After hearing my vow, she felt relieved and never brought it up again. I continued high school, and she continued working. She believed I would never leave again and trusted me unconditionally.
The power of trust is truly tremendous.
As I said before, an important prerequisite for successful hypnosis is trust. The reason I couldn’t undergo hypnotherapy was that I couldn’t trust Dr. Giang.
Even though Dr. Giang carefully taught me psychology and passed his knowledge on to me, I still couldn’t trust him. But his hypnotherapy wasn’t entirely useless.
What did it mean that my mother trusted me unconditionally? It meant I could become her psychologist.
I could make psychological suggestions to her day after day, gradually changing her subconscious.
A Nguyên from the orphanage was not only my age but also the same height and weight as me. I envied A Nguyên for being an orphan, while A Nguyên envied me for having a mother.
Our desires were so closely intertwined that I was tempted to embark on a daring experiment.
A Nguyên looked a little chubby, while I was skinny. A Nguyên started losing weight, and I tried to eat more.
I would often casually say to my mother, “Mom, I think I’ve gained weight.”
A Nguyên had a scar on his neck, and I had scars on my arms and legs. Later, A Nguyên injured his arms and legs, while I injured my neck.
I told my mother I’d fallen after catching my foot on a peach tree branch. A Nguyên went to a small clinic for double-eyelid surgery. I got a square haircut and shaved my hairline high.
I taught A Nguyên what I’d learned in high school, and A Nguyên learned my way of speaking and my daily habits. I told him about the distant past, when I was little and my family of three went to the park.
I’d had close friends when I was little. I told A Nguyên all my happy memories, but I didn’t tell him about the terrible things I’d been through or why my mother had taken me to Tây Sơn, because she would never bring up those painful memories again.
A Nguyên also secretly replaced the photo in the orphanage file. I made up an excuse to burn most of my photo albums, keeping only a few childhood pictures in which I looked like A Nguyên from certain angles. I often took them out to show my mother.
But I still didn’t think it was foolproof.
The medication Dr. Giang prescribed for me was chlorpromazine. It had serious side effects and could make a person sluggish and drowsy, or even impair their cognitive abilities.
I’d never taken it, but this time I crushed the pills and mixed a small dose into the water my mother drank every day to make her distracted.
——This approach was indeed insane, but my mother and I were trapped in a desperate impasse. In short, I continued psychologically manipulating her day after day, gradually blurring her subconscious impression of me and helping her grow accustomed to my changes.
A Nguyên and I imitated each other, growing more and more alike. We appeared before my mother in turn until she no longer suspected anything. I spent all of high school carrying out a three-year-long hypnosis of my mother, teaching her to believe that A Nguyên was me.
At last, I took the college entrance exam and did very well. The day the results came out was my nineteenth birthday.
That evening, my mother bought a cake, prepared a lavish feast, and drank a great deal of alcohol.
Just like three years earlier, I made my wish and blew out the candles.
My mother asked what I’d wished for. I said it was a wish for good fortune. She was delighted and said, “My son, promise you’ll treat me well from now on, okay?” She smiled with satisfaction, then nodded off at the table.
I studied her face for a long time before getting up to leave. On the night of my nineteenth birthday, I grew up, became an adult, left home, stepped into the darkness, and never looked back.
Unlike three years earlier, this time I took nothing with me when I left home. In the end, A Nguyên was the one who received my college acceptance letter.
I gave A Nguyên my identity as Hạ Văn Hi, and A Nguyên gave me the name Trần Nguyên.
I applied to a university in another province, where A Nguyên, living as me, would never run into any of my acquaintances or former classmates. Once A Nguyên was old enough, he could leave the orphanage and never have to return.
To minimize the image of Trần Nguyên in everyone’s memory as much as possible, I disfigured myself with burns and knife wounds.
From then on, Hạ Văn Hi had to be alone. For the next few years, we kept in sporadic contact.
I knew he was living a good life with his mother. He’d enrolled in the medical school I’d applied to, become a doctor, and settled in a livable city. The next steps would be to marry, have children, and build a life together. His future would unfold just as my mother had hoped.
I, too, could move toward my fate without worry.
It felt wonderful, didn’t it? It was like blending two parallel times and spaces into one.
What I’m investigating isn’t a case but the life of a son. Giving that mother a son worthy of her lifelong trust is the deepest blessing I can offer her.
12.
“Back to my earlier question: why didn’t I confess my real motive in court?”
Trần Nguyên explained, “Because Hạ Văn Hi was the one who was sexually assaulted, I, Trần Nguyên, have no connection whatsoever to Chu Hồng Hưng. Of course, I could only make up some reason to deceive him; otherwise, it wouldn’t fit with the background I have now.”
“In any case, the death sentence was a given, and the motive didn’t matter. I’d been preparing to die for a year. Who knew Hạ Văn Hi would spend a fortune to hire an experienced lawyer to defend me and get me a pardon?”
“Forget it. It’s fine. We can stay in touch, and I can keep up with how my mother is doing, as long as she doesn’t find out about me. That’s the only thing I’ve ever been greedy for. Even if his wife doesn’t find out, I won’t go out. This is all Ma Minh’s fault.”
After finishing the story, I still hadn’t come to my senses.
Trần Nguyên checked the time.
“It’s time. I should be on my way.” He stood up calmly.
“Is all of this true?”
I hurriedly asked, “Is what you just told me true?”
“Take Trần Nguyên outside!”
A colleague shouted from outside the door, “It’s time. Get ready to verify his identity!”
Trần Nguyên said, “It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. Why am I only telling you all this right before my execution? Because now it doesn’t matter anymore. I just want to get it all off my chest before I die. Nothing matters now.”
Two police officers led Trần Nguyên away. I sat there for a while, then hurried after him.
At the far end of the dim corridor, it was still dark outside. The heavy, slow clanking of his shackles grew fainter and fainter.
“Wait!” I shouted, trying to catch up with him.
Someone behind me lightly tapped my shoulder. “Little Lục, what are you doing?”
Startled, I turned around and saw it was my senior colleague. He would be responsible for verifying the identity later.
I quickly grabbed my senior colleague and told him what had happened with Trần Nguyên, so worked up that my words came out in a jumble. He was silent for a moment, then asked me two questions: “Did he commit a crime? Did he kill two people?”
“Yes.”
My senior colleague asked himself and answered, “I don’t know what his name was before. His name is Trần Nguyên now, and that’s the name on his file. Whether he deliberately switched names with someone else or fraudulently impersonated someone during the college entrance exam, whatever the reason, he was the one who committed those crimes. So what if we verify his identity? It won’t change the outcome. You believe a far-fetched story like that, Little Lục? You’re still too naive. Come on.”
After listening to my senior colleague, I gradually calmed down. I shook my head and slowly followed him. His identity was verified, he was handed over for execution, and everything proceeded according to protocol.
Early in the morning, before sunrise, the entire execution grounds were washed in a pale blue dawn. Mountain winds carried mist through the air, leaving it damp and cold.
I shivered, then realized I had arrived at the execution grounds. It was my first time there.
The scene before me looked much like the one Trần Nguyên had described.
Whether Trần Nguyên’s story was true or false wouldn’t change his fate.
——But was his story true or false? Trần Nguyên walked over to the broad grassy field, stood silently for a moment, then knelt down.
From the time he was sentenced until now, he had remained calm and expressionless, making no fuss. When the gun was loaded, he suddenly stood up and looked into the distance.
Something suddenly came back to me, and I followed his gaze. At a glance, I could make out the dormitory building at the westernmost end of Taishan County No. 2 Machinery Factory. Abandoned for so long, its walls were full of cracks and its windows were broken.
Between the trees, a flower stand had unexpectedly been placed outside one of the windows. On it sat a terracotta pot overgrown with weeds.
Suddenly, I saw a woman lean out, bowing her head toward the water. My heart lurched. I quickly looked away and anxiously turned my gaze to Trần Nguyên.
“Time’s up!” At that very moment, the gun was aimed at the back of his head—his pupils suddenly dilated, his dying eyes fixed on the distant windowsill, his lips trembling as he breathed out, letting air escape but taking none in. The police officer reminded him again, “Open your mouth!”
He knelt on the ground, lifted his head, opened his mouth as wide as he could, and cried out, “Mother!————Mother!——”
When the gunshot rang out, only a few birds were startled.
The mountains and fields fell quiet once more.
I thought I had my answer.
[THE END]