Chapter 18: The Secret Hidden in the Dorm Room (1/2)

After Dali was gone, I then went to Deng Chao’s dorm with Huang Xiaotao. As one might be familiar with, the boys’ dorms were messy and dirty the boys’ dorms as usual. Huang Xiaotao grimaced the whole way to the dorm.

As we were walking past a room, the door suddenly burst open and out came a guy wearing only underpants yelling out to his friend in another room to borrow his shampoo. The guy saw Huang Xiaotao and was so shocked he froze for a few seconds before rushing back into the room, slamming the door behind him.

“They’re living like pigs in a sty…” said Huang Xiaotao, brows deeply furrowed. “Are you just like them, Song Yang?”

“Absolutely not!” I denied firmly. “I highly value self-discipline and personal hygiene. You can ask Dali about it, and he’ll tell you that I make my bed so tidily every day that it looks like a neat block of tofu!”

“Oh, really?” asked Huang Xiaotao. “Then maybe I should pay your room a visit, and take a look for myself.”

“Y-Yeah, sure…,” I said. “But let’s just focus on the case for now.”

It would be detrimental to my image if Huang Xiaotao found out that I was no different from that group of “pigs” she just saw in this dorm.

Huang Xiaotao snickered at my reply.

We inquired about the room that Deng Chao used to stay in, and eventually we found it. We came to a room where there was a guy with long hair sitting at the desk plucking at his guitar. Perhaps it was because there had never been any girls in the dorm, or perhaps it was due to Huang Xiaotao’s cool and serious demeanor, but the second he noticed us, the guy was so startled that he almost threw his guitar onto the floor and sprang up to his feet.

“What… What are you doing here?” he asked nervously.

Huang Xiaotao pulled out her badge and showed it to the long-haired guy.

“Is this Deng Chao’s room?” she asked.

“Ah, so you’re a police officer!” said the long-haired guy. “Come in, have a seat! Would you like a drink? I heard that someone committed suicide this morning, and it turned out to be Deng Chao’s best bud Zhang Kai. Deng Chao himself hasn’t come back since last night. Did anything happen to him?”

“He’d been murdered,” said Huang Xiaotao.

Just then, a very muscular guy jumped out of the messy bed beside me, giving me the fright of my life.

“What?!” he yelled. “Who killed Chao?”

“That is still under investigation,” said Huang Xiaotao. “Do you have any idea who Deng Chao has gotten into trouble with?”

“Well…” the long-haired guy considered for a while. “There are some guys in class that aren’t in the best terms with him. You see, Chao is the kinda guy… how do I put this? He’s pretty good at rousing people’s jealousy.”

“How so?” asked Huang Xiaotao.

“He might not seem like it, but Chao has always been a genius and a top scholar!” said the long-haired guy, full of admiration.

“You mean his grades are always perfect?”

“Yeah!” And the guy continued, “He rarely ever went to class, but he’d always score above 90% on every test! And he’d always get awarded some kind of scholarship money from the college every year too! To be frank, sometimes even I felt like it was unfair. I mean, he was always hanging out with us, and he’d sleep just as much as the rest of us, but how did he manage to score so high on the tests when the rest of us didn’t even pass? It made no sense! No, wait, don’t take me wrong. I’d never kill anyone just for that, I swear!”

“Can you give me the names of the people who had been in conflict with Deng Chao?” Huang Xiaotao had a pen and a small notebook ready in her hands.

The long-haired guy contemplated for a while, then gave Huang Xiaotao a list of names, which she then jotted down onto her notebook.

“No, none of those people would kill him!” the muscular guy suddenly interrupted. “If there’s anyone who would want to see Deng Chao dead, it’s gotta be that bastard!”

“Who?” asked Huang Xiaotao.

The muscular guy sat down and pulled out a pack of cigarettes from under the pillow. He lit one up and took a huff, before proceeding to tell us Deng Chao’s history.

According to him, Deng Chao was indeed a highly intelligent individual. He scored 140 for an IQ test in high school, and had always been able to ace all the tests with minimal effort.

Recently, Deng Chao wrote an academic journal paper that received high praise from a professor, who then recommended him for a scholarship grant to the upper management of the college. Deng Chao eventually won this scholarship grant which was only awarded to four students every year.

But not long after that, there was a student from the same department as Deng Chao called Ma Baobao who reported to the upper management that the journal paper written by Deng Chao was in fact plagiarized. He even collected evidence to prove the claim. Consequently, not only was Deng Chao disqualified from the scholarship grant, but he was to return the money that he received, which was about 17,000 yuan.

After that, Ma Baobao was awarded the scholarship grant in place of Deng Chao, which raised suspicions about his real motives for reporting Deng Chao’s plagiarism.

Besides, this Ma Baobao was a loudmouth who liked to keep bringing up this incident every opportunity he got. He even went so far as to raise doubts about the validity of Deng Chao’s past exam grades, positing that those might be the result of cheating too.

No one entertained his theories, though. Even the professors couldn’t stand his smug behaviour. But when Deng Chao got wind of this, he punched through a glass window in a fit of anger, resulting in a wound that required five stitches.

Deng Chao was a typical Scorpio. He didn’t forgive easily, especially not someone who had so wounded his reputation. He was determined to have his revenge!

On an evening right before this year’s summer vacation, Ma Baobao walked back to his dorm alone after a group study. Suddenly, a dark figure rushed out from the bushes nearby and grazed his skin with a knife. Ma Baobao was so scared he tossed away the books in his hands and ran for his life. The knife merely scratched the surface of his skin, but he soon fell ill and contracted a high fever. He had to return to his hometown early, and had to receive intensive medical treatments for three whole months, which cost him tens of thousands of yuan before the illness subsided.