Second Sister

by Chan Ho-Kei

  “I want Violet to believe that she’s the main thing endangering her brother, and to form the idea that as long as the police don’t find her, her brother might get away with it. There’s no truth in that, but if she believes it, she’ll act accordingly. And in a while she’s going to see this message …”

  N tapped on the keyboard, bringing up some text in a new window:

  I know the man who was arrested. He’s my coworker. I never realized he was this sort of person. You can never tell what’s in someone’s heart! I have insider info: he once told me he has a little sister in secondary school. I’ve seen them together. I remember her uniform—she’s at the same school as the girl who killed herself! There must be a connection there.

  “… so Violet will face a stark choice: her own existence versus her brother’s safety. The more she loves and cares about him, the more easily she’ll be swayed.”

  “Even if she thinks her brother might go to jail, infringing on someone’s privacy isn’t a major crime, is it? Surely that’s not worth sacrificing your life—”

  “If it goes to trial, the media spotlight will fall on him, and he’ll be judged by the public. What Violet fears is that he’ll be torn apart on the internet because of her, and he’ll be seen as a pervert who destroyed someone else’s life. Even the truth wouldn’t get in the way of that—so she wouldn’t consider turning herself in as a solution.”

  Nga-Yee was starting to wrap her head around this way of thinking. She knew how stressful it could be to become a talking point, and clearly Violet understood it too—having weaponized public opinion against Siu-Man.

  “Over the last few days we’ve steadily applied more and more psychological pressure on her. Now she’s liable to crack, believing that death can solve all her problems,” said N crisply. “In this unstable mood, deprived of sleep, hearing ‘Murderer!’ shouted in your ear would make you lose touch with reality.”

  There was one thing Nga-Yee didn’t know: It was N who’d left that comment about suicide on Violet’s book blog.

  After meeting Rosalie and learning about Violet’s family background, the plan started to form in N’s mind. That night, he commented on her blog as “Franny” in order to make Violet read the novel again and think about its protagonists’ states of mind, so the idea of suicide as a rational choice would be implanted in her subconscious. He had no way of knowing whether this would work, but experience had shown him that going the extra mile never hurt. This was nothing like hypnosis or mind control, more the way an advertisement—a slogan or image—might subliminally influence a consumer’s choice.

  “Take a close look at the final day of Violet’s life,” said N, reclining his seat and tearing open a snack bar. “This is your revenge—you have a responsibility to watch it to the end.”

  For the next few hours Nga-Yee stared silently at the screen, observing the flame of life flickering in Violet. Hospitable for once, N offered her a snack bar, but she had no appetite. Her insides were flipping over and over. Much as she longed for her enemy to be punished, she also had a conscience, and she was uneasy at the taking of a human life. Humankind was capable of evil thoughts and poisonous words, but most people wouldn’t be able to look directly at the results of this cruelty. Several times, Nga-Yee wanted to tell N that she was going home, that he should call her when it was done, but his words—that she had a responsibility to watch—kept her fixed to her chair. She was unable to tear her eyes away from Violet, unable to ask anything of the assassin sitting next to her.

  A little after nine p.m. N posted the comment by an apparent coworker of her brother’s. Violet’s whole body language changed after reading it. She still looked stricken, but her eyes no longer roamed and her lips stopped trembling. Nga-Yee felt that she might abruptly open the window and take a flying leap to her death on the street ten stories below, but she remained where she was, eyes on her laptop, unmoving for more than an hour.

  “How long is she going to be like this?” said Nga-Yee.

  “That’s heartless of you, Miss Au. Even a convict on death row is given time to say a last prayer, but you won’t let her have these final moments.” N smiled wickedly at her.

  Nga-Yee hadn’t meant anything like that—only that it was difficult to put up with this endless waiting, and she found herself on pins and needles. “I was just—”

  N pushed the microphone over to her, cutting her off.

  “If you can’t wait, feel free to place the final straw on the camel’s back.”

  “What?”

  “Remember the directional speaker? I’ve fitted one on a drone, and it’s facing Violet through the open window now. If she ‘hallucinates’ another voice urging her to sacrifice herself for her brother, she’ll probably do it right away.”

  The black microphone before Nga-Yee seemed to emanate a deadly chill, and its red button beckoned her like a demon.

  She had an impulse to hit the button and blurt out “Murderer!” or something equally venomous. Her arm twitched, but she couldn’t make her finger do it. Was it her limb or her courage that had failed her? Or was it that heavy sense of responsibility?

  “Hurry it up if you like. I have a lot of other work to get through to make sure you get your true revenge.”

  “True revenge?”

  “Why do you think I’m dealing with Violet in such a convoluted way?” N smiled drily. “Think about it. Violet obviously isn’t going to leave a suicide note. Tonight, after she dies, I’ll retrieve all my drones, eliminate any traces that we were ever here, and restore her phone to its original condition. Her brother will have no way of knowing why his much-loved sister chose to kill herself. She was alive and well a few days ago, and just like that, she’s gone. He had no idea that she was unhappy. For the rest of his life he’ll be tormented by this, regret that he was so absorbed by his work that he neglected her. No matter how well he does in his career, he’ll never get his sister’s life back. Isn’t that the truest revenge you could get for Siu-Man’s death?”

  It took Nga-Yee a moment to fully grasp what he was saying—so his guarantee of satisfaction hadn’t been an empty promise. N understood her torment and everything underlying it. He wasn’t just going to punish Violet; he would make her brother suffer everything Nga-Yee herself was going through. There was a darkness in him she hadn’t sensed before, and she started to wonder if he was a person or a devil. What kind of Faustian bargain had she gotten herself into?

  But no, he wasn’t Mephistopheles, he was Nemesis. Like his namesake, N was the soul of revenge.

  Nga-Yee looked again at the microphone. Should she do as vengeance personified told her? Give Violet To that final push?

  “What should I say?” The same question she’d asked two days ago, finger on the button.

  “Anything you like. Maybe your greatest hit, ‘Murderer!’ Or ‘Are you brave enough to die?’ ‘Scum like you have no right to go on living.’ ‘Time to finish what you started last year.’”

  Hearing N repeat lines from Violet’s final messages to Siu-Man awakened the hatred in Nga-Yee once more. Then, in a lucid moment, she detected something amiss.

  “What do you mean, ‘started last year’? What did she start last year?”

  “Nothing much.” N pursed his lips. “She tried before, that’s all. It’s not hard to nudge someone into suicide when they’ve already attempted it. A little encouragement is usually enough.”

  Nga-Yee froze. “She’s tried before?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “From the scars on her wrists.”

  Nga-Yee’s head swung back around, but the resolution on the screen was too low for her to tell.

  “Don’t bother,” said N emotionlessly. “You won’t be able to see. Long sleeves.”

  “So how do you know?”

  “Long sleeves.”

  “You think that’s the only reason people wear long sleeves—to cover scars?”

  “Not now. I meant at the school
.”

  Nga-Yee remembered the baggy sweater Violet had been wearing in the library.

  “Wasn’t that just to hide her figure? Many girls—”

  “A sweater-vest would do for that. But a long-sleeved pullover in the summer?”

  “You’re just guessing!”

  “You think I’d come up with such an elaborate plan without doing my homework?” said N, sounding exasperated. “The first time I saw Violet To, I was only ninety percent certain that she was covering up self-harm or attempted suicide. But that gave me enough to go on, and I was able to get confirmation from Rosalie. People open up more when you say you’re a social worker.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Sometime last May, someone rang the To household’s doorbell frantically around midnight, then starting banging hard on the door. Mr. To was still out, leaving only Rosalie and Violet at home. Rosalie thought her employer must have forgotten his keys, but when she opened the door, it was Violet’s brother, who’d never shown up at the apartment before. He pushed past without a word. When she followed him to the bathroom, Rosalie realized why he was acting so strangely: Violet was slicing her wrists open. There were already quite a few cuts along her arms, and blood was spattered everywhere.”

  “He came to stop her?”

  “She’d sent him a text to say goodbye, probably thinking it wouldn’t take long to die. But she’d underestimated how hard it would be, and he managed to get there in time.” N shrugged. “But here’s the punch line—Violet’s father arrived home just then. He’s supposed to be a mature adult, but he couldn’t deal with the scene he was presented with: his stepdaughter’s attempted suicide. On top of that, he finds out for the first time that his ex-wife had another kid and that Violet had been meeting him in secret all along. Worst of all, even the cleaning lady knew about it, while he’d been kept in the dark. Ha!”

  “And then they sent Violet to the hospital?”

  “No.”

  Nga-Yee gasped. “Why not?”

  “Her wounds weren’t very deep, and they managed to stop the bleeding. Mr. To stopped them from calling the police, and he chased Violet’s brother out. He told the doormen to keep him away. Rosalie was fired a month later. Par for the course, I guess.”

  “But why not send his daughter to the hospital? She tried to kill herself!”

  “Very simply, because they weren’t actually father and daughter.”

  “So what? Just because they weren’t related by blood, he didn’t care about her?”

  “No, you misunderstand. They weren’t actually father and daughter, so if he called the police, she might be taken away from him.”

  Once again, Nga-Yee was caught off balance.

  “According to Hong Kong law, parents and guardians have a duty of care over children under the age of sixteen, or they’re guilty of negligence. Even if they aren’t convicted in court, the authorities can still intervene to remove the children from their custody. And because Mr. To isn’t biologically related to Violet and the mother is no longer there, if you were the judge, wouldn’t you find yourself wondering about possible abuse? Don’t forget, the brother was an adult. Violet could have been placed with him instead.”

  Now Nga-Yee understood why Violet’s father had hired detectives—not to have strangers spying on his daughter, but to keep an eye on this man who was no blood relation to him, and to find out if he had the ability and intent—or the money—to break up his family.

  “Why did Violet want to kill herself?” Nga-Yee was still having trouble accepting this. She’d made kidkit727 out to be a demon, and it was difficult to see her as a fragile being who’d once sought death.

  “Family problems, academic pressure, depression … mainly that old cliché.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Being isolated at school and feeling lonely.”

  “She was bullied at school?”

  “If you’re thinking of being physically attacked or having her possessions destroyed, then no, she wasn’t. But psychological harm and verbal abuse, yes.” N curled his lip. “Frankly, beating people up is out of fashion these days—no kid would be stupid enough to do anything that leaves marks. Much easier to jeer, to gossip, to belittle. Even if a teacher catches you, you can talk your way out of it. Quite a few adults will think it was the victim who wasn’t strong enough and should take some responsibility. What a snowflake.”

  “But why was Violet being ostracized?”

  “You know why. Kwok-Tai said.”

  Nga-Yee had to stop and think. Kwok-Tai had said that Violet went to the teacher about that girl, Laura, and got her expelled for canoodling on school property.

  “Kwok-Tai also mentioned that Laura was very popular. When someone like that gets forced to leave for ‘grown-up reasons,’ don’t you think the other kids would turn on the tattler?”

  “How do you know this happened to Violet? Are you just extrapolating from what Kwok-Tai told us?”

  “When I was looking into your sister’s friends, I got a good sense of the cliques within her class, so it wasn’t hard to tell who was out on her own. Besides …” N opened a new window on the laptop. “Like I said before, the Enoch chatboard back end has all kinds of old stuff, including deleted threads.” He placed the laptop in front of Nga-Yee:

  Group: Class 2B

  Posted by: 2B_Aide

  Topic: The truth about Laura Lam’s expulsion

  Time: September 13, 2013, 16:45:31

  Violet To’s just been made student aide again, and I’m not going to stay silent anymore! Remember Laura Lam from 1A? She had to change schools this year. She didn’t want to, she was forced, because she was seen kissing an older girl. And how did anyone find out? None other than the student aide of 1A, Violet To. She told the teacher, and Laura had to go.

  Let’s not get into whether you approve of lesbians or not, just ask yourself if you want to be ruled over by someone like this. Student aide? More like student snitch. Should this bigot have so much power? With Violet To in charge, we’ll have to watch every step. For all you know, the next person forced out of this school might be you.

  Don’t be fooled by this bitch’s meek appearance. We all know that silent dogs are deadlier than barking ones!

  “Two years ago, this explosive post was up on the board for three hours before the mods stepped in to delete it. That was more than enough time for people to take screenshots and circulate it. As a result, Violet stepped down as student aide, but that wasn’t enough to appease the mob. She became a pariah to the entire school. After half a year of this, she slit her wrists.” N’s tone was level, as if this were all trivial.

  Nga-Yee remembered that one of the Countess’s handmaidens had called Violet a “snitch.” Now she understood why.

  “Well, she—she can’t blame anyone else, can she?” For some reason, Nga-Yee was feeling uneasy, and she found herself stuttering a little. “She’s the bigot who insisted on getting involved where she shouldn’t have.”

  “She wasn’t the tattler,” said N calmly.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Violet To didn’t say anything to her teacher.”

  “But Kwok-Tai said—”

  “Let’s just say Enoch School is a hospitable environment for hackers,” said N, his tone changing. “Teaching records, extracurriculars, exam results, disciplinary notes—everything is digitized and stored on the school server.”

  N hit a key and opened a densely packed text document.

  “This is the report from the disciplinary teacher about Laura Lam, for the principal, supervisor, and board to approve.” N scrolled down the page. “After the teacher heard about this, he asked Violet to confirm what happened, because the student who raised the alarm had named Violet as a fellow witness. What Kwok-Tai overheard wasn’t Violet tattling, but the teacher asking her for more details.”

  Nga-Yee thought back to what Kwok-Tai had reported: Did you see this with your own eyes? Yes. On th
e rooftop? That’s right. Yes, that fitted with this new version of events too.

  “Even if she didn’t start it, she still helped get Laura into trouble, so—”

  “She was the student aide. When a teacher started asking her questions, didn’t she have a duty to tell the truth? She couldn’t have known what was in store for Laura. Wouldn’t it have been wrong of her to lie?”

  “But when her classmates started avoiding her, did she clarify what happened?.”

  “Like you said, her words ended up hurting Laura, so how could she defend herself? Besides, she’d have to say who the actual snitch was, which would make her guilty of snitching too.”

  “But who was it?”

  “Lily Shu.” N pointed at her name on the screen. “Quite a coincidence that she’s on our radar too. If Kwok-Tai knew his girlfriend was the one responsible, there’d probably be trouble.”

  “All right, so Violet was bullied too. That makes it even more unforgivable that she led a mob against Siu-Man! What, she couldn’t stand to see someone else doing well? She got hold of the idea that Siu-Man was a slut and had lied about Shiu Tak-Ping, so she became a vigilante and created a big stink?” All this shot out of Nga-Yee like a machine gun.

  N shrugged. “I guess so.”

  Nga-Yee was expecting him to come up with more perverse logic, but he blandly agreed with her. Something was wrong.

  “What are you not saying?” she asked.

  “Mmm. Nothing.”

  “No, there’s definitely something.”

  N stroked his chin in silence for a few seconds. “My guiding principle is never to say anything unless I can verify it. Do you really want to hear my speculations?”

  “Tell me!”

  “Violet may not have gone after your sister for any of the reasons you mentioned—like a misplaced sense of justice. It may be more rational than that.”

  “Sending an internet mob after a defenseless girl? How could that be rational?” Nga-Yee shouted.