Chapter 27: You’re My Brother

2022-05-20

The next day, Gu Chen and Xiao Liu returned.

Stroking his beard, Gu Chen said, “That girl Gao Rui called his girlfriend? She wasn’t real. Gao Rui paid her five thousand yuan to pretend to be his girlfriend and chat with him every night. He even told her exactly what to say—they had to fight and act like they were about to break up.”

“She’s just a forty-year-old woman. When we found her and told her who we really were, she came clean right away.” Gu Chen’s face was full of disbelief. “It started a week ago. If Gao Rui hadn’t paid her a two thousand yuan deposit upfront, she would’ve thought he was crazy.”

When Gu Chen mentioned a week ago, Xiao Liu chimed in, “What a coincidence. When I went to the hospital and pushed a little, the attending doctor actually told me the truth about Zhang Mingliang. The surgery Zhang Mingliang needed? That came up only a week ago too. He flat-out lied the first time you all visited.”

Lounging on the sofa, Xiao Liu shook his head and said, “He lied because Zhang Mingliang slipped him a hundred thousand yuan to cover for him. That doctor said, by the book, a gender reassignment surgery needs at least a month of observation, but money talks, so he caved.”

I snapped my fingers and looked at the two of them. “Now, there’s only one thing left for us to settle.”

“What is it?” they asked.

“How do we make it look like the corpse died five days later?” I said, staring out the office window at the distant autopsy room, its lights still burning.

An hour later, Guan Zengbin slunk into the office, looking sheepish.

“So?” I asked.

All the data had lined up perfectly in my head, but this was still the missing piece. If Guan Zengbin couldn’t pinpoint the real time of death, everything else I had was just theory—no hard evidence.

Guan Zengbin glanced at me, embarrassment written across his face. “Yeah, I got tricked.”

“The corpse had been kept warm, so I estimated the time of death wrong. With all the heavy decay, it was nearly impossible to be sure. Last time, I mostly went off when Zhang Mingliang supposedly died, which led me way off track.” Guan Zengbin twirled his index fingers nervously in the air. “I never thought someone could pull off something like this…”

I reached out and rapped him lightly on the head. “If you’d been this thorough the first time you examined the corpse, we wouldn’t have wasted all this time. So now you see? Gao Rui could never have killed someone who was already dead. This was all just a fabrication by Gao Rui.”

“He did it for Teacher Hu Jiajia,” Guan Zengbin growled, punching the sofa cushion with his fist. “It’s all that damn Principal Zhang’s fault. If someone had exposed him earlier, Hu Jiajia would never have resorted to murder.”

But the world doesn’t work that way, and besides, Guan Zengbin was wrong.

“Put Gao Rui and Hu Jiajia together in the interrogation room. I’ll tell them a story,” I said quietly.

Gao Rui and Hu Jiajia finally met. It was the first time they’d seen each other since Gao Rui turned himself in.

The moment she saw Gao Rui, Hu Jiajia broke down in tears.

“Why did you do this? I’m the one who killed him, so why would you take the blame for me? Murder means a death sentence, don’t you get that? Why are you so stupid? Someone like me isn’t worth your sacrifice!” Hu Jiajia sobbed.

Gao Rui just stared at her, never breaking eye contact.

“I like you, Gao Rui, I love you!” Hu Jiajia cried out.

Funny thing—people always seem to wait until the very end to confess their true feelings, like facing life or death is the only thing that can force out those words. Why do we only say we love someone when we’re out of time? Why can’t we just say it earlier, before regret hits?

But honestly, maybe Gao Rui hadn’t done it for Hu Jiajia at all. The eight years Hu Jiajia spent pining for him were eight wasted years. If she’d just let go of her pride, maybe things would’ve turned out differently.

Gao Rui’s lips trembled, his eyes wide, his whole body shaking. “I hate you.”

How could someone willing to take the blame for you say something like that?

“If I didn’t step up, you’d be the one about to die. How could I let you throw away your life so I could be happy alone?” Hu Jiajia’s voice was hoarse. “I couldn’t do that.”

But Hu Jiajia had it completely wrong. Gao Rui’s actions hadn’t been for her at all.

Gao Rui gave a cold snort. “I hate you. I wish I’d killed you sooner. None of this would have happened if I just did it in the first place!”

Everyone in the interrogation room stared at him in shock—except me. Even Guan Zengbin and Hu Jiajia had their mouths hanging open. How could such crude words come from mild-mannered, popular Teacher Gao, who’d won ‘Most Popular Teacher’ three years straight?

“What…what did you say?” Hu Jiajia stopped crying, staring in disbelief.

“You heard me!” Gao Rui’s face was twisted, and he spat out each word through clenched teeth. “I should’ve killed you ages ago. You don’t deserve a good ending!”

“But if you hated her so much, why take the fall for her?” Guan Zengbin asked, unable to believe it.

I tapped the table gently, pulling everyone’s attention back to me. “Because Gao Rui didn’t want to live anymore. In truth, this whole scheme wasn’t Gao Rui’s plan, but Zhang Mingliang’s. Gao Rui just changed one part: he volunteered himself to die instead.”

This story started a long time ago.

Zhang Mingliang, worried the security guard would catch him, disappeared across the school field and said he’d never come back.

But Gao Rui never gave up searching for Zhang Mingliang.

Gao Rui was handsome and smart, so of course plenty of girls liked him—Hu Jiajia was one of them. Other teachers fretted he’d get distracted by an early romance, but his homeroom teacher always told people he trusted that Gao Rui would never date in high school.

Everyone thought this teacher was open-minded, but what they didn’t know was that he understood Gao Rui’s preferences.

When college applications rolled around their senior year, Gao Rui shocked everyone by choosing a low-tier college. His grades could’ve easily gotten him into a top university. He told Hu Jiajia he’d made a mistake, but in reality, he picked that school because Zhang Mingliang was going there too.

It took another three years before Gao Rui and Zhang Mingliang saw each other again.

Zhang Mingliang seemed flustered, but Gao Rui was composed.

“Small world. It’s been three years,” Gao Rui said.

After that, Gao Rui learned to bury his feelings, never saying a word to Zhang Mingliang. One time, when they were drinking together, Gao Rui joked that he’d been a foolish kid back then. Now it was all water under the bridge—a secret they’d keep forever.

They drank all night. Gao Rui wore a smile, but inside, he was in pain. A smile is only a look; it can’t show you how someone really feels.

From then on, Zhang Mingliang and Gao Rui were best friends again.

“Who’s this girl? She’s really pretty,” Zhang Mingliang asked one day when they were hanging out, spotting a photo on Gao Rui’s social media.

“Oh, her? That’s Hu Jiajia,” Gao Rui said, tapping open the picture. “She went to our school, but she’s at a top university now.”

Zhang Mingliang shook his head. “Look at this Hu Jiajia—pretty, smart, a real goddess. But us? With a lousy degree, who knows what we’ll amount to after graduation. A girl like that would never even notice us.”

Gao Rui stayed silent.

What Zhang Mingliang didn’t know was that if Gao Rui had just nodded, the girl he admired could’ve been his. But Gao Rui never did, because in his eyes, no girl was good enough for Zhang Mingliang. To Gao Rui, Zhang Mingliang was the real deal.

To have more to talk about with Zhang Mingliang, Gao Rui kept up a relationship with Hu Jiajia, often tricking her into sending cute photos, which he’d pass to Zhang Mingliang.

If Zhang Mingliang didn’t care, Gao Rui would never have bothered with Hu Jiajia at all.

Four years later, the two of them graduated.

Zhang Mingliang moved to the city, snatched up a sales job, and scraped by on a meager two thousand yuan a month.

Gao Rui followed him to this city, relied on his own skills to pass the interview at Yucai High School, and even exposed Principal Zhang’s dirty dealings. With his new job and benefits, he was pulling in eight thousand yuan a month.

“If it weren’t for me, you’d be doomed! I won’t even charge you rent—happy now?” Gao Rui teased.

“You and I are brothers!” Zhang Mingliang laughed.

Being your brother—yeah, that’s enough, Gao Rui thought.

But that peaceful life was shattered. Three years later, a grad student showed up in the city. That person was none other than Hu Jiajia. Now, she was Gao Rui’s colleague and became part of Zhang Mingliang’s life too.

“Without a place to live, who would even bother with you.”

At the same time, Zhang Mingliang gave Gao Rui a new job: secretly snap photos of Hu Jiajia. If Gao Rui could snag a piece of her clothing, even better. Zhang Mingliang’s desires had grown.

“Aren’t you two colleagues? She’s all over you,” Zhang Mingliang said.

Hu Jiajia had enough. She moved out. Only Principal Zhang and Gao Rui knew her new address.

One day, Zhang Mingliang stood by Hu Jiajia’s bed, the spare key in his hand—the one he’d gotten from Gao Rui. When Hu Jiajia first moved, she’d given Gao Rui a spare, saying she was too forgetful and might lose hers.

That key, now, was in Zhang Mingliang’s grip.