Chapter Three: Instinct

Fei Qiang followed the trail of blood toward the crowd. The crowd parted, and Fei Qiang saw a woman not yet thirty kneeling on the ground. In front of her lay a motionless calico cat, a large pool of blood beneath its body. Her cat was dead.

Fei Qiang knew her. Her name was Ah Qing, a woman who lived alone on the first floor of the residential complex. Two years ago, in that car accident—it had been Ah Qing's car that ran the red light at the intersection outside the complex and collided with Fang Ran's car. But Ah Qing wasn't actually at fault. At the time, she'd been waiting at the red light when a driver behind her suddenly lost consciousness and his car rammed hers into the middle of the road. Fang Ran had been passing through the intersection at 70 kilometers an hour at that moment, and collided with Ah Qing's car as it suddenly appeared, causing a serious accident. Both women were sent to the hospital.

After that, whenever the two of them crossed paths in the complex, they'd exchange polite nods. Beyond the nodding, there was no communication at all.

"Ah Qing." Fei Qiang crouched down, lowering his voice. "When was the last time you saw the cat?"

Ah Qing raised her head, her eyes red, and forced out a few words with difficulty: "This noon. After she ate her cat food, she ran outside."

Fei Qiang habitually put on a pair of disposable gloves and began examining the cat's body:

There was a clean incision across the cat's neck, the edges neat—not a bite mark, not an accidental scrape, but a single cut made by a blade. Blood had gushed from the carotid artery, pooling beneath the cat's body, its edges already darkening, forming a thin film. He reached out to feel the cat's paw pads—still faintly warm, but the muscles had already begun to stiffen—rigor mortis just beginning, spreading forward from the hind legs.

Fei Qiang's gaze fell on the cat's mouth. There was some pale reddish liquid on its whiskers; leaning in to smell it, he detected the smell of fish—very fresh, not the smell of cat food. He looked up and followed the trail of blood, and saw, in the flowerbed, in the shadow of a few leaves, a fish head still attached to a bone, with several bloody holes poked into it by a small knife.

Fei Qiang frowned. He swept his gaze over the crowd of onlookers. Most of them covered their mouths or murmured amongst themselves, their faces wearing expressions of idle curiosity. Only the two children from Old Long's family, Big Long and Little Long, stood at the edge of the crowd with unnaturally tense expressions.

Fei Qiang walked up to the two children and suddenly said, "Big Long, Little Long, did the cat scratch your hands?"

Both children flinched at the same instant, hurriedly raising their hands to check them over and over. As they raised their hands, a whiff of fishy smell wafted out. After checking for a while, they found no scratches, so Big Long put on a tough front: "No scratches. I never even touched it."

"If you never touched the cat, why did you just check your hands?"

The two children were speechless.

Fei Qiang continued: "Today's Grandpa Long's big birthday, isn't it? Your family bought a lot of fish. Then you two took the fish heads the adults cut off and threw away to play with. You imitated the adults, using a knife to cut the fish head so it would bleed, and the fishy smell attracted the cat, and that's how you ended up doing this cruel thing. Am I right?"

Big Long's face went white at once. He turned to confront Little Long: "How does he know? Did you show him the video we recorded?"

Little Long immediately pulled out his phone, opened the video, and protested: "No I didn't! The video of killing the cat is only in the photo album! I never posted it online!"

The video's recording timestamp read this afternoon at 3:40—the footage shaking, the two boys taking turns holding a fruit knife, gesturing at the cat's neck, the cat's screams coming out of the phone's speaker.

Ah Qing, kneeling nearby, bowed her head even lower. Fei Qiang couldn't see her face, but he could see her trembling with sobs. The crowd around them began to hurl accusations at Big Long and Little Long.

Under the crowd's condemnation, the two children grew even more panicked, frozen in place. Fei Qiang circled around behind Little Long, reached out his hand, and "helped" Little Long tap quickly at the phone a few times. By the time the two children realized what had happened, the video had already been sent to Fei Qiang's phone.

"The evidence has now been collected," Fei Qiang said, waving the phone in his hand. "So now—do you want your family to come out and handle this, or should I hand it over to the authorities?"

Soon, Long's father and mother came rushing frantically out of the stairwell, giving their children a thorough scolding with their hands, then repeatedly apologizing to Ah Qing, saying they'd compensate her for the cat.

"No need." Ah Qing said only that one sentence, picked up the cat's body, and turned to walk toward the stairwell, her footsteps very light, as if afraid of disturbing the body in her arms that would never move again.

The onlookers gradually dispersed as well. The property staff washed away the bloodstains with water, and it trickled along the seams of the paving stones into a pale red streak, which soon faded too.

Fei Qiang returned home. Fang Ran had just walked out of the studio. Fei Qiang told her everything that had happened downstairs. Fang Ran listened quietly, and finally asked one question: "Why would those two children do something like that?"

Fei Qiang hesitated, but still gave the answer he believed: "Carnivores have a bloodthirsty instinct—it's a primal instinct written into human genes. A society built by humans is bound to contain killing."

"Instinct?" Fang Ran nodded thoughtfully. She turned and walked back into the studio. Through the gap in the studio door, Fei Qiang saw, on Fang Ran's canvas, a painting of a cup with two straws stuck into it.

By the time Fei Qiang truly understood this painting, half a year had already passed. By then, everything was too late.