before returning his gaze to the laptop screen again.

“A’Chen, why aren’t you persuading us?” Wang Chao couldn’t help asking.

“No, I like to hear you quarrel. You guys can continue.”

With this encouragement, neither of them had the desire to keep fighting.

Xing Conglian’s voice sounded in his ears. “Consultant Lin…”

Hearing “Consultant Lin” sound more like a sigh made Lin Chen’s ears a little itchy.

“Hmm?” He responded.

“Are there any new discoveries?” Xing Conglian asked.

Lin Chen replied, “All fairytales are particularly symbolic. Since she deliberately left the nightingale and roses for us, of course it has a meaning she wants to express.”

Xing Conglian thought for a while and said, “If the nightingale symbolizes the wandering warbler, then the person who ran on stage to cut Li Jingtian’s throat can’t be her. What did she want to express? She was hurt by Li Jingtian and used this dead nightingale to show her unyielding will. She wanted to commit suicide in order to retaliate against Li Jingtian?”

Wang Chao shouted. “That’s so messed up. Captain, I’m getting goosebumps!”

As Wang Chao said, Xing Conglian’s idea was indeed messed up, but it wasn’t messed up enough.

At least it didn’t fit the psychology of a psychopath who could stab a nightingale to death.

Lin Chen shook his head.

Xing Conglian couldn’t see the scene because the camera was obscured, so he didn’t witness the part where the girl walked on stage holding the bouquet of green roses with his own eyes.

But Lin Chen was there, and he saw what happened.

Under the circumstances at the time, Li Jingtian had no power to resist. She handed him the bouquet so gently and hugged him. She obviously could’ve killed him, but she didn’t.

Could the girl who gave him the bouquet be the wandering warbler?

Lin Chen couldn’t determine it, but the only thing he could judge was that the series of actions of the girl from going on stage to leaving were completely inconsistent with the body language of a rape victim being in contact with their rapist.

He put down the silver spoon and began to refresh Weibo’s keyword search page.

Finally, he saw the inference he wanted to see.

Kinky Thoughts:

You can read the short story of The Nightingale and the Rose by clicking on the link.

The summary provided in this chapter is quite accurate. Though there is a sense of irony behind it. The nightingale loves the Student and sacrifices her life to give him a red rose for the sake of his “true love”. When the Student presented the rose to the girl, she rejected him, as she had been given jewels and other valuables that a single rose was incomparable to.

Ironically, the Student calls her ungrateful and tosses the red rose to the streets, where it gets crushed by a carriage (not knowing the sacrifice that the nightingale made to give him such a rose). He then rejects love and prefers to stick with logic, which has more practical use.