Hearing the malicious words, everyone immediately became restless.
If the woman had spoken politely, people might have cooperated. After all, five hundred yuan was no small sum.
But with her attitude, who would want to help?
Moreover, money doesn’t have any distinguishing marks. Anyone who could afford a sleeper ticket would surely have some cash on them. Given the woman’s attitude, who’s to say she wouldn’t falsely accuse someone?
Though many were glaring at her with displeasure, the woman was too absorbed in her own world to notice—or perhaps she simply didn’t care.
After all, their dissatisfaction wasn’t as important as her five hundred yuan!
“All of you, stand still! I’m going to search each of you. My money must be on one of you!”
She then pushed the man beside her and said, “Cousin, what are you standing around for? Hurry up and help!”
Song Wei’s ears twitched, and she whispered, “So they’re cousins. The way they were acting, I thought they were a couple.”
She wasn’t the only one who thought so—everyone else did too.
The man, who had just been slapped, looked uncomfortable. Searching people like this? Who would agree to that?
He tried to reason with her, “It’s not appropriate to search so many people. We can’t do this.”
The woman glared at him fiercely and continued to do as she pleased.
She grabbed the nearest person, ready to search them, but was immediately slapped hard.
It was an elderly woman, around fifty or sixty years old, but she was no pushover.
After slapping the woman, she grabbed her hair and began scolding her.
“Who do you think you are, daring to search me? Today, I’ll teach you a lesson so you’ll know not to mess with me!”
The woman, whose hair was being pulled, let out a piercing scream.
The man tried to intervene, but he was quickly punched by the old woman’s son.
“You dare search people? Try it, and see what happens! You couldn’t keep an eye on your own money, flaunting it and attracting thieves. Waking everyone up in the middle of the night is bad enough, and now you’re pushing your luck!”
The man kept saying it was a misunderstanding.
But he had a foolish ally. The woman, emotionally out of control, refused to back down even after being hit.
“I’m going to report you! It must be you who stole my money. Otherwise, why wouldn’t you let me search you?”
The man was exasperated by her stupidity. Was she asking for another beating?
No one stepped forward to help. In fact, some of the more hot-tempered passengers rolled their eyes.
“What kind of person accuses everyone of being a thief? I felt sorry for her at first, but now it seems she deserves it.”
Soon, the train staff arrived. They separated the fighting parties and began investigating the situation.
Throughout the process, the woman kept pointing at the old woman and her son, shouting that they were the thieves.
The old woman was no pushover. “Comrades, this woman’s money was stolen, but instead of catching the thief or identifying who did it, she accused everyone in this carriage.
While it’s possible the thief is among us, she can’t just demand to search us like we owe her something.
Besides, everyone here has some money on them. If she finds money on someone, how do we know it’s not their own? She doesn’t strike me as someone who’d listen to reason.”
Everyone nodded, chiming in to describe what had just happened.
The train staff were no strangers to theft.
“We’ll investigate this thoroughly. Please calm down, miss.”
The woman wanted to keep shouting, but no one was going to indulge her.
“If you can’t calm down, we’ll have to ask you to leave. Your behavior is hindering our investigation.”
Finally, the woman was forced to calm down.
But when asked if her money had any distinguishing features, she couldn’t provide any.
Song Wei, holding the puppy, had been watching from the side for a while.
Lin Zhen opened their luggage, took out some steamed buns and mushroom meat sauce, split a bun, added some sauce, and handed it to her.
“Have something to eat. Once this is over, I’ll find a way to heat the buns.”
Song Wei didn’t mind the cold bun and ate it with relish.
She asked Lin Zhen, “Do you think she’ll get her money back?”
Lin Zhen shook his head. “No one saw anything, and she can’t even describe any distinguishing features. Money is money—everyone has some. If her money isn’t marked or doesn’t contain anything unique, it’ll be hard.”
They were some distance away from the woman. Even with Lin Zhen and Song Wei’s sharp senses, it was impossible to notice who might have gotten up in the middle of the night.
Besides, apart from the woman, no one else in the carriage had lost anything. It was likely the thief had targeted her specifically.
She must have flaunted her wealth somewhere earlier.
As they spoke, Lin Zhen suddenly looked at the man beside the woman.
“Why do I feel like every time he speaks, the woman gets angrier?”
Song Wei nodded. “Right? There’s something off about him.”
The man appeared meek, and his words seemed to be trying to calm the situation, but every time he spoke, the woman became even more furious and irrational.
“I remember now! In that stack of money, there was a new hair tie I bought—a red one!”
Finally, a female staff member took the woman aside to calm her down. Once she had settled, the woman suddenly remembered something and shouted.
She grabbed the staff member’s hand and said, “That hair tie was tucked inside the money. Go find it! If you find the hair tie, you’ll find my money!”
While this provided a clue, searching through the entire carriage with so many people and belongings would take forever, and not everyone was willing to cooperate.
Who would want to expose their privacy in front of so many people?
Besides, what if they revealed their own money and attracted thieves?
And the thief might not even be in this carriage.
“Woof~”
Song Wei didn’t want to be searched either. Hearing Little Boss’s soft bark, she suddenly looked down at the puppy.
The little dog looked up at her with an innocent, smiling face.
Song Wei smiled too. “Little Boss, how about helping out?”
“Woof?”
Lin Zhen was surprised. “You want to use him? Will it work?”
Song Wei said, “Let’s try. I’ve noticed at home that this little guy is pretty good at finding things.”
Dogs have a keen sense of smell. Normally, a puppy as young as Little Boss, without any training, wouldn’t be able to find specific items.
But Little Boss, though small, was clever and really good at finding things.
At home, when Hei Dan lost his homework and couldn’t find it after searching for a long time, it was Little Boss who wagged his tail, squeezed under the cabinet, and fetched the homework that had accidentally fallen there.
He could even find the baby chicks scattered around the yard.
“Comrades, you can borrow our puppy. But no guarantees it’ll work.”
The train police looked at the chubby little puppy in Song Wei’s hands and fell silent for a few seconds.
“How did you bring it on board?”
“Ahem, let’s focus on solving the theft first.”
Though they wanted to resolve the issue, what could this little puppy do?
“Go ahead and try.”
They had no other options and didn’t hold out much hope. They were still negotiating with the passengers in the carriage.
But no one wanted to expose their money.
Seeing that they weren’t paying attention to her, Song Wei took Little Boss over to smell the woman.
“Have you worn that hair tie before?”
Song Wei asked.
The woman was impatient. “What’s it to you?”
Song Wei pressed her shoulder, using a bit of force, and smiled “kindly.”
“Comrade, please don’t waste everyone’s time. Answer my questions, okay?”
The woman was unnerved by her gaze and nodded shakily.
“Y-yes, I’ve worn it.”
Song Wei then let Little Boss sniff the woman’s hair.
“Little Boss, find the same scent.”
The puppy whimpered twice, then set off wagging its tail and trotting around the carriage.
Few people noticed this. The female staff member who had calmed the woman found it adorable.
Even Song Wei herself didn’t have much hope. She was just passing the time while the carriage was in chaos.
No one paid much attention to the little puppy wandering around.
Until…
“Woof woof woof!”
The puppy’s high-pitched barks were urgent, and it began pawing at a man’s pants.
The man instinctively tried to kick the little thing away, but a tall figure blocked him.
He froze.
Lin Zhen bent down, picked up the puppy, and fixed his wolf-like eyes on the man—a meek-looking man much shorter than himself.
It was the woman’s cousin.
The man smiled ingratiatingly. “Sorry, I didn’t know it was your dog.”
“Woof woof woof~”
The previously quiet puppy kept barking at the man, as if trying to alert everyone.
The man nodded and tried to leave, but Lin Zhen stepped in his way.
“What are you trying to do, comrade?”
Song Wei said, “Since we’re checking everyone’s belongings, let’s start with the closest person.”
Her words caught everyone’s attention.
“If we’re checking everyone, then this gentleman can’t be exempt, right?”
The man was sweating. “What are you implying? I’m her cousin. Why would I steal her money?”
This was the common misconception—people assumed the thief couldn’t be someone close.
But based on the man’s earlier behavior, which seemed to agitate his cousin, and Little Boss’s reaction, Song Wei and Lin Zhen were about 80% sure the man was the thief.
This was something they hadn’t expected.
“Right, if we’re checking, start with the closest person.”
“We don’t know where the woman hid her money. Maybe it was someone close to her—a case of the thief crying ‘thief.’”
They didn’t want to be searched either. The whole situation had everyone frustrated. Why search them and not the man?
The woman also looked suspiciously at the man.
“How could it be me? You’ve got the wrong person. I would never…”
“Comrade, please cooperate.”
“Why should I? I have my own money. This is my money.”
The man clutched his pocket, looking panicked, and was already thinking of how to escape.
Clearly, he wasn’t going to cooperate.
“Take out your money. I don’t want your money—I just want to see if my hair tie is there! And if you cooperate, it’ll be easier to get others to cooperate. Hurry up!”
Her commanding tone made everyone frown.
No one expected what happened next. The man’s expression turned vicious, and he lunged at the woman, slapping her hard.
The sudden move shocked everyone. The train police quickly restrained the man.
In the struggle, money fell out of his pocket.
Little Boss ran over, pawed at it, and pulled out a hair tie.
“Whimper~”
“The hair tie!”
Everyone saw it, and they also saw the puppy pawing at the money.
Now, everyone looked at the man differently.
Especially the woman who had been robbed. After being slapped, she was already in a bad state. Now, finding her hair tie on her cousin…
Her face twisted, and she screamed as she lunged at him, scratching and clawing at his face.
“It was you! It was you! You thief! You stole my money and hit me! I’ll kill you!”
The two tussled, and Song Wei, holding Little Boss, quickly stepped back.
Watching the drama was fine, but getting hurt wasn’t worth it.
Tsk tsk… Who would’ve thought it was a case of the thief crying “thief”?
When the two were finally separated, they were both a mess. The woman’s hair was disheveled, her face swollen from the slap.
The man’s face was covered in scratches, his skin broken. It made everyone wince.
Then they felt a sense of schadenfreude.
Serves them right!
Neither of them was any good. What a fine display of dogs biting dogs.
From their shouting and fighting, everyone pieced together the whole story.
The man was indeed the woman’s cousin, but the relationship was distant.
They weren’t just cousins—he was also her blind date, and they were in the process of getting to know each other.
That’s why the man had been so submissive around her, always yielding to her demands.
But the woman’s temper was terrible. During their interactions, she treated him like a dog.
The reason he stole the money was partly out of greed and partly out of resentment.
In the end, both were taken away by the train police.
The carriage quieted down, but everyone’s attention turned to Song Wei and Lin Zhen—and the little puppy.
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