Chapter 5

To them, a job was a job, so long as it earned money.

This place paid more.

More money came home.

They didn’t want to lose that income.

Hoàng Đình had powerful backing.

I don’t know how they did it, but every girl brought there had legitimate employment papers.

Even an investigation would find nothing wrong.

So it made no difference whether I begged for help or reported it to the police.

No one believed me.

All I got was indifference.

Or a beating.

Eventually, I learned something.

No one could help me.

No one.

Afterward, I gradually grew used to the work.

Other girls were brought in.

Not one escaped the same fate.

The harder they fought, the worse they suffered.

If you were a little more obedient, you could spare yourself some pain.

Some girls disappeared shortly after arriving.

I didn’t know whether they had been taken somewhere else…

Or died.

After too long in that place, I felt like an empty shell.

I could even calmly advise other girls not to resist.

Be good.

Go along with it.

Until…

I met Hiểu Nguyệt.

She was so much like the girl I had been.

Determined not to submit.

Perhaps it was because we came from the same place.

Perhaps because she could have had a better future than mine.

I tried everything to protect her.

I failed.

I was gone for only half a day.

When I returned, she had vanished.

Everyone at the club kept silent.

I searched like a madwoman.

In the end, the manager warned me off.

He gave me some money.

He said an important man had taken a liking to her and taken her away.

From then on, I was never to mention her name again.

Later, they discovered I had a sexually transmitted disease.

Ha.

Before that, I couldn’t escape no matter what I tried.

Now they threw me out themselves.

I went back to my hometown once and met Aunt Mai.

By then, she knew Hiểu Nguyệt was missing.

She was preparing to sell everything and search for her.

She knew we had worked in the same city.

But she didn’t know it was the same club.

She asked me about her daughter.

What did I say then?

“Oh… I’m sorry, Aunt Mai.”

“I don’t know.”

“Hiểu Nguyệt and I didn’t keep in touch much, so I don’t know how she is.”

Perhaps it was punishment for concealing a crime.

My illness grew worse.

It consumed all my savings.

My family drove me out and cut all ties.

I never touched that money.

Seven years later, after all my wandering, I returned to this city.

And met Aunt Mai again.

She had searched for her daughter for seven years.

Despair and suffering had worn her down to skin and bone.

As for me, my illness could not be cured.

I was rotten to the core too.

Hiểu Nguyệt and I should both have had good futures.

Those bastards destroyed everything.

Ground us into the mud.

What gave them the right?

They were far more rotten than I was.

Why should they still live such glittering lives?

I wanted to drag them down.

Grind them into the mud too.

At this point, Chu Viện raised her head and smiled at me.

“Look.”

“This world is a contest to see who’s more rotten.”

“As long as you’re worse than someone else, you have a chance of beating them.”

“As for me…”

“I lost the right to be a good person long ago.”

Chu Viện disclosed the entire plan she and Mai had made.

In fact, she had been the planner.

Mai had carried it out.

After learning the basics about Đại Quyền’s group, she approached the domestic-service agency that worked with the Tôn family.

She bribed its manager and secured a personnel job.

Then she recommended Mai as the family’s nanny.

Over the following year, Chu Viện gathered information about the other six men outside the household.

Inside it, Mai watched Đại Quyền’s every move.

Their revenge had taken a full year.

From the beginning, they had never intended to make a child pay for her father’s sins.

They wanted to create a case sensational enough to draw everyone involved into it.

To use the police to expose the old crime.

Toward that end, they did everything they could.

They rehearsed the child swap and the fall on the bridge countless times.

That was why even the surveillance footage had revealed no sign that Mai was pretending to fall.

And from the beginning, they had never considered simply reporting it to the police.

“Why?” I asked hoarsely.

Chu Viện looked at me and smiled gently.

“Because…”

“It would have been useless.”

“Aunt Mai and I had been disappointed too many times.”

“If, out of all our earlier cries for help, even one had received an answer…”

“Perhaps we would never have reached this point.”

“What we did…”

“Was the last choice we had left.”

My throat was dry.

I could not speak.

At the end of the interview, I asked one final question that had troubled me for a long time.

“…How did you bribe that agency manager?”

Her eyes took on an odd look.

She looked at me and asked:

“Officer Mạnh.”

“A woman like me, with no power or influence…”

“And no money…”

“What do you think I could use to buy off a man?”

She smiled.

Then added:

“But don’t worry.”

“I have plenty of other ways to make people happy.”

“I haven’t fallen so far that I’ve lost my last shred of human decency.”

I all but fled the interview room.

Not long afterward, the sentences were handed down.

Tôn Đại Quyền was convicted of rape and intentional homicide.

He was sentenced to death.

Tiền Thông was convicted of rape, intentional homicide, and shielding offenders.

He received life imprisonment.

The other five men were convicted of rape.

Each received fifteen years.

All were also ordered to compensate the victim’s family.

The total was nearly two million yuan.

Trương Mai was convicted of child kidnapping and fabricating and deliberately spreading false terrorist information.

She received four years.

Chu Viện, as her accomplice, received three.

When Đại Quyền learned he would be executed, he went berserk in court.

He cursed Mai and Chu Viện.

Had he known who they were, he said, he would have killed them long ago.

Then he turned on his wife, Ngô Hồng.

He berated her for giving birth to a useless daughter who had caused all this trouble.

Why hadn’t the girl actually fallen into the river and died?

Now she had cost him his life.

Hồng sat calmly in the public gallery.

She thought of her daughter, safely returned, rushing happily into her arms.

The little girl had even said she wanted to visit Aunt Trương’s house.

A gentle smile touched Hồng’s lips.

The court officers shouted a stern order and escorted Đại Quyền out.

Mai and Chu Viện were both calm.

As though they had long known how it would end and now quietly accepted it.

Perhaps because she had finally found her daughter, Mai looked utterly at peace.

Her color was poor, though.

As she was led away, she turned to say something to Chu Viện.

Then she suddenly collapsed.

The courtroom erupted.

“Aunt Mai!”

Chu Viện rushed toward her, desperate to find out what was wrong.

But the police still forced her away.

…

Not long afterward, I visited Chu Viện to tell her about Mai.

“…These years have been too hard on her.”

“Searching for her daughter wore her out.”

“The doctor says…”

“She doesn’t have much time.”

My throat tightened as I spoke.

I had never imagined this would be how it ended.

Chu Viện stood motionless.

Her eyes quickly reddened.

I couldn’t bear it.

After a moment’s hesitation, I handed her an envelope.

“Aunt Mai asked me to give you this letter.”

“And…”

“The compensation money.”

“She wants you to have all of it.”

“To thank you for everything you did.”

“She says…”

“Neither she nor Hiểu Nguyệt will need it anymore.”

“She hopes that, after you’re released, you’ll take care of yourself.”

“Live a good life.”

“Don’t give up on yourself…”

I couldn’t go on.

Chu Viện broke down completely.

She covered her face and sobbed.

Something constricted inside me.

I looked up at the ceiling.

My mentor was right.

As a police officer, I really shouldn’t let so much personal feeling into a case.

It wasn’t what a good officer should do.

When I left the prison, the sunlight outside was astonishingly bright.

It drove away the chill clinging to me.

…

Someone asked:

What became of the Hoàng Đình Club?

That was another case.

The End.