Chapter 5

Meng Wei's eyes widened. He began struggling fiercely.

I drove him into the mountains.

He wouldn't settle down. I had to give him a sedative injection.

Looking at him unconscious, I found myself remembering Zhuang Xinyue when she died.

22.

At seventeen, she accidentally learned what her father did.

She couldn't accept it. Couldn't stop him.

In the end, she drove herself into depression.

She tried every way she could to kill herself.

As her bodyguard, I knew I would be punished if she died.

So I watched her twenty-four hours a day.

She was miserable.

Sometimes she still smiled and comforted me.

She died at eighteen anyway.

In her favorite white dress, she lay in a bath covered with roses and cut her wrists.

The scene was beautiful.

Very beautiful.

So beautiful I still remembered it.

It looked like suicide.

The organization's leader still turned his fury on me.

The bereaved middle-aged man pointed a gun at my head.

“Don't think I don't know what you did! Remember who taught you!”

I didn't argue.

I copied Xinyue's manner and expression, looked at him, and begged.

He didn't pull the trigger.

After staring at me for a long time, he said:

“You took my daughter from me.

“You'll become her.”

Operations. Medication. Imitating every gesture and expression.

Over a year, I became a Zhuang Xinyue no one could tell from the original.

For six years.

Until the organization was dismantled.

Even now, I sometimes couldn't distinguish whether I was Zhuang Xinyue or Shen Qingyuan.

23.

I put the unconscious Meng Wei into the cage I had prepared and suspended it at the cliff's edge.

Then I only had to wait for Shen An.

I had left him a letter at the café.

For Meng Wei, he would come.

After all, Meng Wei hadn't been fully cleared.

Clouds rolled in the distance, obscuring the sun.

Poor weather.

Not a good day to leave.

Shen An arrived sooner than expected.

I toyed with the remote in my hand.

It controlled the hook above the cage. One press, and Meng Wei would plunge over the cliff with it.

“Zhuang Xinyue. Where's Meng Wei?”

His hand rested on the gun behind his waist.

I tilted my head toward the drop.

He glanced anxiously at it.

“What do you want? If you're avenging your father, come for me.”

So he'd investigated Xinyue's identity.

I laughed.

Hearing those words from him was indescribably funny.

“Officer Shen, there's something I've never understood. No one I killed was innocent. What's wrong with someone like me?”

“You broke the law!”

“The law? People made it, didn't they? If they can make laws, why can't I?”

If the law marked the limits of morality, wouldn't there only be more people like me?

“See that cage? Does it look familiar?”

His expression changed.

“What do you know? Where… where is he?”

His voice trembled.

“Dead.

“He died at nine. I carved the flesh off him, piece by piece.”

“Zhuang Xinyue! You monster!”

I had angered him.

I held up the remote and explained that one press would send Meng Wei down the cliff.

Sirens sounded below.

I pretended to be distracted.

Shen An seized his chance and lunged for the remote.

In the struggle, it fell near the cliff edge.

He threw me down and handcuffed me.

What he didn't know was that, during those six months he kept me at home, these had been my toys.

He hurried to check on Meng Wei.

He never noticed me slipping free.

In that brief moment, I made a show of lunging for the remote.

“Sir! She's Shen Qingyuan!”

Meng Wei's shout came with the gunshot.

Too late.

I fell backward toward the cliff.

Shen An stared, disbelieving.

His lips trembled as he cried my name, heartbroken.

How lovely.

No one had called me that for so long.

Officer Shen, you never imagined the final criminal you shot dead would be your own son, did you?

24.

Everything before me slowed.

So very slowly.

I remembered what Xinyue had said before she died.

“Xiaoyuan, I know you've always wanted to kill me. I love beautiful things. Let me die beautifully.”

I said nothing.

Only nodded.

Then I carried her into the rose-filled bath and cut her wrists myself.

Her blood slowly reddened the water.

She smiled and told me many things.

She didn't blame me for showing her the truth about life.

She only hoped I would stop casually killing innocent people.

I sat beside the bath for a long, long time.

Until the only breathing in the room was mine.

Only then did I quietly answer:

“All right.”

She could never reply.

An unfamiliar feeling rose in me.

Then suffocation, as though I were sinking into a deep sea.

I clutched my chest, gulping air. Tears rolled from my eyes.

Can you see, Xinyue?

I've kept my promise.

Every person I killed afterward was guilty.

Can you see?

You loved beauty so much. How could I let your lovely face fade on my body?

No one will ever find us again.

At last, we'll meet in the kingdom of death.

Epilogue

By the time the officers arrived, Shen Qingyuan had fallen.

Shen An knelt at the cliff's edge, utterly broken.

An officer quickly picked up the remote.

“Captain… there are no batteries in this.”

Police found a mysterious website on Meng Wei's sister's phone.

When they opened it, it was no longer active.

Despite their efforts, the search led nowhere.

Late at night.

Inside an apartment building somewhere.

Mouse clicks sounded unusually clear in the silence.

Soon, an electronic voice came from the speaker beside the computer.

“Still suffering because of scum the law can't punish?

“Still furious at cowards hiding behind their keyboards?

“Still in pain over the dark corners sheltered by power?

“Didi Murder. At your service.

“Didi~”

THE END