Chapter 18: Blind Testimony

The scent of disinfectant crystallized into shards of ice within her nostrils, stabbing her brain until it tingled with numbness; every breath felt like inhaling splinters of glass. Su Wan stared at the final drop of medicine falling into the IV tube, then for the seventh time pressed the bandage at Song Zhao’s temple—her fingertips met skin so unnaturally cold, it was like a stone soaked through by rain, heavy in her palm, as if it could press into the old scar within her hand.

On the bedside table, the voice recorder gave a soft click, its plastic shell trembling, auto-switching to the third recording. Song Zhao’s voice, mixed with the sound of rain, seeped out: “…waste transfer station…” The words were torn apart by coughing, frayed like a snapped string, scraping a bloody mark across the eardrum.

Su Wan bent to pick up the fallen register; its edges had been thumbed so much they curled. Her finger traced over the words “Hongda Scrap Recovery Station,” circled seven times in red pen, the ink blurring into a dark red scab, like congealed blood.

She pulled out her phone—the screen glowed with a chat window with Dong Lan. The location sent at 4:17 a.m. still flashed, accompanied by a compressed file: “Old Scar’s hiding place, Hongda in the east of the city.” The Provincial Bureau’s reply, “Received,” was timestamped three hours prior—a green check quietly settled in the dialog box, like an unopened bullet, weighing upon her chest.

The rain outside had ceased; droplets still clung to the glass, sliding down slowly, like silent tears. As Su Wan poured the cold porridge into the trash, hurried footsteps echoed in the hallway—boots splashing on the tiles, rhythm erratic, carrying the wind.

Dong Lan’s police uniform was still flecked with mud, the epaulets limp from the rain. She gripped Su Wan’s wrist, dragging her toward the stairwell, the rough calluses in her palm grazing Su Wan’s pulse. Her phone screen showed a surveillance snapshot—a gray-shirted old man locking the iron gate of the scrap station, his left ear missing a third, jagged like a walnut gnawed by rats, the edge uneven, tinged with old flesh.

“We compared three months of biometric data.” Dong Lan’s thumb slid across the screenshot, leaving an oily streak. “Registered as Zhang the Cripple, slight limp in the right leg, matching your ‘iron rod from construction site fence.’” She produced the voice recorder, containing Old Scar’s voiceprint analysis. “Northwest accent, border of Gansu and Shaanxi, same as Song Zhao said.”

Su Wan’s nails dug into the old scar in her palm, cut by rubble in a cellar twenty years ago; now it burned faintly, as if fire smoldered beneath the skin.

A wave of mold stench surged—damp earth, iron rust, and the cheap tobacco from a trafficker’s pipe, blending into a suffocating breath that flooded her nostrils.

Back then, she had also gripped Xiao Mei’s hand like this, listening to footsteps descending from the stairwell, each step landing as if upon her scalp.

“Now?” she asked, her voice steadier than she’d thought, though her throat felt sandpapered.

“Now.” Dong Lan slapped her service pistol onto the fire hydrant, the metal clang echoing through the empty stairwell. “I want you to know, this time you’re not alone.”

The one-way glass of the interrogation room reflected Old Scar’s shadow. He sat in the iron chair, the silver bracelet on his left wrist dazzling to the eye—found under his pillow during the raid, engraved inside with “Yongan City Welfare Institute 1998,” the words worn and blurred, but the indentations still palpable.

Song Zhao’s sketch was projected onto the wall opposite: the notched left ear, the bulge in the right boot, three centimeters high, the transverse scar at the thumb—all drawn like nails hammered into his slack skin.

“How could you possibly know this?!” Old Scar suddenly stood, the chair legs scraping a shrill sound across the floor, like nails on a blackboard.

He glared at the annotation “insole in right boot” in the projection, his Adam’s apple bobbing, voice shaking: “Back then he…he clearly…”

Dong Lan slapped the evidence bag on the table, the plastic edge cracking sharply. Inside was a yellowed photograph: Song Zhao, twenty years ago, in a trainee police uniform, cradling a tear-streaked young Su Wan, the background a leaking cellar.

The mold in the corner crawled like black webs, a drop of water falling from the beam, spreading a small stain across the photo’s edge.

“You say you were just the gatekeeper.” She drew out a steel pen, pressing the tip to Old Scar’s hand, the chill of metal making him shudder. “Then why was this photo under your bed?”

Old Scar’s pupils contracted to pinpoints.

He stared at the trainee insignia on Song Zhao’s shoulder in the photo, then suddenly laughed—a sound squeezed from his throat, tinged with rust, like a grindstone dulling a blade.

“He shouldn’t have saved those children…That night I squatted at the alley, saw him carrying the girl out, like a god…” His gaze swept past the glass to Su Wan, his lips twitching. “But the gods don’t know; they’ll never escape fear—the mold of the cellar, the trafficker’s tobacco, and…” He suddenly lowered his voice, breath fogging the glass. “The car that hit him that day, the last three digits of the plate were 627.”

The monitoring device’s beep spiked, the sharp electronic tone puncturing the silence.

Song Zhao’s fingers curled into a fist beneath the sheet, the lashes beneath the bandage trembling violently, like butterfly wings battered by wind.

Su Wan reached for the call button, but his Adam’s apple moved, and he rasped: “Pen.”

The disinfectant swab wiped his bandaged right hand, the cotton soaked in blood scabs, leaving a faint sting.

Su Wan placed the notebook in his palm, feeling the searing heat of his fingertips—like red-hot wire, burning her skin.

His eyes closed, brows furrowed into deep lines, the steel pen scratching twisted lines onto the paper—first the outline of an ear, a third of the edge missing, as if cut by a blunt knife; then a shoe, the right one marked with three horizontal lines, indicating the height insert; lastly, the webbing of the thumb, three parallel scars deeper than the old wound on his own hand, the pen tip nearly tearing the page.

“Northwest accent,” he suddenly spoke, his voice like sandpaper scraping glass, each syllable tinged with pain. “Every sentence drops at the end, border of Gansu and Shaanxi.”

Su Wan’s tears splashed onto the notebook, blurring into a pool of blue ink, like a flower blooming abruptly.

She remembered seven days ago, he’d said in the rain, “Go to Chief Dong,” and the thirteen-year-old scar on his hand, now faintly burning with his movements.

The attic at night was filled with the moldy smell of old books, pages yellowed and brittle, crumbling at the slightest touch.

Song Zhao pulled out the iron box left by his father, the film glinting with blue under the desk lamp, like moonlight sunk in water.

He logged into the evidence trace-back system, his fingertip hovering over the “test” button for three seconds before pressing down, the keyboard emitting a soft tap.

Golden patterns unfurled from the depths of his pupils, and he heard his own heartbeat, slow and heavy, like a pendulum.

This time there was no searing headache, only a faint buzzing, like a distant swarm of bees.

The countdown on the screen jumped to thirty seconds, ten more than before.

He pulled up the surveillance video from before his coma, pausing at the blurry label on the attacker’s backpack—“Lin’s Scrap” shadowed across his retina, edges tinged with gold.

“Lin Haoyu,” he murmured into the darkness, his voice light as a sigh, yet echoing through the empty attic.

The moon climbed over the eaves outside, casting a sheet of silver frost onto the desk, cold as a layer of thin ice.

Su Wan’s footsteps creaked up the stairs, the floorboards groaning, carrying a faint scent of jasmine—the aroma of the restoration fluid she always used, cool with a hint of sweetness.

“Tomorrow.” When he turned, he saw Su Wan clutching an old map, the corners sticky with glue, her fingers trembling. “No. 72 Yong’an Lane.”

Her finger tapped the map at a spot marked with a small red cross, the ink still wet, like a freshly drawn bloodstain.

“Human traffickers’ den from twenty years ago,” she said, moonlight filtering through the window, scattering silver stars in her hair. “I checked the old archives in the Classics Department—before its demolition, that building belonged to…Lin Corporation.”

Song Zhao drew a line between “Lin’s Scrap” and “No. 72 Yong’an Lane,” the pen scratching softly across the paper.

As the tip paused, golden patterns spread again from his eyes.

This time, he saw clearly—the label on the attacker’s backpack matched exactly the emblem on Lin Haoyu’s charity gala lapel pin, like two threads of fate finally converging.

The attic clock struck two in the morning, its chime deep, as if rising from underground.

Su Wan slipped the map into her canvas bag, the metal clasp clicking shut like a lock, sealing away twenty years of secrets.

Song Zhao gazed at her retreating figure, recalling the last moment before he lost consciousness: she running through the rain, the transfer ledger in her arms dripping, “White Dove” blurred into an indistinct blot.

Now he understood—it wasn’t just smeared ink, but blood soaked and spread by rain, blood that hadn’t dried in twenty years.

“Sleep,” Su Wan said, turning with a fruit candy in her hand—the orange flavor he always used to give her, the wrapper shimmering in the moonlight. “Tomorrow…we’ll go meet old friends.”

Song Zhao took the candy, its wrapper crackling between his fingers, like snowflakes falling on dry leaves.

He watched the sky begin to brighten outside the window, and heard something inside himself fracture—not a wound, but rebirth.