28 One Life for One Life

 

Gao Rui had never changed, his heart still belonged to Zhang Mingliang. A man fell in love with another man but the other man was not gay. Seeing his beloved slowly falling into the clutches of lust, Gao Rui’s heart bled. But he once promised he would do anything for Zhang Mingliang and that was what he did, he even considered drugging Wu Jiajia so that he could give her to Zhang Mingliang. However, he did not. He was jealous and he hated himself. He was doomed to forever be out of reach from his true love because he had one extra appendage than Wu Jiajia? Gao Rui hated himself but he hated Wu Jiajia even more. 

When Zhang Mingliang would stroke himself to Wu Jiajia’s picture, Gao Rui would think about giving his brother a helping hand but he stopped himself. Because he was afraid of the possible loss. The feeling of being abandoned that night was still suffocating whenever Gao Rui thought about it. Gao Rui had a fear of darkness ever since that day, but for Zhang Mingliang, Gao Rui had overcome that fear. His love was one that could only bloom in the cover of the night. 

Zhang Mingliang became a pervert, a stalker. Gao Rui couldn’t understand what was so special about Wu Jiajia that she had charmed Zhang Mingliang so. It was a hot and humid night, one that Gao Rui would never forget. That night Wu Jiajia was raped by Headmaster Zhang and the next morning, Wu Jiajia killed Headmaster Zhang. That morning, Gao Rui was supposed to deliver a document to Headmaster Zhang’s home. Actually Gao Rui had never warned Headmaster Zhang away from Wu Jiajia, if anything, Gao Rui was hoping that Headmaster Zhang would ruin her as permanently as possible. In Gao Rui’s eyes, Wu Jiajia was a bitch who practiced some kind of dark magic to charm his love away from him. Gao Rui prayed night and day that Headmaster Zhang would rape Wu Jiajia. That way her life would be ruined and maybe Zhang Mingliang wouldn’t be so charmed by her anymore. Headmaster Zhang did rise to the occasion but he definitely did not expect Wu Jiajia to kill him. 

When Gao Rui arrived at Headmaster Zhang’s place, the man was already missing. The bedroom was covered in blood. There was a bloody mug and a USB drive. Gao Rui looked around the compound and soon discovered Headmaster Zhang’s body. Wu Jiajia did not do a good job of burying him. Gao Rui checked the files inside the USB drive, and saw the latest video was Headmaster Zhang having sex with Wu Jiajia. Gao Rui was overjoyed, he understood immediately what had happened. Headmaster Zhang raped Wu Jiajia and the latter retaliated by killing him. If he called the police, Wu Jiajia would be jailed and she would forever be eliminated from Zhang Mingliang’s life. Life would return back to normal just like how it was before the bitch entered the picture. 

He called Zhang Mingliang to the scene. He told Zhang Mingliang what happened. Zhang Mingliang said, “You are a biology teacher, you would know how to dismember a body without leaving any trace! So, I need you to go do that and keep it preserved!” 

“But why…” Gao Rui was confused. 

“Just do what I ordered! Do you hear me?” Zhang Mingliang shouted harshly at his brother. After Gao Rui dealt with the body and returned to Headmaster Zhang’s home, he saw that everything was back to its original places. The hole in the back garden was filled, the blood, the mug and even the USB drive was gone. Every piece of evidence that could prove Wu Jiajia was the killer had disappeared. 

“What did you do?” Gao Rui hissed through his teeth. “Headmaster Zhang is the headmaster of a prestigious school, people will soon notice his disappearance and then they will come here. No matter how hard you wipe away the blood, they will react to luminol.”

Zhang Mingliang chuckled. “You’re not the only clever one, you know. Did you forget my major was in chemistry? I’ve doused the floor with bleach. When the whole floor gets lit up by luminol, it will hide traces of blood.” 

“But wouldn’t that make things even more suspicious?” Gao Rui said angrily, “Why would someone bleach their floor? The police are not dumb, you know.” 

“Therefore, I’ve come up with a plan and I need your help!” Zhang Mingliang grinned. And thus, Zhang Mingliang initiated his crazy plan that night. 

A few nights ago, Zhang Mingliang sneaked into Wu Jiajia’s bedroom and that seriously shook Wu Jiajia’s sense of security. Zhang Mingliang heard from Gao Rui that Wu Jiajia was asking him to move in with her for protection. Gao Rui had been holding her off but now Zhang Mingliang told Gao Rui to agree to it. While Gao Rui was staying there, he would have to steal a few unwashed undergarments from Wu Jiajia and take a lot of sneaky pictures of her. 

With the key to Headmaster Zhang’s home, Zhang Mingliang planted Wu Jiajia’s undergarments with some others inside Headmaster Zhang’s bedroom closet. Then, Zhang Mingliang bought a new USB drive and filled them with sneaky pictures of Wu Jiajia as well as other pictures from the female staff at Yu Cai High School. Now he needed to find an incriminating place to plant it. Since Gao Rui knew Headmaster Zhang’s biggest secret, the other smaller secrets like the code to the safety box at his office were accessible to him as well. And that was where Zhang Mingliang decided to place the USB drive. 

After he was done with all that, Zhang Mingliang started to call to harass Wu Jiajia. He told her that he would take action if she continued to share a room with another man. He had Gao Rui write down the warning, ‘Don’t force me’ on their apartment wall. Since Gao Rui was literally staying in that apartment, this was easily done. Gao Rui was told to mimic Headmaster Zhang’s handwriting. It would be hard to mimic the man’s handwriting for a whole paragraph but three words were nothing. 

Wu Jiajia cooperated fully by calling the police and took the picture down as evidence. Then Zhang Mingliang manufactured a threatening letter and sent it to Wu Jiajia, ‘One day, I will rape you and then cut off your head and write with it.’ They used letter cutouts from newspapers and magazines this time because the handwriting would be too hard to mimic for a full letter. 

Then, Zhang Mingliang did something that Gao Rui would never have expected. Zhang Mingliang went for gender-reassignment surgery and changed himself to look like Wu Jiajia. Zhang Mingliang typed out the word documents regarding his struggles to become a woman and left them on his computer. Zhang Mingliang’s parents were already dead so there was no one there to contradict him. However, some evidence did contradict him. When we visited Zhang Mingliang’s home, Mary played lesbian porn on his computer. Statistics showed that lesbian porn’s main target was straight male. Furthermore, when I checked his bookshelf, I noticed the romance novels were the least read among the other books. Plus, there was also the sports channel. However, since Guan Zhenglin said that a trans person’s sexual orientation could go both ways, I didn’t think much of it.

In any case, the fake evidence left behind by Zhang Mingliang had severely misdirected the focus of the investigation. Zhang Mingliang made us believe that there were 2 stalkers, Zhang Mingliang stalking Gao Rui and Headmaster Zhang stalking Wu Jiajia. But in reality, he was the only stalker. Headmaster Zhang had many sins but stalking was not one of them. 

Eventually, someone would discover Headmaster Zhang’s disappearance. When they opened the closet at Headmaster Zhang’s home, the fact that Headmaster Zhang was a pervert would be discovered, a fact that was not helped by Headmaster Zhang’s history. After Headmaster Zhang’s dirty laundry was exposed, it would not be that much of a jump to turn the serial rapist into a stalker and pervert who would steal people’s undergarments. 

Then came the central and most genius part of Zhang Mingliang’s plan—a suicide. 

From Zhang Mingliang’s fake note, we drew the conclusion that Zhang Mingliang should know his killer and that person had to be Headmaster Zhang. Following that would be the realization that Headmaster Zhang was the stalker who threatened Wu Jiajia but he killed the wrong person. After all, Zhang Mingliang died in the same way as described in the letter. 

In reality though, Zhang Mingliang headed up the building alone. He grabbed Ol’ Zhang’s pail of dog blood because he needed it to make a device, one that could help him kill himself, something modelled after a Chinese guillotine. Zhang Mingliang used the pail of blood as weight to keep the knife standing, blade side up. He set up the device along the edge of the window, the hilt on the ledge and the blade poking out into the air. When all the preparation was done, Zhang Mingliang stood on the other side of the window ledge. He made sure to fall with his neck aligning with the blade of the knife. Zhang Mingliang had to lean outwards to hit the knife so his body would fall down out from the 15th floor. He probably expected his head to fall out the window as well but energy rebounded it back into the building. 

Due to the theory of energy preservation, when Zhang Mingliang landed on the device, the impact would tip the pail over and splash the dog blood everywhere. That explained why there was so much blood on the ground. The knife was pulled along by the greater weight of his body and dropped through the air. 

Of course, before doing all these, Zhang Mingliang had to make sure that his suicide look like a homicide. He reached his head into the pail with dog blood and drenched his hair in it. Then he wrote on the wall moving his head around. That was why the handwriting was so hard to understand.

Other than that, there was another crucial step. I had questioned earlier, must a rapist be present for a rape to happen?

After Wu Jiajia murdered Headmaster Zhang, she did not bring the condom with her, even Gao Rui had missed it but the condom was stolen away by Zhang Mingliang. The reason was he needed to smear the scabbed semen along his reconstructed vagina. 

It was almost impossible to figure out this was a suicide. As the case unfolded, with more ‘evidence’ fed to us by Zhang Mingliang, the biggest suspect would naturally be Headmaster Zhang. 

The last step of his plan was the discovery of ‘Wu Jiajia’s body. Zhang Mingliang needed Gao Rui’s help for this. Gao Rui was to hide Zhang Mingliang’s body in the underground sewer and waited patiently for him to be discovered. Once Zhang Mingliang’s body was discovered, we would discover the semen in his vagina and tied his murder to Headmaster Zhang. Thus a dead man’s plan would succeed, we would never have known that by then Headmaster Zhang was already dead. 

Actually according to Zhang Mingliang’s plan, Gao Rui was supposed to dismember Headmaster Zhang’s body and distribute them at secluded places. We would assume Headmaster Zhang had escaped from guilt. 1 year later, 5 years later, no one would remember this case anymore… By then who would still suspect Wu Jiajia?

This was a flawless plan. Zhang Mingliang had used his own life to fake a crime scene where Headmaster Zhang had murdered him. If we had not discovered Headmaster Zhang’s body, who would have thought there was such a big conspiracy behind this. In other words, the plan started to crumble the moment Headmaster Zhang’s body was discovered. 

Someone had changed the plan at the last moment.