Chapter 337. The Scent of Violets

On May 27th, Chen Shi felt that his body had already kicked the smoking habit. Of course, the psychological addiction was still there. Not smoking was actually quite pleasant. His nose was clear, food tasted better, and his lungs no longer felt that dull sensation as if stuffed with cotton like before.

Chen Shi started smoking in middle school and had been a smoker for nearly twenty years. These two days of quitting made him feel that indeed, it required motivation to be able to give it up.

Every day when they met, Lin Dongxue would give Chen Shi a box of mint candies or Extra gum to ease his anxiety of having nothing in his mouth. When the two were having an intimate moment in the car, Lin Dongxue sniffed his body and said, “You smell much better now. I just don’t understand what’s so good about the smell of tobacco.”

Chen Shi teasingly poked her forehead and said, “You care so much about my health. Do you want to marry me?”

“Um…” Lin Dongxue’s cheeks turned red. “Your progress is too fast. Didn’t you say last time that you still owed me a formal confession?”

“That’s right. Then I’ll prepare recently.”

“It must be unforgettable for me, otherwise I won’t agree.” Lin Dongxue pinched Chen Shi’s ears with both hands and gave a charming smile. Nourished by love, in Chen Shi’s eyes, she was as beautiful as an angel and sometimes like a child.

The case was still under investigation. Zheng Guohao had a very poor interpersonal relationship. He had many friends around him, mostly to curry favor with him. Once they heard that he was dead, these people all said one after another, “I just knew Zheng Guohao!”

Most of the people around him knew about his despicable hobby. His fondness for young girls was almost crazy. To satisfy his desires, he would look for those parents who owed huge loans or were drug addicts, and have sex with their daughters in exchange for money.

Such a scumbag, women who knew his details were unwilling to marry him, so he remained single. He even had the idea of adopting from the orphanage and wanted to adopt a daughter, but the orphanage did not approve his adoption application.

Today, Chen Shi and Lin Dongxue went to meet a school psychological counselor. According to the investigation, Zheng Guohao also had an underage female student involved in this school. The school remained tight-lipped about this. After making a round of calls yesterday, they finally found someone willing to reveal the details.

After meeting, the female psychological counselor said, “I haven’t directly met the Zheng Guohao you mentioned. About ten years ago, there was a girl named Yi Qing in our school who was sexually assaulted by an adult. I think it might be related to this person.”

Lin Dongxue asked, “What was Yi Qing’s family situation like?”

“She was from a single-parent family and lived with her father. Her father was an athlete who participated in provincial competitions and was close to entering the national team. Later, he was injured during training and retired to do some small business. I don’t know if it’s appropriate to say these… According to Yi Qing, when her father and mother got married, her father was not at home because of daily training and her mother was beautiful. Her father suspected that Yi Qing’s mother was cheating. Yi Qing was a premature baby, and her father suspected even more that she wasn’t his child. Coupled with the setback in his sports career, from a glorious athlete to a grocer, he vented his anger on his wife.”

“Domestic violence?”

“It wasn’t the kind of direct physical domestic violence, but mental. Besides verbal abuse, he hung a basketball with his wife’s name on the balcony and punched and kicked it every day, cursing Yi Qing’s mother to die. Living under this mental pressure for six years, Yi Qing’s mother died in a car accident. Although the police’s conclusion was a traffic accident, I think it was inseparable from her long-term mental stress. After that, the father and daughter relied on each other, and the father transferred his anger to Yi Qing.”

“Why didn’t they do a paternity test?” Chen Shi asked.

“I asked this question. Yi Qing said that since kindergarten, her father had taken her for a paternity test five or six times. The results proved that Yi Qing was his flesh and blood. But such a compulsive idea is difficult to change. Just like hypochondria, if a person thinks he is sick and no matter how many tests are done and no illness is found, he will still think so. He will think that it’s the hospital’s technology that is not good, not that he is really not sick. Yi Qing’s father was like this. He always firmly believed that Yi Qing wasn’t his flesh and blood and subjected her to all kinds of mental abuse. I think that kind of family atmosphere must have been very depressing!

“Once Yi Qing saw her father talking to a fat man, mentioning words like ‘daughter’, ‘overnight’, ‘one hundred thousand yuan’, etc. Yi Qing was panicked and sought help from the school teacher. Yi Qing hid at her teacher’s house for a few days, but after all, the teacher was an outsider and couldn’t protect her. Her father came angrily, saying that the child was lying, stole money from home and ran out to surf the Internet, and forcibly dragged her home… The sexual assault should have happened that day. Her father sold her. After that, Yi Qing came to me. Psychology couldn’t help her with this kind of thing. I suggested that she find a lawyer and expressed my willingness to assist.

“With my continuous encouragement, we found a lawyer and wrote a complaint. When her father learned the news, he came to the school to distort the facts and forcibly took her away. For a teenage girl, it’s very difficult to muster the courage. Her father easily extinguished this small flame. Since then, she seems to have changed. Although she still looked the same on the outside, I always felt that she was wearing a mask and no longer trusted adults.”

Mentioning the past, the psychological counselor showed a sad emotion. She continued, “I know you are investigating the case. Now that this sexual assaulter is dead, all the girls he sexually assaulted have become suspects…”

“We are also helpless, but this is our job.” Lin Dongxue said.

“If it was really done by Yi Qing, I hope you can be lenient. After all, she has a painful past.”

“We will.”

After saying goodbye to this teacher, Chen Shi said, “Let’s meet this girl’s father!”

“That’s what I was thinking.” Lin Dongxue made a call and asked the bureau to check the information of Yi Qing’s father. Listening, her expression changed and she covered the phone and said to Chen Shi, “This person is dead!”

“How did he die?”

“Car accident. The police suspected it was murder because the car was tampered with, but in the end, they couldn’t identify the suspect due to insufficient evidence.”

“What about this girl?”

“I’ll ask again.”

Lin Dongxue continued the conversation. After hanging up the phone, she said to Chen Shi, “She works in a welfare home after graduating from university.”

“Counting, she should be twenty-five or twenty-six years old this year, right?”

“Do you think it’s necessary to pay her a visit?”

“It doesn’t hurt to meet!”

The two then came to a welfare home. The children playing in the yard scattered. Some hid in the corner and observed the two, their eyes full of anticipation, because for these children, when a man and a woman walked in, it might mean that their fate was about to change.

“What poor children.” Lin Dongxue said. Most of the orphans were girls or boys with defects. “Where did you adopt Tao Yueyue?”

“Uh, that orphanage wasn’t in Long’an.” Chen Shi said. Lin Dongxue didn’t know the true background of Tao Yueyue.

“Who are you looking for?”

A tall woman in a purple dress came over. She was young and beautiful with calm eyes. Chen Shi smelled a faint scent of violet perfume…