Chapter 5

“Shut up, both of you. Make another sound and I’m leaving. You can rot here for all I care.”

Only then did they realize—

I hadn’t come to save them.

Of course I hadn’t.

How could I save them?

They were the ones responsible for Niem Niem’s death.

First, I told them a story so they would understand how serious this was.

Once, there was a woman whose name I couldn’t even remember.

She was a good mother, but unfortunately, she had married a bastard.

She loved her daughter. Her husband didn’t.

He wanted a son. Without one, he couldn’t carry on the family line or bring honor to his ancestors.

So one day, he decided to sell his daughter.

He demanded a sum of blood money, hoping to use it to start a new life—even though he knew the money was being paid in exchange for his own child.

But the girl’s mother refused. She wouldn’t agree.

So her face was smashed with a rock, her clothes were cut off with scissors, and her body was wrapped in burlap and buried here by her own husband.

For sixteen years, no one knew.

Only a few days ago did the police dig her up.

That was the whole story. Simple as that.

But the two of them stared at me, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. They might not have understood a word.

So I explained further.

“There are two main points. First, if I bury you down here, no one might find you for another decade or two… Second, have you still not figured out who I was talking about? Why did you sneak away from the police and come here last night? You know exactly why.”

That was right. The secret that had brought them here last night was their own secret from sixteen years ago.

It was a secret they wouldn’t tell the police even though their daughter had been murdered and the killer hadn’t been caught.

Zhang Lingzhi finally remembered.

He drew a long, ragged breath, then started crying and pleading with me.

“Please… let me go… please…”

Zhang Jianjun seemed to understand, too, but he showed no remorse.

He still thought he could solve everything with money.

“Kid… I’ll give you money…”

I couldn’t help laughing at him.

Then I crouched down and started searching my backpack.

I thought of Niem Niem again.

I remembered the last time we played “Rock, Scissors, Paper.”

I remembered threatening her with “I won’t play with you anymore” to make her go exploring in the mountains with me.

She hadn’t wanted to go, but she’d followed me anyway.

We got separated on the mountain. I left her where she was and went looking for a way down alone.

I couldn’t find the way. I got lost, too.

My father found me after dark.

He told me Niem Niem’s parents had found her. I believed him.

But it wasn’t true.

I only learned the truth last year, before my father died.

He’d never dared tell me because he knew how close Niem Niem and I had been.

The truth was that, on the mountain that day, Zhang Lingwei and Zhang Lingzhi found Niem Niem first. They bullied her.

It was hard for me to imagine. They were fourteen or fifteen years old, and they’d done something like that.

Zhang Lingwei beat Niem Niem. Zhang Lingzhi sexually assaulted her.

In the end, the two of them planned to push her into a ravine and make it look like an accidental death.

At their age, I could only conclude that they were rotten to the core. They deserved to die.

I don’t know whether it was lucky or unlucky that Niem Niem hadn’t died yet.

Her mother found her.

But perhaps that was worse than if she had died then.

Because if Niem Niem had died that day, her mother wouldn’t have had to die, too.

When Du Zhicheng found out what had happened, he went straight to Zhang Jianjun and demanded money.

But Niem Niem’s mother refused. She wanted justice for her daughter.

So that night, Du Zhicheng killed her and buried her here.

He probably didn’t care much about Niem Niem. He’d simply killed too many people at once, and covering it all up would have been difficult.

Because half a year later, Niem Niem also “drowned.”

Afterward, Du Zhicheng remarried and really did have two sons…

It didn’t matter anymore. Before I came back to the village, I had killed him.

The weapon was the knife in my backpack.

I pulled it out.

Zhang Lingzhi was tied to a pillar. He was so frightened that he wet himself.

“I was wrong… I was wrong… Please… Please…”

He kept crying and pleading.

Zhang Jianjun, meanwhile, seemed like an idiot. He still thought I was someone he could bargain with.

“Son! Don’t do anything extreme… We can talk about whatever you want… I can give you anything…”

I thought it over, then decided to give them a glimmer of hope.

“Let’s play rock, scissors, paper.”

Zhang Lingzhi froze, forgetting to cry.