Chapter 6

“Was it because his devotion made you look even more contemptible? You were her boyfriend. You handed her over to your brother, then disposed of her body and covered it up.

“Could you not bear the comparison? Did you smear him just to restore some pathetic balance in your own mind?”

Qin Xuan stared blankly and said nothing.

I tried a more direct question.

“Did you love Jiang Nansheng?”

After a long silence, he answered hoarsely.

“Perhaps. But…

“I loved my brother more. I couldn't watch him sacrifice so much for me, then lose his entire life because of my suggestion!”

“You loved your brother?”

I repeated the words with undisguised scorn.

“Did you really, Qin Xuan?”

His face darkened.

“What do you mean?”

“What you feel for him isn't love!”

My voice rose with the anger and contempt I had held back for so long.

“It's a sick obsession with wiping out the debt between you!

“You can't bear owing him, because it makes you feel useless.

“So you used the love you valued most to repay him. When that went catastrophically wrong, you tied him to you through a shared crime, making sure he could never escape.

“And in the end, you deliberately killed someone in front of a camera and surrendered, staging the tragedy of a terminally ill man taking the blame for his brother.

“Even when you were the real killer, you had to make it look like a noble sacrifice.

“Was any of it really for his good?

“You were only using these extremes to tell him, and yourself, over and over—

“Look! I don't owe you anymore! I killed Jiang Nansheng for you. I killed Wang Kai for you. We're even!”

I stressed each word, driving it toward the deepest part of him.

“But was that what Qin Zhu wanted?

“He couldn't bear the guilt anymore. He wanted to be free.

“In the name of protecting him, you cut off his last way out!

“All you cared about was restoring that pathetic balance in your own mind.

“You're an animal.”

“Enough!”

He slammed his hands on the table and sprang up, his face savage.

“Chen Ke! I didn't tell you the truth so you could lecture me!

“Stop digging up meaningless things!

“My brother is dead! But I can still live!

“You should be thinking about how to invent a story that keeps me alive!”

Looking at his face, twisted with rage, I suddenly laughed.

Slowly, I removed the silver ring from my right hand.

“What if I told you I forged that report?

“You really do have lung cancer, Qin Xuan. You're dying.”

His anger turned to shock.

“What?

“No! You had no reason to do that…

“It can't be…”

I held the ring before his eyes. My fingertips trembled.

Not from fear.

From emotions suppressed for far too long.

“Look at this ring. Does it seem familiar?”

At first, he only looked puzzled.

Then his pupils contracted.

Inside the band, the character Xuan was clearly engraved.

“How… how did you…”

His voice shook beyond speech.

“There's a miniature camera on this ring.”

My voice was calm.

“From your first story about revenge for love to every crime you've just admitted, it's all been recorded.”

I closed my hand around it, as if holding Nansheng's cold final wish.

“This will be the most compelling evidence against you in court.”

He collapsed into his chair, his face ashen.

An uncomprehending frenzy filled his eyes.

“Who… who are you?

“Why are you doing this?

“Ah!

“If I'm dying anyway, what does it matter whether I tell the truth?”

I stood and looked down at him. At last, I couldn't hold back my tears.

Not for him.

For Nansheng. For Wang Kai. For the youth and lives so completely betrayed.

“It matters.”

My voice caught. Every word came through blood and tears.

“It matters to Jiang Nansheng.

“It matters to Wang Kai.”

I turned and walked out of that suffocating room.

Behind me, he howled like an animal in despair.

16

I never visited Qin Xuan again.

The ring that had recorded the truth, along with my statement, entered the procuratorate's file as key evidence.

The trial was far quieter than I expected.

I sat in court as his defense lawyer, yet felt like a bystander from beginning to end. I offered no words in his defense.

He seemed resigned.

Perhaps he knew he was terminally ill and had little time left.

Perhaps, with his final mask torn away, he no longer had the strength to struggle.

He confessed fully. He admitted killing Wang Kai. He also admitted that he and Qin Zhu had killed Jiang Nansheng ten years earlier and staged her death as suicide.

With a complete chain of evidence and his confession, the court delivered a just verdict.

He did not appeal.

Not long afterward, beneath a gray afternoon sky, I brought a bouquet of the white lilies Nansheng had loved to her grave.

In the photograph, her smile was still clear and bright, forever held in the best years of her life.

I gently brushed dust from the headstone and laid down the flowers.

“Nansheng.

“The truth is out.

“You can rest now.”

Wind moved through the cemetery's pines and cypresses. Their rustling sounded like a wordless reply.

Nansheng and I had been close friends since childhood. We shared every secret of our girlhood.

We went to different universities, but never lost touch.

She had called me once, shy and happy, to tell me she was in love.

Her boyfriend was a gifted student at Jinghai University. He treated her well.

I teased her for betraying our pact to stay single so quickly.

Who could have imagined that, not long afterward, I would hear she had taken her own life in a lake?

I didn't believe it.

Nansheng was always cheerful, a little sun. How could she leave the world so decisively without even saying goodbye?

At her funeral, I took off that silver ring engraved with Xuan.

I always felt it might hold a secret.

From then on, finding the truth about her death became part of my life.

It was one reason I studied hard, passed the legal qualification exam, and became a lawyer.

Later, on a forum devoted to unsolved cases, I noticed Wang Kai.

His posts examined the suspicious details of Nansheng's death. His conclusions matched mine.

We met in secret.

He too had never given up.

He worked openly, using his social connections and every channel he could to investigate.

I stayed in the shadows, using my legal knowledge and growing network to search for leads.

We became secret allies.

Then one day, Wang Kai excitedly told me that Qin Xuan, whom we had previously ruled out, had suddenly come back into the picture: his younger brother, Qin Zhu, had made contact.

Qin Zhu wanted to tell the truth about that year.

We thought we could finally see light at the end of the tunnel.

Soon afterward, instead, came the news that Wang Kai had been murdered in the street.

My world nearly collapsed again.

It was Zhong Yi who called in every connection and favor he had to secure me this apparently open-and-shut case.

17

“How does revenge feel?”

A steady voice spoke behind me.

I didn't turn.

My mentor.

I didn't know when he had arrived. He stood quietly at my back.

Looking at Nansheng's photograph through blurred eyes, I shook my head.

“It doesn't feel good. Not at all.

“The truth came too late…

“Nansheng can't come back. Neither can Wang Kai.

“All that's left is an appalling truth.”

I turned to him, full of pain and bewilderment.

“Why are there people like Qin Xuan?”

He didn't answer immediately.

He stepped up to the grave and bowed respectfully.

Then he looked toward the rows of headstones in the distance.

“Not all evil begins with a hideous face.

“Often it grows from ordinary human weaknesses. Cowardice. Inferiority.

“Some of Qin Xuan's feelings for his brother were genuine at first.

“But he accepted his brother's sacrifices. When that debt became more than he could bear, his feelings changed.

“He couldn't repay it through honest effort, so he took another path.

“At each step, he felt he had no choice. He was driven by his obsession with owing nothing.

“He couldn't see anyone else's pain.

“Nansheng's. Wang Kai's. Even the torment his brother could no longer endure.

“He deliberately ignored it all.

“Because the only thing that ever mattered to him was the unbalanced scale inside his own heart.”

He turned back to me, his gaze deep and calm.

“We can't erase all the evil in the world, Chen. We can't understand the origins of every distorted mind.

“But we can refuse to abandon the truth. We can hold to our belief in justice.

“Bring crimes into the sunlight and let them receive the judgment they deserve.

“The law isn't only about punishment. It also marks a final boundary. However gentle your original purpose may appear, once you cross that line, there is an abyss from which you cannot return.”

I stood before the grave, tears dried on my face.

With his words, the fog that had clung to my heart for years slowly began to lift.

The truth was ugly.

But the search for it was itself a defense of the dignity of human life.

(The End)