Chapter 4 — When He Believes the Outsiders

Fully equipped police officers swiftly unspooled yellow and black caution tape, cordoning off the incident site with clinical precision. The commanding officer strode into the center of the chaos, his voice cutting through the air with stern authority.

Our command center has been flooded with countless distress calls! Over one hundred thousand viewers are reporting this on the livestream, declaring that a cold-blooded murder has taken place right here in plain sight!

Two officers lunged forward, grabbing So Lam by the shoulders and pinning him in place.

I did not kill anyone!

So Lam struggled frantically, his eyes bloodshot, repeating the same words like a broken machine stuck in a loop. I am the head instructor! I was merely enforcing discipline with absolute fairness! This is righteous education! She had a habit of faking illnesses to deceive people since she was a child; I was simply correcting her behavior!

He shrieked until his voice turned raspy and raw. Yet, his hands—which hung limply at his sides, stained with the fluids from my lifeless body—could not stop twitching in a rhythmic, uncontrollable spasm. The forensic investigator approached with an examination kit and lifted a corner of the white shroud. A high-powered flashlight swept over my arms, where the skin had been burned away, leaving raw, exposed tissue.

The injuries are consistent with intense, prolonged exposure to harsh sunlight. There are deep, severe ligature marks on her wrists and waist, likely from coarse rope, cutting all the way down to the periosteum.

Suddenly, a short-haired girl from the crowd—the same one who had once tried to hand me my medical leave note—bolted forward, pointing a trembling finger at So Lam. She broke into agonizing sobs. He is lying! So Van was never faking an illness! It was you who refused to look at the medical certificates; you were the one who publicly shredded her hospital documents and forced all of us to stand by and watch her be baked to death under the sun!

Her cry acted like a spark in a powder keg, igniting the fear and suppressed rage held by over a thousand students. That’s right! He wouldn’t let us call the school doctor! He even threatened us with collective punishment, claiming anyone who dared to beg for mercy would suffer the same fate! He is a madman! A murderer!

These furious accusations rose like a tsunami, completely engulfing So Lam. The students who had once remained silent, or even harbored resentment toward me for implicating the group under the blistering heat, now stood together, turning their blades toward the absolute tyrant of this nightmare. The online backlash pushed So Lam toward the figurative guillotine. Phrases like Devil Instructor Tortures Younger Sister to Death exploded across the internet. I hovered in the air, watching my brother, a man who prided himself on absolute impartiality. The uniform he wore with such arrogance was now smeared with the foul, metallic scent of my blood. Amidst thousands of condemnations, the back he had always kept so rigid finally began to slouch, inch by agonizing inch. In his eyes, I saw the terror of reality crushing his delusions.

Escort the suspect to the vehicle! the commanding officer ordered decisively, scanning the crowd. Everyone else, stay where you are. Hand over your phones and cooperate with the evidence collection process!

As officers with evidence bags began collecting devices, the short-haired girl suddenly spun around and grabbed Chu Man, who was attempting to slink toward the back of the crowd. Officer! Check her phone! She is the one who constantly misled us, convincing us that So Van was just playing the victim!

The girl’s sharp voice pierced the deathly silence of the training grounds. Chu Man’s fragile, doll-like face turned ghastly white. Instinctively, she clutched her pocket and attempted to burrow deeper into the crowd.

Stop right there!

A female officer reacted with lightning speed. She strode over, executing a swift, practiced motion to pin Chu Man’s arms behind her back. She retrieved a smartphone from Chu Man’s pocket just as the girl was attempting to initiate a factory reset. A technical officer immediately connected the device. His fingers danced across the screen, his expression darkening with every passing second.

Reporting to the Captain, the officer said, stepping forward to show the contents of the screen to the commander. Not only does the suspect’s phone contain a massive cache of candid photos of So Lam, but the chat history also reveals that she was constantly feeding him distorted reports about the victim.

I floated above them, watching the cold, hard evidence of my demise on the illuminated screen. As it turned out, from the very first day of military training, Chu Man had cultivated a persona of being resilient and sensible in So Lam’s eyes. She had realized that he loathed my perceived weakness, so she fed him exactly what he wanted to hear.

Instructor, So Van was eating snacks and playing on her phone in the dormitory last night; she doesn’t look like someone who is sick at all. Instructor, you are too soft on So Van. She even asked me to help her forge a medical record earlier, but I refused. I believe that in military training, all students should be treated equally; no one should be allowed special privileges.

Each malicious text message on WeChat, paired with photos she had carefully snapped from angles designed to make my mundane daily tasks look like deceit, served as the incontrovertible proof that convinced So Lam I was faking my agony until the very end.