Chapter 3

My father gave him money, over and over.

Zheng Luoshan's greed was bottomless.

On June 25, 2007, he came demanding more.

By then, my father had almost emptied the family's savings.

If he kept paying, the man would drag us all down sooner or later.

They had a furious argument.

What my father hadn't expected was for Zheng Luoshan to threaten him with me.

That was the same day I fought Zheng Luohai.

It hadn't been a coincidence.

It had all been planned.

When I invited Zheng Luoshan to the karaoke bar, he intended to use the opportunity to intimidate my father.

Now I understood why he had told me to go get my father.

He just hadn't expected me to lose control and carry a fruit knife.

But what my father said next destroyed the last of my reason.

“Chen Yu, since we've come this far, I'll tell you everything. You didn't actually stab Zheng Luoshan to death that day.”

At first, I didn't understand.

“I know. Mr. Wu said that during the defense. I wounded him badly, and then he died from losing too much blood.”

My father shook his head and spoke quietly.

“That's not what I mean. I mean… Zheng Luoshan didn't have to die.”

12

“What did you say?”

I stared at him.

He lit a cigarette and spoke slowly.

“I never dared tell you. I was there that day too.

“After you ran, Zheng Luoshan tried to go outside for help. I blocked his way. He couldn't be allowed to live. He'd ruined our lives. So I took the knife you'd stabbed him with and pushed it about an inch deeper.”

My mind went blank.

What was he saying?

What did he mean?

That I hadn't killed Zheng Luoshan?

That he had?

The room seemed to spin.

His voice kept droning in my ears.

“Don't blame me, Chen Yu. I had no choice. If Zheng Luoshan lived, we'd have had to pay a fortune in compensation, and he'd have kept blackmailing us for the rest of our lives. You were a minor. Even if you killed someone, they couldn't execute you. A few years in prison, and you'd be out. Look at you now—only twenty-three! Your whole life is still ahead of you.

“I was your age when I left home to find work. For a small price, we've bought ourselves peace for the rest of our lives. Whichever way you look at it, that's a good deal, isn't it?

“Now we've cleared the air, let's make a good life together.

“Tomorrow, I'll put this apartment in your name. I'll give you all my money too. Consider it compensation.

“Let the past stay in the past, Chen Yu. Don't let it spoil the rest of our lives, all right?”

I couldn't take in what he was saying.

Just as I couldn't understand why I had stabbed that man all those years ago.

Yes.

My father had worked it out very cleverly.

Six years of my life in prison in exchange for his enemy's death. An excellent bargain.

But—

Was that really a small price?

Could I live a normal life with the label of murderer hanging over me?

More importantly—

Could my mother come back to life?

No.

My family. My life.

He had destroyed everything.

He was still talking.

I couldn't hear him anymore.

I reached for the fruit knife on the table.

Just as I had stabbed Zheng Luoshan—

I stabbed my father.

13

When Chen Yu finished, I sat speechless for a long time.

I had never imagined that the case eight years ago concealed such a brutal truth.

Only when he spoke again did I come out of my stupor.

“Tell me, Mr. Wu. If you were me, would you have killed him?”

I nodded instinctively, then quickly shook my head.

“I don't know. I haven't lived through what you have. I can't put myself in your place. I'm sorry.”

He smiled.

“It's all right. I wouldn't wish it on anyone else.”

I collected myself.

“Are you telling me all this because you want a lighter sentence? I need to make one thing clear: reopening the case from eight years ago will be extremely difficult. Your father left no trace at the scene. There's no way to prove Chen Bing delivered the fatal stab. After all this time, we can't reconstruct the scene either.

“Besides, he's dead now. The only witness is gone. Your account and that diary alone can't establish that he was the one who really killed Zheng Luoshan.”

I let out a breath.

“Speaking of which, where is the diary?”

“I burned it.”

“You burned it?”

I stared at him.

“Even if it couldn't conclusively prove Chen Bing killed someone, handwriting analysis could at least establish that he wrote it. It would show he knew something about that case. It was important evidence. How could you burn it?”

Still smiling, he said casually:

“I got carried away.”

I had no words.

Without that diary, everything he had told me could be dismissed as an unsupported story.

I sighed.

“If we can't recover even the diary, there's virtually no chance of using this to reduce your sentence.”

“What if there's still a witness?”

I paused, not understanding.

“Remember the woman I said used to live with my father?”

I nodded.

“I've been thinking everything over these past few days. I have a vague feeling she might know the truth.”

“You don't even know her name. Why would you think that?”

He sighed softly.

“Instinct. At this point, Mr. Wu, it's all I have.”

Now I understood why he had insisted on me.

He knew my weakness.

My obsession with the truth.

“That's a lot to take in,” I told him. “I need to go home and sort it out. Let's stop here today. I'll take your case. If you remember any other leads, contact me.”

I rose to leave.

Just as I reached the door, he spoke again.

“Mr. Wu, if someone committed a crime while they were alive, can the property they leave behind after death be used to compensate the victim's family?”

The question surprised me.

After a moment, I answered:

“Legally, the victim's family can file a claim in court for appropriate compensation. But gathering evidence of the crime is difficult. In practice, it may not be easy.”

Chen Yu nodded and said nothing more.

14

I didn't understand why he had asked.

Did he want compensation for Zheng Luohai?

Since he offered no explanation, I let it go.

Back home, I went through his case file carefully.

After the killing, the police had obtained surveillance footage from the residential complex.

As Chen Yu had said, he arrived at Chen Bing's apartment the day before the crime and never left.

Chen Bing returned two hours before the killing.

The only biological traces in the apartment belonged to the two of them.

Chen Bing's fingerprints were also found on the fruit knife.

The scene was in chaos, with clear signs of a struggle.

Injuries on both men corroborated that.

There were also large quantities of paper ash and the partly burned cover of a notebook.

That matched Chen Yu's claim that he had burned the diary.

He had called the police himself and surrendered.

But after giving his personal details and admitting the killing, he refused to say anything else.

Only when he met me did he describe the previous two years.

I checked the police investigation into Chen Bing's social connections.

His circle was small.

He ran a grocery store. Apart from a few suppliers, he had almost no friends.

He was an only child.

His parents were long dead, as was his wife.

He had no relatives in the city.

The police spoke to suppliers who dealt with him regularly. None even knew he had a son.

A year earlier, however, Chen Bing had closed his store.

He spent most of his time out of town.

He had last left a month before the killing and returned only just before it happened.

I frowned.

That directly contradicted Chen Yu's story.

According to him, he had visited his father regularly over the previous year.

They had been getting along fairly well.

The police investigation showed that Chen Bing had barely been home.

The police could hardly be mistaken about that.

Which meant Chen Yu was lying.

But why?

The woman he had mentioned was called Han Mengjing. She had worked at a karaoke bar.

She said she had lived with Chen Bing for a year.

During that time, father and son argued constantly.

Their complicated relationship was the reason she had cut all ties with Chen Bing.

Neighbors confirmed that they often heard the two arguing, though they didn't know what about.

At this stage, apart from Chen Bing's year-long absence, most of the investigation broadly agreed with Chen Yu's account.

I listened to his entire account again.

Several questions emerged.

First, had his conflict with Zheng Luoshan really been directly connected to Chen Bing?

Second, why had only those two pages survived in Chen Bing's diary?

Third, and most importantly—

What secret had Chen Bing and Zheng Luoshan been hiding?

Eight years had passed.

Almost everyone involved was dead.

Uncovering the truth would be all but impossible.

Chen Yu was right.

Our only lead was Han Mengjing, the woman who had once been involved with Chen Bing.

But first, I needed to establish something else.

What had really happened between father and son over the previous year?

I decided to visit Chen Bing's apartment.

15

I expected the neighbors to avoid me like the plague.

Instead, luck was on my side.

The man who lived opposite had come back to collect some things.

I hurried over.

“Excuse me. I'm a lawyer. I'd like to ask a few questions about Chen Bing. Do you have a moment?”

The middle-aged man waved me closer, surprisingly willing to talk.

“Ah, don't get me started. Killed by his own son, in his own home! Even our property prices are suffering. They'll probably drop now. You're a lawyer? Ask away. Be quick, though. I'm leaving as soon as I've got my things. I don't want to hang around here.”

I nodded, offered him a cigarette, and asked what Chen Bing had been like.

He spoke of the man with obvious contempt.

Chen Bing had lived there for five years, he said. Han Mengjing had moved in two years ago.

They argued at the slightest provocation. Each time, she smashed things and stormed out, while Chen Bing stood in the doorway pleading with her to stay.

About a year earlier, she had left and never returned.

“They broke up. We neighbors finally got some peace.”

I asked if he knew what they argued about.

He shook his head.

“I'm not that nosy. I've never listened too closely to other people's family business.”

I nodded.

That agreed with what Chen Yu had told me.

But when I asked about Chen Yu, his account was entirely different.

His opinion of the son was even worse.

Several times, he had heard Chen Yu drunkenly pounding on Chen Bing's door.

If Chen Bing was home, they shouted abuse at each other through the wall.

If he wasn't, Chen Yu muttered to himself and cursed his father.

The neighbor couldn't make out exactly what they were arguing about, but assumed it was money.

He curled his lip.

“Chen Bing was a coward, but his son was even more useless. Every few days he'd turn up demanding money. If he didn't get it, he'd bang on the door and swear. And now look what's happened. Xiaojing was right to leave. A son like that would ruin anyone.”

So Chen Yu had lied about this.

“When was the last time you saw them arguing?”

The man thought.

“Must be a year ago. After Xiaojing left, I don't think the son came around anymore. That's why we were so surprised. No warning at all.”

I pressed him.

“Could they have stopped arguing, so you simply didn't notice him visiting?”

He shook his head.

“Impossible. Never mind the son—I don't think Chen Bing himself was home much this past year. I hardly ever heard his door open.”

So Chen Bing really had been away.

The neighbor's account matched the police findings exactly.

16

Chen Yu was hiding something.

For the first time, I was afraid of him.

Eight years ago, he had been a straightforward boy.

He answered whatever I asked.

He cried as he spoke, like an overgrown child who had made a terrible mistake.

But now—

How had he become so guarded and calculating?

Back home, I dug out my old materials from the case.

As I read, I found another major discrepancy.

To prepare his defense, I had spoken to many of his teachers and classmates.

They said he had once been a good student, fairly outgoing.

Then, in ninth grade, he suddenly seemed to become a different person.

He sat in class every day, withdrawn and gloomy, speaking to no one.

Chen Yu had told me he was obsessed with video games then. He thought about them all day and couldn't bear sitting in class.

Nor had he been the class tough he now claimed to be.

Quite the opposite.

He had been the victim of bullying.

His tormentor was Zheng Luohai.

Zheng Luohai really was the tough guy in the class next door.

He regularly brought a group of boys to surround Chen Yu and spit on him.

It went on for almost a year.

Then, just before they finished ninth grade—on June 25, 2007—Chen Yu snapped and gave Zheng Luohai a severe beating.

What followed matched his account.

Zheng Luohai brought his older brother, Zheng Luoshan, to bully him.

In the end, Chen Yu killed Zheng Luoshan.

Those details had little bearing on the case as a whole, so they never went into the official file eight years ago.

If I hadn't kept my own records, I would probably have forgotten them too.

More importantly—

Among the students I had interviewed was a boy named Chang Fei.

But according to my notes, Chang Fei was one of Zheng Luohai's followers.

In other words—

One of the boys who had bullied Chen Yu.

Another lie.

These details were easy to overlook and had little direct relevance to the case.

Why lie about them?

Eight years earlier, Chen Yu had neither avoided nor concealed any of it.

Why, eight years later, was he trying to alter my recollection?

Whatever had changed him—

It must have happened in those two years after his release.

What had he been through?

I decided to visit his home and find out.