Outside of Yan City there was a village that had had the marrow and workforce drained out of it by the big city and hadn't developed a day in twenty years. Xiao Haiyang drove himself. Because his eyesight was poor, he drove into every pothole, jolting himself until he was ghastly pale. And when he got out of the car, he slipped on shards of ice and was sent sprawling. Limping, he was followed through half the village by a very disgraceful big yellow dog until at last he saw the local civil policeman he'd contacted ahead of time.
The civil policeman chased away the big yellow dog studying the cripple's walk. "I remember what happened then. The old Sun family had two sons. The second son had a little girl, and the eldest gave them a precious grandson, the only heir, unbearably spoiled. The rotten kid did it because of the business of the home repairs. Maybe he didn't like that his uncle wouldn't give any money and thought that he was real reason. He thought everything the family had should be his. Anyway, a bunch of relatives partying as they celebrated the New Year also had him pretty unhappy, and not two days passed before the second son's girl fell through a hole in the ice and drowned. She was only three. She didn't even look human when they pulled her out."
The civil policeman led Xiao Haiyang to a little police station. There was no private office for the household register, just a little space portioned off with a sign hung up. Inside, a female police officer was on duty. There was an old man sitting across from her who'd come for some certificate.
The civil policeman said hello and walked right in, getting out an already prepared file. Pointing to a photograph in it, he said, "This is the dead girl's dad, the Sun family's second son, called Sun Jian."
Xiao Haiyang had no attention to spare to wipe his running nose. He breathed in deeply and took a close look, then found a photograph of Beiyuan's Longyun Center's fake security guard "Wang Jian." "Could you look at this for me? Is this the same person?"
The fake security guard "Wang Jian" looked like he'd aged more that a decade or two. The bones of his cheeks had changed shape. Lacking support, the flesh of his face had collapsed. The bridge of his nose meanwhile looked unnaturally high, the protruding cartilage nearly breaking through the skin, making his eye sockets look even deeper, giving him a somewhat sinister appearance.
Xiao Haiyang consulted an expert; this fake security guard's face had likely gone under the knife.
One was a somber middle-aged security guard you could tell at a glance wasn't to be trifled with; the other was a refined and cultured young father. At a glance, no one would connect them.
The civil policeman stared for a long time. "There's some similarity, especially the mole on the chin… Ah, he's changed his appearance too much, I wouldn't dare to say."
"Is there a record of DNA and fingerprints?" Xiao Haiyang said.
"Well, now, we really don't have that." The civil policeman shook his head. "It's been too long. We weren't so advanced then. Though the parents insisted that it had been their nephew who'd done it, no one had seen, and there was no evidence. He himself wouldn't admit it no matter what. There was nothing we could do.—Such a little child who couldn't even walk steadily, reasonably speaking she wouldn't have run out by herself on a frozen day. Her death really was odd, but you still couldn't point to anyone. In the end, after a long investigation, we had to let it go… Oh, yes, he signed a statement then, we should still have it. Do you have a use for that?"
This person's original name was "Sun Jian," and the false name was "Wang Jian." One character between them was identical. Security guards at the Longyun Center had to sign in every day when they were on duty. Xiao Haiyang quivered. "All right, let me see it!"
The civil policeman quickly found the signed document from back then and gave it to him. Relying on his naked eye, Xiao Haiyang judged that the two signatures had probably come from the same pen. "I need to have a graphologist give an expert opinion. Thank you."
The civil policeman saw him to the door very warmly. "You're welcome. If you have any questions, come ask any time."
Just then, the old man getting a certificate suddenly turned his head and looked at Xiao Haiyang, widening his clouded eyes. "That little asshole from the Sun family threw that three-year-old girlie into a hole in the ice and drowned her. You didn't do anything about it and let him go, but what happened next? The joker fell into a frozen river himself and drowned. Retribution! Ha!"
The civil policeman made a face and went to educate the old man on the law, but Xiao Haiyang stared, not knowing how to answer. Just then, his phone rang. He pulled himself together and hastily walked out of the police station.
Lang Qiao spoke quickly over the phone: "How are you doing? I've found a lead on the fake front desk receptionist over here. Her real name must be 'Wang Ruobing.' She had a big sister. Over a decade ago there was a case of a remedial class teacher molesting female students. This business made a pretty big fuss at the time, but none of the victims would stand up. There was insufficient evidence, and he had to be let go. Wang Ruobing's sister was one of the victims. She committed suicide over it."
"I found the fake security guard." Xiao Haiyang stretched out his frozen hands with difficulty and opened a file. "His original name may be 'Sun Jian.' His three-year-old daughter was pushed into a hole in the ice. The location is rather remote, but it was in Yan City's jurisdiction at the time. The file was transferred to the City Bureau… No need to look for the fake Zhao Yulong. In one of the unsolved cases, the victim's husband signed when he recognized the body. He must have also had plastic surgery, I found an expert to take a look. Apart from the jawline, nose bridge, and forehead, the other facial characteristics match."
"For the fake delivery person and the fake patrolman we only have small photographs from their fake IDs. Especially for the fake patrolman; the boss took a picture of the fake ID in night mode, it's hard to tell anything," Lang Qiao said. "But I went and looked through the rest of the files for the unsolved cases and found relatives of the victims that seem to match… Ah, Little Glasses, can't we basically determine now that these people who have been acting as go-betweens and stirring shit up are victims from the unsolved cases recorded in the Picture Album Project?"
Xiao Haiyang's mind was still full of the memory of that old man's teeth-gnashing "Retribution!" He gave an absent-minded affirmative.
"What are they playing at?" Lang Qiao asked. "Righting wrongs in accordance with heaven's decree?"
Xiao Haiyang was silent for a while. "Wait, I'll contact Captain Luo."
But Luo Wenzhou couldn't be contacted. His phone was in his jacket pocket on silent.
Luo Wenzhou stood with his hands crossed over his chest, watching Fei Du writing and drawing on a piece of paper, hesitantly saying, "I hear that getting memories back needs an expert hypnotist. I feel like I may not be any use in this respect. After all, looking at a warm, lively, beautiful youth like me is more likely to make you treasure the present and look to the future."
"I don't need a hypnotist, and I don't need to have my memories reawakened. I need to deduce the truth," Fei Du said without looking up. "The brain sometimes automatically constructs fake memories, but the fake memories have confused details, trying to obscure the inherent logic of events. I need you to raise questions from an outsider's point of view and help me find what's been obscured by my memory."
Luo Wenzhou frowned. "Do you believe what that driver said?"
"They call themselves 'The Reciter.'" Fei Du tossed the pen at his fingertips onto the table and paused. "Honestly, shixiong, don't you think this Reciter is a lot like me?"
Luo Wenzhou's expression cooled. Stiffly, he said, "Not at all."
Fei Du smiled, paying him no mind, and continued: "I always thought that my pattern of gathering together victims and using their disadvantaged material and emotional situations to get things done was imitating them, but now I think that my way of doing things is more like The Reciter—if two things, two people, seem to have a connection, then it's likely they in fact do have some connection."
Luo Wenzhou frowned.
"That driver told me that their leader, who they call Teacher, can't come see me now—there are two possibilities. First, he's concerned that my people will immediately betray him to the police. Second, it's in the literal sense that he himself can't come see me. Maybe he isn't at liberty, or maybe the problem is with his health. In the message the driver passed on, the words he used were that he 'regrets being unable to come in person,' so I incline more towards the latter."
Luo Wenzhou paced two steps. "Teacher Pan is currently the main focus of suspicion. He can't even return home. He isn't at liberty. And then there's…shiniang. She's at the hospital. That's a problem with her health. Which of them do you suspect it is?"
"They both have one problem."
"What?" Luo Wenzhou said.
"Money," said Fei Du. "Creating fake identities, providing for a group of subordinates, eavesdropping, stalking, purchasing illegal weapons—each of their plans, each of their actions, requires a great deal of capital. It's not a bit cheaper than taking care of wanted criminals. Either he's rich himself, or there's someone financially providing for him. That makes the scope of suspects very narrow. If we're only talking about within Yan City, you could count them with both hands. I'm one of them."
"Fei Du, if you have something to say, say it." Luo Wenzhou turned his head and for once looked at him seriously. "I don't like this way of speaking."
Normally, when he was grumbling and swearing, he himself often didn't take it seriously. Once he was really angry, his expression would become increasingly calm and cold.
Fei Du didn't answer, avoiding his gaze and continuing, "…Fei Chengyu would also be one, if he weren't down."
Luo Wenzhou looked down none too happily at his temple for a moment. "Thinking from a paranoid point of view, if you could bribe a hospital worker, it wouldn't be unfeasible to pretend to be in a vegetative state."
Fei Du smiled. "When Fei Chengyu was first in the hospital, I sent people to follow the doctor in charge around the clock. The aides changed every week. I have all their biographical notes starting from birth. When the hospital told me he had irreversible brain damage, I had him transferred to other hospitals a few times under the guise of seeking other treatment options. Only when they gave the same diagnosis did I move him to the sanatorium. Even so, I still kept him under watch for over a year, until I'd gotten a firm grip on his conglomerate."
Luo Wenzhou said, "…Why didn't you simply pick up a quilt and smother him?"
"I considered it, but then I thought that smothering him wouldn't have any use but revealing myself ahead of time," Fei Du said. "I wanted to seize the shadow behind him. Leaving him one breath would be like leaving a fishbone stuck in that person's throat."
Luo Wenzhou sat down across from him.
"The first time I went into the basement, by a fluke, I wasn't discovered," Fei Du said dully. "Half a year later I snuck in again, but that time my luck wasn't as good, and I was caught. Then Fei Chengyu emptied his basement… That's about how it happened, but my impressions about how I got in and what happened after I was caught have always been very vague."
Luo Wenzhou thought about it, then said, "Let's start with how you got in.—How many possible codes did you have to try from?"
"There were three most likely possible answers," Fei Du said.
"Your basement sounds the alarm if the wrong code is entered once. In other words, your chance of success was a little over thirty percent," Luo Wenzhou said. "If it were me, I may have gone to try, so what if my dad gave me a thrashing—but from my understanding of you, you would have been more cautious."
Even if Fei Du hadn't innately been such a cautious person, the environment he'd grown up in had doomed him. He was much more cautious than other people in minor matters. Being caught by Fei Chengyu, after all, wasn't a question of getting a thrashing or sitting at the door writing a self-reflection.
Fei Du nodded slowly.
"You wouldn't have done it, unless someone had given you a hint. It's not very likely that it would have been Fei Chengyu, and it couldn't have been the housekeepers who passed through your house. As for other outsiders… I think it's likely you wouldn't have easily trusted them. By process of elimination, supposing someone really did give you a hint, it could only have been your mom," Luo Wenzhou said. "That matches what you dreamed that day."
"Yes," said Fei Du.
"Now for the second question. You just said that the first time you got into the basement, you felt that she was watching you, and later she covered your escape. Then the second time, she gave you a hint about the code, so she must have known you were going to sneak into the basement. Why didn't she have time to cover you then?"
Fei Du put his elbows on his knees and propped his chin on his fingertips, frowning involuntarily—his memories became increasingly blurry here. He really couldn't remember.
"All right," Luo Wenzhou said after waiting a moment. "Before you were discovered by Fei Chengyu, what were you doing? What was the last thing you saw?"
"…the computer?" Fei Du pondered for a long time. "It must have been. The computer's code was the same as the basement's."
Luo Wenzhou said, "While you were looking through his computer, Fei Chengyu suddenly came in?"
Fei Du's brow furrowed more tightly. After a while, treasuring words like gold, he said, "…I don't think so."
He didn't think so—even hearing such a scene described filled him with terror. If it really had happened like that, Fei Du thought he'd have some reaction every time he turned on a laptop of a similar model.
"Definitely not." Fei Du continued thinking along those lines. "I think I may have heard something before that and hid somewhere."
Luo Wenzhou wasn't a specialist, after all. He didn't know what he should say now. He could only wait for Fei Du to slowly think about it. He suddenly thought that when Fei Du recalled Fei Chengyu, he didn't seem like a boy who feared his father, didn't even seem like he was recalling an abusive scumbag. It was simply like he was recalling a monster—a teeth-gnashing, blood-sucking monster in a nightmare.
Why?
Had Fei Chengyu really never done anything to his "heir?"
Luo Wenzhou clutched his teacup. The bottom of the cup scraped against the table, letting out a few gentle sounds.
Fei Du suddenly fixed his eyes on the teacup. "Porcelain… I heard the sound of porcelain clicking together, and Fei Chengyu said…"
What had Fei Chengyu said?
There seemed to be a splinter at Fei Du's temple. His pulse went faster and faster, about to explode.
"'No need,'" Fei Du said quietly. "He said… 'No need, we aren't having any.'"
"He said 'we aren't having any,'" Luo Wenzhou quickly followed up. "In other words, he had a guest with him, and your mom brought them tea? Who was the guest?"
A faint figure appeared in Fei Du's mind, but he couldn't remember who that person was, as if he was taking a test and reaching for information he didn't quite have—he'd clearly seen it, clearly remembered every word and sentence around it, but he couldn't remember the thing itself.
His chest hurt, and he coughed as though unable to catch his breath.
This reaction again. Luo Wenzhou's pupils contracted. He asked grimly, "What did Fei Chengyu do to you?"
Fei Du didn't answer. He waved a hand at him.
Luo Wenzhou grabbed his shoulder. "Fei Du, you're the expert. You tell me, what is post-traumatic stress disorder, and what symptoms does it have?"
Fei Du took a breath with difficulty. "I don't have any…"
"Any what?"
"Trauma." Fei Du noticed that his voice was hoarse and cleared his throat. He said, "Fei Chengyu really didn't hit me, didn't cause me any bodily harm. Or else wouldn't I have had to go to the hospital? If other people had gotten involved, I couldn't not remember it."
Luo Wenzhou looked at Fei Du in astonishment. "Since when does 'trauma' mean bodily harm? Student Fei Du, tell me the truth, did you pass your final exams?—It's all right, I won't make fun of you if you have to make them up."
"I don't have a problem with psychological trauma." Fei Du leaned back slightly and raised his eyebrows a little. "You must have felt it. My capacity for fellow feeling is very poor. I have practically no empathy or sympathy. I lack a sense of shame, my feeling of fear is slower to react than that of other people, and my autonomic responses concerned with anxiety are weak—if you add in a high level of aggression, it's basically no different from Fei Chengyu. I didn't especially want to be like him, so I used electric shock to forcibly correct myself."
Luo Wenzhou felt he'd finally touched the core of his problem. For a time he stared dumbstruck at this delicate-featured young man. Before this, he'd thought that Fei Du's occasional vile appraisal of himself was sulking, was nitpicking, was even a means of venting his unhappiness when he was in a bad mood. But he hadn't thought that for Fei Du, what he said wasn't a vile appraisal; it was an objective statement, like asserting his name, sex, age, and ethnicity.
"…No," Luo Wenzhou said somewhat heavily, "I haven't felt that."
Fei Du met his eyes. For some reason he suddenly regretted making Luo Wenzhou help him remember. Fei Du abruptly stood up. "If I really can't remember, then forget it. I'll go ask whether they've caught up to that driver. Since The Reciter has come to the surface, there'll be traces to follow. We can also use other means…"
Luo Wenzhou pulled him back. At the same time, Fei Du's phone rang.
Fei Du said, "Wait…"
Luo Wenzhou pulled him, making him stumble, encircling his waist from behind, holding down his hand, which was ready to pick up the phone. "You said that the first time you got into Fei Chengyu's basement, your mom distracted him. After you ran away, why didn't you dare to watch how he treated her?"
Fei Du's fingers trembled involuntarily.
Luo Wenzhou pressed down on his chest. "You didn't save her, so were you ashamed? Upset? You've been upset all this time, isn't that right? So you've never thought about it, nearly thought you'd forgotten. Fei Du, have you really forgotten?"
Fei Du struggled subconsciously. "I didn't…"
"Didn't you say that when Fei Chengyu abused her, he made you watch?" Luo Wenzhou said quietly into his ear. "If you closed the door, you'd still know what would happen to her, right? Tell me—"
The music of Fei Du's phone's ringtone seemed out of tune, out of tune the way he'd heard it that weekend when he'd come home from school and seen her cold body. In an instant, he remembered a dream he seemed to have had over and over: a woman with a suffocated face, ashen, lying on the ground, asking him, "Why didn't you save me?"
Without knowing it, he struggled fiercely, knocking the tea set off the coffee table. The little porcelain cups rolled all over the solid floor, scattering in pieces along with the hot water. The sound of them shattering combined with his memories—
He was dragged out of the little cabinet at the bottom of the bookcase. Then he heard a woman's scream, and costly porcelain breaking. Fei Chengyu pulled her by the hair across a floor littered with shards. Beside them was a person indifferently watching this farce.
He instinctively used this tall guest as a shield, ducking behind him. The person looked down and smiled at him from on high, even gently stroked his hair. He said, "You can't just hide, boy."
Fei Chengyu seemed to notice him. His bloodshot eyes turned to him. Fei Du felt as if his heartbeat had been interrupted.
The familiar feeling of suffocation rushed up. Fei Chengyu had closed that metal ring over his neck.
But this time, on the other end wasn't a little cat or dog like he usually "trained" with; it was—