Chapter 1

During a massage, a client told me about a criminal case from many years ago.

It was a disturbing, brutal story. But I could not understand why, halfway through telling it, he suddenly began to cry.

I hurried to hand him a tissue.

“The case has been gathering dust for years, and it was settled long ago. Why does it still upset you so much?”

He told me that the tragedy was nothing like the grim, absurd story everyone thought they knew.

In fact… it had never really ended.

And now, it was time.

…

I had never met a client as strange as Professor Wu.

My name is Su Ranran. I am thirty-eight, and I provide massage treatments in clients’ homes.

I had known Professor Wu for almost three months. He was a regular.

He was a retired university lecturer, and everything he said had a rather literary air. Listening to him was like watching one of those educational programs from the seventies or eighties: solemn, orderly, precise to the last detail. Calling him Professor Wu felt a little friendlier.

He booked me to come to his home at least two or three times a week. An old injury from his youth had left him with a bad back, he said, and massage was the only thing that eased it.

But I had been doing this for six or seven years. I had treated more clients with bad backs than I could count.

Usually, I could locate the injury by touch. I would take care to avoid it so I didn’t hurt them.

Professor Wu was different.

However hard I rubbed or pressed, he seemed perfectly fine. He hardly ever even winced.

Why pretend to have a problem?

I was curious, but people had their quirks. It wasn’t my place to ask.

He said he was excessively particular about cleanliness and didn’t want me treating other clients on the same day. Whenever he booked me, he insisted on paying for the entire day.

At first, that annoyed me. One massage took an hour. Why should he take up my whole day?

But he paid generously. One booking from him brought in more than I usually made in three to five days.

For that kind of money, of course I agreed.

It only made me more curious, though.

After years in this line of work, I had seen just about everything. Men who used massage as an excuse to grope me, or asked for “extra time” and other services, were hardly uncommon.

At first, I assumed Professor Wu was another of those lechers.

To be honest, I wasn’t especially prudish. For the right price, I was willing.

But he only had his massage and made conversation. He never crossed the line. Even when I hinted, he showed no interest.

What did he want?

I could never work it out.

The only explanation I could come up with was that rich people really did live in another world.

That morning, he called again and asked me to come over.

I changed into slippers and chose the essential oil I would use.

He lived on the sixth floor of an old apartment block. There weren’t many tall buildings nearby, so the place got plenty of light.

From the living-room window, I could see the sign for Xinhua Bookstore. He said the university where he had taught was another two or three kilometers away, around a corner. He had spent his whole working life there.

By the time I had chosen the oil, he was lying on the sofa, ready for his massage.

“Miss Su, shall I tell you a local story today? I was selling some old newspapers a few days ago and came across a case. Rather interesting.”

“Go ahead, Professor.”

During our sessions, apart from discussing his life or mine, he liked telling stories about crime and the law.

They didn’t interest me much, but it was better than an awkward silence.

“This happened quite close by.”

He pointed out the window.

“Near that bookshop. The suspect died outside a school.”

…

Professor Wu’s Story

This is an old case, buried for nearly twenty-five years now.

There were no bewildering twists. On the contrary, it was straightforward. The evidence was conclusive, and the killer was caught and dealt with long ago.

It was a murder.

The victim was a boy named Hu Yue, who had just started high school.

One evening he went out and disappeared. His family was frantic, but no one could find him.

A week passed before they did.

His body was found halfway up a small nearby hill, in a gully beside a stream.

I didn’t see it myself. A colleague told me about it. He lived close by and had gone to look.

The scene was horrific.

It was late summer. The worst heat had passed, but the weather was not cool yet.

The child had been stuffed into a woven sack. By the time it was opened, his body had begun to decompose.

Even several meters beyond the police cordon, the stench was overpowering. Rotting flesh, stream water, rainwater, and death seemed to have combined into some appalling chemical reaction.

My colleague thought for a long time before trying to describe it.

“I’ve never smelled anything that foul… Like pork left to rot for days, but sour too… Whatever it was, I never want to smell it again.”

When they opened the sack, they found a boy of sixteen or seventeen.

His body was covered in injuries. Days in the sun had distorted it until it was barely recognizable.

As the forensic examiner lifted him into a body bag, one arm fell loose under its own weight and swung gently in the breeze.

But his eyes remained open.

They seemed to stare at every curious onlooker.

As though he were committing each face to memory, waiting for nightfall to return as a vengeful ghost and claim their lives.

His relatives cried until they fainted. The police led them away.

A few hours later, the forensic examiner left and the body was taken away. Only a handful of officers remained to guard the scene.

Some of the bolder spectators approached.

There was nothing left but flattened grass and irregular wet patches—blood or fluid from the body, no one could tell—staining the ground yellow and dark brown.

…

I sat stunned for a long time after hearing it.

The description of the boy’s eyes, especially, frightened me in a way I couldn’t explain.

I had always been timid, always lived a quiet, orderly life. When had I ever seen anything so horrifying?

I barely slept for days.

…

It was the year 2000.

The media was not as developed then. News did not spread at today’s speed. People mostly passed it along by word of mouth.

Even so, within half a month, the whole city knew.

The seriousness of the crime put enormous pressure on the police. They eventually decided to appeal through the media for information from the public.

It worked at once.

Within days, concerned residents had sent in everything they considered unusual from the preceding fortnight.

Letters containing possible leads poured into police offices large and small. The information delivered in person was beyond counting.

Officers worked day and night, investigating, analyzing, and putting it all together.

Before long, they had reconstructed the case.

And identified the killer.

A thirty-two-year-old local man named Song Yi.

He was on the run.

You see the power of the media.

But there is a darker side to it too—and that is part of its peculiar fascination.

Once an event becomes public, it acquires countless perspectives and interpretations.

Put simply, the very same murder will provoke entirely different feelings and actions in different people.

Honest people go to the police with what they know, hoping to help the investigation.

Frauds take advantage, claiming to have seen the killer and demanding the victim’s family pay a reward before they will say more.

Anxious people, parents in particular, fear he will strike again. They worry about their families and children.

Gossips take what the police release, add their own speculation, and turn it into a story to tell others.

…

Isn’t the human imagination extraordinary?

Different viewpoints produce endless thoughts, and those thoughts soon become tangled up with self-interest.

Within days, after passing from mouth to mouth and changing each time, the story had brought every side of human nature to the surface.

Our little city fell into turmoil.

People were frightened. Rumors flew.

Soon, wanted posters for Song Yi covered the streets.

Parents kept their children home from school.

Local police canceled their leave and went out to maintain order and keep residents safe.

Even shopkeepers were afraid. Many packed up early as soon as darkness fell.

I was investigated too, though I had done nothing.

I had a connection to the victim, so the police questioned me.

But they established that I had been away chairing a conference at the time of the murder. With that alibi confirmed, I was cleared.

…

As I remember it, that state of constant alarm lasted until nearly the end of summer.

More than half a month, if I’m not mistaken.

Song Yi’s parents were dead. His wife had divorced him several years earlier.

His daughter had died in a fall a year before.

His only remaining relative was a younger sister with intellectual and physical disabilities, who had been placed in a specialist residential school.

He had almost no ties left. No obvious vulnerability.

Identity checks were looser then. The systems of verification we have now were not widespread.

With a reliable fixer and a little money, false papers and travel tickets could be arranged.

Even the police began to lower their guard.

Then a local station received a tip.

Someone had spotted Song Yi still in the city.

He was even hanging around near a secondary school.

…

It was overcast, with a light drizzle.

I had just bought some books at Xinhua Bookstore and stopped at a grocery shop for a bottle of yogurt to quench my thirst.

In those days, yogurt didn’t usually come in plastic tubs or pouches as it does now. Most of it was sold in cloudy white glass bottles, which you returned to the shop after drinking.

I was standing outside, about to open mine, when I noticed something strange.

A crowd had gathered around a nearby school.

It was growing steadily, and the noise was getting louder.

Curious, I walked over to ask what was happening.

Then a shot rang out.

Bang!

Sharp and deafening, its echo seemed to linger.

The crowd fell utterly silent.

Only after several startled sparrows took flight did people seem to wake up and begin screaming.

Someone shouted, “The police shot the murderer!”

The uproar began again.

I pushed through the crowd and finally learned what had happened.

From a distance, I saw an officer holding a sobbing child, apparently trying to comfort him.

Another officer stood with his gun still trained on a criminal who had fallen and was no longer breathing, as though afraid the man might spring up and attack again.

From where I stood, I had a clear view of his face.

I had seen the wanted posters.

It was Song Yi.

Dark red blood ran from his head and slowly spread into a pool.

His eyes were wide open too, like those of the boy he had killed.

They stared at me.

At everyone there.

I stood frozen.

The yogurt bottle slipped from my hand and shattered on the ground.

A colleague had a relative in the police who had read Song Yi’s file.

Song Yi was a local man, a fitter in a factory. Both his parents were dead.

His younger sister had intellectual and physical disabilities and had lived in a specialist residential school from an early age.

Five years earlier, his wife had divorced him and moved away, citing incompatible personalities. She had left their little daughter in his care.

A year before the murder, his daughter had fallen from a height and died at the scene.

The police had ruled it an accident.

Taken as a whole, his life could only be called unfortunate.

Relatives and coworkers described him as withdrawn. He had no friends and little contact with his extended family.

Outside work, he had no interests.

His daughter’s death had hit him especially hard.

Neighbors and coworkers said he became a different person afterward. He would sit staring into space, sometimes muttering to himself.

He insisted his daughter had not died in an accident.

Someone had killed her.

He knew who.

When curious people asked who it was, what the killer’s name was, he could never give an answer.

He only repeated, “It was the moon… the moon… the moon…”

Then, two or three months before the murder, he abruptly resigned from his job. He said he was going back to his hometown.

After that, he disappeared.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say no one cared where he had gone.

He had always been an unremarkable man. After his tragedy, he became even more withdrawn. With no friends, he attracted still less notice.

Looking back, even the reason he gave for resigning was odd.

He was a local. His family had lived here for generations.

What hometown was he going back to?

The police could only conclude that his mental state had already begun to deteriorate.

A disturbed person, after all, need not follow ordinary logic. His words and actions could be unpredictable.

Then the murder brought him back into public view.

Song Yi had brutally killed a high-school student, Hu Yue, dumped the body, and fled.

But he had not left the city.

For half a month, he wandered near another school, eating and sleeping out in the open.

One day, he went into a grocery shop. The owner thought he resembled the wanted man.

He calmly took Song Yi’s money, waited for him to leave, and called the police.

That led to what happened next.

School was letting out.

Song Yi resisted arrest, seized a student as a hostage, and tried to escape.

He was shot dead at the scene.

With him dead, the police could no longer ask why he had murdered an innocent child, or why he had lingered near a different school for so long.

There would be no answers.

In the end, the conclusion was that his tragic life, compounded by his daughter’s death, had become more than he could bear. He had suffered a breakdown and begun taking revenge on society.

That was how it ended.

Hastily arrived at, carelessly wrapped up.

The end of his life as well.

…