Second Sister

by Chan Ho-Kei

  “What state was she in?”

  “Dazed, like she’d been drugged.” Kwok-Tai sounded like he was still angry.

  “Thank goodness you were there. If you’d been a minute later, god knows where they’d have brought her,” said N approvingly. “Then you and Lily brought Siu-Man home?”

  “Yes. We sat in McDonald’s for a while so she could sober up, then got a taxi to Wun Wah House. She was a bit more clearheaded in the car, and she muttered something it took me a while to make out: ‘Don’t tell my mom.’ That’s why I made up that story about Siu-Man feeling ill at a party.”

  Finally knowing the truth swamped Nga-Yee with conflicting emotions: gratitude that Kwok-Tai was there to rescue her, worry at the thought of the horrors she might have suffered in the bar. And, she abruptly realized, her mother might have figured out the whole thing. She’d taken care of Siu-Man all night long, and someone who’d lived as much life as Chau Yee-Chin wasn’t easily fooled.

  “Does anyone know about this apart from you and Lily?” Now N had got to the heart of the matter. Nga-Yee pricked up her ears and waited anxiously for the answer. If Kwok-Tai said no, then Lily became a much stronger suspect.

  “Uh—that was actually unfortunate.” Kwok-Tai looked nervously at N. “No one was supposed to find out, but I started hearing rumors that a girl from our school had been assaulted on Christmas Eve. The older kids were talking about it a lot. No one named the girl, so our teachers didn’t do anything about it, just got the principal to say something about watching our words and behavior—the usual. I asked my bandmate, and apparently one of those thugs had a cousin in our school. All the gossip was coming from him.”

  Nga-Yee’s heart sank, but N nodded a little, as if he’d been expecting this answer.

  “Mr. Ong, Ms. Au, when you thanked Lily and me today for coming to the funeral, I felt so guilty. We let her down so badly, and we owe her so much.” Kwok-Tai grimaced. “We didn’t comfort her when she lost her mother. We weren’t with her when she got groped on the MTR. We didn’t stand up for her when she got slammed on the internet. We only thought about ourselves. It was too awkward, too much had happened between us. And now we’ve lost our chance to make up. We weren’t fit to be her friends. You shouldn’t thank us.”

  “Kwok-Tai, it’s in the past. Don’t give yourself a hard time,” Nga-Yee blurted out, breaking her vow of silence. She couldn’t help it, the boy looked like he was about to burst into tears. “Thank you for your courage, telling us all this today. I’m sure Siu-Man wouldn’t blame you if she could hear. Please take care of yourself, and of Lily. That would please Siu-Man too.”

  “But—” He was such a ball of tension, he hadn’t taken in a single one of Nga-Yee’s clichés.

  “If you really think you let Siu-Man down, then you’ll have to live with that guilt forever.”

  N’s words startled Nga-Yee, and Kwok-Tai gaped, wondering why kindly Mr. Ong had suddenly turned so harsh.

  “Human beings are such forgetful, selfish creatures.” N’s voice was calm, and his expression hadn’t changed, but Nga-Yee could tell he’d dropped the mask. “Asking for forgiveness is just another self-interested thing to do. You receive absolution, and you can move on. But in the end, it’s just hypocrisy. If you think Siu-Man wouldn’t have forgiven you, you can bear that guilt for the rest of your life. Every single moment, you’ll have to live with the knowledge that you treated a good friend terribly and there’s no way to make up for it, not ever. But remember, you have a duty to use your life well. Only by listening to your innermost self and making the right choice can you whittle away at your pain and redeem yourself. This guilt will become your very flesh, and also the proof that you’re a good person.”

  Kwok-Tai’s frown faded, and he nodded vigorously. “I understand, Mr. Ong. Thank you.”

  “As long as you understand.” N smiled, easygoing again. He sipped his latte. Nga-Yee had always thought he was full of nonsense, but what he’d just said—well, she wasn’t sure if it was sense or nonsense, but it was undeniably more powerful than what she’d come up with.

  “Oh yes.” N put down his cup. “One more thing. Do you know Violet To?”

  “Sure, she’s in my class.” Kwok-Tai’s face sank, as if N had stabbed him.

  “When we mentioned her name in the cafeteria, you looked like you wanted to say something,” said N lightly. “I thought it was odd, that’s all.”

  “Mr. Ong, when you asked who would have hated Siu-Man enough to smear her name, Lily said the Countess, but I think it’s Violet you should have your eye on. The Countess and her handmaidens are big talkers, but if you’re looking for the sort of busybody who’d go behind someone’s back, Violet’s at the top of that list.”

  “What happened between her and Siu-Man?” N asked.

  “Nothing. But she has a history.”

  “What did she do?”

  “It started in year one.” Kwok-Tai looked a little mollified. “I was in one B, while Siu-Man and Lily were both in one A. Violet was the student aide. There was a girl in one A called Laura who was very popular—she was so nice, and her grades were good. Quite a few of the guys in my class had crushes on her, but she turned them all down. There was a rumor that she was dating an upperclassman, possibly someone on the basketball team or the debate captain.”

  Dating in year one! Nga-Yee marveled at how quickly young people were growing up.

  “Then … It was sometime in our second semester, maybe around May. A teacher caught Laura in an, uh, intimate situation on the rooftop, with an older student. This became a big incident, and Laura was forced to ‘voluntarily withdraw from school.’ The other student was just waiting to graduate after finals, so there was nothing they could do.”

  “Didn’t they make a police report?” said N. “Even if she consented, a thirteen-year-old is still considered a child. That’s assault.”

  “No, because the school didn’t want a scandal. Anyway it wasn’t assault. From what I heard, it was just a bit of kissing.”

  “What’s so scandalous about a bit of kissing?” N asked, puzzled.

  “The other student was a girl,” said Kwok-Tai. “We’re a mission school, and in some ways it’s still very conservative.”

  “What did Violet To have to do with this?” asked N.

  “She was the one who told the teacher,” said Kwok-Tai angrily. “I had to hand in some homework in the teacher’s room, and while I was there I saw Violet talking to the discipline master in one corner. They looked very serious, and I heard him ask her, ‘Did you see this with your own eyes?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘On the rooftop?’ ‘That’s right.’ I didn’t know what they were talking about at the time, but when it all came out the next day, it was obvious what had happened. Apparently the discipline master interrogated Laura as if she were a criminal and called her some terrible names. We were all disgusted. Don’t they know it’s the twenty-first century? Some countries even have same-sex marriage these days! Isn’t this an abuse of human rights? But it wasn’t just the teacher we were angry with—we hated Violet To even more.”

  “So that’s why you think Violet is more likely to have destroyed someone’s reputation than the Countess—she’d already done it once?” said N.

  “Exactly.”

  “But she hadn’t fought with Siu-Man, had she? At least the Countess had a reason to be upset with her, after the Disneyland incident.”

  “Laura hadn’t done anything to Violet,” said Kwok-Tai. “I saw on TV that there’s a sort of person who thinks they’re standing up for justice and righteousness, but actually they’re just moral extremists who want to get rid of everything they consider sinful. She probably thought Laura deserved a death sentence for kissing another girl. She must have somehow found out that the girl in the Christmas Eve scandal was Siu-Man, and she got a one-sided version of the story that made her think Siu-Man was hanging out with gangsters or something. That’s why she started the rumors.”

  “What happened to Laura
? Have you heard anything from her?”

  “I think she ended up transferring to a school in Australia. Her parents are quite wealthy, so they sent her out of the country to keep her away from the older girl.”

  Nga-Yee hadn’t expected such a dramatic story, but then she hadn’t imagined that the bookish Violet To would turn into such a moral crusader. When Kwok-Tai mentioned “far worse people” than the Countess, he must have had Violet in mind.

  “That’s why I was so surprised when you said Violet was at Siu-Man’s funeral,” Kwok-Tai went on. “She doesn’t normally care about anyone else, so why would she show up? Crocodile tears?”

  “Lily says it’s the Countess, you say it’s Violet. But those are both guesses, right?” said N.

  “Well, yes …”

  “Thank you for telling us so much.” N smiled. “Never mind why Violet and the Countess showed up. It was still just the handful of you who came to say goodbye to Siu-Man. That must be a kind of fate. Siu-Man might have left us, but she’ll always live on in our hearts.”

  Nga-Yee nodded in agreement, even though she knew N was getting at something else. Siu-Man probably lived on in kidkit727’s eart as well—but as an object of hatred.

  Kwok-Tai said goodbye around 4:15. Volleyball practice ended at half past, and he had to head back to the school to meet Lily.

  “I’m afraid her imagination will run wild,” he said as he went. It was clear he was referring to their meeting earlier that day.

  As Nga-Yee watched Kwok-Tai leave the coffee shop, her brain was a whirl of confusion. At the school, she’d been certain at several moments that one person or another must be kidkit727, but now she had no idea: everyone seemed suspect. Countess Miranda Lai acted guilty and was hostile to N and Nga-Yee; Lily could be the culprit, because hate is the flip side of love, and losing a good friend—especially over a boy—could make someone do terrible things; then there was Violet To. Might this mild-mannered librarian have a secret, terrifying side? And of course it could be someone else altogether—only circumstantial evidence had made them narrow the field of suspects to three.

  “How much longer do you want to stay? We’re done for today. I’m going home,” said N, looking unconcerned, standing up.

  “That’s it? Shouldn’t we keep investigating?”

  “My dear Miss Au, it’s a good thing you don’t run a company. Your employees would surely be worked to death.” N did a little stretch. “You only paid me eighty grand. That doesn’t entitle you to all my time.”

  “But you haven’t come up with any answers—”

  “You want answers? I’m ninety percent certain that one of the people we spoke to today is the one we’re looking for. Don’t ask why. Until I get my hands on conclusive evidence, I’m not going to show my cards.”

  Nga-Yee had no idea whether he was serious or if this was just something to fob her off.

  “But—”

  “I have to leave now, otherwise Barbara might die.”

  “Who’s Barbara?”

  “My sacred lily—I forgot to water her this morning. I’ll be back in touch if there’s any progress.” N walked out of the coffee shop without a second look. Was he looking for an excuse to flee? She remembered the evergreen plant in his window, which definitely hadn’t looked fragile enough to die from missing a single day’s watering. More crucially, N didn’t seem like the sort of person who would name a houseplant Barbara.

  It was only when Nga-Yee got home that she realized N had gone off with everything they got from the school, including Siu-Man’s textbooks and homework, plus the condolence book and the script he stole from the Countess. She didn’t mind, because all that stuff had only been an excuse to get onto the premises. She sat down at her computer and opened a browser window to look up Lily, the Countess, and Violet once more. With luck and a closer look at their social media pages, she might be able to find more clues.

  Lily’s Facebook page was mostly posts about One Direction—Nga-Yee had ignored these in her previous investigation—and food pictures, quite a few of Japanese cuisine, probably from dates with Kwok-Tai. Nga-Yee had never understood the point of photographing your dinner, but everyone around her seemed to be doing it. The Countess had filled her Facebook with selfies, as if she were a celebrity, and every one of her pictures had hundreds more likes than Lily’s; the captions below each image were peppered with cutesy emojis, although Nga-Yee had trouble imagining the surly girl they’d met actually speaking like this in real life. Violet only had a book blog. Nga-Yee had skipped this the first time around because it didn’t seem to contain any personal information; now she went through it, but all she learned was that Violet enjoyed reading Haruki Murakami, Eileen Chang, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, and Gillian Flynn. These short reviews didn’t seem to contain any information connected to Siu-Man.

  Although N had said he’d be in touch if there was any progress, Nga-Yee started getting antsy after a couple of days. She was distracted at work, her head filled with thoughts about Lily and the others. She chewed over N’s words, wondering if he was trying to mislead her when he’d said the culprit was someone they’d spoken to that day: that wouldn’t be only the three girls, but also Miss Yuen and Kwok-Tai, not to mention the attendant in the cafeteria, the student actors, the magazine-reading boy in the library, or maybe even the woman whose tablet N hacked in the café. Could any of them be kidkit727? Nga-Yee grew more and more confused and longed for N to put her out of her misery, but there was not a peep from him. She had an early shift on Wednesday, and when she got out of work, she boarded the tram without even thinking about it, heading to N’s flat.

  By the time she got to Central, she’d had second thoughts.

  Losing Siu-Man might have thrown her off-kilter, but despite her constant unease, Nga-Yee was rational down to her bones. She understood that some things can’t be rushed, and she couldn’t forget how she almost ruined the investigation by not following N’s orders in the cafeteria. Maybe she ought to trust N and let him get on with it.

  As she wrestled with her thoughts, the tram reached Sai Ying Pun. Reason won out in the end, and she got off at Whitty Street instead of going on to Second.

  I’ve come all the way here, I might as well have dinner, she thought, recalling the delicious wonton noodles at Loi’s—one of the few tasty meals she’d had recently, now that she was on such a tight budget. She looked in her wallet to make sure she had enough to get through the next week, then went across the road to the restaurant.

  Nga-Yee chose a counter seat. There were no other customers, and the owner had been watching the news on a tiny TV screen. “Hi. A small bowl of wonton noodles, please.”

  “Sure, small wonton noodles coming up.” He went over to the stove to start cooking, then turned back to add, “Don’t you need to get something for N too?”

  Nga-Yee groaned inwardly, then thought that she could take the opportunity to correct the earlier misunderstanding.

  “No. Just me today. I’m not really friends with N, we were just working together on something.”

  “Working together, are you?” He swirled the noodles in the boiling water for less than twenty seconds before plunging them into a cold bath, then back into the heat. “I see. Lucky for you he’s willing to take your case.”

  Nga-Yee stared at him. “N told you about me?” she asked. Weren’t detectives supposed to keep their clients secret?

  “No, but I’d guess nine out of ten people ‘working together’ with N are actually his clients.” The proprietor smiled at her. He drained the noodles and starting cooking the wontons.

  Nga-Yee cursed herself for her stupidity. Asking that question had just confirmed his guess. Still, now that they were talking openly, she might as well see what she could find out.

  “Do you know what N does for a living?”

  “More or less. He helps people solve their problems.”

  “You said I was lucky. Is that because he doesn’t take many cases?”

  The propri
etor paused for a moment to stare at her, then chuckled as he went back to preparing her broth. “Miss, you don’t seem to understand how good N is. He’s a real maverick.”

  “A maverick?”

  “Neither cops nor criminals dare to get on his bad side.”

  “Is N—a triad leader?” Nga-Yee asked nervously. She knew hackers had to do some shady things, but actually being involved with the criminal underworld would be a whole different matter.

  “No, no.” The man grinned. “He’s even more powerful than that. He’s not in any triad, yet all the gang bosses respect and fear him. If he gets in their way, they just have to chalk it up to bad luck. I heard that he had dealings with a police officer in the Western District, and the cop had to bow and scrape too.”

  Nga-Yee thought back to when those gangsters tried to kidnap them. When they got out, the proprietor had said, “Those idiots don’t know what they’re getting into.” So this is what he’d meant.

  “See this?” The man pushed his hair back to reveal a half-inch scar. “A few years ago, some gangsters came to make trouble. They insisted that their boss had a bellyache from eating my wontons. I thought they were after protection money, the usual, but before I could even ask how much, they’d already gotten to work. They overturned the chairs and tables and smashed up my counter. I’ve been in business more than twenty years, and of course I’ve seen these sorts of shenanigans before. I could have put up with it if this was just a one-off, but those bastards turned up again the next week. When they did it a third time, I couldn’t stand it anymore and tried to stop them. I ended up in the hospital getting six stitches.”

  “Did you make a police report?” Nga-Yee wasn’t sure why he’d brought this up, but she went with the flow.

  “Yes, but it didn’t do any good. I got this injury falling over in the confusion. Those gangsters were smart—they smashed up my stuff, but never attacked me. The police could only treat this as a case of criminal damage, which meant it was a lower priority for them.” He turned to scoop some wontons into the pot. “The strange thing was, they stopped coming after that, as if their boss had suddenly stopped being angry or they’d discovered their consciences. It was only half a year later that I found out the real reason.”