Chapter 8

37

The case of Chen Yu killing his father seemed to be over.

Yet I couldn't shake the feeling that I had missed something.

There appeared to be no unanswered questions.

Still, something felt wrong.

What was it?

I thought about it for days.

Then one word came to me.

Diary.

Yes. The diary.

Chen Yu said he killed Chen Bing because his father burned the only record of the truth, destroying every lead. In his rage, he had killed him.

At the time, we hadn't questioned it.

Looking back, it made very little sense.

He said that after searching Chen Bing's apartment for more than six months, he finally found the diary and learned the truth.

Then, the day before the killing, he went back to read it again, hoping its clues would help him find his family.

Instead, he encountered Chen Bing returning from a trip.

But there was a glaring problem.

After discovering a secret that important, any ordinary person would do more than feel shocked. The first thing would be to preserve it.

If taking the diary risked alerting Chen Bing, he could simply photograph its contents on his phone.

Why wait several months before returning to search his room?

Why did it take him months to think of looking for his birth parents?

It made no sense.

There was another inconsistency.

Chen Yu said he had spent that year studying the surveillance cameras in Chen Bing's complex. Every time he slipped in, he deliberately avoided them.

Yet the day before the killing, the cameras recorded Chen Bing.

He walked in openly.

That was inexplicable too.

Then I remembered something Chen Yu had asked:

“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?”

I had thought he wanted compensation for Zheng Luoshan.

Now it seemed he had meant Liang Shuang.

But at that point, he supposedly knew nothing about his relationship with her.

He wasn't even certain he had been trafficked.

Why was he already thinking about compensation?

As I put those questions together, something frightening began to emerge.

There was a problem with Chen Yu's motive for killing Chen Bing.

I got up at once and resumed my investigation.

To my surprise, I found a major discrepancy.

38

Two months later, I went to see Liang Shuang and asked about the compensation.

The money had reached her account.

She planned to leave Ping City in a few days and start a new life elsewhere.

When Chen Yu finished his sentence, she would take him to live with her.

I nodded.

“He's still young. He'll only be in his thirties when he gets out. There are plenty of good years ahead.”

Then I asked abruptly:

“Do you hate him?”

“What?”

She looked bewildered.

I took a sip of water.

“If it weren't for Chen Yu, perhaps you and your parents would still be living peacefully. You might have graduated from a prestigious university and built a successful career, instead of drifting through life like this.”

Her eyes dimmed.

After a while, she said:

“My life isn't bad now. I've paid off the debts and still have some money left. I want to learn a trade. There's a long life ahead. No one knows what the future will bring. Besides, I've found my brother. I have a family again…”

“Do you hate the people who abducted and sold him?”

A fierce light flashed in her eyes.

“What do you think?”

I smiled.

“Let's leave that for now. First, let me tell you a story.”

39

Once, there was a little girl who lived a very happy life.

A loving family, a comfortable home, and an adorable little brother.

Everything changed when he was two.

One day, their parents went out and left the children at home. Before leaving, their father specifically told the girl to watch her brother carefully. They would be back soon.

But she couldn't resist her friends calling from downstairs, so she took him outside to play.

Caught up in their games, she forgot all about him.

Only when her parents came home did she realize—

Her brother was gone.

She was five that year.

Her parents' hair seemed to turn white overnight. She was too frightened to know what to do.

They never blamed her. They still cherished her.

But hearing them cry late at night filled her sleep with nightmares.

Her happy life had fallen apart.

Her parents searched for thirteen years.

Then one day, as they rode their old motorbike with a banner asking for news of their missing son, a truck struck and killed them.

She was eighteen.

They left no savings.

Only debts.

She hated herself.

If she could go back thirteen years, she swore she would die before taking her brother downstairs.

But she hated the people who stole him even more.

She worked to pay the debts.

And she took up her parents' search.

Following their last lead, she came to Ping City.

There, she heard about a murder committed by a minor.

When she saw the suspect's photograph, her eyes widened.

There was something about his brow that looked almost exactly like her father's.

Instinct told her—

This was the brother she had been searching for.

She went to his home.

His father was out. Only his mother was there.

The woman understood why she had come the moment she saw her. In tears, she told her about the boy's origins.

He really wasn't their biological child.

But she didn't know where he had come from.

She gave the girl a diary recording her suspicions over the years.

The girl wept.

The man called his father hadn't treated him well.

For his own selfish ends, he had even encouraged the boy to kill.

Her heart broke for her brother.

She wanted to seek legal help, but he was in prison. She couldn't establish their relationship.

More importantly, she didn't know how he would feel about her.

Out of guilt, his mother gave her some money: all she could spare.

Soon afterward, the woman died.

The father was much harder to deal with.

The girl tried approaching him, but he drove her off before she could say anything.

With no alternative, she worked to support herself in Ping City and waited for her brother's release.

She waited—

Six years.

When he came out, she didn't immediately reveal who she was. She quietly watched him for a year.

At last, she was certain his relationship with his nominal father had broken down completely.

The time had come.

She rented the place next door and gradually got to know him.

Once they were close, she finally found the courage to tell him the truth.

After reading his mother's diary, he could no longer hold himself together. He broke down sobbing.

He had never imagined that he wasn't an adopted child—

But a child who had been abducted and sold.

When he learned that his birth parents had devoted everything to finding him, even dying in the search, he collapsed.

He felt he had wronged his parents.

Wronged his sister.

But above all—

He hated the man who had always called himself his father.

When he discovered that his sister was still burdened by debts from the search, he decided to demand an explanation.

He and his sister took the diary to the man's apartment.

He wasn't home.

Avoiding the complex's cameras, they climbed inside, hoping to find something useful.

They found nothing.

They repeated this several times.

Then one day, the girl somehow learned that the man might return within a few days.

She went to his apartment alone.

When the boy discovered she was gone, he immediately sensed danger.

Her hatred for the man ran deep.

She had said many times:

“Why does the man who caused all this get to live comfortably, while our parents died so horribly, far from home?”

After their repeated failures to catch him, her hatred grew.

She told her brother:

“If I see him again, I'll kill him myself.”

Afraid something would happen, he rushed to the apartment.

This time, he didn't sneak into the complex.

He walked openly beneath the surveillance cameras.

Climbing into the apartment, he found only his sister.

He was relieved.

The next day, the man returned.

The sight of his two uninvited guests told him what had happened. He swore and tried to drive them out.

But the boy finally snapped.

He demanded that the man turn himself in and compensate him and his sister for their suffering.

The man refused.

Unable to bear it, the boy grappled with him.

He caught him around the neck from behind, trying to restrain him.

What he hadn't expected—

Was for his sister to act.

A cold flash.

A fruit knife plunged into the man's chest, dealing a fatal wound.

He died quickly.

The boy stood stunned.

He had never thought it would really come to this.

Whenever they entered the apartment, they wore gloves and shoe covers to avoid leaving traces.

Even so, he had been in prison. He knew.

With a murder committed, neither of them could escape involvement.

The girl said bitterly:

“I did it. I'll answer for it. I won't drag you into this.”

But he had become calm.

“I've already dragged you and your family into too much.”

He calmly assessed their position.

Finally, he told her:

“If you killed him, you'd get at least twenty years. If I killed him, it's different.

“I served time for him before. Now he's abandoned me. I have deep grievances against him. There are grounds to ask for leniency.”

She sobbed.

“No! How can I let you go to prison for me? I have reasons too. He destroyed our whole family!”

The boy shook his head.

“I've already accidentally appeared on camera. Even if you admit killing him, I won't be able to stay out of it.

“It isn't worth ruining both our lives for scum like him.

“Listen to me. I've learned a lot about the law these past few years. I know how to seek a lighter sentence.

“I owe you and your family too much. Let me do something for you.”

She tried to speak.

His expression changed.

“Go! If you wait any longer, we're both finished!

“Move out as soon as you get home. Whatever happens, don't let anyone know we know each other.

“Trust me. Someone will come to see you in a few days. Then you can come forward and prove we're related.”

In tears, she left.

He burned the diary bearing her fingerprints, removed his gloves and shoe covers, and took hold of the fruit knife.

40

When I finished, Liang Shuang was trembling slightly.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she whispered.

I sighed.

“The diary hadn't burned completely when the police arrived.

“If they examine it for fingerprints, everything will become clear.”

Her eyes widened.

“But the verdict's already been given. Can it still change?”

I looked straight at her and spoke slowly.

“So you admit it?”

Tears poured down her face.

“I didn't want it to happen like this…

“I never wanted my brother to go to prison again.

“He said he had a way to avoid being convicted. He said he'd be all right. That's why I… I…”

I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath.

“He never intended to seek a reduced sentence.

“He came to me only to help you obtain compensation.

“If I hadn't happened to find that abducted girl, I might still be in Zhangnan County looking for leads.

“Did you ever think about it?

“If that had happened, he might have been sentenced to death.”

She shook her head in horror.

“No…

“That can't be…

“If he really were sentenced to death, I'd tell them everything.

“He's my own brother. I finally found him after all that. How could I stand by and watch him die?”

That was what I had been waiting to hear.

The story I had just told her was entirely conjecture.

I had no evidence.

I got up and managed a smile.

“It seems he made the right choice this time.

“Fifteen years is a long time. But when there's a future worth looking forward to, the years pass quickly.

“The first half of his life has been hard enough.

“I hope you won't let him down again.

“Give him a real home when he comes back.”

She stared at me.

“But you said the diary…”

I smiled and shook my head.

“I was bluffing.

“Fingerprints come from the oils and sweat on the skin. After a fire like that, they're very difficult to recover.

“Don't worry.

“Live well.

“Stay strong.

“Live well.”