Chapter 5
Edward Quan ·
As though clutching his last lifeline, he stared at the officer in charge.
“Someone must have stolen her medicine! Find it, and you can prove I didn’t mean to do it!”
The officer frowned and immediately gave an order.
“Seal off the train’s waste system. Conduct a full search.”
In the next room, Bai Meng crouched in a corner.
Her teeth chattered uncontrollably.
She covered both ears, afraid to hear anything outside.
Cold sweat blurred her carefully applied makeup. She looked as though she had been hauled out of water.
Half an hour later, an officer arrived with a transparent evidence bag.
“Captain, we found this deep in the rubbish bin in the carriage eleven toilet. We’ve recovered clear fingerprints.”
Inside was an empty white medicine bottle.
Its dirty label still faintly read *Heart Medication*.
Pei Chuan stared at it.
He suddenly remembered Bai Meng offering to go to the toilet to gather my things.
He sprang up, violently shaking the heating pipe.
“It was you!”
Like an enraged lion, he fought past the police trying to restrain him.
He lunged for Bai Meng, who happened to be escorted past, and clamped a hand around her neck.
His eyes were bloodshot. Through clenched teeth, he demanded, “Why did her lifesaving medicine turn into an empty bottle in the waste system?”
“You poured it away, didn’t you?”
Bai Meng’s feet left the floor. She struggled wildly.
Her eyes rolled as she forced out broken excuses.
“Cough… Not me… Ms. Ye…”
“She thought it had expired… made me throw it in the toilet…”
“She wanted to frame me with her death!”
“You’re lying!”
Xiao Xu, the intern who had tried to give me water, suddenly stood.
She pointed straight at Bai Meng and testified loudly.
“I heard her clearly. Before she fell, Ms. Ye kept asking for help and her medication!”
“You deliberately took the bag away and said she was pretending!”
“I saw you carry it into the toilet. You looked panicked when you came out, and the bag had been moved!”
Her lie was exposed in front of everyone.
Bai Meng’s face turned ashen.
I hovered above them, watching the pair tear at each other.
To escape responsibility, they ripped away their hypocritical masks and exposed their ugliest selves.
Three years of hurt finally dissolved in this ridiculous spectacle.
I no longer hated them. I felt only utter disgust.
The police pried Pei Chuan’s fingers from Bai Meng’s throat one by one.
“Enough! Assaulting someone right in front of us?”
An officer took out cold handcuffs. Two clicks sounded.
Pei Chuan and Bai Meng were cuffed to opposite sides of the same iron railing.
“Deliberately destroying someone’s lifesaving medication is grounds to suspect intentional homicide.”
The officer looked coldly at them.
“Neither of you is getting away with this.”
The interrogation room’s harsh white light was almost too bright to look at.
Pei Chuan wore orange prison clothes. His hands were cuffed to an iron chair.
In a few hours, he seemed to have aged ten years.
Dark stubble covered his chin. His empty eyes made him look like a walking corpse.
The detective in charge entered and threw a thick stack of documents onto the iron table.
“These are Ye Tingxue’s records for severe heart disease over the past three years. We obtained them from the hospital.”
The red word *Critical* made Pei Chuan shut his eyes.
His hands shaking, he turned page after page of the clinical reports.
Every date cut straight into his heart.
“December 24, 2021. Sudden ventricular fibrillation. Two hours of emergency treatment.”
“August 15, 2022. Grade-two heart failure. The hospital issued a critical-condition notice.”
“January 1, 2023. Warning signs of myocardial infarction. One week of observation in intensive care.”
He shook uncontrollably at those dates.
Of course he remembered them.
December 24 was the company’s year-end party.
He had stood onstage lecturing about keeping work and personal life separate, refused the warm water I offered, then turned to accept champagne from Bai Meng.
August 15 was the management team’s company trip.
To avoid gossip, he had made me stay behind alone and work overtime, checking the accounts.
January 1 was New Year’s Day.
Busy entertaining clients at a club, he had called me a nuisance and hung up on thirteen calls for help.
I sat on the table before him and calmly watched him fall apart.