The car didn’t go straight to the station. It turned into a hospital.
The doctor treated Officer Lục’s hand wound.
When it was my turn, I lifted my chin and shouted, “It’s just a little scrape! I’m not getting it bandaged! I don’t need to!”
I looked just like a shrewish, domineering old woman.
They had no choice but to let it go.
When we returned to the interrogation room, Officer Lục looked at me for a long time.
“There are a few things I just can’t make sense of.”
“Go ahead.”
“Last time, you mentioned a ‘maid’…”
He tapped his notebook lightly. “At your age, you’d call her a ‘housekeeper’ or ‘cleaning lady.’”
I smiled and waited silently for him to continue.
“And there’s more… The road up to the cemetery was long and steep, but you walked ahead of us without even getting winded.”
“You’re also obsessive about neatness—you even straightened my clothes. But the clothes in your closet were… all rumpled and creased.”
He suddenly leaned close, his voice dropping. “Who are you, really?”
I slowly straightened the back that had been hunched all along. As his pupils contracted, my voice shifted from a hoarse rasp to something young and clear:
“There’s one more detail. Why didn’t you mention it?”
“What detail?”
“When you grabbed me at the cemetery…”
I looked him straight in the eye. “You should have noticed my waist…”
“…was slim and firm, nothing like an old woman’s.”
The corner of Officer Lục’s mouth twitched.
I leaned back, my voice calm. “That’s right. I’m not Lý Xuân Mai.”
“Then where’s the real Lý Xuân Mai?!”
“Dead.”
A small laugh escaped me.
Then it grew louder and louder, stretching into a wild, manic laugh.
Until tears welled in my eyes.
“Dead! Hahaha… She’s dead! She’s been dead for six months!”
Officer Lục went deathly pale. “You… killed her?”
“No.”
I lifted my head and let the interrogation-room light shine straight onto my face.
My voice lowered. “But I was the one who buried her.”
“Where?”
“At the outlying cemetery.”
I tilted my head. “The very place we just visited.”
Officer Lục swore, grabbed his radio, and called for backup.
A young female police officer led me to the restroom.
Under her watchful gaze, I slowly removed the gray-white wig and gently smoothed out each lock.
The officer’s face went pale… understandably. The sight would’ve sent a chill down anyone’s spine.
I carefully combed out the real hair and handed it to her. “This is Lý Xuân Mai’s hair.”
My voice was soft, but her hand trembled so badly she nearly dropped it.
I stood before the mirror and began peeling off the pieces of fake skin stuck to my face. Each one had taken months of work, crafted to reproduce Lý Xuân Mai’s face exactly… her features were etched into my memory.
When the last piece fell away, the reflection in the mirror… was a girl in her early twenties, with smooth, fair skin, a long, slender neck, sharply defined features, and a small mole on the tip of her nose. Long, ink-black hair fell over her shoulders, catching a faint blue sheen beneath the lights.
Even dressed in an old woman’s blouse, no one would have mistaken me for an old woman.
I calmly sat back down in the interrogation chair and waited for Officer Lục to return.
Not long afterward, the interrogation-room door was kicked open.
Officer Lục strode in, fury in his eyes. But when he saw my real face, he stopped for a second… then immediately grabbed my collar and yanked me forward. “How dare you toy with the police?!”
He pulled my neck back, but I kept a faint smile on my face. “Officer Lục, what do you mean?”
“There are only her husband’s ashes in the tomb! Lý Xuân Mai isn’t there!”
I blinked. “How can you be sure… those ashes aren’t Lý Xuân Mai’s?”
He let go, stunned.
“Her husband’s tomb was empty to begin with.”
I smoothed the collar he’d wrinkled.
“I… put Mrs. Lý’s ashes in there.”
“What the hell happened?!”
I sat upright again and looked at the large words on the wall.
“Now, it’s time for the truth to come out.”
I smiled faintly. “Let me introduce myself. My name is Kiều Vân Mãn.”
I was an orphan.
The winter I turned fifteen, snow fell thickly. I sat huddled on the back steps of the orphanage, counting the cracks the cold had raised across the backs of my hands.
Fifteen… already too old.
No one wanted to adopt a stubborn, prickly kid like me anymore.
“Hey, kid, want a piece of candy?”
I looked up and saw a hunched old woman.
She was Lý Xuân Mai, ten years earlier.
I was fifteen. I no longer believed in so-called good people, and I didn’t care about a piece of candy, either.
“I don’t need your pity.”
“It’s not pity.”
She opened my hand and pressed the candy into it.
“This old lady has a toothache. I can’t eat sweets.”
In the end, the candy still ended up in my mouth, so sweet it was almost sickening.
Only later did I learn that her daughter, Trần Diêu, had just gone abroad and gotten married there. Every afternoon, Mrs. Lý would sit by the river for a while… and the person she took in that day… was me.
“Tiểu Mãn.” That was what she often called me.
“Mrs. Lý.” That was what I always called her.
Back then, she still lived in the old house in the small town. She hadn’t moved to the city yet.
Mrs. Lý was very kind—far too kind.
She let me live with her, but so I wouldn’t feel like a burden, she often said, “I tricked you into coming home with a piece of candy.”
At the time, her husband, Trần Trường Quý, was still alive.
They treated me so well that, for the first time, I understood… home wasn’t just a word people used to fool you.
“You said Trần Trường Quý was still alive then. So now he’s dead, but why is his tomb empty?”
“Don’t rush me. Let me continue.”
Two years later, Trần Diêu returned home with her husband. The moment she saw me in the house, she didn’t even bother to lift an eyelid.
In her eyes, I was less than air.
Trần Diêu had made a lot of money abroad, and this time she came back with a suitcase full of cash to spend.
On the surface, she played the dutiful daughter and said she wanted to bring her parents to the city to enjoy the good life.
But the night before the move, the whole old house erupted into chaos.
A suitcase full of money was thrown into the yard, bills flying everywhere.
Mr. Trần shouted so loudly the whole neighborhood could hear him. “How could the Trần family give birth to someone so devoid of humanity?! Take your dirty money and get out!”
Mrs. Lý sat on the ground in the yard, shaking as she cried. “Diêu Diêu… stop this… I’ll take you to turn yourself in…”
Trần Diêu’s money… wasn’t clean.
The old couple had spent their whole lives farming, with the word “kindness” carved into their very bones.
That night, Trần Diêu left. Mrs. Li bent down to pick up the scattered bills one by one. I crouched to help, and she suddenly clutched my wrist, her eyes bloodshot. “Tiểu Mãn… tell me… how can a person become like that?”
I had no answer.
After that night, ông Trần fell ill.
He grew quiet, sitting by the window all day, staring out.
Mrs. Li changed, too. She stopped going to the riverbank and spent all her time in the living room, wiping Trần Diêu’s childhood photograph over and over.
Three months later, ông Trần died.
It was very sudden.
One morning, Mrs. Li called and called, but he wouldn’t wake. He lay stiff and straight in bed, a trace of blood still at the corner of his mouth.
The doctor’s diagnosis: acute myocardial infarction.
Trần Diêu didn’t come back for the funeral.
Mrs. Li didn’t shed a single tear. She just stared at the coffin until the earth covered it completely.
But… the next day, the grave was completely empty.
The coffin was still there, but the body had vanished.
Mrs. Li stood before the empty grave… and smiled.
Her strange laughter sent a chill down my spine.
Because just then, I saw a cigarette butt behind the headstone.
The same kind Trần Diêu had smoked the last time she came home.
After that, Mrs. Li packed our things and took me with her to the city.
Life there was nothing like the countryside: noisy traffic and rows of towering buildings.
We lived in the house Trần Diêu had bought.
Mrs. Li often stood on the balcony, gazing into the hazy distance.
I once stood beside her and heard her whisper, “He used to say… once Diêu Diêu made something of herself, he’d take her to the city for a visit…”