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Meanwhile, Lu Yizhan and his colleagues were also investigating the case of the missing children at the orphanage.
"Shouldn't this be handled by the criminal investigation unit, or some special department?" Lu Yizhan's colleague looked unsettled. "Did you see the surveillance footage of the missing kids? This is way beyond our pay grade!"
"Four children, in the early hours of the morning, heard a whistle and then lined up and walked out. They played in the central playground, and the strangest thing is, they didn't look hypnotized or sleepwalking at all—they deliberately avoided the cameras. That means they were fully conscious. They played on the swings for an hour, and then, suddenly, they just vanished from the footage!"
His colleague began to curse under his breath. "Damn it, after the kids disappeared, the equipment kept moving. I couldn't sleep after watching that footage…"
He rubbed his arms, shivering. "Now there are only five kids left. We were going to transfer them to another orphanage, but with the hospital incident, everyone has to stay here for the investigation. This is so damn creepy!"
Lu Yizhan frowned. "Let's go ask the director."
"The director? She won't say anything," his colleague muttered. "That old woman didn't even report the missing children! If it weren't for the mushroom poisoning deaths at the hospital, which escalated the case, we wouldn't have noticed the numbers didn't add up. No one would have known kids were missing!"
"We still have to ask," Lu Yizhan said steadily. "She must know something."
In the director's office, Mu Ke's father had finished discussing the donation and left. Only the old director remained.
She sat slumped in her chair, eyelids drooping as she looked at Lu Yizhan. "You want to know why I didn't report the missing children?"
Lu Yizhan nodded. The director suddenly chuckled, her hands trembling as she opened a drawer and pulled out a stack of police report receipts, handing them to Lu Yizhan. "Young man, you must be new. I've reported every disappearance, but have you ever found a single child for me? So this time, I didn't bother. The orphanage is about to close anyway."
Lu Yizhan frowned at the receipts. The oldest dated back ten years, all for missing children, but every investigation concluded with "child ran away from home," and nothing more.
"Every year, we hold a Children's Day performance for our benefactors, so they can see the children they're supporting. But after every performance, children go missing, and the investigation always says they ran away."
The director spoke slowly. "The police even suspected us of abuse, but you found nothing—no abuse, no organ trafficking, no pedophilia. You searched this place top to bottom and found nothing."
She lifted her eyelids. "Just ordinary cases of children running away and disappearing."
"Missing children are hard to find. Once they're out, it's like a grain of rice lost in the sea. You're searching for kids who are actively avoiding you—it's like looking for a needle in a haystack. So every year, the case is dropped."
Lu Yizhan's colleague interjected, "But this time, the footage shows the kids just vanishing from the swings! That's not a runaway case!"
"What you're describing is too strange. How could that happen? Our cameras are old and faulty—maybe they just broke down," the director replied blandly.
Her answer left the colleague speechless, but as he was about to press her, Lu Yizhan stopped him.
Lu Yizhan asked calmly, "Director, it's our fault we can't find the children, but you should still report it. And you haven't reported every year, have you? I checked your receipts—some years are missing, but you said children disappear every year. So what's the truth?"
The director was silent for several minutes. Then she turned, rummaged through a dusty shelf, and pulled out a large file folder. She blew off the dust, undid the string, and took out a thick album.
The first page was labeled: "200x Orphanage Children's Day Performance Group Photo"—clearly, the orphanage's archive.
In the photo, dozens of children stood stiffly beside a group of well-dressed benefactors, wearing the carefully rehearsed, artificial smiles of children taught to please. Their lips were painted bright red, a garish, old-fashioned touch.
"Children go missing every year, but I haven't always reported it," the director said, her voice drawn out as she gazed at the photo. "Even with a year or two of investment, this place can't last. It's about to close, so there's no harm in telling you the truth."
"Many of these children are hard to manage. To put it nicely, they're independent; to put it bluntly, they're wild and always trying to run away."
"Some of them aren't just runaways—they're escaping guilt."
She turned the page to a record, like a diary: "Orphan Bai Liu, Xiao Ke, and three others assaulted a benefactor after the Children's Day performance, robbed him of his belongings and phone, and were punished with cleaning duties and a day of fasting. Further punishment to be determined based on their behavior."
"For example, this group beat up a benefactor after the performance and ran away that night. I didn't report it—I turned a blind eye, because if they stayed, their fate in this place, with those benefactors, would not have been good."
She tapped the punishment record meaningfully. "The punishment would have been more than just a day without food."
"Director, may I see that group photo?" Lu Yizhan's attention was elsewhere, his expression grave.
The director handed him the file. Lu Yizhan turned to the group photo, scanning the children's faces until his gaze fixed on one in the corner.
Even with lipstick and a red dot on the forehead, the child's delicate features were unmistakable, but the effect was ruined by a gaze far too calm for his age—aloof, almost contemptuous of the other children.
No one knew this face better than Lu Yizhan.
He stared at the child in the photo, then looked up at the director. "Who is this child? What's his name?"
"That one?" The director studied the photo, lost in memory. "He was the ringleader who attacked the benefactor. I remember him well. When he arrived, he only said his name was Bai—Bai Liu."
"No." Lu Yizhan slammed his hands on the desk, glaring at the director. "His name is Bai Liu. He used to be called Bai Liu, but he changed it at fourteen. He left the public orphanage with me—he couldn't have been here at the same time!"
"But…" The director looked at Lu Yizhan, puzzled. "Are you sure you're not mistaken? This Bai Liu was caught and brought back after running away, and he didn't leave again. Not long after, he died."
"Died? What was the cause?" Lu Yizhan's voice was strained.
The director sighed. "A strange death. He swallowed a coin with a hole in the center, which lodged in his windpipe. He died within minutes. He'd suffered a lot here, both before and after running away, so… we all suspected suicide."
Lu Yizhan stared at the black-and-white photo of Bai Liu, his face expressionless, eyelids drooping as if drowsy, damp hair clinging to his forehead from the exertion of the performance. Lu Yizhan felt a heavy, invisible weight pressing on his chest as he gazed at the slender boy in the photo, struggling to breathe.
That was Bai Liu, ten years ago.
——————
Bai Liu stepped forward and picked up the doll beside the seesaw. It was clearly handmade, modeled after him, but old and worn. There was a faint mark of a ribbon on its leg—a sign it was a gift doll, which usually bore a date.
He turned the doll over, searching for a date, and finally found a handwritten inscription inside the severed head.
It was indeed a doll from ten years ago.
Yet Bai Liu had only been working for two or three years; he'd only adopted the shirt-and-trousers "office worker" look after starting his job, and the coin necklace was something he'd acquired after joining the game—a system artifact.
But here was a doll, dressed exactly as he was now, made ten years ago, its head and limbs twisted off and discarded.
Bai Liu narrowed his eyes.