4
“He” ran his hand over my neck. The rough lines on his palm scraped against my soft skin.
I’m used to using a continuous overcast stitch when sewing.
The scars running across his palm were the marks left by those stitches.
I went rigid, as if nailed to the bed, able only to lie still. But I could feel “him” staring at me.
His ice-cold lips brushed my ear as he whispered, “Vãn Vãn, be my audience forever.”
“Just as I’m your audience.”
I sank into darkness, helpless and in pain.
When I opened my eyes again, it was already morning.
The doorbell rang. I hurriedly threw on a coat and went to open the door, startled to see them.
“Chief, Captain Phương, what’s going on?”
It was only eight in the morning, and they were already at my door with several police officers.
With seven or eight people in the room, even my spacious living room felt cramped. The chief looked uneasy, but Captain Phương seemed much calmer.
He opened each door in the house, swept his eyes around, then stopped in front of me.
“Professor Trang, you’ve finished preparing Cao Mẫn’s body for burial, correct?”
Their wariness made me even more uneasy.
I replied, “Yes. The chief confirmed it, didn’t he?”
Captain Phương continued in a low voice, “Cao Mẫn’s file lists his height as 1.82 meters, right?”
I didn’t understand what he was getting at, but nodded. “That’s right.”
“But the body I saw last was nowhere near that tall.”
As the head of the criminal investigation team, shouldn’t he know this basic principle?
Though I was a little confused, I explained as simply as I could. “Cases involving dismembered bodies are like putting together a puzzle. A lot of body tissue is missing, so of course there’ll be some discrepancy in the height. It’s like how your height can differ slightly between morning and evening. Hasn’t the chief ever told you that?”
The chief looked at me with a complicated expression, part pity, part fear.
“Professor Trang, the height was off because… someone stole Cao Mẫn’s body from the morgue.”
“…”
My heart pounded. My throat went dry.
“Who?”
A terrifying silence fell over the room. Captain Phương fixed me with a sharp look.
“The security footage shows… it was you.”
Me?
Was he saying I’d stolen the body?
Could the arm I’d rested my head on last night actually have been the part of the body I’d hidden in a bag and brought home?
“You took the body apart, brought it home, and stitched it back together, staging the scene as if your lover were still alive.”
Everyone’s eyes turned toward the refrigerator.
Since the incident, I’d been eating almost all my meals in the cafeteria and hadn’t cooked, so there was nothing inside.
But… the stench of rotting flesh was creeping out from within.
I sprang up, but Captain Phương was quicker and opened the refrigerator door.
The overpowering stench of a corpse filled everyone’s nostrils.
A curled-up left arm, pale and covered in necrotic patches.
It fell to the floor.
5
I screamed.
At that moment, the phone by my pillow rang.
I clutched the blanket, gasping for breath, and realized it had all been a nightmare.
The call was from Captain Phương.
“Professor Trang, please come to the police station. We have a new suspect.”
The voice in the dream and the voice in reality were identical.
I still hadn’t recovered. Hearing the captain’s voice, my heart continued to shudder.
“Yes… I’ll come right away.”
Captain Phương asked with concern, “Professor Trang, are you all right? Do you need me to come pick you up?”
“No, no, that’s not necessary. Don’t come!”
The nightmare left my head spinning, but as I was about to sit up, I suddenly froze.
I have long, silky black hair, but there were several dark brown strands beside my pillow, coarse in texture.
They looked exactly like Cao Mẫn’s hair.
Someone else really had been in this room…
6
I practically ran to the police station.
The person Captain Phương had mentioned was Cao Mẫn’s teacher, Trần Triết.
He was one of the country’s leading magicians, internationally renowned for recreating ancient illusions.
Tickets to his shows cost tens of thousands of yuan.
I’d once asked Cao Mẫn to pull some strings so I could get a ticket.
That time, Trần Triết recreated the ancient illusionist Đỗ Thất Thánh’s act, “Beheading and Body-Swapping.”
He randomly chose an audience member, “cut off” their head right onstage, then, in full view of the crowd, used “talisman magic” to put it back.
“Do you know what the secret is?”
The act was so gruesome it horrified me. I kept crying out in shock and hurriedly asked my boyfriend.
But Cao Mẫn only lowered his head, forcing a smile as he said he didn’t know.
“He’s never let me watch him practice. In this line of work, secrets are everything.”
No matter how hard Cao Mẫn tried, Trần Triết refused to pass his signature trick on to him.
He even forced Cao Mẫn to sign an unfair twenty-year contract.
Their conflict reached a breaking point.
I’d encouraged him: “My job is stable, so don’t worry. Go ahead and chase your dream.”
After they severed ties, Trần Triết ordered that Cao Mẫn be blacklisted, forbidding any theater in the industry from giving him a chance to perform.
From then on, his career hit rock bottom.
The day before the case, someone saw them having a fierce argument.
Trần Triết ordered his bodyguards to throw Cao Mẫn out of the theater, even arrogantly declaring, “Who the hell do you think you are? As long as I’m alive, don’t even dream of setting foot onstage!”
“I’ll destroy you right on that very stage!”
7
At first, Trần Triết was arrogant, giving the police only one answer: “I have nothing to say.”
That was, until Captain Phương showed him a video.
That was when I learned the truth: Cao Mẫn was the one who had actually created the illusion “Beheading and Body-Swapping.”
Not Trần Triết.
Captain Phương said coldly, “This is a recording we found on Cao Mẫn’s phone. The original version of that famous illusion you perform was created by him, wasn’t it? You stole your student’s idea and claimed it as your own. You were afraid he’d expose the truth, so when a theater agreed to sponsor his performance, you killed him.”
Trần Triết gave a faint laugh, his tone mocking. “I’ve said far worse things than that. So what? You think you can convict me based on words alone?”
He quickly regained his usual composure.
“Where were you at three in the afternoon on the day of the crime?” Captain Phương stared at him like a hawk watching its prey.
“I was in my office. Every day, I work there from two to six in the afternoon.”
“No witnesses, no security cameras?”
Trần Triết shrugged. “In the world of magic, secrets are everything. I don’t even let my closest assistants in. If you have evidence, go ahead and charge me. My time is precious—not like trash such as Cao Mẫn.”
His arrogant attitude made me grind my teeth in anger.
When Cao Mẫn was Trần Triết’s student, he received a measly two thousand yuan a month. At every performance, he was stuck with the heaviest work, and even the illusion he’d poured his heart into was stolen by his teacher!
Yet he never once complained, just because he was afraid I’d worry.
Though Trần Triết was riddled with suspicions, the police still hadn’t found any concrete evidence.
That didn’t stop his reputation from collapsing.
The video from Cao Mẫn’s phone was leaked online, turning him from a master magician into a thief who stole his student’s work. Magic fans around the world condemned and cursed him.
Even though he insisted that he was the one who had created the illusion…
No one believed him.
Major theaters announced one after another that they were banning him from performing, retaliating with a complete industry blacklist.
A few days later, Trần Triết went to the police station of his own accord to report a crime.
Captain Phương said helplessly, “He claims someone’s been following and spying on him. He suspects it’s Cao Mẫn. He also blames him for the threatening letters left outside his home. Are all these magicians paranoid?”
“Haha, I think the public backlash has driven him to a breakdown.”
“When you’ve done that much wrong, of course you’re afraid a ghost will come knocking.”
This time, Trần Triết no longer looked so confident. He was haggard and alarmed.
As he passed me in the hallway, he suddenly leaned close to my ear and whispered, “That kid… he’s definitely still alive.”
His unexpected words left me stunned.
In the world of magic, everyone is a master observer.
And Trần Triết was especially good at reading people.
He saw the terror in my eyes. At last, a smile spread across his wrinkled face.
“He’s watching me. I can feel it.”
A magician lives half in the light, half hidden in the dark.
Only their own kind can sense each other.
“Stop him! If I die… you’ll be an accomplice!”