Reverse Stroke Order

“The killer writes characters with reversed strokes,” Xu Mo suddenly realized a detail he hadn’t noticed before while staring at the note left by the killer beside the body.

The officers immediately gathered around, scrutinizing the note for a while.

However, they couldn’t see what Xu Mo was referring to.

The killer writes characters with reversed strokes? Is that important? Han Fei was also puzzled. He looked at Xu Mo and asked, “How did you notice that?”

Because I write characters with reversed strokes too, of course I can tell… Xu Mo said seriously, “Characters written with reversed strokes and those written with the correct strokes can still be distinguished if you look closely.”

Xu Mo recalled the time when he was just learning to read and write as a child.

The first three characters the teacher taught were ‘one,’ ‘two,’ and ‘three.’

The teacher said that ‘one’ was written by drawing a single horizontal stroke, ‘two’ by drawing two horizontal strokes, and ‘three’ by drawing three horizontal strokes. Xu Mo, who was a bit clever but also somewhat impatient, stopped paying attention at that point.

He thought to himself, “Is this all there is to writing? I thought it was harder than this!”

One stroke for ‘one,’ two strokes for ‘two,’ three strokes for ‘three,’ so by that logic, ‘four’ would be four strokes, and ‘five’ would be five strokes, right? This is too easy. Do I even need to learn this? I’ll just play for the rest of the class!

Seeing his classmates staring at the blackboard with blank expressions, listening intently to the teacher, Xu Mo’s vanity was greatly satisfied… What a bunch of idiots! Do they really need to study this so seriously?

Little Xu Mo’s gaze unconsciously drifted to the cute face of his female desk mate…

A few days later, when Xu Mo finally snapped out of it, he realized that ‘four’ wasn’t written with four strokes. By then, it was too late. The teacher had already moved on to other content, and all his classmates could write other characters, while Xu Mo could only write ‘one,’ ‘two,’ and ‘three.’

Xu Mo couldn’t stand this. Relying on his cleverness, he started copying the characters from the textbook, teaching himself how to write.

After some self-study, he managed to catch up on what he had missed, but he also developed the habit of writing characters with reversed strokes, a habit that persisted to this day and one he still hadn’t been able to break.

Thinking of this, Xu Mo spoke up.

“There are only two reasons why someone would write characters with reversed strokes. First, they didn’t pay attention in class when the teacher was teaching stroke order. Second, they never attended school and learned to read and write on their own. Once the habit of writing with reversed strokes is formed, it’s very hard to correct.”

“Let’s start by filtering out those who write with the correct stroke order.”

Xu Mo picked up the notebook in which everyone in the institution had written something and began the screening process.

Different handwriting might be an attempt to imitate someone else’s writing, so relying solely on handwriting to identify the killer wasn’t a reliable method. The officers had already tried this approach, and it didn’t work. They hadn’t been able to pinpoint the killer just by analyzing handwriting.

However, stroke order is hard to change. Even if someone tries to change it, it would take a long time, and it’s difficult to do so in the short term. Forcing a change in stroke order might even cause someone to momentarily forget how to write the character properly.

The fact that the killer writes with reversed strokes is a crucial clue.

There are definitely people who write with reversed strokes, but they are certainly in the minority. By filtering out everyone in the institution who writes with reversed strokes, the suspect pool could be significantly narrowed down!

With that in mind, Xu Mo started flipping through the notebook page by page.

Whenever he saw someone who wrote with reversed strokes, he tore out the corresponding page.

Among all the officers present, only Xu Mo wrote with reversed strokes, and only he could tell when someone else’s writing had reversed strokes.

The screening task had to be left to Xu Mo.

After about twenty minutes, Xu Mo finished the screening.

“Only these two people write with reversed strokes,” Xu Mo said, spreading the torn pages on the table.

Each page also had the corresponding name, as the officers had asked everyone to write their names along with the sentence. This was to make it easier to cross-reference later.

“So the suspect is one of these two?” Han Fei asked.

“Most likely,” Xu Mo replied, not wanting to sound too certain.

The habit of writing with reversed strokes is hard to break, but it’s not impossible.

“Anyway, we don’t have any other leads right now. Let’s investigate these two first.”

With that, Xu Mo asked Wang Dachuan to fetch the director. He wanted to question these two individuals who wrote with reversed strokes.

Soon, the director arrived with the two people in question.

One was a patient from the institution, and the other was the gatekeeper, Old Ding.

Xu Mo decided to interrogate them separately.

However, during the interrogation of the patient, Xu Mo nearly lost his composure.

He came to the profound realization that the reason mentally ill patients are considered mentally ill is that ordinary people simply can’t communicate with them.

Xu Mo: “Did you know the deceased… no, did you know Huang Youwei?”

Patient: “Obtuse angle.”

Xu Mo: “???”

Xu Mo brought out a photo of the deceased and pointed at it, asking again.

“Him, Huang Youwei. Do you know Huang Youwei?”

Patient: “I haven’t had water yet.”

“Alright…” Xu Mo rubbed his forehead. “Where were you last night?”

The patient suddenly clutched his head. “Water, water… I’m wilting! I’m wilting!”

Was he thirsty? Xu Mo handed him a bottle of water, but the patient knocked it away.

“Water, water, give me water… I’m wilting! I’m wilting!”

After that, no matter what Xu Mo asked, the patient kept repeating the same phrase.

Xu Mo: “???”

The officers: “???”

The interrogation was going nowhere.

Initially, Xu Mo hadn’t planned to ask for help, as he wanted to keep the case details confidential and try to handle it himself.

But there was no way around it. Xu Mo had no idea how to communicate with this patient, so he had no choice but to call the director again and ask for a medical staff member who was familiar with the patient to assist with the questioning.

The director was very cooperative and immediately brought in the medical staff responsible for the patient.

The medical staff member entered carrying a watering can and explained to the officers,

“He has severe cognitive impairment. He believes he’s a mushroom and needs to be watered regularly. Every morning, he has to be ‘watered’ to ease his symptoms. This morning, with everything going on, we forgot to water him…”

As he spoke, he ‘watered’ the patient’s feet with the watering can.

After being watered, the patient looked relieved and soon returned to normal.

The officers were stunned.

“Can you ask him where he was last night?” Seeing that the patient was no longer demanding water, Xu Mo turned to the medical staff member.

The medical staff member didn’t even need to ask. He replied directly, “In his room.”

He then added,

“He has a habit of never leaving his room after sunset. He crouches by his bed, motionless, imitating a mushroom until sunrise, when he finally moves again.”

“He never leaves his room after sunset? Every day?”

“Yes, he’s been like this since the day he arrived. It’s been several years now. At night, he doesn’t move at all.”

“Alright, I see…” Xu Mo pondered for a moment. “Please take him back to his room. Thank you for your help.”

…