My sister, whom I raised, has turned evil after faking her death for three years.

It was already past midnight when the car left the mental hospital.

Jiang Mingyuan sat in the passenger seat, one hand supporting his forehead, as the streetlights flashed past the window, tracing streaks across his wrinkled face.

The woman's scream still echoed in his mind, like a broken record player stuck on the same lyric, unable to skip ahead... He was there, he was with you.

Every detail of that nightmare from fifteen years ago was stirred up by this sentence, like dust swept away and re-entering the air, choking him and making it hard to breathe.

Jiang Mingchuan gripped the steering wheel tightly, his knuckles gleaming white in the dim light of the instrument panel.

Jiang Ren, sitting in the back row, kept making phone calls—to her family, to her secretary, and to every possible channel that could contact Wu Yue. But every call felt like being thrown into an abyss; the only response was a mechanical, cold female voice on the other end: "The number you have dialed is temporarily unavailable."

They ultimately decided to rush back that very night. Without waiting for dawn or any news, they had to see Wu Yue in person and ask him for an answer.

The car sped along the highway, and no one in the car spoke.

The highway was deserted in the early morning, like a forgotten river. Only the occasional high beams from the opposite lane would flash a blinding white light on the car window before quickly fading away.

After hanging up the call from the hospital, Jiang Mingyuan gripped his phone tightly in his hand, the light from the screen illuminating the deep weariness on his face.

The hospital said that Wu Yue is still in the morgue and has not left since Yin Wan was pronounced dead.

When they arrived at the hospital, the sky was already beginning to lighten.

The morgue was on the second basement level. The lights in the corridor were dimmer than on any of the floors above. Faded fire safety diagrams were pasted on the walls, and the air was so cold it felt like it was seeping into your bones.

A nurse on duty pushed open the heavy iron door for them. The hinges of the door made a dull groan, and cold air rushed out, carrying with it the pungent smell of formaldehyde and disinfectant.

Then they saw Wu Yue.

He knelt on the cold cement floor of the morgue, next to the gurney where Yin Wan's body was placed.

Wu Yue held Yin Wan's hand, which was hanging outside the bed sheet, with one hand, and rested his other hand on the edge of the bed, his fingers unconsciously stroking her cold knuckles.

His hair... Jiang Mingyuan remembered that two days ago when he smiled and asked him for leave, his hair was still gray, neatly combed and fixed at the back of his head with hair gel, as proper and composed as usual.

But now his hair is completely white, as white as a handful of withered grass that has been hit by winter frost, scattered messily on his forehead, without any shape or order, just hanging there lifelessly.

His back was hunched, and his shoulder blades bulged out abruptly through the thin fabric of his shirt, making him look as if his spine had been removed, leaving only a loose, flabby shell barely holding up the shape of a person.

In just two days, this man transformed from a sturdy and composed old butler into an old man kneeling in the morgue, his hair turned white overnight.

Hearing footsteps, he slowly raised his head. His eyes were so red they looked like they were about to bleed, with dense blood vessels covering the whites of his eyes. His lower eyelids had dark, almost black, eye circles, and his gaze was so cloudy that it was almost unfocused.

He seemed to be looking at the people at the door, or perhaps at a place very, very far away.

Then he lowered his head, pressed Yin Wan's cold fingers against his face, moved his lips, and began to speak in a hoarse voice that was completely unlike his own.

He didn't ask them why they came, or if they knew anything. He just knelt there and began to tell their story from that late autumn night fifteen years ago.

His voice was very low, like a broken string on a musical instrument still vibrating with difficulty. But the morgue was so quiet that even the low hum of the air conditioner compressor sounded harsh. So every word he said clearly reached the ears of everyone present.

He said that he was driven to desperation by medical expenses because of his pathetic pride. He said that Cui Jiayi came to him at that most desperate time and said that her condition was very simple: help her get rid of the child and she would take care of the money.

He said he never really wanted to kill the child, so he found the mentally unstable female doctor, lied to her that the child was hers, and asked her to steal it. Then he took the child from her and delivered it to the gate of the orphanage.

  

He said the child wasn't dead; she was still alive.

He said he slipped a note into her swaddling clothes with a name he'd overheard from the lady of the house—Jiang Ran.

Jiang Mingyuan stood there, one hand supporting himself against the cold wall, his fingers gripping the faded fire safety diagram on the wall, the paper crumpled into a ball, his knuckles making a soft cracking sound.

The person he had raised for twenty years, the person he had trusted for twenty years, the person he had treated like family, the person who had been able to come and go freely in his home for twenty years, turned out to be the accomplice who had caused him to lose his child.

He had never doubted him even once before.

Jiang Mingchuan clenched his fist so tightly that the bones ground against his flesh with a dull thud, and the muscles on his face twitched incessantly in the dim light.

Jiang Ren stood at the very back, leaning against the cold wall, looking up at the creaking fluorescent light on the ceiling. Her eyes were red as if they had been burned by something, but her lips were tightly pursed, and she did not say a word.

He recalled the question Uncle Wu asked him at the party, "Are Miss Su and Miss Jiang sisters?" He remembered how Uncle Wu's fingers tightened slightly when he asked that question.

It turns out that wasn't just casual conversation.

He was a man who had carried a secret for fifteen years, and in the most unexpected moment, he was tripped up by the truth he had buried with his own hands.

Wu Yue knelt on the spot, burying his face in Yin Wan's cold palms, his shoulders trembling violently, and the sounds he squeezed out of his throat were broken and incoherent.

He said he didn't want their forgiveness, that he knew he didn't deserve it, and that he just wanted his wife to know that her daughter was still alive.

And then there's Awan... her last wish... he dares not betray the confession that Awan earned with her own life.

All he could do was tell everyone, and with his last remaining worthless life, settle the debts he had incurred for fifteen years, one by one.

Under the ghastly white lights of the morgue, the man, whose hair had turned white overnight, knelt beside his wife's cold body and laid bare every detail of the sin committed fifteen years ago before the Jiang family.

He did not defend himself, did not shift the blame to Cui Jiayi, and did not use any excuses to lessen his guilt.

After he finished speaking, the morgue was quiet for a long time, with only the air conditioning compressor still humming tirelessly.

Jiang Mingyuan didn't look at him again, turned around and pushed open the iron door of the morgue, the door making a heavy thud behind him.

He took two steps forward, then stopped. Without turning back, he spoke in a flat, even voice, "You just said you sent the child to which orphanage?"

Wu Yue knelt on the ground and shakily pulled a brown paper bag from his bosom.

The paper bag was warm from his body heat, and its edges had been frayed from repeated folding.

He handed over the paper bag, which contained a paternity test report.

His voice was hoarse and calm, as if he had used the last bit of strength to utter the sentence completely: "Miss Su's younger sister, Jiang Ran... is that child from back then."

Jiang Ren turned around abruptly, staring incredulously at the paternity test report that had been handed to her father.

The printed text in the "Appraisal Conclusion" column felt slightly cool from the air conditioning.

He remembered the girl who always stood quietly beside Su Qing, with a cool and aloof expression; he remembered the girl who politely said "hello" to him at the party before turning around to chase after Su Qing.

His sister, whom he had lost for fifteen years, was right beside him.

They had met, spoken, and stood on the same lawn under the same afternoon sun, all without his knowledge.

Jiang Mingchuan took the report, his fingers trembling so much he could barely hold it. His lips moved several times before he managed to squeeze out a hoarse question: had Wu Yue told the child about this news?

Wu Yue shook his head.

He hasn't said anything yet; he doesn't know how to start.

As for Cui Jiayi, Jiang Ren immediately called the police station upon receiving the news. Jiang Mingyuan had his secretary contact all available resources, but when the Jiang family arrived at her rented apartment, the door was ajar, the wardrobe was open, the items on the table were scattered all over the floor, and she was gone.

She ran away.

Jiang Ren slammed his fist against the wall, the cold morgue wall making his knuckles go numb.

They didn't know where she had gone, or if she would ever reappear, but they couldn't care less about her at the moment.

They had more important things to do... The child, the child who had been stolen fifteen years ago and whom they thought was long gone, was still alive.

She was on the other side of the city, within their reach.