Xie Qingcheng, I Never Forgot You

Zhang Yong's death photograph had vanished. What remained now was one last smear of blood-red text —

L.

The final round of the Drop the Handkerchief killing game had officially begun.

'Tell me exactly who the Police Force has identified as L.'

Inside the bedroom, Xie Qingcheng drew hard on a cigarette, one hand braced against the wall, the fingertips of the other pressed to his temple, his eyes drifting upward as he stared at that smear of red light on the distant Broadcast Tower.

On the other end of the line, Captain Zheng said something to him with the weight of long experience behind every word.

Xie Qingcheng kept his voice under control. 'I don't want to hear any of that. Give me the list.'

'...'

'A while back I brought a Utopia Guestbook I found at Huada to the Local Police Station — it had WZL written in it, along with a warning that WZL would be killed soon, signed with the name Jiang Lanpei. I thought it might be useful to the Police Force, so I handed it over. You don't have to hide it from me. A notebook like that doesn't turn up for no reason, and it lines up with the information in today's murder broadcast. '

'Xiao Xie...'

'That was a message from your informant, wasn't it?'

Xie Qingcheng went straight for the throat, and the other man couldn't produce a single word of denial.

Xie Qingcheng said through clenched teeth: 'So you already knew WZL was going to be killed. But your informant must have only had part of the picture — he could only write down what he knew in that notebook, leave it as a warning for you to decode. WZL. Count the days. You've had that message long enough to work out a list of names. Zheng Jingfeng, don't tell me you don't have one.'

Captain Zheng let out a long sigh. '...I can't hide anything from you, Xiao Xie. Listen to me — I understand how you feel. Anyone would struggle with this, but...'

Zheng Jingfeng's words took a turn, and the ember of Xie Qingcheng's cigarette grazed the side of his finger; he flinched at the burn.

'But we are obligated to maintain confidentiality...'

Xie Qingcheng erupted — rare, for him, to lose his composure like this: 'Confidentiality? What confidentiality? When my parents died you couldn't find a single thing. In the end it was ruled a traffic accident. How long did I argue with you? How much did I sacrifice trying to get an answer?! You knew everything and you couldn't produce a scrap of evidence! All those years... I gave up eventually, because I still had a little sister to think about, because I couldn't afford to keep fighting — but now these people are moving right in front of my eyes, and you're talking to me about confidentiality?'

'Xie Qingcheng, you're not a police officer — you need to stay calm...'

'I'm the son of the victims, for fuck's sake!'

'...'

'The people who killed my parents — whoever they are — there's a chance I could find one of them alive today and get an answer.' Xie Qingcheng's eyes were burning red, his forehead pressed against the cold window frame. 'Tell me. Tell me how I'm supposed to stay calm.'

'...'

'Tell me how I'm supposed to trust the Police Force, Zheng Jingfeng. Nineteen years, and you've given me nothing. And now you can't even stop a hacker from hijacking every screen in the city with a murder countdown. I don't need you to spell it out — I already know these people are always one step ahead. What are the odds they walk away clean this time too?'

'Zheng Jingfeng, Officer Zheng — do you understand what it is to live nineteen years in the dark and never once arrive at the truth? I have been patient. I have been waiting.'

'...I understand. But...'

'I have spent nineteen years understanding you. Can you not understand me for a single day.'

'...I do, I do...' The other man trailed off into a murmur, as though he no longer knew what there was to say.

Xie Qingcheng paused. When he spoke again, every word bled.

'Captain Zheng. If you truly understand, give me the list of L.'

'...'

'Otherwise I'll find my own way.'

'...'

A stretch of silence.

Zheng Jingfeng finally spoke: 'Ah, Xiao Xie... listen to your Uncle Zheng just this once...'

He went on saying something well-meaning and consoling after that — and it was precisely those words that became the last weight to break Xie Qingcheng entirely.

He exploded without warning, swearing viciously, and kicked the chair beside him over with a crash. 'Fuck off! What good does any of that do? Don't come to me with this useless shit again!!!'

Xie Qingcheng slammed his phone down on the desk and pressed his forehead hard against the wall; the force of it left a bruise blooming at his brow, red and darkening.

No one in this world — not even Xie Xue — had ever seen him like this. His chest heaved violently. His eyes were red, threaded with blood.

He was still for a moment, then turned to look at the Broadcast Tower again.

The Broadcast Tower's feed was synced in real time to tens of thousands of mirrored screens, and after the L, the electronic Drop the Handkerchief game was slowly, steadily progressing.

Xie Qingcheng forced himself toward calm. With trembling fingers he picked up his phone again, adjusted his breathing, and dialed Chen Man's number.

'Du... du...'

'Hello, Xie-ge.'

'Chen Man.' Xie Qingcheng's voice had gone rough. '...There's something — see if you can help me with it.'

Chen Man hesitated. 'Ge, anything you ask me to do, I'll do. But...'

'...'

Chen Man's voice dropped into something that sounded like pain. 'But I know what you're trying to do right now.'

Xie Qingcheng couldn't hold himself back; he reached for another cigarette, barely managed to get one between his teeth, but couldn't get the lighter to catch.

He tossed the lighter aside irritably and clenched his jaw around the filter. 'You know?'

'I know. Right now almost every officer in Huzhou is monitoring this situation. The mobile signal port at Huada was breached — the death video was force-transmitted through it. Our people have intercepted the hacker, but then an anonymous threat came in: if we cut the video feed, explosions will go off at several locations across Huzhou. We can't confirm whether it's real, but that's not a gamble we can afford to take.' Chen Man's voice sounded deeply tired. 'Xie-ge, I know what you want to do.'

'...'

'What you saw, I saw too. I know you want to find L, stop him from being killed, and get the answer about who murdered your parents back then — which person, which organization.'

Chen Man's voice caught as he said it: 'And I know... I know that my older brother, back then, was trying to get justice for your father, for his shifu — that's why he... he...'

A wet, choked sound came through the line as Chen Man sniffed back tears.

Xie Qingcheng's throat moved. There was a bitterness settling deep in it.

Chen Man hadn't cried in front of him — but through the static and distance, his tears seemed to fall somewhere inside Xie Qingcheng's chest all the same.

'You can't help with this, can you?' Xie Qingcheng asked quietly.

'I can't... it's regulations... I'm just a rank-and-file officer, I don't have clearance for anything at that level, and I — I'm a police officer... I...'

'...' Xie Qingcheng said nothing more.

He could curse out Zheng Jingfeng — even though Zheng Jingfeng was his elder. But in this, he could never bring himself to curse Chen Man.

He only said, with an exhaustion that had no bottom to it: 'Then forget it.'

'Xie-ge, I —'

Xie Qingcheng had already hung up.

He lay on the bed as time bled past him, second by second. His whole body had gone cold — from his fingertips all the way inward...

'Dad!! Mom!!!'

'Don't go over there! Xie Qingcheng! Don't go over there!!!'

Nineteen years ago, on a night torn open by rain — the moment he finally understood that the two cold bodies lying in a pool of blood were his parents, he had lost all control and lunged toward them.

His father's colleagues had grabbed him, several of them, crowding in from all sides to hold him back.

'Who did this? Who did this? Who was the driver!!!'

'...'

'Let me through — let me get a closer look, what if it's a mistake, what if they got the wrong people...?!'

The officers were all weeping, but the arms holding him refused to let go.

'Xiao Xie, don't do this.'

'The driver fled the scene — we'll investigate... we will get to the bottom of this, we'll give you an answer...'

But what answer had they ever given him?

He only found out later: there had been no fleeing driver. The surveillance footage showed the vehicle had no driver at all — it seemed to have been operated by some kind of remote device, aimed straight at his parents, and then the device had triggered an explosive sequence, and fire had risen in an instant and burned the cab clean of every trace of evidence.

Clean.

So clean that nineteen years had passed and the case remained unsolved.

Xie Qingcheng lay on the bed, the cold spreading through him in waves. His trembling hands couldn't get the cigarette lit. He forced his phone open, found a file, and kept staring at the images inside it.

Click.

The bedroom door opened.

At that moment Xie Qingcheng closed his eyes and turned off his phone — and then calls began coming in one after another —

Old colleagues of his parents. Xie Xue. Chen Man.

He answered none of them, letting the ringtones layer over each other in an unbroken chain, each one a needle in his eardrums.

'Ring, ring...'

Suddenly, the ringing stopped.

What followed was the sound of the phone powering off.

Xie Qingcheng had been lying with his arm thrown across his forehead and eyes; now, through the bend of his elbow, he slowly opened his eyes and stared, hollow, at the young man who had just turned off his phone.

'I heard everything,' He Yu said.

'...'

'You never told me your parents died like that.'

Xie Qingcheng turned his head away. He hadn't cried — but his eyes were alarmingly red. He moved to get up and leave; this was something He Yu couldn't possibly understand.

Xie Qingcheng had no desire to say much to him.

He sat up and reached for a cigarette with still-trembling hands, flicking the lighter several times; there was no strength left in him, and it wouldn't catch.

The lighter was taken from him. A crisp click, and He Yu lit the Zippo for him, bringing the flame up to Xie Qingcheng's lips.

'...' Xie Qingcheng took it back and drew a long breath; the trembling in his body began, slowly, to settle.

He Yu sat beside him and watched in silence as he finished the cigarette.

He thought Xie Qingcheng was extraordinary — that faced with something like this, he had only lost a measure of control, without truly losing himself, without breaking down.

But a Xie Qingcheng this helpless, before him, was still something rare.

He looked fragile, and He Yu was used to his strength — this fragile Xie Qingcheng, who had reached out to everyone and found no one willing or able to help, stirred in He Yu a feeling he had never had before: the want to extend his own hand.

He watched Xie Qingcheng — that expression of absolute despair held behind absolute silence — and somewhere in it, something seemed familiar.

He stared at him for a long moment...

And then he remembered.

It looked a great deal like himself in the grip of an episode — at eight, at nine, at ten. In those moments of deepest pain he would be exactly this helpless, and exactly this silent, unwilling to say a word to anyone.

And what had Xie Qingcheng done for him, back then?

...That was so long ago.

He Yu was surprised by himself — how had he kept that memory all this time.

It must have been after Xie Qingcheng became his private physician... his first episode.

The villa had been so quiet that day you could have heard a pin drop, still as an abandoned grave.

He had sat alone on the stone steps where the hydrangeas bloomed, neither crying nor making a sound, a sharp silver knife in his hand, methodically opening his own flesh — as though he were handling skin that had nothing to do with him.

When He Yu had an episode, he loved the smell of blood; he craved it. He had no right to hurt anyone else, but however he treated himself, that had always seemed like fair game.

He watched, indifferent, as blood ran down his own hand, feeling his heart growing over with moss, the cruelty spreading from some center inside him outward into his limbs...

Then, from somewhere deep inside the blooming Endless Summer, a calm voice reached him —

'Hey. Kid.'

He Yu startled. In an instant he hid the blade without any visible change of expression, put his hand behind his back, and arranged his still-childish face into the clean surface that was expected of him — the guileless, uncomplicated look of a child. He looked up, and saw walking out from between the flowers a young Xie Qingcheng, still in his white coat.

Xie Qingcheng stood over him, eyebrow raised, looking down. 'What are you hiding.'

'...Nothing.'

He Yu had never let anyone in; naturally he wanted him to leave.

The sharp blade was inside his sleeve, pressing against his skin, and it took considerable effort to hold back the urge to turn it on someone else.

But Xie Qingcheng gripped his wrist and forced his hand out. The bloodied knife clattered to the ground. Xie Qingcheng looked at the raw, bleeding cut on his wrist.

He Yu went rigid all over, bracing for the scolding.

Instead, after a long silence, all the doctor said was: '...Does it hurt?'

He froze.

Both his parents knew he was ill, but they seemed to regard his illness as a source of shame. His mother especially —

'You are not allowed to hurt anyone. You need to learn to regulate yourself. I can understand the physical discomfort, but what would a child have to suffer so much mentally? It seems you're simply not strong enough.'

He listened to his mother's instructions — instructions of that kind — the way he always did, quietly, compliant. He lived up to their requirements: one certificate after another, one trophy after another, one compliment after another.

He was shattered into pieces, each fragment put under a microscope for inspection.

He could not make a mistake.

So during every episode, he hid his pain with great care, drove it inward into a heart that had grown thick with callus.

He had to be excellent. He wasn't even allowed to cry out. And crying out was pointless anyway — no one would truly care.

Gradually, he lost even the instinct to express pain. It no longer mattered.

Like the flesh-gnawing dragon of a fairy tale — serrated scales, sharpened claws — but one that had never left its own dark reef. It tormented its own heart, gnawed at its own body, and transformed every aberrant symptom that would have disappointed others into scars that could not easily be shown.

As long as he didn't harm anyone else, his illness wasn't wrong, was it?

Every sweet-copper cut was a brand he pressed into himself, a shackle he chose in order to be a normal person, to bind himself.

His own blood was the only offering he gave to his disease.

All of this he had long since made his peace with.

And yet this private physician kept pulling at his self-forged chains, kept stepping into his cold, lightless dragon's lair, kept touching the wounds of varying depths across his body — and then asking: hey, kid, does it hurt?

Something inside him let out the weak, furious low growl of a young dragon — and yet when the man reached out to touch his wounds, he dragged his bloodied wreck of a body backward in panic, his spike-bristling tail lashing with agitation.

He wasn't used to being asked after.

Even less used to being cared for.

He said: I don't feel it.

I don't feel anything, stop looking at me like that! I won't hurt anyone, don't lock me up, don't interrogate me, don't come near me, go away...

But his hand was caught. The young doctor pulled out the arm he had been keeping hidden, and rolled up his sleeve.

The cold blade fell to the floor.

What lay in plain sight were the cuts this young, unformed child had carved into himself during his episodes — to suppress the urge to harm others — lines crossing lines, still warm with blood running freely through them.

The young dragon seemed to have been frightened by something; even the obedient, gentle human mask slipped away, leaving exposed the bedraggled, scarred, ugly little dragon underneath.

He lashed his thorn-covered tail, bared sharp teeth as he snarled, and with every defense he had, desperately tried to drive this intruder out of his lair —

'This is none of your business. Don't touch me.'

The young doctor paid no attention to his resistance, slipped both arms under his and scooped up the small child, hoisting him onto one shoulder.

'Hold still.'

He Yu fought against it. He loathed the smell of antiseptic on the man, loathed the faint bitterness of medicine that clung to his sleeves.

He could no longer hide his own ferocity; he spoke very quietly, through clenched teeth — a threat, and also a warning.

'Let go of me, or I might hurt you...'

'...'

The doctor said, mildly: 'And how exactly do you plan to hurt me? Do you have a specific method in mind.'

Back inside the villa, in the treatment room that had been specially fitted out for him, the doctor dropped him into a soft children's sofa — thud — swung the door shut, and went to the drawer to take out a disposable mask. When he turned around, all He Yu could see were Xie Qingcheng's deep, cold, sharp black eyes above it.

It was the first time he had not been looked at as a 'model to be admired and emulated.'

It was as though something in that gaze had turned him, all at once, into a clumsy child — one for whom mistakes and foolishness were understandable, even forgivable; one who could reach out a hand and ask for something sweet without it being wrong.

So he went still, and forgot entirely to run.

Xie Qingcheng washed and disinfected his hands at the basin, then said: 'Give me your hand. I'll bandage it.'

'...It's fine. I don't mind.' He Yu turned his face away, pressing his fist tight around the bleeding wound, unwilling to trust the person in front of him.

Xie Qingcheng raised an eyebrow slightly. 'You've grown used to the smell of blood, to violence — so much so that self-harm no longer means anything to you. Is that right?'

He Yu said quietly:

'Yes. It can't be changed. I don't want to trouble you with treating it.'

Xie Qingcheng said, without inflection: 'I'm being paid.'

'...'

'Kid — do you think hurting yourself is the right thing to do? Do you think a craving for blood, a mind turned inward and violent, is something that should simply be ignored?'

'You harm yourself. You don't value yourself. Breathe in enough blood and you lose all feeling for other people. Slowly you get worse, more numb — you spend your whole life like a stone, like dead wood. Don't you feel the loss? Doesn't it hurt?'

...

Those words — it was as if they had only happened yesterday.

Even after Xie Qingcheng left, after the distance grew between them, He Yu had never stopped carrying that day — the first time anyone had reached out a hand to him, and asked.

Doesn't it hurt.

How can you not even value yourself...

He Yu watched this man bow his head and draw the cigarette down to its last ember.

He said suddenly: 'Xie Qingcheng — you want to know who the Police Force has identified as L, don't you?'

'...'

'Don't grieve. Maybe I can help you.'

Xie Qingcheng looked up sharply, his eyes going wide.

'Don't forget,' He Yu said. 'I'm a hacker too.'

'...'

'The equipment they're using is cutting-edge — out of habit, I looked into it the moment it came on the market. I've already blocked an attack they just made on my phone. I know their programs well enough. The technicians they've hired — I may well be able to break through them.'

He Yu wasn't joking.

His expression was completely serious — solemn, even.

As though he were making a declaration to a mountain that had stood before him, unapproachable, his whole life — that he had grown, that he was no longer the helpless boy among the Endless Summer that he once was.

Xie Qingcheng went blank for a moment, his mind empty, his thoughts in pieces.

After a long silence, he heard himself ask: '...You... why would you help me.'

He Yu was quiet for a moment. Then, without a word, he extended his hand.

The way Xie Qingcheng had once found the courage to extend his own — to a child in the grip of his illness, sunken in depression, craving violence, tearing himself apart.

'Because once, you made exactly this gesture toward me.'

'...'

'Xie Qingcheng, I have never liked you.'

'But...'

The scent of Endless Summer hydrangeas seemed to drift over from that distant summer — the standing figure extending a hand to the one seated —

'Dr. Xie, I have never... not once... forgotten you.'