Zhang Mingsheng did not rise to my provocation. Even with the door left open, he maintained the power to isolate me. Though he was merely inches away, he remained tight-lipped regarding the web of entanglement between us. He disconnected the call, slid the phone into his pocket, and turned to depart.
I felt no urge to call out to him; the hunger for answers had finally withered away. He was dressed in a crisp white shirt with a faint bluish hue with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows just as they had been the day we first met. That familiar figure made it feel as though he was once again setting out alone on a solitary path.
I suspect he felt it too; a premonition of sorts, the sense of reaching the end of a long, agonizing ordeal only to find it irreparable.
Standing barefoot on the floor, I parted my lips and spoke in a voice as thin as silk, the words slipping out almost unconsciously in a whisper, “Mr. Zhang, I’m truly so tired.”
Zhang Mingsheng’s footsteps halted. He looked back, watching me in silence, his face a void of readable emotion.
“It will get better.” He spoke.
Then, he repeated it, “Everything will be alright.”
Then everything returned to stillness; he left again, closing the door behind him. The crack in the door grew thinner and thinner until it finally became a straight, narrow line.
He was always more comfortable facing the world outside than facing me. He had a mountain of matters to attend to; so many people waiting for the right moment to dismantle our relationship and, by extension, his entire life. He had to figure out who bypassed the bodyguards to hand those documents to Zhang Xiaoyuan, how Zhang Yaonian learned of my identity overnight, and why the old man chose this specific moment to call. Most importantly, this house was not an impenetrable fortress.
The doorbell rang, yanking me back to reality. Who would come to visit at a time like this? I had already prepared myself to end everything, yet I still couldn’t help fearing that Li Yi might be the one standing outside. His patience was even thinner than mine.
I clung to a sliver of hope as I reached for the door handle. It turned halfway and then jammed, the hope vanished instantly. Resigned, I searched through the room for the remote and pulled up the live surveillance feed. The same cameras Zhang Mingsheng had once used to trap me and monitor the child were now my only way to identify the uninvited visitor at the door.
If it were Zhan Weiqing, I hoped he would draw his weapon the second he stepped inside and take Zhang Mingsheng down with him. If it were Li Yi, I hoped he would have a sudden change of heart and run, or at the very least, be faster on the draw than Zhang Mingsheng.
But today, my hopes were repeatedly crushed as though fate itself were deliberately toying with me.
The visitor was Li Yi. He burst in with his gun already drawn, his hair a disheveled mess and his face covered in stubble. He was visibly agitated, shouting a constant stream of curses that sent Aunt Liu stumbling to the floor in terror. Ah Hai and Ah Shan were nowhere to be seen. The Zhang household was so shorthanded now that Zhang Mingsheng was the only one left to face him.
I watched Zhang Mingsheng appear on the monitor completely unfazed by the barrel of the gun pointed at him. Still in his white shirt, he walked past a vase by the entrance and pulled a handgun from within it. He muttered a command, and Aunt Liu scrambled up immediately before disappearing into the corridor around the corner of the living room.
“You aren’t welcome here.” Zhang Mingsheng stated.
“I’m coming in whether I’m welcome or not.” Li Yi retorted.
“An uninvited guest is a thief; I would be well within my rights to shoot you dead.”
“Illegal possession of a firearm, do you think I won’t pull the trigger?”
“You think you can actually catch me in the act?”
I caught only fragments of their exchange, my fingernails digging so deeply into my palms that it felt as if the skin itself might split. Li Yi’s relentless shouting was punctuated only by Zhang Mingsheng’s frigid, cutting remarks.
I rose in a frantic state, my mind racing as I paced the room. I threw myself against the door several times, but it remained immovable. I called out a string of names, but no one answered. Jumping out the window from the fourth floor would likely mean I’d have to wait until my next life to save Li Yi. My anxiety manifested in me biting my fingers until the edges of my index finger were bloody, exposing the raw, pink flesh beneath.
Passing the large screen, I saw Zhang Mingsheng suddenly look up and stare directly into the security camera. Still expressionless, he decisively raised his hand and fired a shot; the sound exploded through the room, and the monitor before me instantly plunged into darkness.
The shock sent me recoiling until I collapsed onto the floor.
The look on his face terrified me. He had threatened to kill Li Yi many times before, but this was the first time it looked like he truly intended to follow through. My voice and my consciousness seemed to detach from one another; part of me was screaming in a gut-wrenching wail, while the other was trembling as I scrambled to my feet, stumbling and falling repeatedly as I searched the room.
A few gunshots echoed out, and then everything fell into a heavy, suffocating silence.
My limbs felt ice-cold. I tore open every drawer and searched for every crevice. Standing in the center of that vast yet chaotic room, a sob rose in my throat and got stuck there. Suddenly, a realization struck me, and I whipped my head around.
The safe Zhang Mingsheng had bought for me was still sitting in the corner undisturbed.
For the first time in my life, I moved to open it of my own accord. I hurried through several passwords in panic until, at last, my birthday unlocked it. Inside, boxes were stacked like a small mountain, each one containing every gift Zhang Mingsheng had ever given me over the years. I pulled them out one by one; there were diamonds, gemstones, gold, rings, necklaces as well as watches. A dazzling array of wealth that I mindlessly tossed onto the floor behind me.
At the very bottom was a box both familiar and strange; covered in red velvet, broad and square, no more than ten centimeters deep. It was the condolence gift Zhang Mingsheng had once given me in the hospital.
I fell silent, the only sounds left in my ears being my own ragged breathing and the thudding of my heart.
So that was it. That was it all along.
I reached out, my hands trembling violently as I pried the box open.
Inside sat my identification and my service weapon, the pistol even carefully wrapped, lying there in silence.
It turned out that the “gift” Zhang Mingsheng had once mentioned was my very identity itself. He had “given” me to himself yet never forced me to open the box; perhaps even deriving a twisted satisfaction from watching me leave it untouched. For countless nights, the gun had lain in the same room as me, as if it had been quietly waiting all along.
It was another one of Zhang Mingsheng’s games. As long as I hated him, I would never open that box. By the time I was willing to open it, he likely assumed I would no longer have the heart to use what was inside.
Unless.
I reached for my sidearm and gripped it in my left hand. Relying on what was left of my muscle memory, I racked the slide. After a few crisp metallic clicks, the weapon was chambered.
Unless I had reached the end of my rope. Unless I had resolved to settle things with him once and for all until death did us part.
I stepped toward the door. I had intended to shoot out the lock, but by some strange whim, I tried the handle one more time.
This time, it turned smoothly. The door swung open. Someone had unlocked it for me.
A person’s choices can hinge on a single moment; intuition and premonition often dictate the course of the future. I would never know who opened that door for me, but had I fired instead of turning the handle, there might have been a corpse lying on the other side already.
In that moment, however, I had no time for reflection. I sprinted downstairs while clutching the gun. From the staircase, I looked down upon a scene that struck me with agonizing pain.
Li Yi lay sprawled on his back near the entrance of the living room, his condition unclear; it was impossible to tell whether he was alive or already dying.
Zhang Mingsheng stood facing him while holding a gun in one hand, about ten meters away. With his other hand, he took out his phone as if he were still in the middle of a conversation with someone.
“Zhang Mingsheng!” I screamed, my voice tearing through the air. I leveled my gun at him and began a slow, deliberate descent down the stairs.
As I moved, my eyes landed on my mentor. He was slumped near the entryway with his eyes tightly shut. When had he even arrived?
My eyes felt as if they might split open with rage. I shoved my weapon forward, my finger trembling on the trigger as I roared, “Why? Why did you do this!”
Hearing my voice, Zhang Mingsheng whipped around. When he realized it was me, a flicker of genuine shock crossed his features. Then he relaxed, an odd calm settling over him. “You see,” he said evenly, “I didn’t lie to you. I simply returned what already belonged to you long ago.”
“You killed them.” I stated, my voice weak and trembling, though a hidden part of me desperately hoped he would deny it.
Zhang Mingsheng didn’t answer immediately. He looked at me and said, “I’ve suddenly realized that I, too, wish for all of this to end completely. And I want it to be ended by you.”
“What?”
“Have you made up your mind, Ah Chao?” Zhang Mingsheng started walking toward me, the hand holding his gun, lowering naturally to his side. He showed no sign of fear. Even as I stood there ready to kill him, he showed no fear at all.
He stepped onto the staircase while looking up at me, closing the distance step by step.
“Did you kill them?” I held the gun with both hands now, tracking his movement as he climbed. I couldn’t stop myself from shaking violently.
“If I said no, would you stop wanting to kill me?” Zhang Mingsheng stepped onto the next stair. “Do you truly need a specific reason to kill me, Ah Chao?” He asked leisurely. “Don’t you hate me?”
“Why won’t you answer me!” I recoiled half a step, my heel striking the back of the riser, nearly sending me tumbling.
Witnessing my clumsiness, Zhang Mingsheng stopped his approach. He stood still and said, “If you require a reason to pull that trigger, then I will tell you: no, it wasn’t me.”
“You’re lying!” I flared up again, screaming at him.
Zhang Mingsheng didn’t even acknowledge my outburst; instead, he threw the interrogation back at me. “Since you don’t believe me anyway, why bother asking?”
Amid my choking sobs and his silence, the second hand of the living room clock ticked on with a steady “ticktock.”
After several beats, Zhang Mingsheng spoke, “Are you going to kill me, Ah Chao?”
“Yes, I’m going to kill you.” I forced the words out, refusing to back down.
“Then fire,” Zhang Mingsheng said. “Only, before you do, I want one reason from you.”
Despite my trembling, I stood as straight as I could. I braced the gun with both hands with my index finger resting on the trigger and my feet planted firmly on the ground. From my position on the landing, I looked down at him standing calmly below. He looked no different from a passing stranger casually asking a homeowner for a cup of tea.
I heard my own voice, brittle and tearful, repeating the same words over and over, growing from a whisper to a crescendo. By the final repetition, I no longer needed to feign certainty. I couldn’t tell if my heart had turned to cold ash or to diamond and steel.
Hating him had become a part of my very existence. But I no longer wished to exist this way.
Yu Huaiqing spoke with a sudden, eerie calm, “Mr. Zhang, I don’t want to be Mrs. Zhang anymore.”
Then, a gunshot rang out.
Zhang Mingsheng fell backward, a small spot of crimson appearing on his chest and slowly blooming outward.
Then, followed by a second shot.
