Chapter 6

“Now I understand. It was because I trusted him that I became so desperate.”

Father couldn’t hear her.

He only stared into empty space, repeating his apologies.

My brother stood behind him.

My sister walked over, glanced at them, then turned and walked away.

No one followed her.

I suddenly understood that truly leaving was not about hatred.

It meant that from now on, their joys and sorrows no longer had anything to do with us.

Mother stepped down and turned back.

“We’ve finished taking attendance. Everyone is here.”

“It’s time to go.”

“Go ahead,” I said.

“I want to wait a little longer.”

Mother frowned. “You still can’t let go of Pei Xun?”

“No.”

I looked at the three people in the mourning hall.

“I just want to hear the verdict.”

Not to see how much they regretted it.

Everyone who had died in this house deserved justice.

Mother did not force me.

She stroked my head.

“Then wait.”

“But don’t wait too long.”

“We’ll walk slowly on the road to the Yellow Springs.”

I handed the baby back to Mother.

He clutched my finger once, then let go.

The two of them turned and walked away.

As my sister went, she kept turning back to wave at me.

The glow in Mother’s arms flickered once.

I stood on the steps.

I watched them walk into the vast white mist in the distance.

There was no main Su residence there.

No creditors.

And no one left to use the words “be sensible” to force them to die.

Chapter 9

Ten days after the case was opened, the Su Group changed its name.

The board approved the restructuring plan.

Father sat in the detention center and listened to his lawyer read it. For a long time, he said nothing.

The company was no longer called Su.

For half a month, he had staged a bankruptcy.

The financial statements, the draft news reports, the ferry ticket for his staged jump into the river.

Everything had been made to look real.

At the time, he said it had to be realistic or Ranning wouldn’t be scared.

Now he finally understood.

Some things, if you only think about them once, really can happen.

The Su Group was truly gone.

The Pei family acted more decisively than the Su family.

After Pei Xun’s name was struck off, the Pei family appointed a new successor on the third day.

His younger cousin.

On the day my brother was formally arrested, he was still wearing the shirt he had worn when he went to pick up my sister.

There was a bit of dried cake frosting on his cuff.

He had never thrown the cake box away.

He kept it on the highest shelf of his closet in the detention center.

An investigator once asked if he wanted to get rid of it.

He said no.

My sister’s name was written on the box.

It was the last time he had seen someone write her full name.

He said he would throw it away once he got out.

He never considered that release would not come for another ten years.

Jiang Chuyue once caused a scene at the detention center.

She used a shard from a porcelain bowl to cut her wrist.

The wound was very shallow.

A guard confiscated the shard and replaced her bowl with a wooden one.

She cried and said she couldn’t take it anymore.

The guard replied calmly, “The three Su women were locked up for half a month.”

“You’ve only been here a few days.”

She froze.

Then, for the first time, she asked that question.

“Are they really dead?”

No one answered her.

The day Mrs. Su died, Jiang Chuyue was posting photos from a yacht in Beihai.

The day the second Su daughter was carried home, she was busy choosing an evening gown.

When the eldest Su daughter fell from the second floor, she was calculating which route to take at the airport when she returned to the country.

Now she sat on a hard wooden bed, holding her wooden bowl.

She began to understand that some things weren’t a performance.

A play can be staged again after the curtain falls.

The dead cannot.

I visited Pei Xun once.

He sat there with his back to the door.

The guard called his name, but he didn’t react.

He still held the pregnancy test result tightly in his hand.

Folded, unfolded.

Unfolded, then folded again.

The creases had torn the paper into ragged strips.

He said nothing.

Only once, he suddenly spoke.

He asked the guard what day of the month it was.

The guard told him.

He nodded.

Then he said that day was when we had been supposed to go try on wedding dresses.

The bridal shop had been booked half a month in advance.

The thirty million yuan was eventually recovered.

When the money was withdrawn from the account, not a cent was missing.

The investigator said it was evidence and had to be returned to the victim.

Returned.

After he heard those words, Pei Xun himself paused for a moment.

There was no one left in the Su family who could claim the money.

The money came back, but the people did not.

My sister had gotten that thirty million by kneeling.

Now it sat silently in an account.

None of its owners could withdraw it anymore.

A month later, the case was sent to the procuratorate for indictment.

There were seven defendants in all.

The three creditors, Jiang Chuyue, Pei Xun, Father, and my brother.

The charges included unlawful detention resulting in three deaths, robbery, sexual assault, and intentional injury.