27 Brothers for Life

 

The next morning, Xiao Liu and Gu Chen returned. Gu Chen scratched his moustache and said, “Gao Rui’s so-called girlfriend is a fake. Gao Rui gave 5000 RMB to a woman to call and pretend to be his girlfriend every night. He came up with the phone content himself, which was to argue for a breakup. The woman was actually a middle-aged woman in her forties. When we found her and identified ourselves, she told us everything.” At this point, Gu Chen sighed with disbelief. “This arrangement started about 1 week ago. If Gao Rui didn’t give her 2000 RMB as an advance, she would have thought Gao Rui was crazy.”

Hearing the mention of 1 week, Xiao Liu chimed in, “That is such a coincidence. I did some digging around at the hospital and I managed to get the doctor to tell me the real truth about Zhang Mingliang. Actually he did the surgery on Zhang Mingliang only 1 week ago. When you went to see him for the first time, he had lied to you.” Xiao Liu sat on the couch and shook his head. “The reason he lied was because Zhang Mingliang had given him 10000 RMB under the table to speed up the surgery. Gender reassignment surgery normally requires at least a month of observation and preparation period but the doctor bowed before the lure of money.

”There’s one more thing that confused the doctor too. Normally people who undergo this surgery would go for permanence but Zhang Mingliang wanted everything done quickly. He went for the quickest and not the stablest options, which is very unusual in such cases.”

I snapped my fingers and told the two. “Now we only need to confirm one thing and we’ll have the truth.”

“What is it?” The two of them asked.

“How to delay the time of death of a dead body by 5 days.” Through the office window, we looked at the lights which were still on in the morgue. One hour later, Guan Zhenglin entered the office with an ashen face.

“So?” I asked. Even though I have already strung all the clues together in my mind, this was still the most important one. If Guan Zhenglin couldn’t confirm the body’s actual time of death, then everything I had was supposition and no proof. Guan Zhenglin glanced at me and uttered with some frustration, “Fine, I was tricked. Someone has done careful insulation on the body so I misjudged the time of death. The heavy decomposition didn’t help. The conclusion I made last time was in close correlation to Zhang Mingliang’s body and his time of death. I went in with a fixed perspective, I shouldn’t have done that.” Guan Zhenglin’s index finger twirled circles before her. “I really didn’t expect someone would be so clever…”

I reached out and knocked on her head. “That was your punishment. Now you believe me? Gao Rui couldn’t have killed someone who is already dead. Gao Rui is the one behind everything else.”

“But Gao Rui only did all those things to protect Sister Jiajia.” Guan Zhenglin sighed and then threw punches on the back of the couch. “This is all Headmaster Zhang’s fault. If someone has come out to expose him, then Sister Jiajia would not be raped and she wouldn’t end up killing him.” However, there was no if’s in this world and Guan Zhenglin got it wrong.

“Go and get both Gao Rui and Wu Jiajia. Place them inside the same interrogation room, I have a story to tell them.” I said slowly. Gao Rui and Wu Jiajia finally met, this was the first time they saw each other after Gao Rui surrendered himself to the police. The moment Wu Jiajia laid her eyes on Gao Rui, tears flowed freely out of her eyes. “Why would you do this? I was the one who killed him, why would you take the fall on my behalf? You’ll take the needle if you’re convicted, you know? How can you be so stupid? A woman like myself doesn’t deserve someone like you.” Wu Jiajia said between sobs.

Gao Rui looked at Wu Jiajia, no, more like he glared at her. “I like you, Gao Rui, no, I love you!” Wu Jiajia proclaimed loudly. Strangely enough, people would only say the real thoughts in their minds at the very last possible moment. It was like they couldn’t bring themselves to say these things unless the circumstances were dire enough. What was so hard about confessing your love? They had to wait until it was too late then they’d do something about it.

In truth though, Gao Rui might not have done any of these for Wu Jiajia. Wu Jiajia silently loved Gao Rui for 8 long years and that was her 8 years wasted. If she could have picked up her courage earlier, then she wouldn’t have found herself in this awkward position.

Gao Rui’s lips shivered. His eyes were huge and his whole body shook. “I hate you.” Why would a man who had surrendered himself to save her from jailtime and possibly the death penalty say something like that?

“But if I didn’t confess my crime, you’d die. How could I let you ruin your life while I go on living freely?” Wu Jiajia’s voice was hoarse from crying. “I can’t be that selfish.” Wu Jiajia had gotten it totally wrong. Gao Rui was not doing all these for her. Gao Rui scoffed. “I hate you, I regret not killing you sooner. If I could have summoned the courage to kill you, then the rest of the tragedy wouldn’t have happened. You despicable, disgusting bitch!”

Other than myself, everyone inside the interrogation room was shocked, especially Wu Jiajia and Guan Zhenglin. Their mouths fell open as they stared at Gao Rui. Did they just hear the gentlemanly Teacher Gao, who was voted the most famous staff at Yu Cai High School curse and mock his supposed lover?

“What, what did you say?” Wu Jiajia immediately stopped crying. She looked at Gao Rui with disbelief.

“I said,” With a horrid expression, Gao Rui squeezed out the word one by one from between his teeth. “I should have killed you, tortured you, dismembered you earlier. You fucking bitch!”

“If you hate Sister Jiajia that much, why did you come to surrender on her behalf?!” Guan Zhenglin couldn’t believe it.

I tapped on the table to get everyone’s attention. “Because Gao Rui was looking for death. Truth be told, the whole plan was not even Gao Rui’s plan, it was Zhang Mingliang’s plan. I believe the only thing that Gao Rui changed in the plan was surrendering himself to the police.”

…

The story had to be told from a long time ago. Zhang Mingliang was afraid that Gao Rui’s shout had alerted the guard so he disappeared down the other side of the field and claimed that he would never return. However, Gao Rui had never given up the hope of reconnecting with Zhang Mingliang.

Gao Rui was handsome, good at his studies and frequented the gym. Naturally he had the attention of many female friends, Wu Jiajia was one of them. The other teachers were worried that Gao Rui’s studies might be affected due to the attention from the female students but Gao Rui’s class teacher told them not to worry. She knew that Gao Rui would not fall for any of the girls. The other teachers assumed Gao Rui’s class teacher was being liberal, what they didn’t know was the fact that the class teacher knew about Gao Rui’s sexual orientation.

When the students applied for university, to everyone’s surprise, Gao Rui opted for a less than stellar university. After all, with Gao Rui’s result, he could have easily entered a prestigious university. Gao Rui told Wu Jiajia he got the application form wrong but the truth was, Gao Rui applied for that school because Zhang Mingliang was going there as well.

However, 3 years had to pass before Zhang Mingliang would meet Gao Rui again. Zhang Mingliang was quite nervous but Gao Rui was very open about it. Gao Rui said, “This is such a coincidence. We’ve not seen each other for 3 years already, right?”

By then Gao Rui had learned how to hide his feelings deep inside his heart. During one of their drinking sessions, Gao Rui pretended to be drunk and brought up the past. He claimed that he was being too juvenile back then and hoped that Zhang Mingliang would forget about everything. Let those secrets remain in the past. They drank through the night. With Zhang Mingliang beside him, Gao Rui laughed and laughed but internally he was crying. He learned then laughter could be faked.

From then on, Zhang Mingliang and Gao Rui became good brothers.

“Who is this girl? She’s delectable.” One day, Zhang Mingliang saw a picture on Gao Rui’s social media.

“This one? Her name is Wu Jiajia.” Gao Rui clicked on the picture. “She used to be from the same high school as me but now she’s studying at a different university.”

Zhang Mingliang shook his head and said, “Gao Rui, this Wu Jiajia is pretty and popular. She is a living goddess. She wouldn’t bat an eye at people like us.” Gao Rui did not say anything. Zhang Mingliang did not know that if Gao Rui was willing, this living goddess in Zhang Mingliang’s eyes would instantly become his girlfriend but Gao Rui did not do that because in Gao Rui’s heart, no girl was comparable to Zhang Mingliang.

To have a shared topic with Zhang Mingliang, Gao Rui purposely kept contact with Wu Jiajia. He would ask for intimate shots from Wu Jiajia to show Zhang Mingliang. Zhang Mingliang salivated over the pictures and often jerked off to them. If not for Zhang Mingliang, Gao Rui would have already disappeared from Wu Jiajia’s life.

4 years passed and they both graduated. Zhang Mingliang moved to this new city and found a job in sales. His monthly salary was 2000 RMB. Gao Rui followed him to this city and used his own brilliance to pass the interview test for Yu Cai High School. Then due to the incident with Headmaster Zhang, his monthly salary plus bonus would easily go over 8000 RMB.

“Dude, if not for me, you’d be rotting out on the streets. And you’re living here rent-free, shouldn’t you do something to thank me?” Gao Rui told Zhang Mingliang. The hint was quite obvious.

“Well, from now on, we’ll be brothers for life!” Zhang Mingliang grinned.

‘Since we can’t be lovers for life, I’d settle for brothers for life. At least I’ll always be beside you,’ Gao Rui thought sweetly to himself.

However, that arrangement was rocked 3 years later. A postgraduate student came to this city and became Gao Rui’s colleague. Because of that, she also entered Zhang Mingliang’s life. That person was Wu Jiajia.

“I have no car and no house, no one will want someone like me.” Zhang Mingliang lamented while he assigned a task for Gao Rui. He wanted Gao Rui to take candid pictures of Wu Jiajia and if he could get her undergarments, it would be even more perfect. Zhang Mingliang had been jerking off to her picture but the freshness had worn off. “You’re colleagues with her, right? And I know that she is very close to you.”

Blinded by his own love, Gao Rui sneaked into Wu Jiajia’s apartment and stole one of Wu Jiajia’s panties to satisfy Zhang Mingliang’s lust. Like how Wu Jiajia would do anything to satisfy Gao Rui, Gao Rui would do anything to satisfy Zhang Mingliang. He did this again and again just to get on Zhang Mingliang’s good side.

After she couldn’t stand the harassment anymore, Wu Jiajia moved. Only Headmaster Zhang and Gao Rui knew about her new address.

One night, Zhang Mingliang appeared at Wu Jiajia’s bedside and used Wu Jiajia’s panty to satisfy himself. The key, he got from Gao Rui. When Wu Jiajia moved to the new place, she gave Gao Rui a copy of her key. She said she lost her key too often and needed a trustworthy friend to keep one copy for her. And that key found its way to Zhang Mingliang.