chapter 6
“Yes, I was sitting right here reading, and when I looked up, she was gone.”
He sobbed to the police officer beside him.
In the library, the officer comforted him while explaining the situation to his frantic parents.
“Based on what the child said, we can estimate that little Jiang Ye has been missing for less than half an hour.”
“Please don’t worry, you two. The culprit probably won’t have strayed far from the library.”
“We’ll get people searching the area right away and ask around for witnesses.”
That’s what the officer said back then.
No. It wasn’t half an hour.
It had been almost three hours.
Not the library.
The amusement park.
He thought to himself.
He watched his mother crying, begging the police to hurry.
His father frowned and called his subordinates.
He opened his mouth, but in the end, he said nothing.
Thankfully.
No one discovered it was his fault.
No one found out he’d taken his sister to the amusement park.
Everyone just thought she’d wandered off on her own.
The boy took the little girl’s hand and walked into the amusement park.
They vanished from sight.
I sat at the ticket booth by the entrance, watching coldly as Jiang Zhiheng stood frozen on the street.
His eyes were full of terror and rage.
Humans are strange creatures.
When their secrets are laid bare, their first reaction isn’t shame.
It’s anger, shock, and fear.
After who knows how long.
He staggered to his feet.
He came to the gate.
The railing at the entrance stopped him.
My voice was hoarse and muffled: “You need to buy a ticket.”
The knife wound across my neck had been deep, cutting straight through my throat.
So my voice was a little leaky now.
Jiang Zhiheng was much bolder than Jiang Xiaoxiao.
He didn’t react at all to the voice, walking straight up to me.
I handed him a ticket.
He glanced at it, then let out a roar and tore it to shreds.
All his usual refined demeanor was gone.
I knew why he tore up the ticket.
Because on it, written in blood, were some words.
Words he’d said to his parents after Jiang Ye came back.
He was terrified of the returning Jiang Ye, terrified she’d remember her childhood and tell their parents the truth.
Because he was terrified, he began to loathe her.
He began to twist and distort Jiang Ye’s every action in front of their parents, making them believe Jiang Ye had changed.
That Jiang Ye had become a liar, greedy and scheming.
Subtly, he made their parents believe all of it.
The torn scraps of the ticket scattered across the ground.
Jiang Zhiheng slammed furiously on the window in front of me: “Who are you?”
I raised my head.
The pale light shone down.
In his pupils, two faces kept shifting.
One moment a five-year-old child who got lost, the next a twenty-year-old Jiang Ye with a deathly gray face.
“An illusion, an illusion!”
“I’m drunk, I’m just drunk!”
Jiang Zhiheng’s eyes were bloodshot as he pounded desperately at the window.
As if trying to see whether I was human or ghost.
How foolish.
Obviously, I’m a ghost.
I smiled and tilted my head at him.
A thread on my neck snapped.
Half my head separated from my neck.
Jiang Zhiheng’s face went ashen, and he toppled to the ground, scared witless by the sight.
I passed through the ticket booth wall.
And approached him step by step.
Jiang Zhiheng trembled all over, backing away on his hands.
“I’m sorry… I’m sorry.”
“I was wrong…”
Humans are strange creatures.
Their “I was wrong” doesn’t mean genuine guilt.
It just means they’re scared.
“Shh.”
I put my head back on and held up one finger to him.
At the gate, a little boy was leaving alone.
He kept his head down, walking past me and Jiang Zhiheng.
As if he couldn’t see us at all.
I followed behind the boy.
I reached my hand toward his neck.
Blood dripped onto the boy’s collar.
He walked on, head bowed, paying no attention.
“No!”
Just as my hand was about to close on the boy, Jiang Zhiheng suddenly roared from behind me.
With strength that seemed to come from nowhere, he charged forward.
He tried to push me away.
His “I was wrong” didn’t mean he was willing to atone.
I turned around and smiled at him.
“Boom!”
At the bar entrance, a speeding sports car screeched to a halt.
A rich brat smelling of alcohol poked his head out.
Beside the street, blood stained the fire hydrant.
Jiang Zhiheng lay sprawled on the ground beside it.
A pool of blood seeped from the back of his head.