Crime of Innocence - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I didn’t return to the law firm. Instead, I drove straight to Jiang Yueze’s clinic.

He had become quite famous over the years, often appearing as an expert commentator on legal television programs.

A metal plaque hung by the entrance.

Jiang Yueze, Specially Appointed Consultant for the Forensic Psychiatric Evaluation Center.

Standing before that plaque, a wave of coldness washed through my stomach.

The person who locked me in a wardrobe when I was a child had grown up to be a doctor specializing in determining whether others were “dangerous.”

The world truly is full of irony.

The receptionist recognized me and greeted me with a smile, calling me Miss Jiang.

I ignored her and pushed open the innermost door.

Jiang Yueze was reviewing a medical record. He looked up, startled for a moment when he saw it was me, then smiled.

“What brings you here to see me today?”

“Ji Jichuan.”

I tossed the photocopy of the twenty-five-year-old evaluation onto his desk.

“Do you remember this?”

He glanced at it, his expression not changing in the slightest.

“I recall it.”

“I was doing my internship under my mentor back then and was involved in the preliminary assessment.”

“Only the preliminary assessment?”

“Xingyao.”

He capped his pen, his tone tinged with helplessness.

“This is a case from twenty-five years ago. What do you mean by bringing up old scores now?”

“I mean that Ji Jichuan said you taught him that children who are afraid of the dark are the most likely to remember things incorrectly.”

The room fell silent for two seconds.

Jiang Yueze didn’t deny it; he simply leaned back.

“That child’s dissociative symptoms were very severe at the time.”

“I was helping him stabilize.”

“Stabilize him to the point of believing he was a murderer?”

“If a child is already on the verge of a total breakdown, giving them a definitive answer isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

I stared at him, suddenly finding the face before me incredibly foreign.

This was my brother.

He was also the person who had locked me up as a child, waiting until I was too exhausted from crying to move before sluggishly opening the door.

He had been like this since he was a teenager.

Whenever our father lost his temper, he was always the first to step forward and close the door, suppressing the noise for the sake of the family.

Later, he studied under a mentor who preached that “order is higher than truth,” which seemed like he had finally found a theory to justify his own nature.

In his eyes, people weren’t human beings.

They were risk levels-whether they could be stabilized, whether they would lose control, and whether they were worth sacrificing.

“So, is that what you did to me back then?” I asked.

“Locking me in the wardrobe and then telling me it was just because I was too cowardly?”

The smile on Jiang Yueze’s face slowly faded.

“Why are you suddenly bringing that up again?”

“Answer me.”

“That was just children playing around,” he said softly, as if soothing someone who was being unreasonable. “Didn’t you turn out fine in the end?”

I almost laughed.

How could someone be so dismissive?

“Jiang Yueze.”

“Did Ji Jichuan actually kill anyone?”

He remained silent for a moment before looking up at me.

“Xingyao, some people survive by believing they did something wrong.”

“If you insist on pulling that pivot point away, he might not be able to handle it.”

Ji Jichuan’s father had said those words.

Now my brother was saying them too.

They even sounded the same.

A chill ran down my spine.

“So you really are the same kind of people.”

I turned to leave.

Jiang Yueze called out from behind me.

“Xingyao, you’d better not touch this case.”

I stopped.

“Why?”

“Because you’ll be disappointed.”

He paused, his voice remaining gentle.

“You’ll find that not every victim is worth saving.”

I didn’t look back at him.

The moment I stepped out of the clinic, I forced down the nausea rising in my stomach.

When I was little, I always thought my brother just had a bad temper.

Now I realized that wasn’t it.

He enjoyed the feeling of holding someone else’s fear in the palm of his hand.