Chapter 4

Lâm Nhiễm no longer held anything back.

She said she had investigated me and discovered that I had changed pen names several times since returning to China.

Why?

I paused.

What was so remarkable about changing a pen name?

“So I changed it. Do I need to hold a press conference?”

She saw it differently.

She explained in detail that when a popular mystery writer suddenly changed his name, something significant must have happened.

I told her I simply didn't want too much attention on Xuyên Xuyên and me. I wanted a quiet life.

Disbelief was written all over her face.

“Is it really that simple?”

She thought I was changing my identity to hide, perhaps because I had committed a crime and feared the police.

She said she had followed my wife's case. The foreign police had announced that the fire was deliberately set.

Yet less than an hour after it happened, I had vanished.

Unable to find me, they had left the case unresolved.

Forensic examination showed that all three victims had been killed with a weapon before their bodies burned.

She stared at me.

“How long will you keep pretending?”

I glanced at the pendulum clock on the wall and laughed.

“What an imagination. You should write novels. It's a waste of talent otherwise.

“All speculation. You don't have a shred of evidence.

“I was already preparing to return to China on business that day. When the fire broke out, I was on my way to the airport. I have an alibi.

“I only learned what happened to my wife and son after I arrived. I nearly collapsed. I wished I could have died with them.

“But I was so bitter about her cheating that I decided never to return to that painful place. I stayed in China.”

Every word was true.

Whether she believed it was her choice.

“If you had an alibi,” she said with a cold smile, “why are you so certain the man who died in the house was her lover?”

Damn.

I'd let it slip.

I stammered, unable to answer.

A powerful unease spread through me.

She noticed immediately.

Without warning, she pulled a length of fishing line from her pocket.

Before I could react, the cold line was tight around Xuyên Xuyên's neck.

His face went white with fear, but he didn't dare make a sound.

My heart leaped into my throat.

“What are you doing?”

Fear and fury crashed over me at once.

Regret overwhelmed me.

Why had I let this woman into my home?

She really had come to drag me into hell.

But for my son's safety, I could only give in.

“Please, don't get upset! Ask whatever you want. I'll tell you everything. Please don't hurt my son!”

I shook all over, begging desperately.

She smiled faintly.

“Your wife, that man, and your son.

“You killed them all, didn't you?”

The question tore open the darkest corner of my memory.

I couldn't remain calm.

I collapsed onto the sofa.

“Yes! It was bad enough that the bitch was always busy with work. Then she brought a man into my own home.

“And I came back unexpectedly and caught them!”

The memory flooded in.

That day, I had been about to fly back to China.

Since it was a holiday and I had time to spare, I went home to give my wife a present before heading to the airport.

But the moment I opened the door, I saw something that made my blood boil.

She was talking intimately with a strange man.

He held an elegant gift box and was handing it to her.

I lost all reason.

I rushed into the kitchen, grabbed a cleaver, and hacked at the adulterous pair.

Then, to conceal my crime, I set the house on fire.

As she listened, Lâm Nhiễm ground her teeth.

“What proof did you have that he was her lover?”

“What more proof did I need?”

The words escaped me.

“She was beautiful. Men were always pursuing her. And I saw him bring her a gift with my own eyes.

“Worse, my son called him ‘Dad.’”

Her face grew darker by the second.

She shook with rage, her gaze seeming ready to devour me.

“That lover existed only in your imagination!

“He was my husband!

“I know he wasn't having an affair!”

She was almost screaming through her tears.

“What...?”

My head rang.

“W-what did you say?”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

When she spoke again, every word carried an indelible hatred.

“You lunatic! You murderous bastard!

“My husband and I were so good to your family.

“I treated your condition. I helped keep it under control so you wouldn't have to be hospitalized.

“We even became your son's godparents.

“And this was how you repaid us?

“It was a local holiday.

“I prepared a gift and asked my husband to drop it off at your house on his way.

“That kindness killed him.

“He ran into someone like you.

“He was only bringing a present, and you thought he was there to sleep with your wife.

“Your son called him ‘Godfather.’

“You chose to hear only ‘Father.’”

She suddenly took out a pocket watch and swung it before my eyes.

“Look into my eyes.

“Remember carefully.

“What really happened that day?”

Why was everything so different from what I had always believed?

I clutched my head, swaying.

“Impossible...

“It can't be...”

I muttered.

I couldn't accept such a cruel truth.

My head felt ready to split.

I was falling apart.

It seemed my illness was flaring up again.

13

The pendulum clock stopped swinging.

The pocket watch was put away.

I came back to myself.

Only then did I notice that Lâm Nhiễm's phone had been lit up on the coffee table all along, showing a call in progress.

Stranger still, Xuyên Xuyên, who had gone white with terror at the fishing line, now seemed completely unafraid of her.

On the contrary, he was very close to her.

The two of them seemed to have planned this, acting out a play before my eyes.

I swallowed my anger and sneered.

“If I refuse to confess, what can you do?”

Before I finished, the front door burst open with a crash.

Police rushed in and immediately handcuffed me.

“Lưu Vĩ, you're suspected of intentional homicide. Come with us!”

The lead officer held up an arrest warrant.

I froze.

What had I just said?

“Officers, is there some mistake?”

I hurried to explain.

“We'll discuss that at the station.”

They ignored my explanation and took me away.

At the detention center, I finally took my medication regularly. My mind cleared a little.

The next time I saw Lâm Nhiễm, she wore a white coat.

Xuyên Xuyên stood beside her.

“Mom, that bad man can never hurt us again, right?”

He pressed close to her and asked timidly.

Mom?

Why was he calling her Mom?

She stroked his head.

“Be good. He won't have another chance.”

Then she turned toward me, her gaze full of complicated feelings.

“Lưu Vĩ, do you remember me?”

From the moment she entered my home, I had felt something familiar about her.

Yet no matter how carefully I looked, I couldn't place her.

She removed her long wig and glasses, revealing neat, short hair.

Now I could clearly see those bright, almond-shaped eyes.

So familiar.

With her prompting, I finally remembered.

Overseas, she had been my attending doctor.

She had controlled my condition well enough that I didn't need hospitalization, only monitoring and treatment at home.

Through frequent visits, our families had become close.

She and my wife often exchanged gifts.

My wife had been an excellent lawyer.

She loved my talent and was a devoted reader of my novels.

Years earlier, she had defended me and helped me escape conviction.

Ultimately, everything had started with my suspicious nature.

Before marrying her, I had had a girlfriend.

My constant suspicions made us quarrel over everything, big and small.

One particularly fierce argument became physical.

I accidentally beat her to death.

The lawyer who defended me was the woman I later married.

Her self-defense argument won me an acquittal.

But afterward, my suspicion didn't improve.

It grew worse.

Whenever my wife interacted with men younger than me, more handsome than me, stronger than me, I became restless and jealous to the point of madness.

Then came that unexpected return home.

Overstimulated, I suffered an episode of schizophrenia.

The result was an irreversible tragedy.

Putting those fragments together, I thought I had finally completed the picture.

But Lâm Nhiễm's eyes remained cold as ice.

Calmly, she told the officer beside her, “Make the arrangements. Transfer him to a psychiatric hospital.”

I screamed myself hoarse and struggled wildly.

“Why?

“I remember everything now!

“Why are you still treating me like a madman?

“Just because I killed people?

“They were the ones having an affair!”

She must be using her position to take revenge.

Reality immediately brought me up short.

Everything I had experienced had been an imaginary world of my own making.

During the handover, she coldly explained my “illness” to the police and the hospital doctors.

“Once I began to suspect what he'd done, I wanted to kill him myself.

“But I couldn't.

“He had to answer for his crimes under the law.

“After calming down, I began collecting clues wherever I could.

“When I learned he'd fled to China, I made arrangements and followed immediately.

“For a long time, finding him was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

“Then one day, I read a mystery story in a magazine.

“The writing style was so familiar that I immediately identified him.

“Following the clues, I discovered he'd become so delusional that he'd written himself into his fiction, imagining himself as the ruthless killer ‘Long Long.’

“More absurdly, he imagined he had a surviving younger son.

“Perhaps, deep down, he couldn't accept that his son was dead.

“Looking at my own son, I began to form a bold plan.

“After discussing it with him, we decided to take a gamble.

“He agreed to take the risk and pose as the ‘Xuyên Xuyên’ in the story. We arranged for him to enter an orphanage and wait for Lưu Vĩ to ‘adopt’ him.

“The whole process was full of holes.

“The adoption procedure, for example.

“Or my son's age. He was clearly too old to fit.

“But Mr. Lưu's mental state was so unstable that he noticed none of those obvious inconsistencies.

“Tracking a murderer across borders is extremely difficult.

“Fortunately, my persistence finally paid off.

“My husband couldn't be allowed to die without justice.”

In the end, it was all over.

Lâm Nhiễm took her son to another city to start a new life.

Before leaving, she told him, “Never give all your kindness to anyone.

“Because you'll never know whether the person before you is an angel...

“Or a devil.”

As for me, the Chinese police handed me over to the authorities overseas.

The jury's final verdict awaited me.

On the day I was led into the police car, the scenery rushed backward beyond the window.

Like my absurd, sinful life, too small to be worth mentioning.

I slowly closed my eyes.

Then suddenly opened them wide.

No.

In the photo album on my phone, there was clearly a picture of a family of four.

I really did have two sons!