Chapter 29: You Were My Youthful Joy

2022-05-20

The one who went off script was, obviously, Gao Rui.

Instead of destroying Principal Zhang’s body, Gao Rui preserved it. If you want to delay the time of death for a corpse, you have to keep it warm at about thirty-seven degrees, move it regularly to relax the muscles, and slow down the formation of livor mortis. This isn’t easy. It takes great care.

Pulling this off requires detailed knowledge of human physiology. Gao Rui had studied this at university, so he was the only one who could manage it. But why go to all this trouble? Preserving a body is so much harder than destroying one.

It’s like this—dying only takes one condition, while being alive takes so many. People love saying if you aren’t afraid to die, what else could scare you? In truth, death doesn’t take courage at all.

And Gao Rui, it seemed, chose the road to death.

Gao Rui dragged Zhang Mingliang’s body into the sewers, tossed the murder weapon—a mug—down there too, then threw the knife Zhang Mingliang used for his own suicide up on the mountain, and finally buried Principal Zhang’s body on the mountain as well. Afterward, Zhang Mingliang made sure to return home covered in mud, left witnesses, hid his clothes, and left behind physical evidence.

Zhang Mingliang faked a mountain of evidence to pin his own death on Principal Zhang, while Gao Rui created just as much evidence to make it look like he’d killed Principal Zhang.

Step by step, perfectly interlocked. Gao Rui thought he’d covered every angle, but missed one crucial thing.

Hu Jiajia loved him deeply.

“So why did you do all this?” I lit a cigarette, watching Gao Rui across the table.

Gao Rui frowned, watching the smoke curl into the air. He stayed silent a long while before finally speaking. “Why did I do it? Because this was Zhang Mingliang’s final wish. You know, after he underwent gender reassignment surgery… after I saw the note he left for me… after his body fell before me—do you know how that felt?”

Veins bulged on Gao Rui’s arms, his face flushed deep red as he struggled to control his anger. His voice was rough and low: “I know that in this lifetime, I’ll never have Zhang Mingliang’s heart! What I don’t get is, why was he willing to die for Hu Jiajia when he never even spoke a word to her?”

“I don’t get it, I just can’t understand!” Tears shimmered in Gao Rui’s eyes but pride kept them from falling. “But I love him. No matter what Zhang Mingliang chose, I still love him. If it was his wish, I’d see it through.”

I took a deep drag on my cigarette. “So you designed a plan within a plan?”

Gao Rui blinked stubbornly, refusing to let the tears fall. “Yeah. I figured if everyone kept focusing on Zhang Mingliang, someone might eventually uncover the real cause of his death. So I needed to shift your attention to Principal Zhang.”

“That way, the main focus would move to investigating Principal Zhang, and no one would obsess over how Zhang Mingliang died.” Gao Rui met my gaze, his voice slow and steady. “So you’d all assume Principal Zhang killed Zhang Mingliang and, in his escape, was murdered by someone else.”

At this point, Guan Zengbin couldn’t help chiming in. “So you planned this from the very start?”

“No way!” Gao Rui shouted through clenched teeth. “Zhang Mingliang had our spare key. When I saw the note he left in my bedroom, I bolted out the door. If I’d moved faster, Zhang Mingliang wouldn’t have died!”

“If Zhang Mingliang hadn’t died, who cares if ten Hu Jiajias had!” Gao Rui shot Hu Jiajia a venomous look.

I nodded and flicked the ash from my cigarette. “That note told you to handle the body.”

Gao Rui locked eyes with me, then nodded heavily. “Exactly. The note laid out his whole plan, even how he’d take his own life. But when I got there, I got caught up in a trap set by an old guy at the construction site! If I’d made it up there sooner, Zhang Mingliang would still be alive.”

“Why didn’t you call out?” Gu Chen asked. “If you knew, why not stop him? Maybe yelling would’ve changed everything.”

“Because I saw him…” Gao Rui’s voice dropped to a whisper. “In the moonlight, I saw Zhang Mingliang. I couldn’t make out his face or even his silhouette, but I knew it was him. He stood right at the edge of the fifteenth floor, and he saw me too.”

Confusion clouded Gao Rui’s expression. “Standing there below, suddenly I understood something. I always said I’d do anything for Zhang Mingliang. But Zhang Mingliang would do anything for Hu Jiajia. That’s why I didn’t shout. I just walked away.”

Guan Zengbin and Gu Chen glanced at each other, neither able to understand why Gao Rui gave up at the most critical moment.

Gao Rui went on, “Turns out, the way I loved Zhang Mingliang is exactly how he loved Hu Jiajia. I was too afraid to confess—too scared to lose him, or to never get the chance to be close, or that even if we were together, he’d leave me at any moment.”

“We’re all just the same: lonely, weak.” Gao Rui let out a self-mocking laugh. “I get it now—the feeling of loving someone so much you’d do anything. So I didn’t disturb him, even though he was the man I loved most. If, at the very end, he couldn’t even die on his own terms, that would be too cruel.”

Something broke loose in Gao Rui, and the words kept coming.

“I lost my parents when I was little. I lived with my aunt, but I was terrified of the dark and could never sleep alone at night. Then I met a boy—my classmate. We were so close we practically wore the same pair of pants. He was adopted, but his foster parents were awful, so I’d have him sleep over at my place all the time. My aunt was kind, really open-minded.”

“I told him I was afraid of the dark, and he said he wasn’t, he’d protect me. But he couldn’t stay with me forever. Once, I asked him, ‘We can’t be together for a lifetime. What if I’m afraid of the dark in the future?’ He said, ‘Then let’s just spend our whole lives together.’”

“If you promise a lifetime, it can’t be a year short, a month short… even an hour short doesn’t count. I heard this in a movie years later, and it always brings him to mind. He’s the one I’ve loved most in my life, the person I most wanted to become.”

“That night on the field, it was so dark, and he left alone. That’s when I realized—he really wasn’t afraid of the dark. But I only understood just now…”

“We’re all the same, aren’t we?”

Gao Rui’s words lingered with me long after. I can picture that night: Gao Rui standing below, watching Zhang Mingliang prepare to jump, suddenly seeing it all clearly. Gao Rui used to fear the darkness because years ago, Zhang Mingliang left him stranded on that blacked-out field.

Turns out, Zhang Mingliang was afraid of the dark too.

A body plummeted from the fifteenth floor.

Gao Rui was right there. It was the man he loved most. He sobbed on the inside—he had to, so he wouldn’t alert Old Zhang. He clamped a hand over his mouth, tears streaming down his face, not making a sound. If that was your last wish, I’ll honor it for you.

He knelt on the ground, staring in a daze at Zhang Mingliang’s body for ages, then finally slung it over his back. Just as Zhang Mingliang asked, he laid the body in the sewer. He wanted so badly to touch Zhang Mingliang’s face—but his head was still up on the fifteenth floor.

Sitting there in the pitch-black, rank sewer, something clicked for Gao Rui:

I’d do anything for you. Death is the least of it.

If you really want to throw everyone off, just disappearing isn’t enough. Gao Rui had to wrap this case up fast—every extra day of investigation meant more danger.

So Gao Rui forged a motive, faked the time of death, lined up alibis and evidence—everything so perfectly staged.

But he and Zhang Mingliang both got one thing wrong: feelings.

Zhang Mingliang only ever wanted to save Hu Jiajia. He never meant for Gao Rui to get caught up in this. But he could never have guessed that Gao Rui, just to grant his wish, would stage a crime scene to take the fall.

And Gao Rui never expected that while he tried to protect Hu Jiajia, Hu Jiajia would end up telling the whole story.

“If you’d just stayed quiet, you could’ve lived out your whole life in peace.” That was the last thing Gao Rui said to Hu Jiajia.

Between sobs, Hu Jiajia replied, “Just like you’d do anything for Zhang Mingliang, I’d do anything for you…”

That was the last thing Hu Jiajia ever said to Gao Rui.

Guan Zengbin once said, some people fall out of love before they’ve even really been together, while others fall madly in love without having even spent a night together. Who can explain matters of the heart? Gao Rui loved Zhang Mingliang deeply, Zhang Mingliang loved Hu Jiajia deeply, and Hu Jiajia loved Gao Rui deeply.

“What a melodramatic love story,” Gu Chen commented.

“Isn’t every love story a melodrama?” I shook my head.

Gao Rui walked out of the interrogation room, moving like a soul without a body. He looked ten years older.

Hu Jiajia quietly followed. Under her breath, she whispered, “You were my youthful joy.”

I’d seen that line all over the internet—and funnily enough, it works just as well backwards.

If only you could swap gender as easily as words. Maybe there would be fewer tragedies in the world.

But there’s no such thing as ‘if’.