1
I’m a mortician.
Tonight, I have to sew my boyfriend’s body back together—Cao Mẫn.
He died during the first public magic show of his life.
In the “sawing a person in half” trick, he was sawed into pieces.
When the assistant opened the magic box, severed arms and legs mixed with blood came pouring out.
Hundreds of people in the theater and millions watching around the world witnessed it with their own eyes.
I rushed to the scene, fell to my knees, and broke down sobbing.
I’d handled countless tragic cases, but I’d never seen a scene this horrifying.
What I couldn’t understand was how there could be so many pieces of his body in the box, his organs jumbled beyond recognition.
And yet Cao Mẫn’s handsome face was untouched.
He was smiling.
The corners of his mouth curved into a strange smile.
I knew him.
He only smiled like that when he was onstage, completely absorbed in enjoying his performance.
But could anyone who’d been murdered still smile?
Could anyone smile while being torn to pieces?
Cao Mẫn’s death sent shock waves around the world.
Overnight, he went from being an unknown magician to a name everyone was talking about.
People began digging up his elegant street performances, captivated by his humorous style.
They called him a magic genius and mourned his untimely death.
“Could someone have been jealous of him and tampered with his props?” I couldn’t make sense of it.
Cao Mẫn was passionate about magic and didn’t like socializing. Who could he have offended?
Captain Phương, who was in charge of the case, told me the killer was still unknown.
“The mechanism inside the magic box malfunctioned.”
“But according to the backstage security footage, Cao Mẫn was the only one who touched it. His fingerprints were the only ones on the box, too.”
“It’s possible… he cut his own body into pieces.”
I slammed my hand on the table in anger.
That was absurd!
I said firmly, “I knew Cao Mẫn. He had big ambitions. He was absolutely not the kind of person who’d kill himself. No way!”
Determined to get to the bottom of things, I threw myself into my work and gritted my teeth as I sewed his body back together piece by piece.
When I opened his stomach, a scrap of paper fell out.
It was a glitter-covered invitation, with my name written neatly on it: “To my darling—Vãn Vãn.”
That handwriting… It was Cao Mẫn’s!
I stared at it, horrified.
There was just one sentence inside:
“The greatest magic trick of the 21st century has begun. My darling, come witness a miracle.”
2
My hand began to tremble uncontrollably.
The scrap of paper fell to the floor, and I reflexively bent to pick it up.
The moment I touched it, the paper spontaneously burst into flames and turned into the shape of a rose.
A rose—my favorite flower.
Whenever he made me angry, Cao Mẫn would snap his fingers and conjure a rose to make it up to me. I used to joke, “Keep this up, and the rose’s language will end up meaning ‘I’m sorry.’”
Before I could recover, I hurriedly looked toward the worktable.
Under the harsh white fluorescent lights, his head faced me, the smile on his lips frozen in place.
The “body-splitting trick” was an old, familiar act in the magic world. Most audience members knew how it worked, so it wasn’t much of a challenge.
For Cao Mẫn, it was child’s play.
Could Captain Phương have been right? Did he kill himself just to become famous? Was fame really that important? More important than his own life?
Suddenly, I remembered the last time I argued with Cao Mẫn before he disappeared.
His career wasn’t going well, and someone else had stolen his chance to perform onstage.
He was in a terrible mood, his emotions like a ticking time bomb. I was too busy with work to spend enough time with him, and a fierce argument erupted between us.
He’d said angrily, “Trang Vãn Vãn, would you only care about me and stay by my side if I turned into a corpse?”
I was angry, too, and immediately shot back, “Fine, go ahead! Aren’t you a magician? If you’re so good, make yourself disappear!”
Cao Mẫn looked as if I’d struck him with a thunderbolt. He sat on the sofa, muttering to himself in silence. After a while, he raised his head, a strange glint in his eyes.
“I’ll do it, Vãn Vãn. I’ll make the whole world witness my talent.”
“Their eyes will stay on me forever.”
Now, he really had turned into a pile of fragments.
And become the most baffling case of my career.
3
I immediately reported it to Captain Phương.
But the scrap of paper had burned up, leaving no evidence, and the police didn’t believe me.
They suspected that grief had caused me to hallucinate.
I was forced to go home and rest.
As soon as I stepped inside, I sank to the floor, exhausted. Two pairs of slippers sat neatly on the rug.
Everything here came in pairs, except for the people.
I felt utterly alone.
My parents had died in a car accident many years ago. Cao Mẫn had taken care of everything then, presiding over their funeral as their son-in-law.
“Vãn Vãn, I’m here. I’ll always take care of you.” He’d promised me that.
I hugged a pillow and cried. Suddenly, the lights came on.
One by one, every light in the house switched on.
My heart nearly leaped out of my chest. I slowly got to my feet, and only then noticed a bowl of meat noodles on the dining table.
Steam still rose from the bowl. It looked like they’d been cooked less than five minutes ago.
My heart pounded wildly. Beside the bowl was a note: “Vãn Vãn, working overtime must’ve been exhausting. That case must’ve been hard to handle, huh?”
“But you spent the whole day with me today. I was so happy.”
The air was thick with a strange meaty smell, mingled with a familiar odor: formalin and rotting flesh from the autopsy room.
Cold sweat dampened my back. My heart was beating so fast I could barely breathe. I slowly turned around, but there was nothing behind me.
I opened every door and asked quietly, “Cao Mẫn, is that you? Are you still alive?”
No one answered.
But from then on, every night when I came home, there was a bowl of noodles on the table.
Cao Mẫn wasn’t good at cooking. He only knew how to make noodles.
The noodles were always half raw and half cooked, and almost impossible to swallow.
I secretly put a camera on the bookshelf, but the next day, The device had been placed neatly on the dining table.
The note read: “Vãn Vãn, I hate having a third eye in the house.”
I’d always felt that Cao Mẫn was still alive.
Women are especially sensitive to a man’s gaze, and I was no exception.
I didn’t know how he’d managed it, but I was certain he was still watching me from somewhere.
After all, a magician always has to keep an eye on the audience.
They hide secrets in blind spots the audience can’t see, toy with people’s minds, and deceive the whole world.
And every master magician is a master con artist, too.
During the day, I put on my protective gear and continued stitching Cao Mẫn’s body back together. Carefully, I picked up his fallen index finger with tweezers and examined it inch by inch.
I held my breath.
There was a mole between the fingers.
This was Cao Mẫn’s body.
His skin had lost its elasticity, but from what remained, I could still recognize the long, slender hands he’d once had.
“I used to say these hands might be better suited to surgery than magic.”
My coworker, standing beside me, couldn’t bear to watch and offered to help, but I refused.
“I know him well. Maybe I can find some kind of clue.”
Yes, this was the body that had once been intimate with me.
Who could know him better than I did?
What if… what if this really was a magic trick?
What if… I could find the flaw in it?
That evening, exhaustion finally overcame me, and I drifted off to sleep.
Dimly, I heard someone get into bed.
Then the feather pillow beside me sank slightly.
Was it Cao Mẫn?
He often came home at night. So did his performances.
Without thinking, I turned over and rested my head on an arm.
I nuzzled against it contentedly.
The arm was warm, its muscles firm.
Cao Mẫn always liked to hold me like this while we slept. Even when his arm went numb, he wouldn’t let go.
No, something was wrong.
The hairs on my body stood on end.
Fear rose like a cold wave, slowly drowning out my breath.
The person beside me sat up.
But… there was no rustle of clothing.
That meant the person… wasn’t wearing anything.
A faint smell of formalin enveloped me.
Right. Only then did I suddenly realize…
Cao Mẫn was dead.
His body was still lying on my examination table.
His arm… had been cut to pieces.
So then, the thing I was resting my head on…
Who was it?