Once

Before him, it was as if that thirteen-year-old boy had appeared again — stubborn, helpless, swallowing everything down, watching him.

On the day he was leaving The He Family, he thought he glimpsed something rare in that boy's eyes — something that had nothing to do with being a patient.

But his heart was too hard, and he wasn't particularly attuned to certain emotions; besides, he had been tangled up in too many other things at the time, with no real inclination to parse the feelings of a child. So he instinctively refused to believe that what lived in those eyes was anything beyond the doctor-patient.

He had to leave.

He Yu had indeed been sacrificed by him. Abandoned by him.

A child whose hand he had let go of, deliberately, in the churning disorder of The Qin Cizhan Incident —

When the undertow of illness had pulled that child into the spiral, he had looked up at him with such steady eyes — the gaze of a young dragon who had once extended its small claws toward a human, trusted that human, and been deceived in the end, its wings broken, its spine snapped, its claws torn away. It lay dazed on the rock, wounded, the tiny wings and small taloned fingers crusted with dried blood, yet unwilling, for the sake of a dragon's pride, to make too much sound.

He Yu had a great deal of pride, so he kept his voice as controlled as he could manage —

'Xie Qingcheng, over all these years I've seen many doctors. They made me take pills, gave me injections, looked at me the way you look at any ordinary patient. You were the only one who was different.'

'Because you were the only one who treated me as someone who ought to belong in the world. You told me that pills and injections weren't the most important thing — that building connections with other people, building a strong interior life, was the only way I could keep going.'

'Dr. Xie, we were never exactly close, but I —'

'…'

'I —'

'I thought you saw me not just as a patient. I thought you also saw me as a normal person with feelings.'

Such tremendous pride, and in the end it had still been forced into saying something almost childlike.

'I have a lot of pocket money, I could —'

Hire you.

I could keep you here.

Could you — please not go?

Could you stay.

At the time, Xie Qingcheng had assumed that He Yu's reluctance to let him go was rooted entirely in Xie Xue — and perhaps He Yu himself had believed the same.

But that wasn't it.

Eyes closed now, turning it all over in his memory, he could almost feel the weight of He Yu as a child refusing pills and injections, slung across his shoulder — those hands moving from struggle to surrender, going still, resting quietly against him.

'Dr. Xie.'

'Xie Qingcheng.'

The voice changed as it aged — from something young and unformed, to the rough crack of adolescence.

And later still, it became something laced with grief yet bricked over hard with stubbornness and cold —

'— Xie Qingcheng, you're not sick, but you have even less of a heart than I do.'

— You have no heart…

My illness still hasn't healed, it's still this heavy — why did you abandon me…

The crack of the gunshot. Blood scattering. Blood pooling in his palm. A pair of dark almond eyes, cold and transparent in the dark.

He said: Dr. Xie, so this is the truth. You've kept up the act this long — that must have been exhausting.

A young dragon, abandoned and then wounded — was this the expression it wore when it faced the human who had ground its trust and its eagerness underfoot?

The weight and warmth on his shoulder seemed to vanish at that moment.

Xie Qingcheng sat with his eyes closed.

Only in his palm — a lingering warmth, as if the blood were still there.

'You must be exhausted.'

A voice came from behind him, and the pressure on his shoulder returned — a hand settling on the same spot.

He opened his eyes. The police station.

The hand on his shoulder belonged to Zheng Jingfeng.

He had drifted off just now, adrift inside the noise and the bustle, turning over those memories of He Yu.

It was deep into the night. Xie Qingcheng sat in the interview room; the young detective across from him had spent just over an hour completing the full record, then said his goodbyes to Zheng Jingfeng, gathered his materials, and left.

Xie Qingcheng wasn't Zheng Jingfeng's family, but Zheng Jingfeng had a particular history with his parents, so he had recused himself from the interview process — only coming to the room now that it was over.

'Smoke?' Zheng Jingfeng ventured, making conversation.

'Sure.' Xie Qingcheng's voice came out tired.

Zheng Jingfeng passed him a cigarette and sat down across from him. Xie Qingcheng lit it, set the filter between his lips, and slid the lighter across the table.

He took a drag, then slowly raised his weary eyes.

Their eyes met. Despite knowing exactly what kind of person Xie Qingcheng was, Zheng Jingfeng found himself moved by that gaze.

Too hard. Too sharp.

Like a bayonet, like bedrock — like his dead father and mother.

Perhaps even more so. After everything that had happened, looking at him now, Zheng Jingfeng saw almost no fragility in those eyes — only the physical exhaustion of the body.

The hand holding Zheng Jingfeng's lighter trembled slightly as he lit his own cigarette.

'Why aren't you talking.'

Xie Qingcheng's voice had gone a little hoarse — which at least made him seem slightly more human.

'You didn't come in just to sit there.'

'…Because the lectures I'd give you — you already know them all, and you'll still do what you want.' Zheng Jingfeng let out a sigh. 'And besides — believe it or not — I spent the whole time before I walked in here trying to figure out how to comfort you.'

'…'

'But once I was in here I realized there wasn't much point.' The old detective looked at Xie Qingcheng's face, which at this moment was close to expressionless.

Xie Qingcheng pulled the ashtray toward himself with the cigarette still between his teeth, then took it from his dry lips and knocked off the ash.

'No point.'

'But do you know what? Looking at you now, something came to mind.'

'What.'

Zheng Jingfeng exhaled slowly. 'I thought about when you were a child…'

'…'

'The first time I met you, you were still in primary school. Your mother had a cold that day, and you volunteered to go to the canteen and get her food. The soft look of memory settled over Zheng Jingfeng's resolute eyes. 'Your mother liked tomato-and-egg soup. You weren't tall enough to reach the ladle over the soup vat, so I walked over to help — and when you looked up and thanked me, one look at your eyes was enough. No introduction needed. I knew immediately you were Zhou Muying and Xie Ping's child.'

'…'

'After that you used to come by the office often to do your homework, and when you got tired you'd drape your parents' coats over yourself and doze off at the desk until they finished their shift. I've met a lot of colleagues' children over the years. You were the quietest and the most sensible.'

Zheng Jingfeng exhaled a smoke ring and tilted his head back, his gaze drifting after it.

'Eventually I got curious and asked your father how he'd raised you. He laughed and said no one had managed you at all — this was just your nature. I thought old Xie was being smug, so I went and asked you myself. I don't know if you remember: I asked why you were so impressive — and you showed me the certificate from a sanda competition, which you'd just received that day.' The veteran detective paused. 'And then you said…'

Zheng Jingfeng: 'You wanted to be a police officer.'

Xie Qingcheng: 'I wanted to be a police officer.'

'…'

The words came out of both of them at the same moment, and when they were done, both fell quiet.

After a while, Zheng Jingfeng said: 'When other children are asked about their ambitions at that age, most give you something vague. Not you. One look at the light in your eyes and I knew you meant it. Maybe because you always had such a clear sense of direction, you've always been sharper than people your age — purposeful.'

Xie Qingcheng finished his cigarette and lit another.

Zheng Jingfeng: 'Go easy on those.'

'It's fine.' Xie Qingcheng said. 'Keep going.'

Zheng Jingfeng sighed. '…But back then — your composure, your calm — it still had the texture of a normal person. Looking at you now, I'm genuinely worried. The degree of psychological control you're imposing on yourself is something an ordinary person couldn't survive; it would drive them mad. Xiao Xie, you really don't need to be this tightly wound.'

'I don't feel tightly wound. I don't feel tired.' Xie Qingcheng said. 'You don't need to go looking for weaknesses on my behalf. I'm used to how I am. Showing weakness is something for women. It has nothing to do with me.'

That sent a spike of irritated pain through Zheng Jingfeng's head. He raised a finger at him: 'That sexism of yours is genuinely a problem. Fix it. Lucky for you none of our female colleagues are here, because no matter how good-looking you are, they would roll their eyes at you — and I'd think you had it coming, and every roll would be deserved. What century are you living in?'

Xie Qingcheng was indifferent to all of this.

He turned the cigarette filter between his fingers. 'The small talk's run its course. Let's talk business, Zheng-dui.'

'Which part isn't business?' Zheng Jingfeng glared at him. 'Let me ask you — isn't your life business? Aren't those videos that criminal organization broadcast from the Broadcast Tower business? You haven't been on your phone, so you don't know: the internet has erupted. You've really outdone yourself, Xie Qingcheng — you irritated that organization so much they went out of their way to dig up your old videos and broadcast them for free. Is that or is that not business? And then there's the Archives Explosion — you and your little friend were both inside, and yes, I believe what you two told us, but can the people upstairs believe it that easily? Can procedure just skip past it? You're both still under investigation. And on top of that, you —'

'How bad are his injuries.' Xie Qingcheng cut through Zheng Jingfeng's torrent.

Old Zheng paused.

That was the first thing Xie Qingcheng had said since he walked in that sounded like it came from a human being.

Xie Qingcheng felt guilty about He Yu.

He rarely felt guilty about anyone, especially someone so much younger than himself.

To put it plainly, sometimes when Xie Qingcheng looked at young people like this, they barely registered as flesh-and-blood lives.

That wasn't to say he didn't regard them as people — only that he didn't give much weight to whatever feelings they might have toward him.

He Yu was the same.

Despite all the years Xie Qingcheng had spent with him — from He Yu's age of seven to fourteen, as The He Family's private physician — Xie Qingcheng had never placed He Yu on any footing where a genuine exchange between equals was possible.

He had always been instructing He Yu in what to do; beyond that one-sided guidance, he had never thought to take anything from He Yu in return.

It had never occurred to him that there was anything to take from a boy.

This was the first time Xie Qingcheng registered that He Yu had grown up — that he possessed joys and angers and griefs and desires that could no longer be ignored, along with a will of his own.

Xie Qingcheng thought of the cold look He Yu had given him at the end, then looked down at the blood drying on his own body, and for the first time felt something stir in him toward He Yu that had nothing to do with a patient.

He asked again: 'Zheng-dui. How is he.'

'That little friend of yours must have lost his mind.' Zheng Jingfeng shook his head. 'No relation to you whatsoever, and he still went into the Archives with you.'

'And you — how could you let him tag along. Doing something that dangerous with you.'

'…' Xie Qingcheng lowered his eyes.

He had been confused then — genuinely lost, the pain of nineteen years tearing him in every direction, his mind in fragments. When he and He Yu had gone to the Archives together, his only thought had been that the organization that murdered his parents might finally yield an answer that night. It hadn't even registered that what they were doing was far too reckless.

Not until Lu Yuzhu drew her gun did he snap awake.

By then it was too late.

'Be grateful Lu Yuzhu couldn't shoot straight, or you'd both have died in there. Even if you survived, if he had died — how would you have faced his parents?'

At that, Zheng Jingfeng scratched his head, exasperation rising to a peak: 'And speaking of his parents — he's He Jiwei's son. You've got some nerve, using He Jiwei's son like that. His parents have been calling our leadership non-stop demanding to know what happened. Thank god the bullet only caught his arm and didn't hit bone, otherwise I'd be watching you — I'd be watching you —'

He jabbed a finger at Xie Qingcheng through the air, hard, several times.

'I'd be watching you try to clean this up!'

'…' Xie Qingcheng closed his eyes briefly.

He Jiwei had actually called him several times, but Xie Qingcheng hadn't figured out what to say, so he hadn't answered.

He Jiwei had then sent a message: 'Why did He Yu do something like this with you?'

That was something Xie Qingcheng didn't know either.

Perhaps because He Yu had genuinely believed in his approach, and seven years of time together had made He Yu feel that what existed between them was something more than the thin thread of the doctor-patient.

But now —

After those videos had played.

Whatever the answer had once been, it no longer mattered.

He Yu's eyes at the end had been cold — as cold as the first time they'd met, and colder still, as though he were looking at someone who had deceived him.

When he thought about it, He Yu — however cutting his words might have been over the years — had never once worn that expression.

He had never turned that expression on anyone.

Even in his worst episodes, when he was savage and violent and capable of real cruelty, all of it had been directed inward — every wound self-inflicted, every hurt swallowed.

Xie Qingcheng was the first person He Yu had ever cut with that look.

'All right, all right — your little friend is going to be fine, don't read too much into things.' Zheng Jingfeng misread Xie Qingcheng's silence, and folded his hands on the desk, his tone easing slightly. 'Same as you: he has to go through proper procedure, submit to the proper investigation. His parents — we'll explain the situation to them first. As for whether you should go apologize in person afterward, that's for you to decide.'

'…Mm.' Xie Qingcheng was worn and restless. He finished the second cigarette.

He reached for a third.

Zheng Jingfeng pressed a hand down on the pack.

'Do you even care about your lungs? Smoke, smoke, smoke — who smokes like this? You used to hate it when other people smoked. What happened to you?'

Xie Qingcheng: 'I'm irritated.'

'Being irritated doesn't mean you can chain-smoke like this.'

'…'

'I know you're climbing the walls today — so am I, my head is killing me, my grandson has a 39-degree fever and he's at the hospital and I haven't had a minute to call back.' Zheng Jingfeng rapped the desk with a knuckle. 'Just hold on — let me finish what I have to say first!'

Xie Qingcheng let out a slow breath. '…Fine. Go on.'

'I was on the monitor side listening to everything you said during your statement just now, and I believe every word of it. But I'm telling you…' Zheng Jingfeng's gaze flickered slightly as he said this, the bluntness of a moment ago softening for some reason. 'Don't set your hopes too high.'

'My guess is that Lu Yuzhu's death was planned in advance — she was the one the organization left behind to take the fall. To that end they've also planted certain evidence and threads that redirect the direct culpability for tonight's murders onto her, with a full three-document chain that meets the conditions for closing the case.'

'Tonight's events made too much noise. And you know how it goes — the bigger the incident, the more urgently it needs to be accounted for. The people doing the work on the ground aren't idiots; they can see the significant gaps in the details. But certain people higher up can't withstand that kind of pressure. When the evidence chain holds together, they may not look closely — they may actively want to close the book on this as fast as possible.'

Xie Qingcheng, forbidden from smoking, was playing with the lighter — clicking it open and shut, open and shut.

'And there's a protective umbrella higher up. Isn't there.'

Eyes like a blade, lifting.

'I don't know which one it is, or how large it is, but if they dared to move this openly, that umbrella is already in place.'

Zheng Jingfeng: '…Don't ask me. What the hell would I know.'

'Fair enough.' Xie Qingcheng leaned back against the chair.

This was the police station — what could Zheng Jingfeng say? And if he actually knew which umbrella it was, would he be sitting here motionless like this?

'Their objectives tonight were actually quite clear.' Zheng Jingfeng said. 'First: sweep the Archives clean of any trace.'

'Second: the reason they made such a spectacle is that they've identified people like Zhang Yong — people whose weak, pliant natures mean their loyalty to the organization is low, people who might defect to the Police Force. Tonight's Broadcast Tower Death Game was a warning. Kill one to caution a hundred — a demonstration for all the Zhang Yongs out there. So they know that even with police protection, they can still kill inside police sight lines. They're putting every collaborator and subordinate on notice.'

'Third: they want to tie off the loose end of Cheng Kang, throw out Lu Yuzhu as the sacrificial pawn — and maybe others afterward — and exploit the psychology of those among us who want to minimize the fallout and close the case quickly. Put the whole thing to rest. Any officer who tries to push further after this will be acting alone, without institutional backing, easy to isolate. …I won't rule out the possibility that there is a serious inside mole.'

Zheng Jingfeng came to the end of that, and turned his gaze back to Xie Qingcheng.

'But there's one last thing I can't figure out.'

Xie Qingcheng already knew what he meant, but he asked anyway. 'What.'

'Why did they broadcast those videos of you at the end.'

'…'

The broadcast had probably been triggered because the other side had already learned through some method that the two people who had interfered with Lu Yuzhu were him and He Yu — something they could have deduced from stealing part of the school's surveillance footage.

That they chose this method to sever He Yu from Xie Qingcheng pointed to one thing —

This organization already knew He Yu had a mental illness.

And already knew that Xie Qingcheng had once been his private physician.

This was not widely known. Zheng Jingfeng didn't know. Even Xie Xue didn't know. For all the years Xie Qingcheng had worked for The He Family, the explanation he'd given to the outside world was that it was connected to a pharmaceutical project with He Jiwei.

Xie Qingcheng had followed this line of thought before, and for a moment had even suspected He Jiwei — but that was absurd. He Jiwei was He Yu's father, and had given Xie Qingcheng a great deal of help over the years; he would not do something like this.

It also occurred to Xie Qingcheng that He Yu's illness was not quite the ironclad secret it might seem. The He Family's many servants knew at least something of it; with that many people, word had a way of spreading, and it was genuinely difficult to narrow it down to any particular group. And the other side had a hacker who moved through major information networks as though they weren't there.

'I'm talking to you, Xiao Xie.' Zheng Jingfeng saw him drift off again and scratched his head in irritation.

'I don't know.' Xie Qingcheng still didn't tell Zheng Jingfeng about He Yu's illness. 'Probably they detected that I interfered with Lu Yuzhu and wanted to teach me a lesson.'

Zheng Jingfeng looked at him with one skeptical eyebrow lifted.

Xie Qingcheng held his gaze without blinking.

Zheng Jingfeng let out a long breath. 'Fine. Then they got what they wanted.'

He slid his phone across the table to Xie Qingcheng. 'See for yourself.'

Online, it had already exploded — first because Xie Qingcheng's remarks in the video were genuinely cutting and ill-considered, striking at raw nerves for many people, and because they dragged in Professor Qin Cizhan.

Second: a criminal organization, immediately after the Drop the Handkerchief killing game, had gone out of its way to broadcast an old video connected to Xie Qingcheng. The video had been circulating online for years but had never attracted any attention — barely a few hundred views. Nobody watching could know that the video's actual purpose had been to drive a wedge between Xie Qingcheng and the hacker He Yu who'd been working alongside him; and so people began speculating en masse about whether Xie Qingcheng might have some connection to the masterminds behind this act of terror.

Within a short time the speculation ran wild, and Xie Qingcheng — an unremarkable former doctor, now a professor at Huzhou Medical — rocketed straight onto the trending list.

'Enjoying the view?' Zheng Jingfeng's expression was a tangle of helplessness and exasperation, the look of someone who'd given warnings that weren't heeded, with just a trace of an elder's sardonic amusement layered over it all.

Outside, one of his junior detectives was calling for him. Zheng Jingfeng stood, patted Xie Qingcheng on the shoulder, and sighed: 'Really something. Even celebrities don't have your looks. Shame your mouth is such a liability. What were you thinking when you said those things — I can't believe those words came out of you. What was going on with you?'

'Nothing was going on.'

'What do you mean nothing? That was you? I know you better than that — if you don't get out ahead of this and explain yourself, just look at what's going to happen, the public sentiment is already —'

'Do you think you know me that well, Zheng-dui?' Xie Qingcheng looked at him. 'Every word in those videos was what I actually believed.'

'Believed nothing. I've known you and your parents combined for over forty years — you can't tell me I don't know you…'

But meeting Xie Qingcheng's eyes, Zheng Jingfeng's voice finally gave. '…Forget it. If you don't want to say, fine. I'm not going to push you. Whatever you've set your mind to, nobody can stop you from running headlong into a wall — I give up, all right?'

'…'

'Get some rest. Once you have, go see your little friend.'

Something in his tone suggested he had saved this for last: 'Strange as it sounds, he's been running a high fever — but the wound was treated quickly and there's no infection.'

Xie Qingcheng looked up, his fingers tightening — barely perceptibly.

— An unexplained fever was one of the symptoms of He Yu's psycho-Ebola flaring up. Which meant he was —

'Though whether he'll want to see you is another matter. He seems to be in a bad state — not saying anything beyond what's necessary.' Zheng Jingfeng sighed. '…He's already been taken to the hospital. Get in touch with him when you're ready and see how it goes.'