Suddenly, she realized she should review the footage in reverse, starting from before the reported malfunction time. About an hour before the guest’s complaint, she noticed someone entering the equipment room. She quickly returned to normal playback speed.
She had seen staff in work uniforms multiple times before, but this person, though also wearing a work uniform, moved differently—swiftly and alertly. He was slim, wearing a cap that partially obscured his face in the surveillance footage.
Yu Yi recorded the location and time of his appearance and began to track this person’s whereabouts from other hotel surveillance videos during that time. After leaving the equipment room, he did not return to the staff rest area but left through the work corridor, entered the underground garage, and drove away.
Looking at the videos from the previous two equipment failures, this person had also appeared, with the same pattern of action each time, but always wearing a hat.
Yu Yi grouped all videos with this person’s appearance and played them in slow motion. During the second incident, when he entered the underground parking lot, got out of the car, and bent down to retrieve tools from the trunk, he suddenly looked back in a certain direction, seemingly hearing something. The surveillance video had no sound, so Yu Yi couldn’t know what he heard, but in that instant of turning, the camera captured his face.
Because of the distance, his face didn’t look clear enough.
Yu Yi sat up, trying to extract the image from the video but feeling a bit confused.
At this moment, Meng Qing returned. Yu Yi told him about his discovery. He sat beside her and taught her how to extract single frames from the video. Yu Yi opened the images of the thin man, sighing, “Too bad it’s not clear.” When he enlarged the image, the man’s features became even more blurry.
Meng Qing pointed at the picture and said, “With this license plate number, we can continue investigating.”
After searching the vehicle registration information, they found the car was rented from an island rental company to someone named Ping Ke two weeks ago. According to the rental information, he listed his address as a room at Rainbow Hotel.
Yu Yi asked, “Could it really be someone from Rainbow Hotel?”
Meng Qing shrugged, “Who knows? The address might not be real. Even if he’s actually staying at Rainbow Hotel, it doesn’t prove anything. Let’s check this phone number first…”
He clicked an icon and entered the rental person’s contact number to locate his current position. A satellite map of the island appeared on the terminal, with a pink balloon moving westward along a road every ten or so seconds.
They watched as the pink balloon stopped. Meng Qing zoomed in on the map and saw the balloon was at an electric vehicle charging station. A smile curved his mouth, “Got you.”
He quickly tapped on the terminal, first synchronizing the positioning software map to Yu Yi’s terminal, then switched windows to infiltrate the charging station’s security monitoring system. The charging station’s image appeared on his terminal, with an electric vehicle parked next to a charging machine – exactly the one they were looking for.
As electric vehicle charging stations automatically start charging when a vehicle is in place, the man didn’t get out of the car. However, he rolled down the window and called over a small store employee near the charging station, buying something with a banknote.
Meng Qing continued operating, switching between several monitoring cameras to find a side view of the electric vehicle. The video was downloaded, and when the electric vehicle finished charging and left the station, Meng Qing extracted a clearer frontal photo and used image processing software to remove noise and enhance clarity.
Two people got on a rented electric scooter, and Meng Qing drove out of the hotel. After driving for a while, Yu Yi noticed that the direction was different from the daytime route and asked in surprise, “Aren’t we going to the seaside?”
Meng Qing said, “We are going to the seaside.”
He looked back at Yu Yi and smiled, “On this island, no matter which direction you go, you’ll always end up at the seaside.”
Yu Yi smiled in understanding and leaned back in her seat, turning her head to look out the window. Meng Qing had already driven onto the island’s ring road, with the sea on one side.
Twenty minutes later, Meng Qing parked the vehicle on a roadside open ground. They walked down a small path beside the road, which was densely lined with low trees and shrubs. After passing through a tunnel formed by these bushes, the path turned into a rocky surface.
Yu Yi saw a “lake” with a shallow coral reef extending from its side. The reef drew an almost perfect arc, stretching out and gradually curving back after hundreds of meters, connecting with the shore’s rocks on the other side.
This was a coral sea surrounded by a ring of coral reefs.
Moonlight rippled on the sea surface. Yu Yi stood by the shore for a while, quietly watching the nighttime sea under the moon. A warm hand took her hand, and she turned to smile at him. They walked hand in hand on the coral reef, silent and peaceful.
As they walked further, some parts of the coral reef were no longer connected, requiring them to jump across. They continued holding hands, jumping together until they reached the farthest point from the shore.
Meng Qing suddenly asked, “Can you swim?”
Yu Yi shook her head.
Meng Qing laughed and suddenly embraced her waist, jumping with her into the sea.
Yu Yi was startled by his sudden action, quickly clinging to his neck and closing her eyes. The moment they entered the water, cool seawater splashed on her face, causing her to hold him even tighter.
Meng Qing’s loud laughter rang in her ears.
When she realized her head and shoulders were not submerged, she opened her eyes to find the water only reached her chest. She looked at Meng Qing angrily, about to scold him for teasing her, but her vision suddenly darkened as he kissed her lips.
He captured her lips, his agile tongue with a salty-bitter taste entering her mouth, intertwining with hers. She forgot her anger, melting into his kiss.
For a long time, unwilling to separate, only wanting to be together forever.
Late at night, Yu Yi and Meng Qing returned to their room at the Blue Sapphire Hotel, quickly showering before continuing their work.
The comparison of island residents yielded no matches. Meng Qing began pulling up the passenger list from the day the thin man arrived on the island.
By comparing passport photos, they identified the person who was not a local resident. The name on the passport was Pink, but whether it was a genuine passport was uncertain.
Meng Qing checked Tyler’s recent call logs. A local security department manager had contacted an unknown out-of-island phone number several times in the past three weeks. Some of these times coincided with the Blue Sapphire Hotel’s air conditioning system failures. Before these three weeks, he had never communicated with this number.
Meng Qing located the phone’s position, marking it with a brown balloon. On the map, the pink and brown balloons overlapped and remained stationary. The location was the Rainbow Hotel.
Meng Qing closed the terminal display. “He’s not moving, so we won’t move either. Tomorrow we’ll probe Griffin to see if this was Tyler’s private action or if he was instructed.”
Yu Yi wondered, “Griffin does seem suspicious, but why would he create trouble for his own hotel?”
Meng Qing replied, “The purpose of muddying the waters is to fish, but we don’t know what fish he’s trying to catch right now. Let’s not think about it anymore. Time to sleep.”
Yu Yi checked the time; it was past midnight.
