Captured By The Cold Detective

Who are you?

He Juan held his forehead helplessly. "Molei..."

"You drank alcohol, a whole fucking bottle at that, and slept on the fucking kitchen floor! What do you have to say about that, He Juan?!"

"Don't curse," He Juan slipped that out by reflex.

No offense but being on the end of Jia Molei's furious holler was scarier than the prospect of being a murder suspect.

The flying spit notwithstanding, they just had to do this confrontation in front of Mu Yuze. He Juan palmed his eyes as waves of helplessness came over him. First, the man had seen what kind of mess He Juan's apartment was and now, it was solidified by Jia Molei's nagging. He Juan wished he could stay like this forever so he did not have to see what kind of look Officer Mu was giving him right now. It was just nine am in the morning but He Juan already felt tired to the bone.

Jia Molei abruptly turned silent. There was the sound of a chair being dragged back followed by a touch on his shoulder. "What's wrong?" Jia Molei asked, softer this time. "Do you have a headache?"

"I..." He Juan offered a weak smile. "I am sorry. I have made you worry again."

"Tell me honestly, He Juan. I am your doctor, I need you to be honest about your own body." Jia Molei asserted solemnly. "I know you're not a drunkard. Why did you drink last night? Did you have a headache again?"

When he put it like that, how could He Juan evade him anymore? "I did." He Juan admitted with a sigh. "When I returned from school, the pain got worse and I saw the liquor you gave me so..." He sighed again.

This was the origin of the mess, wasn't it? If he had not drunk, then perhaps he would have been sober enough to notice something wrong next door. Alas...

There was something he did not tell the doctor though. He had been feeling this throbbing pain in his head for the past few days and yesterday, it was especially bad. He had downed twice the dose of medicine to get through the day because he did not want to mess up his first day of teaching, which is coincidentally his first stable job after seven long years of part time jobs and scraping whatever tasks he could find.

But he had been too naive.

Toward the end of the class, the dull pain had intensified into sharp, burning pain that hammered down his skull again and again, insistent.

Honestly, he had no idea how he had driven home safely without creating a traffic accident somewhere. And then, it was made worse when he found out that the elevator in the apartment malfunctioned. He Juan had to force himself to climb to the fifth floor on his own feet amidst the wrecking agony.

When he stumbled into his apartment, he was already half conscious. Then the rest was a blur of pain pain pain, the urge to slam his own head against the wall so he could get a brief respite was overwhelming. He was so close to breaking down when his blurry vision landed on the bottle of liquor in his cabinet.

Without even thinking twice, He Juan chugged down the wine directly. It went smoothly down his throat, leaving a burning sensation on its wake. The good, distracting kind of burn. Amid the strong desire to escape from the pain, He Juan had drunk again and again, losing control of himself and fell asleep on the kitchen floor.

Unaware that right beyond the wall, a heinous crime was taking place.

Jia Molei snapped his fingers, pulling He Juan's attention away from the spiral of memories. "From the scale of one to ten, how strong was your headache?"

"Eight." He Juan answered without thinking.

Jia Molei nodded glumly. "It's twelve then."

He Juan: "..."