by Zhou HaoHui
‘Do you like me?’ she whispered gently in his ear.
He had no energy to speak; he simply nodded.
‘Then take me,’ she said, drunk with desire. She tore off her sweater. ‘I’m yours.’
She felt for the clasp of her bra and let it drop to the floor. Professor Ding took in the sight of his secretary’s naked body. Her skin was as pale as flawless jade. He inhaled sharply. Old memories began rushing in, too fast for him to control. Painful memories.
It was sometime during middle school. He’d come home early because of a nosebleed. As he’d opened the front door, he’d seen that same shade of white. A pale female torso pressed beneath the swarthy body of a man, the two entwined with each other. The image burnt into his consciousness.
The woman was his mother, but the man was not his father. It was too early for his father to be home.
His memory jumped forward, as if it were a film with a missing reel. The next thing he remembered was his mother’s panicked scream: ‘Get out! Get out of here!’ It rang in his ears, replacing the carnal excitement with painful humiliation.
Gao felt the professor go limp. She looked at him in shock and disappointment. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
Professor Ding said nothing. Years of hard-won dignity fell away in an instant. In his view, a man’s dignity was everything. He would sacrifice anything to protect his, even if it meant spending ten long years without a woman’s touch.
‘I guess you’re not a real man after all.’
He would never forget those words, nor the smug, condescending expression on the young woman’s face as she’d said them to him on that icy winter’s night ten years ago. That expression had pierced his heart like a dagger, shattering his proud self-image into a hundred jagged pieces. Then the rage had come. He detested that snow-white body. It was the embodiment of all the world’s evil and ugliness, mocking him with the memories of his own humiliation.
He’d pounced upon that body and wrapped his hands around her throat until his anger bled out. When he finally returned to his senses, his fingers were soaked in tears and mucus. The putrid scent of human excrement filled the room. By the time he’d realised what he’d done, it was too late. As the minutes passed, the warmth drained from her body. He had to wrack his brains to try and work out how to cover up what he’d just done.
Professor Ding had never trusted a woman since, not even an infatuated admirer like Gao. He built an impervious shell around himself to protect his dignity – and his bloody, ten-year-old secret.
But fate had other plans for him. The shell had crumbled today, when he realised that his secret had been uncovered. His passion, which he had suppressed for so many years, had finally been reignited. But the shadows of his past lingered still.
What could he say now? He shut his eyes, hoping vainly that he had wandered into a nightmare.
*
Tears welled in Gao’s once eyes again, and now they were tears of indescribable torment. ‘You don’t like me?’ she asked, her voice quivering.
‘No,’ Professor Ding said coldly. ‘I despise you. Get out of here. I can’t stand the sight of you!’
The colour drained from Gao’s face. She fixed her eyes on the professor as though trying to peer through to his very soul. He immediately dropped his gaze to the floor.
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. She moved closer, taking slow, deliberate steps. ‘You do care for me. So why are you lying? What’s there to hide from?’
Before he could answer, she bent forward, opened her mouth and put her lips around the soft flesh between his legs.
Heat swept through the professor’s body once more, this time with an unstoppable force. His mind went blank. All of his past sins and humiliation were forgotten. He was like a newborn, wrapped tight in naked lust. No one could hurt him again.
Gao breathed excitedly as she felt him swell inside her mouth. She controlled him now. She even dared to believe that he would never leave her.
*
Professor Ding and Gao lay on the office sofa, entangled in each other’s arms. The sound of the ringing phone in the outside room gradually brought them back to reality.
Gao gingerly rose and covered herself. ‘I should answer that,’ she said, shy once more.
The professor nodded and watched her walk to the door. Her clothes were still lying on the floor and her pale body glowed, pure and beautiful.
A moment later she was back in the office.
‘Who was it?’ It took all of Professor Ding’s energy to squeeze those words out.
‘Campus security,’ she said casually. ‘They wanted to know if you were here in your office. I asked them what it was concerning, but they wouldn’t tell me.’
Sorrow, pain and desperation flashed across the professor’s face, wiping out any last traces of happiness. Gao, who was hurriedly putting her clothes back on, didn’t notice.
‘Could you please heat up my lunch?’ he said. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘Sure,’ Gao said with a teasing smile. ‘You know, I used to think that you could survive for months without food. Or emotion.’
He didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on her and they were filled with longing and greed. It had been so long since he’d allowed himself to feel these things.
She blushed, picked up his lunch and paused for a moment. ‘I’ll go to the kitchen in the cafeteria. I’ll be back in a minute,’ she said and walked out of the office.
Those were the last words she ever said to him.
*
Fifteen minutes later
After leaving the cafeteria, Gao headed back to the environmental engineering building. As she turned the corner, the familiar grey structure came into view, but that wasn’t all she saw. She froze, and the plastic carton of food nearly slid from her fingers. The building was surrounded by police cars and all the entrances were blocked by groups of uniformed officers.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked a pair of students watching the commotion.
‘I’m not sure. It looks like they’ve come to arrest someone, but that guy’s also about to jump off the building,’ the taller of the two said. He pointed at the building’s upper floors. ‘See him? Up on the eighth floor?’
Gao looked and saw a figure standing on a window ledge eight floors up, so close to the edge that a strong gust of wind could blow him off.
She gasped, and Professor Ding’s lunch tumbled to the pavement. Scrambling her way through the crowd, she sprinted for the building’s entrance.
‘Let me in! I’m his secretary! I’m that man’s secretary!’ she shouted to the police outside the door.
*
Professor Ding watched Gao rushing towards the building. A hint of a smile cracked the blank veneer of his expression. Maybe she was the reason he’d been standing out there for so long. Even though he could make out little more than her silhouette, it was comforting to know she was there.
Upon reflection, he realised that she was one of the major regrets in his life. Why had he ignored her all these years? What would things have been like if he hadn’t?
He looked up at the shimmering sun. The blinding light painted brilliant designs on his irises, as if he was looking at the gateway to another world.
‘Goodbye,’ he whispered – to himself and everyone else. He stepped off the ledge with a small hop.
His senses shut off one by one, except for his hearing. An instant before his body met the ground, the pained cry of a woman broke through the roar of rushing air.
‘No!’
That moment seemed to fill an eternity. He wished that he could remain on earth just a moment longer, if only to keep hearing that voice.
*
Professor Ding’s body thudded against the cement, and Gao collapsed. A couple of police officers rushed over and carried her to the edge of the crowd. As one of them radioed for an ambulance, another felt her wrist for a pulse.
Another group of officers had gathered around the corpse, led by C
aptain Pei. He crouched next to the body, studying the bloodied face, half crushed into the pavement. Despite the damage done to the body in the eight-storey fall, the man’s features were still recognisable.
‘It’s him,’ he said. ‘Lieutenant Yin, make sure all the exits and entrances to the building remain sealed. I want this building searched inside and out.’
‘Yes, sir!’ Lieutenant Yin replied. He set off towards the building with a handful of officers.
A middle-aged man had knelt in front of the body and, with a glazed expression, was studying the deceased’s smashed face. After a moment, he reached out and pinched the pressure point between the corpse’s nose and upper lip.
‘What are you doing, Huang?’ Pei hissed. He’d sensed from Huang’s expression that something was wrong, but he hadn’t expected this.
Oblivious to Pei’s question, the retired police officer grabbed Professor Ding’s collar. ‘Wake up!’ he rasped. ‘Wake up, you bastard!’
Pei glanced at a nearby officer. ‘Get him away from the body!’ he shouted. ‘Now!’
Two younger officers grabbed Huang’s arms and pulled him away. Huang twisted and struggled against their grip. ‘What the hell are you doing? Let me go!’
‘Get a hold of yourself, Huang!’ Pei barked.
The captain’s sharp reprimand appeared to bring Huang to his senses. He stopped struggling and his manic expression slowly relaxed. Tears streamed down his face. ‘I waited ten damn years to find him,’ he finally said. ‘Why couldn’t he have waited just one more day? Why couldn’t he talk to me face to face?’
Pei sighed and silently placed a hand on Huang’s shoulder. There were no words to say.
Over the next several hours the police thoroughly searched every floor of the environmental engineering building. They also examined its security footage, but even after repeated viewings they uncovered no trace of Eumenides. Hours later, however, TSO Zeng made an unexpected discovery while scrolling through the chat records on Professor Ding’s laptop. The professor had been chatting with a user named Eumenides.
The timestamp for Eumenides’ first message was 11:35:32 – a few minutes into the professor’s regular lunch break. The conversation opened with a digital death notice. It was nearly identical to the notice that the police had received earlier that day but with one important difference.
Death Notice
THE ACCUSED: Professor Ding Zhen
CRIME: Homicide
DATE OF PUNISHMENT: 7 November
EXECUTIONER: Eumenides
His heart racing, TSO Zeng read the rest of the conversation.
11:36
Professor Ding: Eumenides?! WHO ARE YOU?
Eumenides: The important thing isn’t who I am. It’s what you’ve done.
11:39
Professor Ding: Are you trying to threaten me? I’ll call the police.
Eumenides: That won’t be necessary. They’ll be there soon enough.
Professor Ding: What do you mean?
11:40
Eumenides: If I can find you, so can the police.
11:41
Professor Ding: I have no idea what you mean.
11:43
Eumenides: Ten years ago, on 12 January, you murdered a university student. You cut up her body and threw the largest piece into the Jin River, behind your apartment. Then you dumped the rest of her sliced-up body parts across the city.
11:44
Eumenides: Does that ring a bell?
11:47
Professor Ding: Are you going to kill me?
Eumenides: Yes. But perhaps you’ll be smart and beat me to it.
Professor Ding: That’s absurd!
11:50
Eumenides: The police will be there very soon. They’re investigating the Bagman case again and you will be of particular interest to them. Funny name, isn’t it – ‘Bagman’.
11:53
Eumenides: When the accusations begin, the media will flock to you like flies to rotting meat. Your crimes will win you far more fame than your academic achievements ever could. You’ll have to look at the remains of the girl you killed. Her skull, and the bones that the police will dredge from the river, will lie before you as evidence of your guilt. I promise that you will regret everything when that time comes. And, more than anything, you will regret not having taken the easy way out when you had the chance.
11:56
Eumenides: Later today, the police will perform a full search of your home. Your fate will be sealed if they find so much as a speck of that girl’s blood on your wall or your floorboards. And then there’s the suitcase and the plastic bags you used for transporting her body parts during your wild ride around Chengdu. Her clothes as well. The police have been holding onto them like precious antiques for the past ten years, in the hope of finding some bit of evidence they missed before.
11:58
Eumenides: It could be a DNA test: a flake of dandruff from your scalp or perhaps a fibre that matches something in your home. Regardless of what the piece of evidence is, the police will spare no effort in using the most cutting-edge technology to trace it back to you. And of course they won’t hesitate to use all sorts of interrogation techniques that you can’t even imagine.
12:01
Eumenides: If you happen to be gifted with an extraordinary amount of luck and are a lot stronger-willed than I think you are, you might actually make it out of this ordeal as a free man. But you won’t escape justice. You don’t know who I really am, but I’m sure you’ve heard of Eumenides. The promise written on that death notice will be fulfilled eventually. It’s just a matter of time.
12:03
Eumenides: I realise that this is not an easy choice, but you don’t have much time left. Once the police take you in, you won’t even have the power to choose.
Professor Ding didn’t respond to Eumenides’ last message, and the conversation ended. The latter half of the conversation was essentially a monologue from Eumenides, Zeng noted. Professor Ding had barely typed anything at all.
Zeng anxiously presented the laptop’s logs to Captain Pei, who read them closely.
‘So that’s it?’ Pei remarked when he’d finished. ‘I suppose it’s not surprising the professor wasn’t very talkative. There’d have been too much going on inside his head.’
The security footage confirmed the timing of Professor Ding’s final decision. When the first police vehicle pulled up outside the building, he was already standing out on the ledge.
‘Can we track his IP address to a physical location?’ Pei asked, pointing to Eumenides’ username.
‘That’s easy.’
Zeng’s fingers clacked across the keyboard. A few seconds later a command window appeared on the screen.
‘That’s the location of his IP address,’ he said, shrugging. ‘But tracking it won’t do us any good.’
‘I don’t care. Try anyway. We can’t let a single opportunity slip through our fingers, no matter how unlikely it may seem.’
Zeng stood up from his chair. ‘Sure thing, boss,’ he said and walked out of the room.
Zeng had left the laptop on the desk and Pei now turned his attention to its screen. The laptop was still online, so he clicked on the chat window, typed a quick message and sent it.
Are you still there?
Barely ten seconds later a new message flashed up.
Who is this?
Inhaling quickly, the captain typed his reply.
Pei Tao.
There was a longer pause before the next message appeared.
Eumenides: You work fast. It took me three days to figure out it was him.
Pei: Professor Ding is dead. This one didn’t really fit your usual style.
Eumenides: ???
Pei: He killed himself. He didn’t die by your hand. Which means your name shouldn’t have been on that death notice.
Eumenides: Which name matters more – the person who physically ended Professor Ding’s life or the one who pushed him to
do it? My goal is to make sure that these criminals receive their just desserts. Nothing more, nothing less. If anything, it was a boon that I didn’t have to resort to violence. If you police were better at your job, I wouldn’t have to send out these death notices in the first place.
Pei: If you don’t like violence, why don’t you try finding another way to resolve these problems?
Eumenides: In many cases violence is the only option.
Pei: Violence is a double-edged sword. As you know from personal experience.
Half a minute went by without a response from Eumenides and Pei began to get worried. He needed to continue the conversation if he was to get any useful information out of him. What could he do to needle him further? Pei leant forward in his chair and grasped at the first idea that came to him.
Pei: I’ve already met the girl.
Eumenides: …
Pei: You know who I mean, don’t you? If I were you, I’d give up now.
Eumenides: Things have already been set in motion. What difference would stopping make?
Pei: You can’t change what’s been done, but you still have a chance to redeem yourself.
Eumenides: Why are you telling me this?
Pei: Because I can see that you want to be redeemed.
Eumenides: What exactly do you mean? What about the girl?
Pei: You’re watching her. Protecting her. She’s a window inside you. If you could go back to the beginning of all this, you wouldn’t kill Sergeant Zheng Haoming, would you?
Eumenides: You’re wrong.
Pei: Why? Why would you kill someone who’d done nothing wrong?
Eumenides: We stand on opposing sides. Only one of us can live. I needed to kill an enemy in order to keep my faith strong. That way, I wouldn’t hesitate the next time I came up against the police. There’s a saying that Yuan liked to repeat – I’m sure you’re familiar with it too: ‘Being merciful to one’s enemies is being cruel to oneself.’
Pei: I have one more question for you and I want an honest answer.
