Chapter 4

I walked toward him, took off my sunglasses and mask, then pushed back my hood.

Gray Owl’s expression changed.

“Who… who are you?”

“Why is it you?”

He lurched to his feet, staring in horror, unsteady on his legs.

An instant later, the dagger hidden in my sleeve drove into his throat.

“Ask Fu Qiong when you get to hell.”

I leaned close to his ear to give him my answer.

His dying gasps gave way to silence.

In the darkness, his body gave off the uncanny reek of blood. The spreading stains reached out like tentacles.

I sat on the desk and told his corpse the whole truth, touching up my makeup in a little mirror as I spoke.

“So it’s finally come to this.”

In the interrogation room, I smiled at the officers across from me, as though a weight had been lifted.

“Name?”

“Bai Yi.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Occupation?”

“Unemployed. Long-term inpatient. I’m mentally ill.”

I answered their questions one by one, then began recounting my crimes.

I was an orphan.

Losing my parents as a child had made me independent and resilient.

At eighteen, in my final year of high school, I placed in the city’s top ten in the mock university entrance exams.

After the actual entrance exams, I was out walking alone one night when someone struck me from behind with a club and knocked me unconscious. I was forcibly committed to Hanshan Psychiatric Hospital.

Then Gray Owl’s daughter took my identity and used my name to enter a prestigious university in the provincial capital.

They labeled me as having “antisocial personality disorder” and used it to justify their so-called treatment.

Electric shocks. Drugs. Beatings.

Endless torment twisted my mind until I craved nothing but murder and revenge.

I really did develop an antisocial personality.

Or perhaps it was some other illness.

In any case, I’d gone mad.

They just hadn’t noticed yet.

Years of medication had dulled my body’s response and built up a tolerance.

No sedative could break my will anymore.

I pretended to be an obedient little lamb. My small build and harmless eyes gradually put them at ease, until they relaxed their watch over me.

Time after time, I slipped into the hospital management’s offices at night and searched their files.

What I found in those secret records astonished me. Most of the patients had been framed and forcibly committed, just as I had.

They hadn’t been ill at all.

One file contained a list of the city’s top twenty students in the final-year mock exams. My name was circled in red.

Beside it, someone had written:

“Orphan.”

The documents revealed how Gray Owl had arranged for his daughter to steal my identity and take my place at university.

A female private investigator named Fu Qiong had been instrumental. She had investigated my background and supplied my personal information.

Behind the respectable title of private investigator, she had done plenty of dirty work.

At the time, she was Gray Owl’s mistress.

The management offices were locked every night. I had found another route around the locks.

From the ward’s ceiling vent, I crawled into the corridor, climbed out through a small window, then followed a drainpipe along the building’s outer wall and entered the office through its window.

That was how I’d really learned to work at heights.

When the Yangjia Village replacement scheme began, I was selected as one of the thirty-two substitutes.

After the “accident,” a doctor gave the order, and we scattered from the highway.

The patients had been injected beforehand. Dazed and distressed, they couldn’t run very fast or far.

Several doctors waited among the trees, watching like predators and following in secret.

At the appointed time, they would take the patients to their designated homes in Yangjia Village.

But the medication didn’t work on me.

I ran fast. I ran far.

I slipped through the net.

I broke away from the others and ran toward freedom.

And toward my revenge.

All thirty-two holdouts were taken to the hospital.

But on the other side of the exchange, one of the thirty-two escaped patients had vanished.

I should have appeared in an innocent young woman’s home in Yangjia Village and taken her identity.

The doctors couldn’t find me.

The doctor responsible for watching me was severely punished.

They never dreamed that I had gone to Fu Qiong’s detective agency, killed her and become someone entirely different.

I had become Fu Qiong.

That Monday morning, she made a cup of coffee, opened her window and drew in the first fresh air of the working day.

I climbed in through the window and tightened a cord around her neck, stealing her breath.

And her identity.

I locked the office door, hid her body in a filing cabinet and put on her clothes and jewelry. I took her name badge and phone.

When everything was ready, I unlocked the door, sat down at her desk and touched up my makeup to steady my nerves.

Just then, Lily burst in, panic written across her face.

“My father’s a fake.”

Intrigued, I lit a cigarette and invited her to sit down and tell me about it.

My first case as a private investigator had walked right through the door.

By coincidence, its objective fitted perfectly with my own hunger for revenge.

Everything that followed was recorded in the report I wrote.

You’ve read it, haven’t you, Officer?

Private investigation is a profession that demands discretion about one’s identity.

While she was alive, Fu Qiong wore sunglasses and a mask all year round. She avoided unnecessary contact with other people.

She trusted no one.

The few employees she had were already resentful and no longer loyal. A little money bought their silence.

I kept dressing as she had. No outsider noticed.

Then I used Lily’s case to carry out my revenge.

The disturbing images I’d taken at the hospital and Yang Xinghua’s home became irrefutable evidence exposing the conspiracy.

As for signing “Fu Qiong” at the end of the report, that was really just a small indulgence in mischief.

Eight years ago, they found someone to replace me.

Eight years later, I came to replace the person who had helped replace me.

Fortunes turn.

My report had the effect I wanted.

The wicked puppets were arrested, one after another. The innocent residents were rescued.

My only regret was Gray Owl. Hiding behind the scenes, he was arrogant enough to keep finding cracks in the law through which to escape.

I decided to get rid of him myself.

It wasn’t difficult.

I was Fu Qiong now—his former lover.

He never suspected that the “Fu Qiong” he’d messaged and arranged to meet was an impostor.

Still less did he expect the impostor to stab him without a word.

My reason for killing him was simple: revenge and survival.

By then, either he killed me or I killed him.

The one who talks too much dies first.

An eternal truth.

Isn’t it better to wait until the body’s cold before you start talking?

Wouldn’t you agree, Officer?

“Wouldn’t you agree, Officer?”

“Cut!”

At the director’s call, the lights came on. Crew members got up and began moving around the interrogation-room set.

The two actors in police uniforms stood, stretched together and removed their caps.

“Great work!”

I went over and shook their hands.

Beside the camera, the director waved me over to watch the take.

“Excellent. Thank you!”

After watching the playback, I called it a wrap.

“Thanks, everyone! I’ve ordered food!”

Once our editor had finished editing the interrogation film, I saved it carefully on my computer.

Have you heard of the scapegoat effect?

In an ancient religion, believers killed a sheep on the Day of Atonement.

The sheep took on their sins.

I watched the cast list roll through the end credits.

[Ye Yi as Bai Yi]

As the screenwriter, I had created a character called Bai Yi.

And played her myself.

Every crime Bai Yi confessed to the police in that short film was mine.

The entire plot was adapted from my real experiences.

Bai Yi had been judged in my place.

She would go to prison for me too.

Wasn’t that atonement enough?

I still wanted to live!

I still wanted to kill!

How could I be stupid enough to let the police catch me?

In truth, ours was an amateur film crew, learning as we went. Everyone involved was a former fellow patient from the hospital.

My report had brought Hanshan Psychiatric Hospital down.

After it closed, the police investigated further.

Like the thirty-two holdout households of Yangjia Village, these fellow patients had been wrongfully confined and were rescued.

They were deeply grateful. Whatever I asked, they did their best to help.

When I learned that one of them had once been a director, a wonderful idea for “atonement” came to me.

We could make a short film!