American comic book: I, with my abundant martial virtue, love to do good to others.

Chapter 741 is very satisfied with this answer.

Gwen nodded, as if she was satisfied with the answer.

"Don't use your own account when you investigate her," she said. "Your internal system is no longer impenetrable."

"I know."

"Also, that colleague who connected you with her, Marjorie. While you're investigating her, also investigate the people around her. It's not necessarily that she herself has a problem; maybe she's just being used as a messenger."

Lynn looked at her.

"When did you become so knowledgeable about these things?"

Gwen didn't look at him.

"I knew about it ten years ago," she said, "but nobody believed me back then."

The living room is quiet again.

The refrigerator compressor ran for a while, then stopped. The whole room suddenly became eerily quiet; you could even hear the rattling of the convenience store's shutter door being blown by the wind downstairs.

Lynn picked up her phone and glanced at the time. 11:20.

There is an unread message from Victoria.

He opened it.

Victoria: I'm home. It was a great evening. Thank you for not letting me ruin the mood.

Lynn stared at the words for two seconds, then handed the phone to Gwen.

Gwen glanced at it.

"She types very fast," she said.

"What does it mean that she dared to send this kind of message after those two probing attempts tonight?"

"That means she's either incredibly thick-skinned," Gwen said, "or someone behind her is telling her, 'You did a great job tonight, keep it up.'"

Lynn didn't reply, but instead typed a message back:

Lynn: I'm home too. I'll check the time for the lecture on Wednesday.

After sending the message, he locked the screen and put his phone back in his coat pocket.

Gwen watched his movements and suddenly chuckled. The chuckle was short and soft, like a breath escaping from her nose.

"What's wrong?" Lynn asked, looking at her.

"It's nothing," Gwen buried her chin in the blanket. "I just find your current state quite amusing. You're clearly being fished out, but you're acting more seriously than the fisherman."

"Is this a compliment?"

What do you think?

Lynn didn't answer. He stood up, walked to the window, and pulled the curtains open a little. The kitchen across the street, which had been lit, was now dark; only the living room light remained on, casting long, thin shadows on the opposite wall through the gaps in the blinds.

A person was walking downstairs with a large dog. The dog stopped under the streetlight, lowered its head and sniffed the roots of a tree by the roadside. It was pulled a couple of times by its owner before it moved on.

"Where are you sleeping tonight?" Gwen's voice came from behind.

Lynn turned around.

She huddled closer to the sofa, pulling the blanket tighter around herself, leaving only her face and feet exposed. Her toes twitched inside her gray cotton socks.

"Go back to my side," Lynn said.

"Your place is twenty minutes farther than mine."

"so?"

"So if you don't want the hassle, you can borrow the sofa." Gwen said this in a very flat tone, as if stating an objective fact about traffic and commuting time, "but not because of me. It's because your hand injury makes driving inconvenient."

Lynn looked down at her right hand. A hint of ointment was visible beneath the dressing; her fingertips were slightly swollen, but she could move them without difficulty.

"I can drive."

"Then you can drive," Gwen said, burying her face in the blanket. "Anyway, you have to get up early tomorrow to check on Victoria and Marjorie, so driving back will give you an extra hour of sleep."

Lynn looked at her.

She didn't look at him. She stared at the chandelier on the ceiling, as if she were carefully studying how the dead flying insect got in.

Gwen.

"Um."

"These things you showed me," Lynn pointed to the tablet on the coffee table, "do you want me to help you find out the truth, or are you just letting me know?"

Gwen's eyes finally moved from the ceiling to his face.

"I don't know," she said. "I've only had it for less than 24 hours. I haven't figured out what to do with it yet."

"Then why show it to me now?"

Gwen was silent for a few seconds.

"Because you were tested tonight," she said. "And you told me. You didn't treat it as something that didn't concern you."

She paused here, as if hesitating whether to say the next sentence.

"I may not have any reason to completely trust you," she concluded, "but I find myself wanting to give it a try."

After those words were spoken, it was as if a layer of air had been sucked out of the room.

Lynn stood by the window, half his face illuminated by the streetlight, the other half shrouded in darkness. He looked at Gwen, and Gwen looked at him. Between them was a coffee table, a glass of water, a tablet filled with dangerous information, and a relationship that neither of them could quite define.

"I'll sleep on the sofa," Lynn said.

Gwen didn't say anything, but she took the blanket off herself, threw it to him, and stood up.

"Here's a blanket," she said. "The pillow is in the cabinet behind the bedroom door; get it yourself. The bathroom light switch is on the right; the one on the left is broken, so don't press it randomly."

After she finished speaking, she walked towards the bedroom, paused at the door, and did not turn around.

"Good night."

"Good night."

The bedroom door was closed.

Lynn stood in the living room, holding the still-warm blanket in her hand. The blanket smelled of laundry detergent, very faint, like some ordinary brand from a supermarket, not some carefully selected fragrance.

He took off his coat and draped it over the back of the chair, opened the cabinet behind the bedroom door, and pulled out a pillow. The pillowcase was gray, with a small, faded stain and a few loose threads along the edge.

He placed the pillow at one end of the sofa and then sat down.

The sofa wasn't long; he had to bend his legs to lie down. The cushions were softer than he expected, sinking in with a muffled thud. He pulled the blanket from his chest to his chin and closed his eyes.

The light is still on.

He opened his eyes, reached for the light switch on the wall, and pressed it. The light went out.

In the darkness, the refrigerator made another sound.

He heard no sound from the direction of the bedroom. Gwen was probably already lying down, or she might be sitting on the edge of the bed, not moving. He wasn't sure.

Her mind was still racing. Victoria. Marjorie. The encrypted file. The handwritten note. Gwen from ten years ago. Someone came out of the stairwell, shoved a tablet into her hand, and said, "Much deeper than your friend thinks."

All the wires are twisted in the same direction.

But he still doesn't know which direction that is.

He rolled over, and the sofa creaked. The smell of laundry detergent on the pillow wafted into his nostrils, much like Gwen's scent—not perfume, just ordinary laundry detergent, with a hint of body heat.

Lynn buried her face in the pillow, closed her eyes, and it took her a long time to fall asleep.

He woke up once during the night. Not from any noise, but instinctively, habitually, because his body hadn't yet learned to sleep through the night in this unfamiliar environment. The first second he opened his eyes, he had no idea where he was. The ceiling was low, and light filtered through the gaps in the curtains, a grayish-blue color somewhere between streetlights and dawn.

Then he heard a voice.

It was very light. It came from the direction of the bedroom.

It wasn't speaking, nor walking; it was a very slow, suppressed breathing sound, as if afraid of being heard.

Lynn lay on the sofa without moving.

He listened for a few seconds.

The sound paused briefly, then resumed, fainter and shorter than before.

It wasn't crying. But something even more unsettling than crying was whether or not to move on.

He stared at the ceiling, motionless.

After about two minutes, the sound stopped. The bedroom fell completely silent again.

Lynn closed her eyes.

Pretend you didn't hear it.

This was the only thing he could do for her at that moment that wouldn't be offensive.

When I woke up again, it was already daylight.

Light streamed in through the gap in the curtains, drawing a thin golden line on the floor that stretched to the side of the coffee table. There were sounds of cars passing by, people talking, and the metallic scraping of a convenience store shutter being pulled up.

Lynn opened her eyes, lay there for a few seconds, and then propped herself up on the sofa to sit up.

The blanket slipped from his chest to his legs. There were dents on the pillow from where he had slept.

He raised his head.

Gwen's bedroom door was open.

There was no one inside.

The bed was made; the blankets weren't folded very neatly, but they were folded nonetheless. Two pillows, one large and one small, were placed on top of the blankets, side by side.

A cup of coffee appeared on the kitchen counter. Next to it was a slice of toast, toasted but without any spread on it.

Lynn stood up and went to the kitchen. Underneath the coffee cup was a sticky note, torn from a notebook, with rough edges.

The note read: "I'm leaving now. The coffee is yours. If you're not going to eat the toast, just throw it away and don't waste it. I've taken the tablet, and I've sent the photos to your email. Check your inbox. —Don't use the office network to view them."

Lynn read the note twice.

Then he picked up the coffee and took a sip. The temperature was just right, not too hot, but not cold either. It wasn't instant; it was brewed in a Moka pot, and it tasted rather bitter, without any sugar.

He stood in Gwen's kitchen, wearing the same dark coat he had worn yesterday, holding a cup of coffee she had made, with pillows and blankets from her sofa at his feet.

Outside the window, New York City is already awake.

The sunlight made the windows of the building across the street look like golden scales. Pigeons flew over the rooftop, and the sound of their flapping wings was cut off by the wind and scattered in the air.

Lynn put down her coffee cup and picked up her phone.

There are two things to do first.

First, open your email and confirm that you have received the photos Gwen sent.

Second, send a message to the colleague who helped him with the private investigation.

He typed:

Lynn: Keep investigating the Victoria line. Also, please open up another avenue for me; it might be unrelated to her, or it might be. Have you heard of "Unregistered Special Individuals Classification Monitoring"? It covers a six-year period. (Unofficial format.)

After sending the message, he locked his screen.

There was still half a cup of coffee left. He picked it up and drank it all in one gulp.

There was a small ring of coffee stains at the bottom of the cup. He rinsed it with water, then turned the cup upside down on the drainer, placing it next to Gwen's own cup.

Then he picked up his coat, pillow, and blanket. He folded the blanket and put it back in the spot where Gwen had been sitting the night before. He tucked the pillow back into the closet behind the bedroom door.

He stood at the door for two seconds before leaving.

The sunlight shone directly on the door frame, illuminating a small knot in the wood grain.

Lynn opened the door and went out.

The smell of old carpet and cleaning agent was still there in the hallway, only fainter than last night. As he went downstairs, he heard music playing upstairs, not very loud, the kind of old-fashioned jazz, with a piano slowly moving forward.

As I stepped out of the building, a gust of wind rushed towards me.

It was cooler than last night, but the sun on my face neutralized the chill, turning it into a temperature somewhere between cold and warm, refreshing without making me want to shrink back.

The convenience store owner was mopping the floor in front of the store. When he saw him, he stopped mopping and glanced at him.

Lynn had seen that look in his eyes far too many times. Coming out of a building, not wearing the same clothes he went in last night, and looking like he hadn't slept well, any old man or woman living across the street, any convenience store owner who had been standing there for ten years, would give him a second glance.

The boss didn't say anything and continued mopping the floor.

Lynn didn't explain either.

He walked to the roadside, flagged down a car, and gave them his home address.

As the car started moving, he leaned against the window and watched as Gwen's building grew smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror, eventually becoming a gray square that was obscured by a roadside tree around the corner.

My phone vibrated.

He looked down.

It's Victoria.

Good morning. How did you sleep last night?

As Lynn looked at the words, two things popped into his mind at the same time.

First, her message came really early. So early that it didn't seem like someone who went on a date last night, went home, washed up, and then went to sleep normally.

Second, what Gwen said last night—"You acted more seriously than a fisherman."

He leaned against the car window and typed:

Not bad. How about you?

After sending the message, he put his phone back in his pocket and looked out the window at the receding street scene.

Sunlight cuts through the buildings, creating alternating light and shadow. Every time he crosses an intersection, the light sweeps across his face, as if someone is using an extremely wide brush to scrub the city over and over again.

The taxi turned the corner and entered a wider main road.

Lynn's phone vibrated again.

He took it out.

Not Victoria.

It was the colleague who did the verification.

In short: "I saw that thing you asked about once. Three years ago. It was on someone's personal hard drive. That person quit their job the next day. All records were wiped."

Lynn stared at the screen.

The car drove through a shadowy area and was then bathed in sunlight again.

He typed: "What's that person's name?"

The other party replied almost immediately: "I can't say in the message. Let's talk in person this afternoon."

Lynn got home just after 8:30.

The apartment was exactly the same as when he left. The coffee cup was still on the counter, the half-empty cup from last night now dry, a light brown stain forming at the bottom. Light streamed in through the blinds, cutting thin, bright streaks across the kitchen floor. The refrigerator was humming, the radiators were humming, and someone was pacing upstairs, high heels clicking on the floor like a beatless metronome.

He took off his coat and tossed it onto the back of the chair, then went to the bathroom to wash his face. When he turned on the faucet, the water pressure was uneven; a spurt of steam came out first, then the water came out, splashing onto his chest. He turned it off and on again, waiting for the water to cool slightly before splashing it on his face. The edge of his dressing was wet and curled up; he tried to press it back down with his finger, but it wouldn't go away. He looked about two years older in the mirror than yesterday, with dark circles under his eyes and a speck of grime on his cheekbone that he couldn't quite place.