Crime of Innocence - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The first time I met Ji Jichuan was at the City Third Security Hospital.

The glass was thick, reflecting his face with a pale, sickly hue.

He wore a grey patient gown, his cuffs neatly buttoned, his wrists so thin they looked like they would snap at the slightest touch.

Though he was a thirty-five-year-old man, his posture was excessively disciplined.

It was as if he hadn’t been living all these years, but rather waiting for someone else to pass judgment on him.

“Lawyer Jiang.”

He nodded to me first.

“Thank you for coming.”

I pushed the case file aside and cut straight to the point.

“Ji Jichuan, when you were ten years old, your sister Ji Ning died in the basement of your home.”

“You confessed on the spot that you locked her in and strangled her with a piano string.”

“You were in a Correctional Center until you were fifteen, then transferred to an Anbao Hospital. It wasn’t until six months ago, when your risk assessment was downgraded, that you first applied for a retrial.”

He listened quietly and gave a soft “mm” in response.

“So,”

I looked at him.

“Why are you saying now that you didn’t kill her?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he looked down at the disposable paper cup by my hand.

“Before you entered the room today, you stopped in the hallway for seven seconds.”

His voice was very light.

“You’re afraid of enclosed spaces.”

I frowned.

“That has nothing to do with the case.”

“It does.”

He finally looked up.

Those eyes were dark and still-not like those of a madman, but like a well that had been sealed for a long time.

“Because the person who sent me here is also very good at judging who is afraid of the dark, who is afraid of closed doors, and who will confess to a crime if they are pushed long enough.”

My fingertips stiffened.

“What exactly are you trying to say?”

He looked at me for a few seconds and suddenly smiled.

The smile was faint, like a layer of cold light on the edge of the glass.

“Lawyer Jiang.”

“Does your brother still lock up children who don’t listen?”

The paper cup slipped from my hand, spilling water all over the table.

The orderly outside the door suddenly looked in.

A buzzing sound erupted in my ears, as if someone had slammed the wardrobe door from my sixth year shut again.

Dark, stifling, with claw marks all over the wooden boards.

My brother stood outside and said, “Xingyao, if you keep crying, I’ll make sure Mom and Dad never let you out.”

I had never told anyone about this.

Not my mother.

And certainly not my brother, Jiang Yueze, who had since become the city’s youngest expert in forensic psychiatry.

“Who told you that?”

I stared at Ji Jichuan, my throat tightening.

“Your brother.”

He answered calmly.

“The first time he met me, he said that children who are afraid of the dark are the most likely to remember things incorrectly.”

The meeting room was terrifyingly quiet.

I picked up the soaked pages of the case file one by one, suppressing my breathing as I questioned him.

“If you wanted a retrial, why didn’t you mention Jiang Yueze from the beginning?”

“Because I wasn’t sure.”

He looked at me, his tone not heavy at all.

“I was afraid you were here to deliver the final blow for him.”

It felt as if someone were squeezing my throat.

In that moment, I suddenly understood why this case had landed in my hands.

It wasn’t because Ji Jichuan trusted me.

It was because he was gambling.

He was gambling on whether I was Jiang Yueze’s sister first, or his lawyer.

And what I hated most was being treated as someone else’s appendage.

“Ji Jichuan.”

I slowly closed the file.

“I’m taking this case not because you’re clean.”

“It’s because I don’t believe a ten-year-old child could sentence himself to twenty-five years alone.”

He was stunned for a moment.

Then, he let out a very soft laugh.

“Fine.”

“Then I’ll trust you this once.”

As I stood up to leave, he called out to me again.

“Jiang Xingyao.”

This was the first time he had used my full name.

“If the investigation reveals that it wasn’t my parents who were the most depraved…”

“But your brother.”

“Will you still keep digging?”

I didn’t look back.

“Just stay alive and wait.”

“I’ll handle the rest.”