I don’t know how many times I hit him on the head.

When I come to my senses, his refined and elegant face is no longer the same.

Blood gurgles out of his head, gore splashed everywhere.

The sheets and pillows are stained. There is blood everywhere on the floor and walls, and on me from hitting him.

I stand beside the bed, my hands stained with blood, and warm liquid drips from the hammer onto the floor.  I hear the drip, drip, drip, and the disgust and terror make my scalp numb.

The body is breathing vigorously on its own, but in fact, there is no flesh left.

I feel a drop of blood fall from my forehead into my eyes, coloring them blood red.

This is a prison.

I am banished to my own hell.

When he gets up after pretending enough, I will definitely be very miserable, and he might kill me.

But I really feel so much hate. I hate Wen Mingcheng who betrayed me, I hate the replacement who deceived and toyed with me, and I hate myself.

Time passes little by little. He does not get up from the bed, and I see his blood gradually stop flowing.

The blood coagulates on his face and turns dark red. The flesh is curled up and covered in blood clots, making it look ever more ferocious and terrifying, and the color of the body’s skin has also turned pale purple.

I see that his nails have turned white and blue, and that his skin has become horribly stiff to the naked eye.

The blood all over my body seems to have stopped dripping, and the cold crawls upward from the soles of my feet, making my limbs stiff.

After a while, I slowly and hesitantly reach out to touch his body.

The skin that my fingertips touch is cold, and the muscles have lost their elasticity.

I try to move his hand, but his joints are difficult to rotate, and the fingers that I forcibly straighten slowly return to a slightly clenched fist.

This is rigor mortis.

He…..looks like a real corpse.

. . . . . . .

“You’re saying you killed your husband?”

It is late at night at the police station, and the lights in the duty room are very dim. I huddle on a chair next to a desk, and two police officers sit in front of me with pens and notebooks. 

The young-looking policeman on my left has been staring at me since I came in, and the officer on the right who asked me the question looks to be in his thirties. He has rimless frames and a steady, intimidating temperament. After writing in the notebook for a moment, he looks up and questions me.

I don’t know why they didn’t take me to an interrogation room. Am I not scary enough?

“Yes! No, it’s possible that…..I might have killed him.” The air feels like it is made of knives, drilling into my trachea and cutting into my internal organs.

The sticky smell of blood still lingers, and fragmented colors and terrifying, distorted visions ravage my mind. When I close my eyes, I see a murder scene and an unrecognizable corpse.

“I thought he was a demon, so I beat him to death. I think he’s deceiving me, but I’m still so scared…..please go back with me to take a look.”

Wen Mingcheng is a very particular Achilles heel of mine.

I have loved him longer than I have hated him, loved him unforgettably for many years. He is deep in my mind, carved into my bones, occupying my soul.

Even though my reasoning tells me that he is not a good person, that he has deceived me and possibly betrayed me, and that the imposter I seemingly beat to death must also be playing a trick on me…..

The sight of Mingcheng’s body lying dead before my eyes still scares me.

I can’t help but recall the story Dr. Zhao told me about the woman who mistook her husband for a goat spirit and strangled him with her own hands.

“I felt like he had been replaced, and he acknowledged it tonight. But…..he seems to really be dead. Could it be that I’m having hallucinations? No, I can’t be!”

Mingyi was right. I’ve been toyed with miserably by him.

My Wei family are all honest, kind people. I admit that I was pampered by them as I grew up, and I’m a person with a gentle personality and a soft heart. When he and I fell in love, I really loved him wholeheartedly and without defenses. If he is truly a cruel person and used my feelings to hurt me, then I will have no power to resist, and I’ll really be played with to death by him.

The tears must have dried up. My eyes hurt so much that there is even pain in my eyebrows and temples, like my skull is about to burst.

I no longer care what others think of me and lay on the table, hugging my head.

A policeman in front of me seems to stand up. I hear the sound of a chair being dragged, and hear his footsteps moving around the room before they finally stop next to me.

A piece of clothing is draped over my body.

It is the young policeman.

He has found a plainclothes jacket from somewhere and covered me.

It’s always a little cold at night in coastal cities. I’m wearing very thin clothes, and I don’t know if it is because of the temperature or my emotions, but my body is shivering slightly.

This piece of clothing covers my body and helps me block the cold wind blowing through the window. I stare up at him blankly.

He is still very young, with thick eyebrows and round eyes. His skin is fair and soft, but fine lines have appeared prematurely between his eyebrows. The way he looks at me with sympathy and compassion is inconsistent with his age. 

I don’t know why he’s sympathizing with me. Logically speaking, shouldn’t I be interrogated strictly?

And when he does this, the other officer doesn’t stop him. He writes on the paper for a moment, puts down the pen, and raises his eyes to give me a deep look. “I have notified your family and your doctor. They will be here soon to take you back to your older brother’s house.”

They’re letting me go home?

“…..Why?! I might have killed someone, Officer.” I am astonished.

I think of something and urgently reach out to grab his arm. “Do you not believe me?”

He lowers his head with a heavy glance at my hand, then pushes the notebook he was using in front of me and passes me the pen. “Someone has already visited your home. Please write your name here.”

I pick up the pen and write my name where his finger indicates, then push it to him and say anxiously: “I hit him with a hammer…..”

He says nothing. He glances down at my signature and pauses imperceptively. Then he raises his eyelids to look at me again. 

“Mr. Wei, do you see what you wrote?”

I don’t understand, so I take another look and realize that I’ve written “A-Zhen.”

My brain really is broken.

“I’m sorry, can I correct it?”

He doesn’t say if it’s okay, and just turns another page before pushing it to me.

This time, the entire page is blank. I don’t know where to write, so I write in the upper lefthand corner.

He watches me the whole time. When he sees that I’m done writing, he takes it back, looks at it, and pushes it toward me again.

I looked at his pointing finger.

I had still written “A-Zhen.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

His finger moves to the right, gesturing for me to write again.

I quickly write again on the right side.

There is no need to show him this time. I freeze when I look at the name I wrote.

It is still A-Zhen.

His finger continues to slide to the right: “Continue.”

I write it again.

The room falls into a deathly silence.

After a few minutes, I impolitely take the notebook and write my name frantically.

The sound of the pen scratching rapidly on the paper is particularly clear in the silence, and the sound of the paper being punctured is also harsh.

Gradually, my hand shakes to the point that I can no longer hold the pen.

I have written an entire page of ‘A-Zhen.’

Neither policeman speaks.

And I also stare straight at the handwriting in the notebook in disbelief. I freeze in the chair, completely stunned.

……I don’t know what my name is.

I can’t remember.

Wait, I need to calm down.

First of all, what is my last name?

My surname is Wei!

Right, my surname is Wei!

Then which ‘Wei’ is it?

They call me A-Zhen, so my name is…..Wei Zhen?

It doesn’t seem right. I probably haven’t even heard this name.

My name is Wei A-Zhen?

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

A-Zhen should be a nickname.

…..Then what is my name?

I suddenly recall something crucial.

Where is my ID card?!

My name will be on my ID card.

I raise my head abruptly: “Officers, where is my ID card? I came here with my ID card, right?”

“I suddenly can’t remember my name. Please let me look at it.”

“Please give it to me quickly…..”

I am probably in a state of complete madness.

“Mr. Wei!” The young officer next to me suddenly calls in a deep voice.

He startles me and I look up blankly, only to see that his eyes are red.

The young police officer grimaces bitterly and says to me: “Mr. Wei, stop looking. You don’t have your ID card.”

I don’t have my ID card? Why didn’t I get my ID card when I called the police?

How could I be so forgetful?

I don’t even know myself. How do the police know my name if I didn’t bring my ID card?

Ai…..that’s not right?

I don’t know what my name is, so I didn’t introduce myself to them. I also didn’t give them my ID card, so…..how do they know that my surname is Wei?

All police stations have facial recognition, and it is said that the identity of the other party can be confirmed through that technology. There happens to be such a lens beside this table and computer. Is this how they know who I am?

Feeling hopeful again, I plead with the officer who seems most likely to speak: “Officer, do you know my name? Please tell me.”

He listens to me quietly, then reaches out to hold my shoulders and leans down to look at me.

“Mr. Wei…..have you forgotten me?” He says something I don’t understand, pointing at the other officer. “This is my mentor, have you forgotten him too?”

I am struck dumb.

I look at his face, trying hard to remember, but there is no such face in my memory, nor the face of the older police officer at the table.

“…..Have we met before?”

“You don’t remember.” He opens his police ID and shows it to me. There is his personal photo and name on it.

I look at it carefully, but his name is unfamiliar to me, and so is his photo.

Likely noticing my confusion, he takes back the ID. Looking down at himself in the photo, his voice carries the weight of memories, and each word sounds particularly heavy. “This photo was taken when I first joined the force half a year ago. At that time, the first case my mentor and I handled was the car accident with you and Mr. Wen…..”

My eyes suddenly open wide. He is telling me of an experience I have no memory of.

He falls silent again after saying this. 

In the photo, his smile is bright and sunny. But now, although he still looks young, his face is already mature, heavy with fatigue and compassion.

He looks at me again, his eyes deep and solemn.

“Mr. Wei, your husband passed away a long while ago.”

“When you returned from your honeymoon, there was an asshole drunk driving and racing…..the cars collided. It was a terrible accident.”

“You were shielded by him, but fragments from the windshield cut his throat. He bled to death before the ambulance arrived.”

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Chapter 22 << Table of Contents >> Chapter 24