Perfect Murder: 7 True Major Crime Stories from a Veteran Detective

2. An Unspeakable Profession: Mukbang Broadcaster

No matter where she went, she had to make phone calls. After taking over this case, the first thing I thought of was checking Yang Fang’s call logs from that night.

A person always leaves traces in this world. In a world overrun by mobile phones, checking a phone is one of the fastest ways to understand someone’s life trajectory.

Yang Fang’s call logs weren’t complicated; there were only a dozen or so calls from unknown origins within a month. After calling them one by one, I found that almost all were from delivery drivers. However, asking these riders, who hustle through streets and alleys every day, to recall details about this woman was indeed asking too much of them.

I also checked her online shopping history based on this phone number. Unsurprisingly, it was all women’s items. At least from the shopping list, there was nothing bizarre.

Just as I was staring blankly at the long shopping list, Yang Fang’s parents arrived.

From the two elderly people, I learned that Yang Fang hadn’t contacted her family for a long time. But she rarely interacted with her parents anyway, as they lived far away in another province. Upon hearing the news of their daughter’s disappearance, the two elders immediately took a flight to this unfamiliar city.

This clue also yielded nothing. Yang Fang’s parents couldn’t provide any valuable information. Through their rambling recounting, I could only barely piece together some fragments of Yang Fang’s life. For instance, she had a younger brother; her family was well-off since she was a child, and she hadn’t suffered any hardships, living quite smoothly. After graduating from college, she met her current husband, Li Xiao, through a friend’s introduction. They fell in love and got married. Everything was as plain as water, but fortunately, they had a good relationship, and the two elders were quite satisfied.

Except for one thing.

When I asked about Li Xiao’s profession, a fleeting look of displeasure appeared on the faces of the two elders. This piqued my interest. After skillfully guiding the conversation, I found out that Li Xiao’s job had always been a thorn in their side.

Even I didn’t expect that Li Xiao was actually a live streamer.

This is considered an emerging profession. A smartphone and an internet connection are enough to become an entry-level live streamer. This way of making a living by showcasing oneself in front of a camera has spread like a virus today, when the fingertip internet economy is booming. Practitioners brazenly use all kinds of eye-catching methods in front of the lens to grab attention. Every enthusiastic spectator behind the mobile screen becomes a potential tipper. This not only stimulates the streamers’ desires but also satisfies human nature’s fondness for peeping into others’ lives. It’s just that this kind of peeping is clearly priced and nakedly placed on the scale of money.

To acquire massive wealth, streamers will do almost anything. Various bizarre ways of showcasing are meticulously contrived to satisfy the thirsty desires of people in front of the screen.

I had absolutely no idea Li Xiao was doing live streaming, but I immediately realized he must be considered an internet celebrity of some sort; otherwise, how could he afford to drive a luxury car and live in a downtown apartment?

Yang Fang’s mother expressed with some regret that her son-in-law could be considered a man of striking appearance and successful career, but as an intellectual, it was hard for the elderly woman to accept this way of living. I then learned that Li Xiao made a living by role-playing various identities on camera: a beggar, a tycoon, a corporate elite, a street punk, a rich second generation, a poor third generation, a glib marketer, an honest farmer—there was no character he couldn’t imitate. It was this vivid acting talent that brought him enormous wealth.

The elders also provided another piece of information: Yang Fang originally had a proper job, but after a while, she unexpectedly resigned and started live streaming with Li Xiao. ‘Then what did Yang Fang stream?’ I acutely sensed this might give us some clues.

Only from the elders did I learn that Yang Fang was a mukbang broadcaster.

What is a mukbang broadcast? It’s a type of live stream that attracts viewers by eating in front of the camera.

This world is full of wonders; don’t be surprised by anything that happens. The emergence of mukbang actually has a theoretical basis. For example, one reason is that nowadays, with weight loss being so popular, some people are forced by weight limits and cannot eat and drink to their heart’s content, so they project their feelings onto watching others gorge themselves, thereby satisfying the restless foodie heart deep inside. Of course, some people get hungrier the more they watch, while others feel more satisfied; this varies from person to person.

No wonder she never came to the table to eat. After all, eating facing the camera every single day, she would have long lost her appetite in real life.

But this couldn’t explain Yang Fang’s disappearance, nor the numerous masks she carried with her.

I was completely baffled! I decided to go to Yang Fang’s house for a look. After carefully searching all the traces related to her in this home, I found that she seemed to have decided to leave, packing her things thoroughly clean. In the huge three-bedroom apartment, there was hardly any trace of Yang Fang’s presence, as if she had never lived there.

I felt something was strange and couldn’t help but think of that medium-sized suitcase. Obviously, a normal woman’s belongings couldn’t possibly fit into such a small suitcase. Clearly, there weren’t many clothes in that suitcase, which meant those masks were quite important to Yang Fang—they were things she had to take with her when she left home.

I bluntly tossed this bewilderment to Li Xiao, who sat across from me with a sad face.

Li Xiao’s answer was even more direct. He explicitly stated that Yang Fang also had a studio, and most of her outfits were there. Since Yang Fang hadn’t come home that night, he initially thought she had gone to her studio.

Yang Fang’s studio wasn’t large; it was just a simple one-bedroom apartment. It was piled high with things, heavily congested. Fortunately, it was visible that she was a tidy woman; although there were many things, they were all orderly and well-organized. The strange thing was that there was absolutely no food or cooking ingredients in the entire room. It seemed the food Yang Fang ate during her streams wasn’t cooked by herself.

Besides various clothes and cosmetics, there was also a neat filing cabinet in the room. Judging from the labels on various folders, they were all filled with information related to diet, such as high or low calories, whether there were any taboos after eating, its impact on weight, and even its psychological impact. It seemed Yang Fang didn’t treat live streaming as just play; she treated it as a serious job.

I noticed that all folders were labeled with different colors. A thick stack of materials arranged in the bookcase was very eye-catching. She seemed to be a meticulous person.

I had previously checked Yang Fang’s streaming records. She didn’t have many fans. I had also contacted some of her fans. According to them, her streams were quite proper; she didn’t eat any weird things, just some home-cooked meals, but she ate very delicately, which was very appetizing.

Unexpectedly, I unraveled another mystery that had been troubling me from the fans—the masks.

It turned out that Yang Fang wore masks during her mukbang streams. Aside from her scarlet, sexy lips, the masks seemed to have become part of her streaming content. Fans would discuss her various mask designs with great interest, filled with a mysterious anticipation for the woman behind the mask.

‘These masks give us a desire to pry into her appearance, and it also increases our appetite while watching’ — this was something a fan unintentionally told me.

Appetite and lust are human nature; imagination and desire are indeed always intertwined and bound together. I was startled by my own thought and seemed to remember something. I immediately found restaurant owner Old Zhou and the residential compound’s property management, retrieving the restaurant’s recent dining and supply records as well as surveillance footage, while also taking the compound’s recent property records back to the police station to examine them bit by bit.

The restaurant records showed nothing unusual. The miscellaneous food supply records were complex and chaotic, but they were complete from beginning to end, offering no clues. The only discovery was that Old Zhou claimed he actually knew Yang Fang long ago; she ordered takeout from his restaurant every few days, and had done so many times.

‘Why didn’t you say so earlier!’ My tone sounded a bit harsh, like an interrogation.

Old Zhou looked wronged: ‘I’ve really never seen this woman! If you hadn’t provided her phone number and address today, I wouldn’t even have known that the customer who frequently orders from me was her.’

Yes, Yang Fang was indeed a regular at this restaurant, but she had never shown up in person.

I had nothing to say. After all, nowadays with food delivery being so developed, this was indeed perfectly normal. However, after carefully comparing the ordered menus with some of the food Yang Fang ate during her streams, I found that this restaurant was the source of food for her live broadcasts.

A terrifying deduction suddenly sprang into my mind, startling even myself.

‘Overthinking it, this is impossible.’ I smiled bitterly and patted my head, refocusing my gaze on this small streaming studio.

Later I realized that in that fleeting moment of inspiration, I had actually touched the edge of the truth.

While flipping through the things Yang Fang left behind again, I finally found an anomaly in a thick stack of records.

Yang Fang recorded the time and content of every live stream. Although they were brief words and phrases, it was visible that this was a kind of feedback on the day’s stream, such as the number of fans, the food eaten during the stream, and the level of popularity.

As I flipped through, I sighed with emotion: every industry is not that simple. Usually, people only focus on the massive profits brought by the traffic behind streamers, but ignore the trivial and tedious preparation work they do behind the scenes.

The weird thing appeared right at this time.

I found that Yang Fang’s records stopped seventeen days ago. But I clearly remembered her fans saying that she was still streaming up until the day before her disappearance.

This was a bit abnormal. From the continuity of the records, there was no interruption in the streaming statuses Yang Fang recorded. It could be seen that she was very serious about this point and also possessed a persevering tenacity.

This made the absence of records during this period seem a bit strange. I had a feeling I had found a good entry point. So I quickly gathered a few fans to follow up and understand the situation.

The few fans appeared very excited; after all, as viewers in the same broadcasting room, they had never met each other before. I entered the topic with a seemingly casual chat and slowly learned some interesting things.

For example, almost exactly at the same time the records stopped, some subtle changes occurred to Yang Fang in the live broadcast room. In the fans’ words, she ‘became much more impetuous, and a bit perfunctory during the mukbang.’ This was obviously a move that lost followers. Clearly, Yang Fang realized this too, because a few days later, with the decrease in tippers and viewers’ dissatisfaction, the situation improved, and Yang Fang gradually returned to normal.

I didn’t know what incident happened to Yang Fang during those few days. But clearly, the impact wasn’t big enough to make her give up live streaming.

So, what exactly happened during this time?

Although I obtained a huge question mark, this conversation did not stop there. My idea was confirmed: eating while wearing a mask, partially concealing her face, seemed to increase Yang Fang’s mystery, making the fans’ gaze focus more on her eating appearance, their attention more concentrated, deepening their fascination with those wriggling lips.

‘It’s hard for us to distinguish whether we are salivating over the delicious food or the wriggling lips in front of the camera,’ one fan said with a look of infatuation.