Chapter 1

The year I turned eighteen, my older brother died.

He died in my bed.

He was naked, with a suspicious pool of semen beneath him.

At eight in the evening on July 16, 2018, I was at school, studying.

The classroom for our final-year evening study session was unusually quiet. All I could hear was the scratch of pens on paper.

I sensed someone behind me. My heart sank, and my pen stopped.

Ms. Chen spoke softly at my back.

“Li Sheng, you should go home early today... Your mother just called. Your brother's passed away.”

Tears filled my eyes. Unable to believe it, I spun around to look at her.

She looked shaken, her face full of grief.

“Miss...” My voice caught. “Did my mother say where I should go?”

Ms. Chen collected herself and patted my shoulder.

“The police station on Chengnan Street. Everyone's there... Your father found your brother. He suspects your brother was killed, that it wasn't an accident, so he called the police.”

I stood up, trembling, and picked up my schoolbag. My chair scraped across the floor with a piercing screech. Heads turned all around me.

In moments, the quiet classroom filled with whispers.

“What did Ms. Chen just say? Li Sheng's brother died?”

“You mean her brother who's an idiot?”

“Shh. Keep it down. She's upset enough already...”

I walked out through the back door under everyone's gaze.

Ms. Chen watched me disappear, sighed softly, then turned back to the class.

“All right! Quiet! I know you're worried about her, but this isn't the time to discuss it!”

At the police station, the cold white fluorescent lights made my eyes swim.

I sat in a daze as a policewoman spoke gently to me.

“Don't be frightened. Can you tell me where you were between six thirty and seven this evening?”

Her kind face slowly steadied my racing heart.

“I... was studying at school.”

She opened the laptop in front of her and turned the screen toward me.

It showed security footage from the disc rental shop outside the school. The time stamp read 6:50.

I glanced at my grieving mother outside the door, then at my father's furious face.

All I felt was cold.

“I did leave school at six forty... to return a disc my brother rented.”

“What kind of disc?”

I bit my lower lip, unwilling to answer.

Her voice grew gentler.

“Even if you don't tell us, we'll find out as part of the investigation. If it has nothing to do with you, you can tell us, can't you?”

I looked at my parents outside, sighed, and murmured, “It was... an erotic horror film. My brother liked watching them. Mum had me rent them and return them on my way to school.”

My mother's grief-stricken face went deathly pale.

I had lowered my head by then and didn't see her expression.

The policewoman paused.

“As far as I know... your brother had Down syndrome. Could he... understand that sort of thing?”

I pressed my lips together and said nothing.

Another officer had already gone out to contact the rental shop owner and check my statement.

“Did you get along with your brother?” she asked.

My thoughts drifted. Before I knew it, I was remembering our days together.

He had been very good to me.

He wasn't like other older brothers, but he still tried to give me everything he could.

Until...

Mum did those things.

“He was very good to me.”

I looked up at the policewoman. My voice rose without my realizing it, as though I were speaking both to myself and to the people outside.

“My brother and I got along very well.”

She reached out to wipe a tear from the corner of my eye.

Only then did I realize tears had been silently streaming down my face.

The interview room door creaked open.

A male officer walked in carrying a file. He was tall, with regular features and an air of... integrity. A name badge was pinned to his chest.

I narrowed my eyes to read it: Jiang Huaimin.

The policewoman rose as soon as he entered.

“Captain Jiang.”

He nodded and took her seat.

His eyes fixed on me as if he could see right through me. He opened the file.

“You're Li Sheng, correct? Your brother, Li Min, died in your room. According to the forensic report, extreme fear disrupted his nervous system, triggering an epileptic seizure. He ultimately died of suffocation. I'd like to know what sort of ‘haunted house’ you have in there that could frighten him that badly.”

His questions bore down on me.

I shrank back against my chair.

“My room... there's nothing in it...”

Captain Jiang narrowed his eyes, apparently weighing whether to believe me.

I swallowed.

“There's... just a bed, a wardrobe, and a desk...”

I wasn't lying.

My parents favored my brother. Although he had Down syndrome, he was a boy, and that alone meant he got the best of everything.

My room contained little more than the bare essentials.

Captain Jiang glanced at me and continued leafing through the file.

I raised my head slightly and caught a glimpse of the documents.

They were photographs of my room.

Everything was exactly as I'd described it.

He frowned and pressed his lips together.

The couple outside insisted their daughter had killed their son. Asked why, however, they couldn't explain.

The victim had indeed died in his sister's room.

Captain Jiang kept feeling he had missed something. He went through the photographs again and again.

The door creaked open once more, breaking his train of thought.

I looked up. The policewoman had returned with a sheaf of papers.

“Captain Jiang, this is the statement from the rental shop owner outside the school. His statement and the security footage confirm she wasn't lying. She didn't have time to commit the crime.”

Captain Jiang nodded and gave me a long, searching look.

For some reason, he still felt there was something... wrong about the girl before him.

“Go outside for now. I have a few more questions for your parents.”

Their questioning went on for a long time.

I waited at the station until midnight.

Taking pity on me, the policewoman made me a bowl of instant noodles.

“Have something to eat... You're still growing.”

I thanked her gratefully and wolfed them down.

It was the only hot meal I'd had in months.

Half an hour later, Mum came out first.

She looked haggard, her eyes red, as though she'd been crying.

I wondered whether she'd told the truth...

About why my brother had been in my room, for instance.

When she saw me looking at her, anger flickered across her drawn face, then vanished.

“Xiao Sheng, come and help Mum,” she said softly.

I flinched.

The policewoman beside me noticed. She began quietly watching every little movement my mother made toward me.

I went over and helped Mum into a chair. We sat so close that, to anyone watching, we must have looked very affectionate.

Then she secretly reached over and pinched my waist hard.

She spoke through clenched teeth, so quietly that only we could hear.

“Don't think I don't know you killed Li Min. Didn't you say you weren't going to evening study today? Why did you go after all?”

I immediately looked hurt.

My eyes reddened, and I raised my voice.

“Mum! I'm in my final year. How could I skip evening study? You must have remembered wrong...

“Besides, the police said I couldn't have done it! The camera recorded me at the rental shop outside school!

“Why won't you believe me?”