Chapter 3

He slurred drunkenly, “Your brother's dead... Your mother can't have any more children... You're adopted anyway... Give me another child...”

As he spoke, he yanked at my blanket.

I struggled in panic.

“I... I'm still a minor... I'm not eighteen yet... You can't... You can't do that... The baby wouldn't be healthy... It might be... an idiot too!”

The word “idiot” seemed to strike a nerve.

Dad stopped.

He stared blankly for a moment, then muttered, “That won't do... Can't have another idiot... Have to wait...”

He stood up stiffly and left.

Outside the door, Mum asked impatiently, “That was quick. Did you do it? We can't let the family line die out!”

Dad snapped, “No... She's too young. The child wouldn't be healthy. It's all right. There's no hurry...”

He shut my door.

In the darkness, I looked at Mum through the crack.

She was staring back at me, her eyes full of hatred.

I lowered my gaze.

No one knew what I was thinking.

I didn't sleep that night.

Early the next morning, I went to school.

A dull day of lessons passed, yet I felt enormously relieved.

When school ended, someone I didn't want to see was waiting right outside the gates.

Captain Jiang. Jiang Huaimin.

He came toward me as soon as I appeared.

“Can we talk?”

I knew I couldn't refuse, so I nodded.

We picked a milk tea shop with private rooms. He bought me a strawberry milk tea and went straight to the point.

“I know your brother's death wasn't an accident.”

I took a sip and said nothing.

“We found your mother's fingerprints on his clothes.”

I looked up.

“My brother liked taking his clothes off. Mum often helped him get dressed at home.”

Captain Jiang nodded.

“She said the same thing. But on those clothes... half the prints were on the outside and half on the inside. As though... someone had taken them off him.”

I calmly reminded him, “But you've already ruled it an accident.”

He sighed.

“Because your brother died at six forty-seven, and your mother was at the supermarket at that exact time. Your father also insisted we stop investigating. We had no choice but to treat it as an accident.”

“Then why come to me?”

He gave a faint smile.

“I want to know the truth.”

I shrugged.

“Then you should ask my mother. Not me.”

Captain Jiang reached inside his coat and took out several photographs.

They showed my brother pinning me to the bed.

Judging by the angle, they had clearly been taken from the building opposite.

He held them out to me.

“When we canvassed the neighbors, a woman in the opposite building told us she'd been taking a selfie by her window and accidentally photographed your brother assaulting you.”

He looked at me.

“Would you say... that constitutes a motive for murder?”

I stared at the photograph.

My mind went straight back to a month earlier.

After my eighteenth birthday, Mum had suddenly told me that, where she came from, younger sisters could marry their older brothers.

She and Dad had married that way too.

I hadn't understood what she meant, but I'd quietly grown wary.

Then she told me to rent some adult films for my brother to “learn” from.

I immediately realized something was wrong.

“Those films are illegal. I can't rent them.”

Mum beat me with a bamboo switch until I was in agony.

“I'm the one who brought you home from the orphanage! You have to bear children for your brother and carry on the family line! You owe us for raising you!”

I owe you for raising me.

Those words weighed on me like a mountain.

I couldn't escape.

In the end, I could only agree to try to find those discs.

My brother had stood beside us, listening blankly to our exchange.

When he saw me fall, he hurried over and held me.

“Little sister... Don't cry... I'll protect you...”

He looked heartbroken.

He was like a child. He didn't understand anything.

Later, I really couldn't find the films Mum wanted.

I had no choice but to rent horror films with erotic scenes in them.

She didn't complain. She just put them on for him.

Whenever something gory appeared, he shrank away in fear.

During the adult scenes, his body reacted.

His mind was still a child's, but his body was a grown man's.

Under Mum's direction, he was repeatedly forced to pin me to the bed.

But beyond that, he didn't know what to do.

Helpless, she kept making him “learn.”

She'd thought it wouldn't take him long to understand.

Instead, the film's excessive gore triggered one of his seizures.

Luckily, I was with him.

I immediately followed the first-aid instructions I'd learned online, and he survived.

...

I brought myself back to the present.

I guessed Mum must have thought I wasn't going to evening study that day.

After stripping my brother, who had just watched one of those erotic horror films, she forced him into my room, locked the door from outside, and went out to buy groceries.

My poor brother...

Alone in that dark room, terrified, he'd suffered a seizure and suffocated.

Seeing my expression change, Captain Jiang spoke.

“So I was right? Your brother abused you... and you killed him!”

His words stabbed at my ears.

I jerked my head up, my eyes bloodshot.

“My brother didn't abuse me! My mother forced him! He was the kindest person to me in that whole house!”

I was almost screaming.

People around us turned to look.

Captain Jiang clearly hadn't expected that reaction.

He froze, momentarily at a loss. But he was an experienced officer. Three seconds later, he had his next question.

“Your mother forced him?”

He had seized on the crucial part of what I'd said.

He lowered his voice.

“Why would she do that? You're brother and sister, aren't you? A mother forcing her son to assault her own daughter? You're lying!”

His tone bore down on me.

I broke.

I clutched my head.

“No... That's not it... Mum said brothers and sisters had to get married... She made him learn from those films... Then... Then she forced him...”

I couldn't go on.

Utterly overwhelmed, I sank to the floor.

Captain Jiang looked at me gravely.

He was silent for a long time before helping me to my feet.

“I'll check this... with your father. Let me take you home first.”

He drove me to the foot of our building.

Dad looked in surprise at the man behind me.

I lowered my head and said nothing, quietly returning to my room.

Captain Jiang told him everything I'd just said.