Tell Me — What Is the Truth

What video?

It appeared to be something related to Xie Qingcheng.

He Yu calmly glanced at the code scrolling upward at speed — the other side still needed time to close the gap, a short window at best. Who knew whether this video was just sent to break his concentration?

He closed the message window and left it alone. No distraction.

Then a second message came, tenacious as a ghost that wouldn't be shaken.

'Edward, I know you're a rare kind of psychiatric patient. While you've been cracking our firewall, we've been pulling your sealed file.'

He Yu's hands paused.

His condition was classified, but records existed — at the Private Hospital, with his personal physician. The opposing hacker was skilled enough. Working from scattered leads, cross-referencing in a short window to lock down his real identity and pull the critical files: not impossible.

A third message followed immediately.

'That Xie Qingcheng is deceiving you, using you. Aren't you curious why he suddenly stopped being a doctor?'

'...'

A fourth.

'Stop risking your life for him. Watch the video.'

The video prompt appeared again, relentless as a viper tracking him down.

He Yu's willpower wasn't that brittle. He still didn't open it.

But the serpent's fangs had found flesh — for just a moment, he hesitated.

To shatter his concentration in so little time, the angle of attack had to be precisely chosen.

He had to admit it: what the other hacker had surfaced in that pop-up was exactly the thing that had never stopped needling him.

—

Why had Xie Qingcheng been so determined to go?

Headstrong, resolute, leaving without a backward glance — even when He Yu had swallowed his pride, stumbling over the words to ask him to stay, Xie Qingcheng had only said: I am employed by your father.

I am not someone you can afford to hire.

He Yu found it hard to forget what he had felt in that moment.

There were only two people who had ever been close to him in any real sense — Xie Qingcheng, and Xie Xue. And on that day, that night, both had dissolved into something that felt like it had never existed at all.

He had tried so hard to live — to live like a normal person, never surrendering to the demon in his mind, fighting for seven full years.

Inside, in that moment, he had been falling apart.

But when it came to it, he had never truly hated Xie Qingcheng. He Yu was accustomed to solitude, accustomed to finding ways to understand all kinds of people. Later he had come to think: he could make sense of Xie Qingcheng's choice.

After all, it had only ever been a straightforward doctor-patient relationship.

A job. One that paid.

They were neither family nor friends. Xie Qingcheng had every right to leave whenever he chose, and when he did, he had not lied or misled — he had stated the terms plainly.

There was nothing to resent.

He couldn't let go of the sudden parting — that was true — but—

Later, he had thought: at least this person had come. Had given him a clear conviction to hold onto, and the courage to keep living. At least this person had once told him that those with psychiatric illness needed to rebuild their bridges to the world, that they should not be isolated, that he was not an aberration in society.

For that alone, He Yu had decided, he ought to forgive him.

Xie Qingcheng always had a way of convincing people, of earning their forgiveness.

Like just now — He Yu had half-caught the exchange between Xie Qingcheng and Lu Yuzhu. Xie Qingcheng's eloquence had never dimmed. After all these years he still knew how to reason people into corners and move them in spite of themselves.

Thinking that, He Yu glanced at Lu Yuzhu's expression and saw it plainly — there had been a crack in her. Even though she had taken root too deep in the mire for a conversation this brief to contend with more than a decade of pain.

But she had wavered. There was no question of that.

Xie Qingcheng had tried to turn Lu Yuzhu in order to learn the truth of his parents' deaths. But when it came to him — He Yu?

Had it all been genuine? Nothing withheld?

He Yu hadn't opened the video, but his eyes had drifted despite himself — settling on Xie Qingcheng, still facing down Lu Yuzhu.

And in that single moment of inattention, the opposing code came surging forward — by the time He Yu snapped back, it had already blown through the defensive threshold!!

'Di — di — di —'

The detonation countdown resumed, and faster than before — the other side's technician had compressed the interval between each second of the five-minute reading down to its minimum threshold. It was no longer a five-minute countdown. It was now a little over one minute and ten seconds.

He Yu jolted back to himself, cursing under his breath. Now was absolutely not the time for any of this.

He snapped his focus back, hammering in commands and brute-forcing the video feed out of his view. Fine sweat broke across his smooth forehead; both eyes fixed on the screen, his fingers moved in a blur, too fast to follow.

Across the room, Lu Yuzhu had made her determination. It was him.

This young man who looked barely old enough — he was the one using his phone to jam the organization's remote detonation. Xie Qingcheng wasn't the priority. This one was.

She kept her face neutral and drifted toward them, eyes anchored on Xie Qingcheng as though still sparring with him — but her peripheral vision was tracking He Yu.

Slowly, closer and closer. She released the safety on the gun. Eleven rounds.

He Yu typed a rapid string of commands and hit confirm.

Red light flashed.

INTERCEPTED!!

The frenzied countdown was reined in again.

He Yu let out a breath. He looked up, about to signal Xie Qingcheng that it was clear — and then his eyelid twitched. Something animal at the back of his neck prickled, and he whipped his head around—

In the same instant, Lu Yuzhu pulled the gun from behind her waist and slammed the trigger toward He Yu!!

'Bang!!'

The shot fired. The recoil numbed her arm and sent her staggering back two steps. The aim had gone wide — it struck a filing cabinet, caving in the metal face; the impact shattered the glass display case beside it, cracks spreading in spider-web patterns before the pane exploded outward.

'He Yu!'

Xie Qingcheng's face went ashen. He lunged forward!!

He tackled Lu Yuzhu to the ground and held her down, but she wouldn't release the gun. She thrashed against him, screaming into the face of the man pinning her — his chest was so close to the muzzle that a single slip could fire it, but he wouldn't let go.

'Get off me!' She screamed at him, hair wild, eyes splitting at the seams. The barrel pointed straight at his chest, and for some reason she didn't pull the trigger. 'Or I'll take your life too!'

'You can take mine. Lu Yuzhu — but not his. Not a child.'

Xie Qingcheng held her down with everything he had, voice low and grinding through clenched teeth.

He said it quietly — low words for her alone, meant to cut through the chaos — but caught in the torrent of Lu Yuzhu's screaming, He Yu never heard.

Lu Yuzhu let out a sound that didn't belong to a human throat.

A door had been kicked open inside her. The first gunshot had killed off the last residue of hesitation and warmth, and whatever remained of Lu Yuzhu's reason and feeling was draining away faster and faster.

The weeping eyes of that mother in the sky — she could no longer see them. She had always been a woman abandoned by her child.

She was the one who had been left behind...

Fragments of the past grazed past her eyes.

The county's goodwill. The joy of taking office—

'Lu Yuzhu is something else — the county's first female graduate student! Came back from a top university, back to serve as Party Secretary, and our first female one at that! Remarkable! Make sure you do good things for the county!'

'Secretary Lu, thank you for getting the road paved for our village and building the Hope School — they'd been dragging their feet on it for years, making every excuse not to get it done.'

'Secretary Lu, thank you — if it weren't for you, my mum would've forced me into a marriage. I... I want to study... thank you for helping me, for letting me have a proper education... thank you, truly...'

'Secretary Lu, why won't you accept our gifts... so many secretaries have come and gone, and not one of them ever looked at us rural people the way you did, or did even half of what you've done for us...'

'Thank you.'

Thank you...

Then, without warning — a thunderclap out of a clear sky. Plummeting from the clouds into the abyss.

'Lu Yuzhu, someone has filed a report. There are allegations of bribery and corruption against you. Please come with us to the Local Police Station.'

'Yuzhu...'

'Ma... mum... ma... mum...'

At the bottom of the great abyss, there always seemed to be a child just learning to speak, the words coming out half-formed and muddled, arms reaching out, eyes shining with tears, looking at her.

Calling for her again and again: 'Ma... mum...'

Years later she came back. The girl who had once reached for her stood timidly behind a young woman, too frightened to come near.

'You... who are you...?'

Who are you?

Lu Yuzhu thought: who was she, then?

A filthy hotel kitchen, sunk among the grimy tablecloths and piled dishes—

'Lu Yuzhu, move it. You grew up in the countryside, didn't you? How are you this slow with a little work like this?'

'She's a graduate student, you know.'

'A graduate student washing dishes?'

'Something fashionable, I think — computer information security... strange. So why would she end up here?'

'Lu Yuzhu, HR has reviewed your file again. You have a prior conviction. That is not something you can conceal on an application. You'll need to go — we'll settle this month's wages, and you don't need to come in tomorrow.'

The sour-smelling back rooms of a massage parlour, the leering faces of men crowding in—

'Xiaomei's actually a little embarrassed.'

'Who do you think you are? Whore. You're out here selling yourself — I'm paying you good money and you've still got this much to say! I'm doing you a favour by looking at you! You dare bite me—!!'

A slap — sharp and flat.

One slap, and then another.

Loud ones, silent ones, those you could touch and those you couldn't — from the dark, from every direction, striking her across the face.

She knelt on the floor and wept without restraint, fingers clawing at the ground until her palms bled, as if she could scrape some small piece of light and truth out of it and hold it up for them all to see.

She had been wrong.

She had done wrong, she had accepted the money — but it had been a single pig's worth, an unwritten rule of the township, and she hadn't even taken it herself. She hadn't even known.

Why had it cost her everything — her family, her home, every place she could have belonged — leaving her utterly, utterly alone?

Why...

No words to clear her name. The net of heaven hung dark and close.

She had longed for someone she could trust, someone who could give her hope. She had waited a long time — until the waiting had dried out her heart — and all she had received was disappointment after disappointment.

'My surname is Duan. Lu Yuzhu, isn't it? A graduate student.'

A spark.

The light of a lighter, struck by a male client.

He had come only to clear his head — lured along by friends for novelty, with no interest in spending anything on desire. Women in places like this held no appeal for him. He found her interesting, and in that small, particular light, he exhaled a slow curl of smoke.

'All that education.' He set the lighter down on the side table and looked at her. 'Why are you doing this.'

'...'

Perhaps it was the quality of the man's gaze — too calm, free of any contempt, attentive and serious, holding a genuine and unhurried curiosity about her.

The besieged walls of Lu Yuzhu's heart took a blow she had not braced for, in that instant.

She held on for a few seconds — or perhaps longer — but in the end she couldn't. She dropped to her knees right in front of him, buried her face in her hands, and broke into soundless, convulsing sobs.

The sound of her own weeping from the day before, the despair of yesterday — it felt like it was right in front of her. Lu Yuzhu turned and screamed at Xie Qingcheng:

'Don't you dare try to stop me from protecting him!!'

The things a human being can do under pressure are terrifying. From some reserve she couldn't name, she wrenched her pinned arm upward, swinging the muzzle toward He Yu.

He Yu hadn't run. Instead, realizing Xie Qingcheng was in danger, he had moved forward to help. In another life, Lu Yuzhu might have admired a boy like that.

But—

She strained to raise her wrist, wrenching it, twisting it around — training it on He Yu with everything she had, fingers clamped on the gun, squeezing — the — trigger—!!

'Bang!!!'

A shot that split the air and shook the chest.

It missed. Lu Yuzhu's eyes had gone red — her face was shattered, unrecognizable, the veins at her temple bulging, teeth bared, something between human and the animal a human might be made into. Pinned beneath Xie Qingcheng, she refused to let go of the gun, sweeping it toward He Yu in a frenzy—

'Bang bang bang bang bang!!!!!'

Xie Qingcheng had given no thought to his own danger. Even at this range he would not release her — but Lu Yuzhu was tapping into the kind of strength that only comes at the edge of death, and in the chaos of that instant he could not simply tear the gun from her hand.

Lu Yuzhu didn't waste a single round on Xie Qingcheng. Every shot swept toward He Yu — the one who had stopped her from detonating the Archives Building.

'Bang bang bang!!!'

Then a dull, flat thud — out of nowhere.

Xie Qingcheng's eyes flew wide. He spun around. His pupils contracted—

'He Yu!!!'

The young man had been hit. Because he wouldn't leave. Because even now, at this moment, he had not abandoned Xie Qingcheng and run.

He Yu pressed his hand to his shoulder and slid heavily against the wall. When blood first welled from the wound it wasn't obvious — he was dressed all in black, the red woven into the dark, and in the dim light even fresh blood didn't show bright.

But—

He raised his hand to cover the wound, and the moment those pale fingers met the entry point, they were soaked through by surging blood — red bleeding into white, a sight that stopped the breath.

Xie Qingcheng's entire field of vision seemed to flood red.

Lu Yuzhu saw that she had landed the shot. She breathed in ragged gasps, pinned beneath Xie Qingcheng, watching He Yu's blood pour, and then she threw her head back and laughed — a sound that was shrill and terrible, tearing through the eardrums. And then, somewhere in the laughter, the tears came, running down her face, pooling in her tangled hair.

'Ha ha ha ha... ha ha ha ha ha...'

Her hand went slack. The gun dropped to the floor.

Xie Qingcheng saw it and was on his feet immediately, running to He Yu. He Yu's wounded hand reached again for the phone — trying to finish the command he hadn't completed — but he tried twice and couldn't hold it; his hand was shaking too badly, and the phone clattered to the ground, the screen already smeared with blood.

'He Yu, you—'

'...I'm fine. We have to go, Xie Qingcheng.'

He Yu's gaze was cold and hard, fixed on Lu Yuzhu's face. His complexion was chalky, sweat beading on his skin. His words were for Xie Qingcheng.

'You won't get anything out of her. She's in too deep.'

'...I know you'll regret losing this witness. But if we don't go now, it'll be too late.'

As if to prove him right, the moment He Yu could no longer input commands, the opposing technician tore through the last of the defensive wall and seized back control of the detonator.

He Yu's brow creased.

Pain didn't particularly frighten him, and blood had never been anything remarkable — but the frightening thing was that the hand that had been shot could no longer grip anything.

It was all beyond retrieval now.

'Move. Now.'

'276... 275... 274...'

The countdown was racing, compressed. Xie Qingcheng hauled He Yu up and turned his head — those bloodshot peach-blossom eyes took one last look at the woman collapsed in the tangle of detonator wires spread across the floor.

Lu Yuzhu lay there like a moth caught in a web, shuddering with laughter at intervals, tears streaking unbroken down her face.

She raised her arm and pressed it over her eyes. The upper half of her face wept; the lower half laughed and laughed, wild and without end.

Xie Qingcheng shut his eyes hard, and the instant he turned away felt like slow motion—

Like pulling his gaze from his parents' cold bodies, nineteen years ago.

But—

There was still one round left in Lu Yuzhu's gun!!

Weeping, laughing, half-mad — the moment she heard them moving to leave, instinct made her scoop up the gun she had just dropped and take aim—

'Down!'

Xie Qingcheng's attention was entirely on He Yu's wound, and he was facing fully away from Lu Yuzhu. This time it was He Yu who saw it first.

'Bang!!' — a single crack.

He Yu couldn't have said what he was thinking — perhaps he wasn't thinking at all, only acting on some dragon's instinct to shield what was his. He shoved Xie Qingcheng down. The last bullet struck the shoulder that was already wounded—

Just slightly higher than before.

This time the pain seized He Yu's whole body in a convulsion; he went soft against Xie Qingcheng, and the blood came, right there in front of him.

Xie Qingcheng's mind went numb. A doctor — and in this moment he couldn't bring himself to face the blood pouring freely before him...

'Why did you—!!'

He Yu said nothing. His dark eyes stared at his own wound with a vaguely uncomprehending look, as if he, too, was trying to work out why he had done it.

Yes...

Why...

The countdown was still tearing forward. Xie Qingcheng couldn't waste another second — he hauled He Yu up and carried the injured boy with him, running out through the stairwell—

He Yu's blood was warm, running down the shoulder and back, and Xie Qingcheng ran and kept running, no longer thinking about the past, no longer thinking about the last witness he was leaving behind.

He held He Yu close as he ran, held him tight, and said: 'It's all right. I've got you. We're getting out.'

'...Don't worry about it... I'm not afraid of this, Xie Qingcheng.' He Yu's voice came soft at his ear — in the corridors of the Archives Building, footsteps all disorder, and then through to the lobby.

He Yu was still very calm.

'I'm not afraid of death, not afraid of blood, and I don't mind pain. You remember that, don't you.'

'...'

'Maybe that's exactly why — because I care so little about dying — that I did what I just did.'

He Yu's lips were draining of color as he spoke.

'It's nothing.'

But Xie Qingcheng felt it. The caring. The pain.

He held He Yu tighter. He Yu's face had gone a frightening white from the sudden blood loss.

Such a small person. Only nineteen.

A normal nineteen-year-old would still be asking his parents for pocket money, gaming without a care, studying with nothing to trouble him, feeling the vivid pulse of youth growing inside him and looking forward to a future lit up with possibility.

And He Yu?

He had always known there was only darkness ahead. In front of him, only the three Mental Ebola Carriers who had already died — grinning at him, telling him there would be no morning in his life, only the long night, no way out, only the dead end.

And still he gritted his teeth, still he clawed toward the future that might, just might, hold something like hope.

Childhood. Innocence. Laughter. Freedom from care.

None of those words had ever had anything to do with He Yu.

He was only nineteen — however formidable, however capable, when it came down to it, he was just a child.

In this moment Xie Qingcheng finally surfaced from the murk of his parents' blood and his own vengeance, and he finally understood what had been quietly wrong all along—

He should never have drawn He Yu into this.

On what grounds?

What was He Yu to him?

This child had already fought hard enough. What he himself had given — a little basic attention, the kind a private physician was supposed to provide — how could that possibly be worth this child staking his life to follow him into a burning pit?

The hand Xie Qingcheng pressed to He Yu's wound was trembling faintly.

He had never felt pain for He Yu before — not really. What he had felt was responsibility, supervision, compassion. But now the young man's warm blood seemed to seep through his skin, down his spine, driving itself into his heart and carving itself into his bones.

Yes...

Between them there had only ever been a doctor-patient relationship, a clean employer-employee arrangement. If anything, his own lingering sense of human obligation — combined with the particular nature of the Mental Ebola Carrier condition — might justify giving He Yu a degree of attention that was slightly more than clinical. But He Yu was different.

He Yu owed him nothing. By any reasonable measure, he should have felt nothing for him beyond what a patient feels for a doctor.

And yet He Yu had followed him anyway.

Simply because Xie Qingcheng had said he wanted to know the truth of his parents' deaths.

He wanted to find whoever was responsible.

But to He Yu, that was entirely someone else's matter...

Xie Qingcheng ran with He Yu in his arms, pressing hard against the wound at his shoulder, voice rough: 'I'm getting you to the hospital now. Stop talking.'

He Yu was quiet.

After a moment's silence, the young man gave a small, quiet laugh and said: 'I really am fine. But—'

'But there's one thing I want to ask you. Dr. Xie.'

'...'

His breath was right at Xie Qingcheng's ear.

Warm, and yet carrying something cold.

'I really want to know — why did you suddenly stop wanting to be a doctor, back then? Was it really as simple as the contract running out?'

'...'

'Why didn't you want me, no matter how I tried to make you stay?'

'...'

'Seven years, Xie Qingcheng. My father always said there's human feeling beyond the terms of employment. Today I... today I really want to ask you.' The blood was still flowing. He Yu didn't look at it. In the long and terrible dark, those black eyes stayed open and fixed on Xie Qingcheng without blinking.

That look was identical to the one from years ago — the helpless, suddenly childish look of a boy childish enough to try to hold him there with pocket money.

However well that child bore pain, however dulled his senses, he had been shot twice. He was still hurting.

He Yu's voice was low, slightly rough from running hard: 'Xie Qingcheng... back then, with me — was there really not a single drop of feeling beyond duty?'