novelslam Chapter 82 Duan Lei's Suspicion
Chapter 82 Duan Lei's Suspicion
Duan Lei opened the kiwi fruit ten minutes early that evening.
Episodes 3 and 4 will be released online at 8 PM sharp.
Zhu Jingjing was standing on the attic by the window when Pu Pu said, "She's going to fall." Zhu Chaoyang ran to the window and glanced out. The camera didn't capture what he saw, only his face—that expression made Duan Lei's fingers freeze on the edge of the tablet.
In the live chat, some people commented, "He saw it, but he didn't say anything," others commented, "Zhu Chaoyang's eyes sent chills down my spine," and still others spammed exclamation marks.
Then Zhu Jingjing fell down.
Duan Lei paused the book, took two deep breaths, and then continued reading. He recalled the childlike indifference described by Zao Chun De Cha in "Summer, Fireworks, My Corpse"—despite something terrible happening, the narration was as calm as if he were talking about what he ate that day. Zhu Chaoyang's face and the child who hid the corpse in that book were of the same kind.
Duan Lei read through them one by one, and the more he read, the more he felt that he hadn't seen anything the first time he read them.
Then he did something he had never done before—he recommended the show to his mother.
He actually regretted it a little after sending the message.
His mother usually only watches those family dramas, the kind where the male and female leads can argue for twenty episodes straight.
She definitely wouldn't be able to watch a fast-paced suspense drama like "The Hidden Corner." But her mother replied with a single word: "Okay."
To his surprise, his mother called him the following evening.
"What's wrong with Zhu Chaoyang's mother, the one who works at the scenic spot? She's clearly having an affair with that director, but she won't let her son tell anyone." His mother's tone was urgent, the kind of urgency only someone deeply engrossed in watching the show could muster. "And what about Zhang Dongsheng? Did he kill his wife too? I'm on episode four; is something going to happen to her later?"
Duan Lei stared blankly at his phone for three seconds, then laughed.
My mom's binge-watching progress is in sync with his.
Episodes 5 and 6 will be released on Friday night.
Duan Lei has developed a habit—after watching each episode, he first goes to Douban to read long reviews, then to forums to read detailed posts, and finally back to the bullet comments to find those comments that made him laugh out loud or sent chills down his spine. After doing these steps, it's equivalent to watching an episode three times.
Duan Lei watched the scene in episode five where Zhou Chunhong publicly revealed her relationship with the scenic area director in the broadcasting room four times. Zhu Chaoyang's mother's acting was superb; her voice trembled as she desperately tried to fight back, yet every word was delivered clearly. The comments section was full of praise such as "The mother's acting is divine," "This scene made me cry," and "Liu Lin deserves a Magnolia Award."
Zhu Chaoyang sat in the police car. Officer Ye asked him, "Is there anything else you want to say?" He shook his head, his expression feigning confusion as if he truly knew nothing.
Viewers who saw this all got goosebumps.
Duan Lei also thought of the plot twist that Zao Chun De Cha wrote at the beginning of "Summer, Fireworks, My Corpse".
He opened the forum and found that someone had already analyzed the two works together. The post was titled "The Child Universe of Early Spring Tea"—the analysis said that the children in Early Spring Tea's works all have one thing in common: they are not the innocent children that adults imagine, but rather people who can calmly observe the world, calmly judge the pros and cons, and then calmly make choices.
They are bad in a childlike and innocent way, as if they were born that way, making many book fans and drama fans exclaim: Human nature is inherently evil, Xunzi was right.
Duan Lei replied to that post: "So I suspect that the author of 'Early Spring Tea' suffered a traumatic childhood. It's hard to imagine what the author who wrote about such a dark child went through."
After posting it, he himself felt that the statement was a bit absurd, but for some reason, he always felt that this guess might be correct.
There was a newly registered account below, and I gave it a like as soon as he replied.
In the second week, the remaining six episodes of "The Hidden Corner" were all released.
Duan Lei took half a day off. The reason he gave at the company was "feeling unwell," but the real reason was that he saw on a forum that someone said the last three episodes contained more information than the previous nine, and he wanted to find a complete period of time to watch them all at once.
He bought a case of Coke, two bags of potato chips, a bag of sunflower seeds, put his phone on Do Not Disturb mode, drew the curtains tightly, and then started watching episode seven.
Then he couldn't stop.
In episode ten, Zhang Dongsheng is cornered, leading to a confrontation in the warehouse. During the long shot of Zhang Dongsheng carrying Pu Pu asthma during an asthma attack, Duan Lei felt like he was running alongside her, struggling to breathe. In the comments, some said, "How can you not hate this psychopath?", others said, "Zhang Dongsheng seems like a normal person when he's carrying Pu Pu," and still others said, "He's saving Pu Pu because she's the only thing he has left."
Duan Lei watches the bullet comments every day, and these past few days he's also taken to watching videos while reading the bullet comments.
The main reason is that the teacher in the bullet comments is very active.
The plot is still unfolding.
Zhu Chaoyang's monologue on the boat, about "the thing I regret most is opening the door for them," sparked a heated debate in the live chat. Some said it was the truth, some said it was just another performance by Zhu Chaoyang, and others said they couldn't tell which of the kid's words were true and which were false. Duan Lei couldn't tell either, but he felt it didn't matter anymore—because Zhu Chaoyang himself probably couldn't tell either; lies eventually lead to this.
Zhu Chaoyang was giving a speech at the school's opening ceremony when Yan Liang walked into the auditorium. Everyone was applauding, but only Zhu Chaoyang saw him. The two looked at each other, then Yan Liang turned and walked away. Zhu Chaoyang didn't chase after him.
Duan Lei stared at Zhu Chaoyang's face on the screen for a long time.
Then, in the final scene of the ending, Zhu Chaoyang opens his diary, and the image freezes on a certain page. The handwriting is so neat that it looks like printed text. It is not the same diary that he showed to the police earlier when he said, "The diary is all my true record."
It is clear that Zhu Chaoyang ultimately survived by surviving as a liar.
Duan Lei placed the tablet on the table, leaned back in his chair, and sat in the dark for several minutes with his eyes closed.
There's something stuck in my chest, I can't swallow it down or spit it out.
He opened the Douban forum and found that the entire website was about to crash.
The top ten posts on the homepage were all about "The Hidden Corner," with titles ranging from "Ending Analysis" to "The Truth Behind Zhu Chaoyang's Diary" to "Did Pu Pu Die or Not?" to "What Did Zhang Dongsheng Mean by His Last Words?" Each post had over two hundred replies. Some people were arguing, some were writing long analyses, some posted frame-by-frame screenshots trying to prove that Zhu Jingjing was pushed by Zhu Chaoyang, and others compiled a table showing all the scenes and times when the "Little White Boat" appeared in the entire series.
Duan Lei spent two whole hours on the forum and posted one message:
"The tea in early spring, the child who hides the corpse in 'Summer, Fireworks, My Corpse,' and Zhu Chaoyang in 'The Hidden Corner' are the same person. This person appears in every one of your works, just with a different face. I may be wrong, but I bet you five cents that you wrote it this way on purpose."
The post was quickly replied to by people: "Early spring tea, come out and get beaten up," "Five cents is too little, I bet fifty," "So who exactly is this person?"
No one noticed that in the seventeenth post, a newly registered account, only three minutes old, posted two words: "Thank you."
Then it disappeared again.
The ratings for "The Hidden Corner" were released in the third week.
When Duan Lei saw the long image posted by Director Qin's studio, he was getting water at the company's tea room. The peak popularity exceeded 9000 on the fourth day after the finale was released, making it the most popular suspense drama on iQiyi that year. The number of advanced viewing viewers exceeded 3.8 million, and the number of people who rated it on Douban exceeded 400,000, with the rating remaining stable between 8.9 and 9.0.
He saved the picture and posted it in the family group chat with the caption: "The show I recommended."
Although he didn't direct the drama, for some reason he felt proud to see such great results.
His mom gave him a thumbs up. His cousin sent a long string of exclamation marks, saying he recommended it too late; her colleagues had been watching it last week.
Duan Lei began to see more and more people discussing his early spring tea creations on the forum.