Chapter 4

That was how he gained control over so many victims, boys and girls alike.

Zijian was one of them.

…

Hu Yue made more money than ever.

His ambitions grew.

He started another gang, drawing in other children who cared only about having fun.

At the same time, he wore his victims down, forcing them to support him with regular payments.

After a while, he grew bored.

Now that he had money, he wanted a new thrill.

Motorcycles.

Riding looked cool.

With the money he had extorted, he and his friends bought several used motorcycles.

Every few days, they went into the nearby mountains to race at night, copying Initial D.

That night, Zijian was forced to go with them.

What they called keeping the bike balanced meant that each racer carried a passenger.

Zijian had no choice.

So he told me he was going to a birthday party.

In reality, he was dragged onto Hu Yue’s motorcycle.

To stop him panicking or falling off, Hu Yue even used plastic cable ties to fasten his arms and legs to the bike.

…

That was the night Hu Yue crashed.

He was thrown against a tree and suffered only minor injuries.

Zijian was tied down.

He could not get free.

He went over the cliff with the motorcycle.

After hearing the police account, I could barely think.

I could not understand how a child still in middle school could be so vicious.

So despicable.

The moment I got home, I contacted a lawyer and began preparing legal action.

I made a silent vow.

Even if it cost me everything I owned, I would make Hu Yue pay with his life.

Only then did I discover that the world was not as simple as I had thought.

I went to many lawyers.

Every one of them shook their head after hearing what I wanted.

They all told me the same thing.

Under the law at the time, minors—especially those under sixteen—would generally not bear criminal responsibility.

At most, he would be sent to a reformatory.

Even then, after a period of “education,” he would be released.

Free to harm others again.

What was wrong with the world?

I had always believed the law distinguished right from wrong.

If the killer was not at fault, who was?

My son?

He was lying in a morgue.

He could not answer.

Was I the one in the wrong?

I found no answer.

I kept going from office to office, consulting almost every leading lawyer in the city.

I wanted only one thing.

Justice.

But every visit ended in disappointment.

Every lawyer shook their head helplessly.

Finally, one asked me, “Mr. Wu, think carefully. If all you want is a life for a life, even the best lawyer in the world cannot get you the outcome you want. The law is what it is.

“Your son is gone. But you still have to live.

“You have parents. A wife. Think of them.

“Try to get as much compensation as you can.

“Then let it go.”

Yes.

Everyone told me to take the money and leave it at that.

But I truly did not understand.

A life for a life. A debt must be repaid.

How had something accepted for countless generations suddenly ceased to apply?

Was I wrong?

Or had the world become so unfamiliar that I no longer recognized it?

…

Later, when I mentioned Zijian to a friend in the police, he hesitated for a long time before telling me something.

The day Hu Yue was arrested, during questioning, he had asked:

“Officer, I’m not even fifteen yet. That means I won’t be sentenced, right?

“I heard the law protects you if you’re underage. Even if you kill someone, they can’t make you pay with your life. Is that true?”

His expression…

As though he had done something trivial.

Not a trace of regret.

…

Before long, the investigation ended.

Manslaughter. Extortion. Sexual assault.

The charges were suffocating to hear. The case was passed to the judicial authorities.

But because minors were involved, the outcome was much as the lawyers had predicted.

In the end, it would most likely be settled through civil proceedings.

…

My son’s body was taken to the funeral home.

He was cremated three days later.

Through those days, I moved like a man without a soul.

I could not accept that he was dead.

But however hard I tried to escape it, his body lay in the middle of the mourning hall.

I had to look.

My wife and mother-in-law were already in poor health. The shock made them ill.

I had to care for them through my own grief.

Fortunately, we had always treated people well. Friends and neighbors helped us a great deal.

Without them, I do not know how I would have survived.

No one else in this family can collapse, I told myself.

…

Three days later, at the funeral, my wife cried until she fainted.

When she woke, she seemed to have become someone else.

One moment she wept. The next she laughed.

Then she began saying things that made no sense.

She said she had seen our son.

He had not left us.

I rushed her to the hospital.

What the doctors told me left me feeling as though I had fallen into an abyss.

They had not yet made a definite diagnosis, but based on their experience, they suspected a psychiatric disorder brought on by trauma.

Our small city could not treat it.

We would have to go somewhere larger.

Even then, recovery was unlikely to be quick.

She might need treatment for a long time.

…

So there were experiences in this world that could be this cruel.

This hopeless.

And still, I had to go on living.

…

In a moment of rage, I went to a hardware shop and bought a bone cleaver.

I spent the night sharpening it.

If the law could not give my son justice, I would do it myself.

I wanted Hu Yue to pay in blood.

But just as I reached his door and was about to act, my phone rang.

My mother-in-law.

She did not know I had gone away.

Worried, she asked if something had happened to me.

In the two or three days I had been absent, my wife had suffered eight episodes.

The doctor said her condition might deteriorate at any moment. We should transfer her to another hospital as soon as possible.

…

That brought me back to my senses.

I was more than a father bent on revenge.

I had a family.

If I killed Hu Yue, it would be a life for a life.

But how would my parents live afterward?

My wife?

I had come to his door full of fury.

I went home in silence.

All along the dark road, my tears kept falling.

Dad is useless.

I can’t avenge you.

I thought that if Zijian could see me from the next world, he would blame me too.

…

Afterward, I took my wife from place to place, looking for treatment.

Our savings quickly ran out.

We had to live on the compensation paid by Hu Yue’s family.

And her treatment was far from over.

What a cruel joke fate could play.

…

When the university learned what had happened, they were deeply sympathetic.

They organized collections more than once to help us through.

They made allowances at work and supported me wherever they could.

They even gave me favorable consideration when academic titles were being reviewed.

That was how I became an associate professor before forty.

I have always been grateful.

…

Nearly half a year passed.

Slowly, I began to emerge from the darkness.

For a time, I put aside my hatred.

The older members of our family began to recover too.

My wife improved enough to leave hospital and return home, though she would need long-term medication to control her illness.

Even that was a mercy.

…

Life gradually returned to its familiar course.

I put revenge out of my mind for a while.

Sometimes I still woke in the middle of the night and cried.

But I kept telling myself:

It will pass.

Time will heal it.

It did help numb me a little.

I drifted through another year that way.

Until now.

That was where my recollection ended.

That day, Song Yi and I drank ourselves senseless.

I knew that for a father who had buried his child, words of comfort were useless.

Only alcohol could dull the pain for a little while.

It would solve nothing.

But at least it did something.

He understood my situation.

Our experiences were frighteningly alike.

Only he had been a little more fortunate.

He had found Song Jia’s diary. He had contacted the headmaster.

The school had promised to take the matter seriously.

Silently, I hoped he would get what he wanted.

That Song Jia could rest in peace.

That the truth would come out.

It was a prayer.

And the blessing of a father who knew the same grief.

…

8

Professor Wu’s eyes filled again.

He paused and wiped them with a handkerchief.

I felt suddenly at a loss.

Something about this was wrong.

It could not be as simple as that.

There was more he hadn’t told me.

A vague uneasiness began to creep over me.

“What is it, Miss Su?”

He seemed to notice the change in me.

“Professor Wu… I don’t know… There’s so much to take in. I’m having trouble keeping up… But something feels strange. Hu Yue… wasn’t he the boy Song Yi killed? Why? What did you do to make Song Yi willing to avenge your son?”

I felt peculiar.

Not emotionally.

Physically.

My head seemed clouded. However hard I tried, I could not grasp the heart of the story.

I thought and struggled to find the words, but the truth always seemed one step beyond me.

That fog, that sense of reaching for something I couldn’t touch, made me irritable.

Even breathing felt difficult.

“I know what you’re asking.”

Professor Wu smiled faintly.

“Song Yi avenged my son. But he paid a terrible price. In the end, he died himself.

“So what did he get out of it?”

Without waiting for an answer, he went on, almost speaking to himself.

“Of course you can’t work it out. I haven’t told you the whole truth yet.

“Don’t worry. There’s still a little time.

“We’re nearly at the end.”

9

Professor Wu’s Story—The Truth

Remember when I first met Song Yi?

We were barely acquaintances, let alone friends.

So why did I go to his home?

Because I read a newspaper article and felt sorry for him?

No.

I had a purpose.

I left that out before.

That was why you felt something didn’t fit.

Now I will tell you everything.

You will know what we did in those mad years.

…

It was the summer of 1999, not long after Song Jia’s fall.

My first visit to Song Yi’s home.

I learned the full story behind her death.

He had found evidence that tied it closely to bullying.

He was a simple, honest man.

In one sense, he had accepted that his daughter was gone.

But he was stubborn too.

He wanted justice.

He wanted the bully to pay dearly.

To him, a killer should pay with a life.

That was an eternal truth.

But what did reality have to offer?

The bully, Moon, was only twelve or thirteen.

The law treated juvenile offenders leniently. A child so young would scarcely face criminal responsibility at all.

And Song Jia had fallen herself.

Whatever indirect causes there might have been, Moon had not killed her directly.

So even with evidence, media attention, public outrage, the outcome would not change.

The instigator would escape any real punishment.

That was the truth.

That was the protection the law gave her.

However cruel it seemed, it would not change.

…

That day, as we drank and spoke about our children, I told him that brutal truth.

That was why I had come.

I had been thinking about a plan for a long time.

A plan that might bring my son justice.

Let him rest.

But I could not do it alone.

I needed someone with the same purpose.

Someone like Song Yi.

…

I told him the plan.

He was appalled.

He called me a madman.

A devil.

He would never cooperate.

Even when I explained that the case would ultimately be ruled an accident, he wanted nothing to do with it.

He believed the police would uncover the truth.

My plan abandoned both law and morality.

Even if we got what we wanted, he said, could people who did such a thing still call themselves human?

I knew it was mad.

Extreme.

Even sick.

I had prepared myself for rejection.

At last, I stopped talking.

We drank until we were senseless.

…

I thought the plan had probably failed.