Chapter 5: Confessions from the Railway Worker

2022-05-20

There are two kinds of people who choose loneliness: those who do so willingly, and those who don’t have a choice. When you know exactly how many leaves are on the tree outside your window, when you’ve counted every step from your little shack to the tunnel, you start to understand what true loneliness tastes like.

Let’s step into a day in the life of a railway maintenance worker. He wakes up at five in the morning on a rickety wooden bed inside a makeshift cabin, eating his meal while reading. The book’s pages are stained with oil, fruit juice, and spit.

Every day he patrols the tracks, rain or shine, walking a desolate stretch where no one ever comes. One flaw in the rails could spell disaster for an entire trainful of people. It takes him two hours to walk from the cabin to the tunnel and another two to return.

Twice a day, morning and night, he makes that trek.

After five years at this job, his wife divorced him. Ten years later, his son was seventeen—and turned out to be quite the troublemaker. Now, with just three days until his twentieth year on the job, he died in the passage beneath the railroad.

The year his son turned seventeen was the first time the boy struck him. He stared up at his son, now a full head taller than himself, silent for a long while. He’d never had a father—so when it came to being a dad, he simply had no clue. He didn’t smoke, but his son did. He didn’t drink, but his son could knock them back.

He wrote a single line in his diary: ‘Sometimes, I feel like I’m the son.’

Like I said, there are only two types of people who end up alone. For the first fifteen years of this job, his loneliness wasn’t by choice. But for the next five, he embraced it. He lived here from dawn till dusk, buying a week’s worth of steamed buns and vegetables in one go—even though the veggies would wilt by the next day.

If you don’t know how to face another person, the best way is simply to avoid them.

That’s exactly how Luo Yongjun lived. For five years, aside from leaving cash at home on the first day of every month, he never went back. After forty, he never saw his son again. If not for someone collecting that money each month, he’d wonder if he ever really had a son at all.

If you can go five years barely speaking to another soul, congratulations—you’re either a madman or a genius. Everyone needs an outlet for their loneliness. Some immerse themselves in movies or music. Luo Yongjun had his own way.

He tinkered on the rails, listening closely to every sound for flaws. During those five endless years, the thought of suicide did cross his mind. He knew exactly how powerful the trains were; just one step onto the tracks, and everything would be over.

After three minutes of contemplation, he gave up on the idea. He didn’t dare to live, but he feared death even more.

Last night, a woman appeared, braving the howling wind and rain.

Sometimes evil hides in a glance or a movement. Luo Yongjun never really knew why she came, nor where he found the nerve to do what he did. Twenty years here made him memorize every corner, every inch of ground.

He waited along the woman’s path. When she walked by, he opened the tunnel hatch and yanked her inside. A flash of lightning split the sky. Behind them, Li Cunzhuang lost sight of Zhang Xutong, while Luo Yongjun was already on top of her. Zhang Xutong struggled, but it was no use.

The thunder covered everything, so Li Cunzhuang couldn’t possibly hear her cries.

At first, Luo Yongjun didn’t intend to kill Zhang Xutong. But something in him snapped. Twenty years’ worth of helplessness and cowardice burst out all at once. Zhang Xutong died of mechanical asphyxiation, likely with her head covered by the killer’s own clothes.

Afterward, Luo Yongjun hung her body on the top of the wire fence.

Next, in a haze, he saw someone approaching. In his panic, he didn’t have time to take the wooden plank and chair, so he ducked back into the tunnel to watch. What happened next would haunt him forever.

Luo Yongjun knew if he didn’t remove those items, someone would realize he’d been there. He erased all nearby footprints, then buried the chair and plank under the locust tree beside his cabin.

He thought over everything for a long time, and for the first time in his life, he drank alcohol.

His cabin was full of white liquor, but he’d never touched a drop. He only kept it because someone once told him, ‘If you’re patrolling alone at night, you have to drink.’

He didn’t get it and asked why. The man said, ‘There are things lurking in the dark—drink to steady your nerves.’ Luo Yongjun just laughed. To him, people were scarier than ghosts. Still, the liquor sat there all these years, until tonight, when he took out every bottle and drained them all.

This was probably suicide, because he wrote this as his last line: ‘Today, I finally found the courage to die.’

Luo Yongjun kept two notebooks. One had detailed records of his daily work; the other chronicled his thoughts and emotions.

We learned these things from his second notebook. When there’s no one to confide in, you end up talking to yourself. Luo Yongjun wrote everything he wanted to say on those pages. As the saying goes, people would rather gossip about a bad actor’s daily life than try to understand an ordinary person’s quiet struggles.

If not for this crime, Luo Yongjun would have stayed invisible, destined to be forgotten.

Following clues from his notebook, we soon found the chair and wooden plank buried beneath the locust tree outside his cabin.

After going through the notebook, someone said, ‘So here’s what happened: Zhang Xutong came here, Luo Yongjun killed her, then Li Cunzhuang found the corpse, and Luo Yongjun tried to erase the evidence but finally couldn’t take it and killed himself?’

“That’s what it looks like so far,” said Team Leader Shao. “I mean, that’s how it appears.”

“He’s not the murderer,” I said flatly.

Team Leader Shao glanced back at me. “It’s true, there are a lot of suspicious points. But right now, I can’t say for sure if Luo Yongjun’s the killer. There are loose ends and motives that still don’t add up. Why are you so certain?”

Team Leader Shao’s question was clearly aimed at me. I looked around the room, then played coy. “If I told you it was all my imagination, you’d never believe me. Let’s solve the rest of the mysteries first. When everything is clear, I’ll tell you exactly why I’m certain Luo Yongjun isn’t the killer. Deal?”

Mary shot me a look. “Your crazy theories never pan out. You’ve been wrong before, and I bet you’re wrong again.”

Team Leader Shao actually found this entertaining. He said, “How about this? If it turns out Luo Yongjun isn’t the murderer, I’ll grant you a wish.”

“Deal!”

“Doubts?” Xiao Liu was confused. “Luo Yongjun’s confession explained everything. What’s left to question?”

Team Leader Shao said, “There’s plenty. If you can answer every doubt, we’ll consider the case closed. First, why did Zhang Xutong risk such heavy rain to come to this godforsaken place? Second, why did Luo Yongjun hang her body on the wire fence? Third, why did he return to the tunnel? And fourth, why was the broken power line right next to the corpse—just a coincidence or was it on purpose?”

Those four rapid-fire questions left Xiao Liu speechless. He mumbled for a while, then finally said, “I guess I’ll just keep my mouth shut…”

Anyone who could ask questions like that had my respect. Team Leader Shao really lived up to his reputation—he’d pinpointed the biggest mysteries of the case. Until those are solved, there’s no way this case is over.

Luo Yongjun’s supervisors arrived late, almost forgetting he even worked on the railway crew.

Once the case was cleared up, a burly, pot-bellied manager scratched his head and said, “Luo Yongjun was such a fool. Why hang the body on the fence? If he just tossed it on the tracks and let a train run her over, wouldn’t that have solved everything?”

Both Team Leader Shao and I looked up at him. Feeling our gaze, he got flustered and rushed to explain, “I’m just saying, just saying…”