The End of Memories (2)
June 18th, her birthday, also the day when the college entrance examination admission notices were issued.
It had been raining steadily since morning, turning into pouring rain by the afternoon.
After lunch, she went to the martial arts gym to practice Brazilian jiu-jitsu. About two hours later, she was supposed to meet Chu Nan at school, then go watch a movie and eat hot pot together in the evening. They had made plans to go drinking and karaoke afterward because they would go their separate ways after that summer.
Two hours later, the rain intensified. She opened her clothes to shield her head and stood under the eaves to avoid the rain. Her phone still had 5% battery left, and she made one last call to Chu Nan.
“Hello, Lin Yan?”
“Yes, it’s me. Are you on your way to school?”
She could hear the sound of raindrops hitting the umbrella fabric.
Chen Chu Nan hugged her backpack, trudging along, one foot deep and the other shallow. “Yes, where are you?”
“I’m at the entrance of the martial arts hall. The rain is too heavy; I might be a little late,” Lin Yan glanced at her watch and answered.
The other person laughed. Even the torrential rain couldn’t disturb her good mood; her voice remained as sweet as ever.
“It’s okay. I’ll be there soon. How about I pick it up for you? Then you don’t have to come. After all, your house isn’t far from the school; just go home directly.”
“That won’t do. You’re alone…”
The girl laughed, “It’s a special privilege for the birthday star.”
The phone was about to die. Lin Yan looked at her watch and then turned her gaze to a bicycle parked not far away, unlocked.
She gritted her teeth and ran over. “Alright, then wait for me at my house. I’ll have the butler come down to meet you.”
After hanging up the phone, she wanted to call the butler. When she wiped the rain off her phone, she found it had already gone black due to no power.
“F*ck.”
Lin Yan cursed under her breath, put the phone in her pocket, and started riding the bicycle home.
When she got home, the person she had been thinking about wasn’t at the door. Lin Yan, soaked to the skin, ran inside.
“Chu Nan, where’s Chu Nan?”
“Have you seen Chu Nan, my classmate?”
“A girl about my age, tall and skinny. Have you seen her?”
She asked the butler, the servants, and the cleaners. She even ran next door to ask Lin Ge, but the answer was always the same: no one had seen her, there was no such person.
As she panicked, it was Lin Ge who comforted her.
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“Don’t be afraid. Maybe the rain was too heavy, and she stayed at school. I’ll send someone to look for her.”
Lin Yan nodded blankly, changed to another phone, and kept calling her, but it was always turned off.
At that time, she was too anxious to notice the faint bloodstains on his cuffs.
She searched for a long time that day, from the school to the usual convenience store, bookstore, café, cinema, and even the riverside, but there was no sign of her, and no one had seen her.
Chen Chu Nan seemed to have vanished into thin air.
That night, Chu Nan’s mother reported it to the police. Three days later, she saw her mutilated corpse in the funeral home.
The last call Chen Chu Nan made to her was preserved by Lin Yan using technical means.
She often played it back repeatedly.
“Hello, Lin Yan?”
“It’s okay. After all, your house isn’t far from the school…”
“It’s a special privilege for the birthday star.”
“Beep, beep, beep…”
At that time, what had the girl who had just wished her experienced?
This was later confessed by Lin Jueshui.
That day, taking advantage of Lin Youyuan’s absence, he brought his most successful experiment to find Lin Ge, as usual.
By then, Lin Ge had grown up and taken over some of the Lin family’s overseas business. He needed to use this connection to sell things overseas for profit.
In a secluded corner outside the Lin residence.
Lin Ge pulled him aside, “Why are you here again?”
Lin Jueshui removed his mask. “Why, can’t I come?”
Lin Ge swallowed. “Uncle Lin will come back today. If you have something to say, say it quickly. I need to celebrate my sister’s birthday tonight.”
The man took out a blue test tube and gave it to him. “This, put it in your sister’s drink, and she’ll…”
“Excuse me, is this Lin Yan’s house? Oh, isn’t this Lin Ge? Looks like I found the right place. I’m here to deliver something to Lin Yan…”
The girl accidentally stumbled upon their secret.
Both of them turned around. Lin Ge immediately recognized her as Lin Yan’s classmate. He had occasionally given her a ride when picking up Lin Yan from school.
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A flash of cold light, and Lin Jueshui already had a knife in his hand.
Lin Ge pounced over. “No! She’s Lin Yan’s friend!”
“But she saw my face!” The man growled angrily in a low voice.
Chen Chu Nan’s expression changed. She took out her phone from her pocket and started to run. Before she could make the rescue call,
The man pushed Lin Ge away, took two steps in three, and stabbed her in the back. When the bodyguard patrolling near the Lin family house looked over, he dragged her into the bushes.
The rainwater diluted the blood on the ground, quickly mixing with the dirty water and flowing into the sewer.
When Lin Yan rode her bicycle back to the doorstep, she narrowly missed the garbage truck carrying Chu Nan’s corpse. The driver was Lin Jueshui and his subordinate in disguise.
That evening, Lin Yan was taken to the police station for questioning, while Lin Ge slipped away to Lin Jueshui’s residence in Jiangcheng.
He grabbed him by the collar and roared, “Where did you hide her? Come with me and turn yourself in!”
Lin Jueshui slapped him away, adjusted his collar, and sneered, a brilliant idea forming as he looked at Lin Ge’s frantic face.
“Killing that girl plays right into your hands, doesn’t it? Don’t think I haven’t noticed your feelings for Lin Yan. I can turn myself in, but do you think you can get away with it? If you go to prison, how will you protect your sister? What about your money, your studies, your status? You’re only twenty five years old; are you willing to throw your whole life away?”
Seeing the young man stagger back, his face full of panic, Lin Jueshui smiled with satisfaction.
He wanted to disgust Lin Youyuan to death. What could be more disgusting than having the child you raised with your own hands turn out to be a murderer?
What could be more disgusting than a brother liking his own sister, even though they were cousins?
The so-called brotherly bond had already burned away when Lin Youyuan threw a Molotov cocktail at him after he harmed Su Yue. The one who survived was a devil.
He wanted Lin Youyuan to live the rest of his life in his shadow, with a broken home and a shattered family.
With this thought, Lin Jueshui put an arm around his shoulders and led him inside. “Great people don’t sweat the small stuff. I heard you study medicine. Come, show me your skills. I’ve already made arrangements. As long as we destroy the body and cover it up well, no one will ever know it was us.”
What they did was indeed flawless. In those days, surveillance cameras were not widespread; there were no onsite surveillance videos, no eyewitnesses, and no DNA testing. The traces left at the scene were washed away by the heavy rain.
Lin Jueshui used his connections to find Butcher Zhu, who had a grudge against the Chen family, to take the fall. This was all arranged perfectly.
“I know it was an accident. Someone did see Lin Ge disposing of the body. The cleaner working near the trash cans saw everything and even lent a hand. In casual conversation, he revealed that Lin Ge had thrown away a large suitcase that day, filled with books, and it was incredibly heavy.”
“When I found out, I gave him some money and sent him back to his hometown to enjoy his old age. He passed away not long after.”
Lin Youyuan said this, raising his eyes to look at her.
“A stranger you’ve never met versus a nephew you’ve raised with your own hands. If it were you, who would you choose?”
Lin Yan could no longer hold back. She raised her hand and hurled the computer against the wall. It hit, fell to the ground, and shattered, the screen cracking like a spider web.
With red eyes and heavy breathing, she screamed into the empty air, “You hid this from me for fourteen years! Fourteen years! What was all my effort these fourteen years for?”
“Mother Chen searched everywhere for Chu Nan, only to return home deranged in the end. What was that for?”
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“Dying at eighteen, never to come back to life, what was that for?”
Even saying this wasn’t enough for her. Seeing the computer still flickering, she leaped off the bed, trying to smash it completely.
“You cherish your nephew whom you raised, but who will cherish Chu Nan? She was so good, so excellent, full of dreams for the future. She was only eighteen… eighteen!”
“We promised to celebrate our birthdays together, stay in touch even if we went our separate ways, travel together every year if possible, buy houses next to each other, be lifelong friends. If we had children, one boy and one girl, they would be betrothed; if not, they’d be sworn siblings…”
“Lin Youyuan, you’re a murderer, a murderer!!!”
Song Yuhang wrapped her arms around her, holding her tightly to prevent her from getting hurt by the sharp fragments.
Lin Yan kicked, punched, and bit, trying to break free, but eventually, she cried herself out.
Song Yuhang gently patted her back, soothing her as they sat on the floor.
The overburdened computer emitted a dying electrical hum, its screen flickering, and Lin Yan gradually couldn’t see his face clearly.
