Zhu Qingan

When the rusty smell of rain seeped into the blinds of the anatomy room, Zhu Zhi was wearing latex gloves, and the tip of the tweezers was hanging above the Adam's apple of a male corpse. "This is already the seventh incident." She whispered, and the movement of her hand never stopped. The blade cut through the pale skin, and the light blue marks on the side of her neck were like a hibernating snake. "Like the first six, the hyoid bone was shattered, and she held half a gardenia brooch in her right hand." Intern Xiao Zhou's hands were shaking while holding the record book: "Sister Zhu, this flower…is the same as the others on your chest." Zhu lowered his eyes, the silver brooch glowed dully under the cold light - it was a faded six-petaled gardenia, the edges of the petals were frayed. She suddenly remembered the summer when she was seventeen years old. Liang Qing squatted under the old gardenia tree in the corner of her yard, stringing the stolen flowers into a bracelet. Her sweaty forehead was pasted on her eyebrows: "Gardenia, when you pass the anatomy class, I will give you a gardenia brooch." At that time, they thought that there would be countless mornings counting gardenias together in the future. Until that night. The heavy rain hit the green tiles. Zhu Zhi grabbed his father's old police badge and rushed into the alley. He saw Liang Qing's white shirt soaked in blood. His back was turned to her, and he was protecting a little girl covered in injuries in his arms - later Zhu Zhi found out that she was the orphan left by Liang Qing's informant. "Let's go!" His voice trembled, "Someone doesn't want to investigate your father's matter..." What happened next was like a crumpled letter: Zhu Zhi's father fell from a building, and the scene was faked as a suicide; Liang Qing disappeared with the transfer order, leaving only half a burnt photo with "Wait for me" written on the back. Ten years. Zhu Zhi became the youngest chief medical examiner in the city, and the dead souls under the scalpel could line up the entire moat; Liang Qing became the captain of the criminal investigation detachment, and the title on his shoulder straps was brighter than before, but he never set foot in her autopsy room again. Until this serial case. The murderer specifically targeted people related to old cases ten years ago. The gardenia brooch held in each corpse's right hand was exactly the same as the one Zhu had collected and the one Liang Qing had not given away back then. "Team Liang said, I want you to be the chief examiner." Xiao Zhou handed over the file bag, with Liang Qing's handwriting on the cover, and the word "Zhu" on the back of the paper looked like an unsheathed knife. We met again at the dissecting table. He was thinner than he remembered, with fine lines at the end of his eyes, but he still recognized the brooch she wore at a glance: "I didn't have time to buy it back then, so I'm going to fix it now." He took out a velvet box from the inner pocket of his suit, which contained a new Gardenia brooch with a gold base lined with broken diamonds. "Find out the death of your father, Gardenia." They traced the scratches on the brooch and uncovered the truth of the past: Zhu's father discovered a case involving cultural relics, and the murderer bribed people to commit suicide, and then hunted down insiders after his death; Liang Qing was forced to fake his death to escape in order to protect Zhizhi, and he has been secretly investigating for these years. "The next target is you." Liang Qing held her hand and pressed it on the closing report. "The murderer knows that you are still alive. He is forcing me to show up." Zhu Zhi smiled. She took off the brooch and pinned it on his collar: "Liang Qing, we owe each other 'I'm not leaving'." The case was solved. On the night when the murderer was found guilty, Zhu Zhi found Liang Qing in the autopsy room. He fell to the ground, with a scalpel stuck in his chest - it was her knife, and the handle was stained with her all-too-familiar fingerprints. "Are you stupid..." She knelt down, blood covering his alarm, "Didn't I say that we would investigate together until the end?" His hand was still holding the gardenia brooch, but the gold support was cracked, and the broken diamonds fell into a pool of blood, like scattered stars. "Zhizhi," he called softly, his breath gradually weakening, "This time it will be me... Sending you away." As the sirens penetrated the rain, Zhu sat holding his body all night. In the morning light, the gardenia in the anatomy room bloomed, and water droplets condensed on the white petals, like tears that no one had shed. Later, people said that of the childhood sweethearts, the forensic doctor and the policeman, one stayed at the autopsy table forever, and the other stayed in her arms forever. The cracked gardenia brooch was locked into the safe by Zhu. The label reads: "Best wishes, Qing." ——If time treats you kindly, this is how it should be. Intent: It is a narrative about "how love grows in the dual tempering of career and time." It does not praise the vigorous sacrifice, but focuses on "forbearance protection", "silent understanding" and "late perfection". It ultimately conveys: the most affectionate confession is to spend a lifetime proving that "I have always been there"; the most touching redemption is when each other becomes the light in each other's life that will never go out.