The municipal bureau's archives still hold a photograph of them together on the day they graduated from the police academy. In the picture, two young women stand side by side in the sunlight, their badges shining brightly. No one could have guessed that years later, when they met again, the bureau chief would force them into the same special-investigation office with a single transfer order.
Xu Yi's palm still bears the calluses of handling a gun. When silent, she is like a blue-gray stone soaked by rain, her eyes concealing an almost stubborn devotion to duty. Yu Xiran, meanwhile, always puts on an air that warns strangers to keep their distance. Her fountain pen draws hard lines across her notebook, and in the sharpest tone she delivers the most precise profiles. Beneath that proud exterior lies a secret longing for the past, one she refuses to admit even to herself.
The shadow of a string of murders falls over the city. The strange ligature marks on the victims' necks and the fragments of police academy badges deliberately left at the scenes both point toward the past they had long since escaped. They pursue the killer in each other's footsteps. Their arguments ring against the interrogation room's steel door, yet their rapport quietly takes root where their ballistics reports and psychological profiles overlap.
Xu Yi always says, "Don't be afraid. I'm here."
Yu Xiran always replies, "Who needs you to protect me?"
Their silhouettes once overlapped on the police academy's track. They once leaned against each other in the dark alleys where they hunted the killer. But just before the dawn when the truth came to light, they vanished completely into the wind.
This reunion in the name of justice was destined to end in farewell from the very beginning.
Theme: Justice
