Before long, Fang Jiabei and Lin Weixia were also brought in one after the other.

The school maintained the appearance of its routine. Students went on attending class. The sea, boundless and still on its surface, held deep currents churning beneath.

Elsewhere, in a school meeting room serving as a temporary interrogation space, a police officer sat on one side of the table. Teacher Liu, as the homeroom teacher, was present to assist with the investigation.

The officer was a woman — her features gentle, a few fine lines at the corners of her eyes. She took out a notepad and began interviewing each student individually.

With each student called in, the female officer patiently repeated that this was just an informal conversation, and repeated the details of the case: Liang Jiashu, fifteen years of age, was struck and fatally injured by a truck driver who had run a red light on Yutan Front Road at 18:30 on May 15th, two years ago. He died of his injuries. The cause of death: accident.

Only Lin Weixia emphasized: “Liang Jiashu was crossing the road in a dazed state after suffering school bullying — the traffic accident happened after he left school.”

“Yes. Because of the post and video you published online, which drew significant public attention, and because we received notification from the education authorities, we came immediately. We’re here to investigate the school bullying incident. But you do agree that Liang Jiashu’s death two years ago was the result of a traffic accident?” the officer asked.

Lin Weixia nodded.

That was her objective — she wanted the police to investigate and find the truth, to get justice for Liang Jiashu.

It wasn’t as though she hadn’t considered going directly to a teacher or the police the moment she received Fang Jiabei’s video. But when Lin Weixia was preparing to do just that, she overheard some girls in class discussing Zheng Zhaoxing’s group.

“You know how Zheng Zhaoxing got on Teacher Liu’s nerves? Well, do you remember — back in Year Ten, Zheng Zhaoxing beat someone so badly they were seriously injured. The victim’s family said they were going to file a police report. And then somehow the whole thing just… went away. His family has serious connections and money. His dad handled it.”

“With people like that, the best you can do is stay well away. Ordinary people — what can we do against him?”

Hearing this, Lin Weixia wavered again. From her very first day transferring to Shengao, she had felt how rigid the hierarchy was here, how saturated with privilege. She was afraid Zheng Zhaoxing’s group could make things disappear with one hand. So she chose to expose them online first — to seize control of public opinion before they had any chance to fight back.

Because Lin Weixia had been through too much. Handling things quietly and privately never had an ending — it only ever led to more harm. And besides, they were all too young; some things had to be handed over to the law.

She owed Liang Jiashu an accounting.

The officer didn’t ask Lin Weixia anything particularly difficult — just simple questions about her relationship with Liang Jiashu, and about her own experiences with the people shown in the video.

After Lin Weixia left, the female officer remarked to Teacher Liu about the girl: “Remarkably calm and clear-headed for someone so young. She also understands the law — everyone in that video was blurred before she posted it.”

The second person brought in was Fang Jiabei.

The officer showed her the video again. The footage was somewhat narrow in frame and slightly unsteady. In it, Liang Jiashu was shoved and mocked by Zheng Zhaoxing’s group, who forced him to undress willingly; when he refused, the beating began.

Shortly after, Ban Sheng appeared. He walked over and said something that couldn’t be heard. Then Ban Sheng’s hand reached down and hauled Liang Jiashu up by the collar.

The footage cut off there.

“When you filmed this, where were you? What time was it?” the female officer asked.

Fang Jiabei thought back: “Year Ten — two years ago, around May. It was a Friday after school, around five in the afternoon. I had just finished cleaning the pool and was going to put the mop and bucket away in the storage room. I suddenly heard the sound of a fight, and I filmed it through a gap in the door.”

“Did everyone in the video hit him?”

At this point, Fang Jiabei’s voice was slightly hoarse, the breath from her nose coming quickly: “Ban Sheng didn’t. He didn’t strike anyone. The others did.”

The female officer continued: “Then why does he appear in the footage? Why does the final frame end with him lifting Liang Jiashu by the collar, his knee bent as if he’s about to strike? Did you see what happened after that?”

“Ban Sheng loved to swim and had a key to the school pool. He was probably there to swim that day,” Fang Jiabei recalled, her tone pausing. “At some point while I was filming, I accidentally kicked the bucket and made a noise. Zheng Zhaoxing seemed to spot me. I was terrified of him, so I ran.”

“I didn’t see what happened after that.” Fang Jiabei said quietly.

“Are you certain he didn’t hit anyone?” the female officer asked.

Fang Jiabei’s shoulders dropped. Her voice was subdued: “I’m not certain. I didn’t see the full sequence of events.”

“Why did you choose to release the video only now?”

Fang Jiabei took a breath, her voice trembling slightly: “Because Zheng Zhaoxing’s group are absolute scum, and I was afraid they’d come after me. But someone told me — if I didn’t come forward, more people would be hurt. People like that deserve to face the law.”

The second person to be brought in was Zheng Zhaoxing.

He wore a T-shirt with a skull print on the back, cargo shorts, a silver chain around his neck — the whole look radiating the air of someone who had done every bad thing imaginable. He moved like a slippery eel.

“Is there anything in this video you want to dispute?” the female officer asked.

Zheng Zhaoxing was obviously someone who had been in trouble before, had been to the police station before, had been through questioning before — so he showed no sign of nerves or fear.

“I’d like to confirm first — Liang Jiashu died in a car accident, correct?” Zheng Zhaoxing said, fixing his gaze on them.

“That is correct,” the female officer said, looking back at him.

Zheng Zhaoxing visibly relaxed. He began: “We beat him.”

He had been the one in the video who had struck Liang Jiashu most and hardest — yet he specifically framed it as a group effort.

“You brought Liang Jiashu to the pool because the surveillance cameras there were broken?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you hit him?”

“Do you need a reason to hit someone?” Zheng Zhaoxing’s tone turned impatient.

The female officer glanced again at his personal file. It noted that Zheng Zhaoxing’s mother had died when he was young; his father was preoccupied with business and had rarely supervised him growing up, gradually allowing him to develop an arrogant and vicious character. His father had later remarried — and out of guilt and a desire to compensate, had indulged and shielded him at every turn.

“How did you hit him?”

“We had people pin him down, then kicked him — the chest, the kidney area, the knees.”

All concealed locations. Injuries that could be hidden under clothing and wouldn’t be visible at a glance.

“This boy in the video — you’re in the same class, correct? Did he participate in this incident of school bullying?”

Zheng Zhaoxing looked up, following the officer’s gesture toward Ban Sheng in the footage — the figure with a baseball cap on, a glimpse of his profile visible. He fixed his gaze on him and answered: “He participated. He hit him too.”

“Walk us through what happened.”

“That day we brought Liang Jiashu to the underground pool. We were just joking around, telling him to take his pants off on his own. He wouldn’t… so we started hitting him. Partway through, Ban Sheng came in — he’d been planning to swim. He’s got that too-good-for-everyone attitude. He saw us hitting someone and barely reacted — just said: ‘Not here, I need to swim.'”

The officer looked at the video. There was no audio, but from the lip movements, he did appear to have said those words.

Zheng Zhaoxing continued recalling the scene: “Even though Ban Sheng usually doesn’t associate with people like us, I knew — he really couldn’t stand that annoying desk neighbor of his. So I asked him.”

“Asked him what?”

Zheng Zhaoxing cleared his throat: “I provoked him a bit. Asked if he wanted to teach Liang Jiashu a lesson. Ban Sheng said yes.”

“But according to another student who was present at the scene, Ban Sheng did not hit anyone.”

A derisive sound came through Zheng Zhaoxing’s nose. “The student you’re talking about is Fang Jiabei, right? You don’t know this — she has a crush on Ban Sheng. She’s covering for him.”

The female officer and Teacher Liu exchanged a look — neither of them had known this additional layer to the story.

After that, the other boys who had been present were brought in one by one — all of Zheng Zhaoxing’s accomplices, his underlings. Their accounts matched Zheng Zhaoxing’s exactly.

Ban Sheng was the second-to-last person called in.

He pulled out the chair and sat down, reached up to rub the back of his neck. The white light overhead fell across his dark lashes, casting a shadow beneath them.

His expression was composed. There was no trace of nerves.

The female officer rarely encountered a teenager this calm.

She glanced at his file, then asked: “Are you in a normal emotional state right now?”

“Yes,” Ban Sheng said.

“Do you admit to having struck Liang Jiashu?” the female officer asked.

“Yes,” Ban Sheng replied.

“Can you walk us through what happened specifically?”

Ban Sheng’s lashes moved. He began: “It was a Friday after school. I went to the underground pool I normally used to swim. When I went in, I found them beating Liang Jiashu. I was in a bad mood at the time. Zheng Zhaoxing asked if I wanted to hit someone. I went over and hit him, then told him to get out.”

“And then you left?”

“Yes. I went out and took a phone call.” Ban Sheng said.

“Can you tell us specifically how you hit him?”

Ban Sheng’s gaze paused. After a moment: “I don’t remember. Kicked him a few times, probably.”

The last person brought in was Ding Li — also one of Zheng Zhaoxing’s followers. His account was the same: he honestly admitted to hitting Liang Jiashu, and stated that Ban Sheng had participated in the incident.

Every testimony was pointing to the same person — Ban Sheng.

Even Ban Sheng himself was pointing to Ban Sheng.

Teacher Liu, who had been quietly silent throughout, finally spoke. He smiled at the female officer: “Let me have a word with him.”

“Ding Li,” Teacher Liu called.

“What—” The old teacher had been keeping him here forever. Ding Li was getting impatient.

Teacher Liu looked at his student: “Your mom called me again today.”

“Why is she calling you—” Ding Li ran an irritated hand through his hair. “Is it still about studying? I was never cut out for it—”

“No. Your mother found out about this incident. She’s already quit her job as a housekeeper at the Zheng family home. She told me she doesn’t hope for you to achieve greatness, or to buy her a big house one day. She only hopes you’ll be healthy. And that you’ll be a good person.”

Ding Li had grown up in a single-parent household from a very young age — just him and his mother, depending on each other. He had entered Shengao on social assistance, and his mother had been urging him to study hard all along.

Every time, Ding Li would brush it off impatiently: “What’s the point of studying — as long as you can make money, that’s enough. I’ll buy you a big house someday.”

Later, his mother’s clothing factory closed. By a series of coincidences, she ended up working as a live-in housekeeper at the Zheng family home, and had been there ever since.

The cocky, belligerent air drained from the boy. His shoulders dropped. He was silent for a long moment — then chose to say what was true.

Ban Sheng was called back into the temporary interrogation room. Teacher Liu poured him a cup of water and asked:

“Ban Sheng, have you ever heard the story of Rashomon?”

“What are you trying to say?”

Teacher Liu, a Chinese language teacher by trade, slowed his delivery considerably when telling a story — his account clear and logical. He explained that Rashomon was a film by Akira Kurosawa, adapted from a short story by Ryunosuke Akutagawa called In a Grove.

The story involves a samurai and his wife, Masago, who are traveling to Wakasa. During the journey, Masago is assaulted and flees to Kiyomizu Temple; the samurai is killed. A trial is convened around the case, and witnesses and parties involved are questioned one by one.

A woodcutter, a traveling monk, a bailiff, an old woman, a bandit named Tajomaru, a woman at Kiyomizu Temple, the samurai’s ghost speaking through a female medium — each one gives a different account in the courtroom.

Every account contradicts the others. Both the wife and Tajomaru claim to have killed the samurai themselves. The samurai’s ghost, through the medium, says he died by his own hand.

“That’s the story. Each person’s testimony is different, and yet each one seems plausible on its surface. It’s the same with you students — each person, driven by different motives, has given their own account, constructed their own version of events, trying to reconstruct what happened to Liang Jiashu.”

“Only Ding Li broke ranks and told the truth. And what he said aligns with what the police found after mobilizing resources to investigate. You did not strike Liang Jiashu. You were not part of this bullying incident. Lifting him by the collar was meant to get him on his feet. After you went outside to take a phone call, you came back to the pool and found that everyone was gone. You kept looking — and you found that Liang Jiashu had been locked in a storage room by the pool—”

Teacher Liu took a sip of his tea and looked at Ban Sheng: “You went and opened the door for him.”

The reason Teacher Liu believed Ban Sheng — and went to reason with Ding Li — was this: the ones who had genuinely taken part in bullying someone, and who then had the added misfortune of Liang Jiashu dying in an accident afterward, would have an extremely vivid, unforgettable memory of that day. It would be burned into them.

Which was why they could describe precisely which part of Liang Jiashu’s body they had struck. Conditioned memory doesn’t lie.

But Ban Sheng had said he couldn’t remember — that he’d just kicked him a few times. He had clearly been lying.

Everyone’s account was shaped by their own motives. Zheng Zhaoxing had a grudge against Ban Sheng, had resented him for a long time — of course he would use this opportunity to drag him down. The other followers naturally went along with pulling Ban Sheng into the account.

Then there was Fang Jiabei — she hadn’t seen the full sequence of events. But because she wanted to protect Ban Sheng, because she felt certain he wouldn’t have done such a thing, she had defended him.

That was right. Fang Jiabei had a secret fondness for Ban Sheng — it had begun in Year Ten. At that time, many of the boys in class had given her nicknames like “fish-scale girl,” and would deliberately burst into laughter when she walked past. At some point the class had begun pushing her out — isolating her, calling her a freak.

Many nights, Fang Jiabei would stay up quietly asking herself what she had done wrong to be targeted like this. She couldn’t find the answer. She started hunching her back as she walked, shrinking her neck down into her collar, trying not to attract attention. That way, no one would mock her or target her.

Gradually, Fang Jiabei became invisible in the class — like a shadow on the wall. As one of the class’s members, she could sometimes skip group activities and no one would notice.

And no one remembered her name.

One day, Fang Jiabei’s homework had been spitefully hidden by those boys, then ended up, somehow, on Ban Sheng’s desk.

At the time, Ban Sheng was slumped over his desk asleep. Sunlight fell across the row of vertebrae at the back of his exposed neck, making it look almost translucent.

As she passed by, her shadow brushed across him — and unexpectedly, Ban Sheng spoke. His quiet, low voice carried the roughness of someone just waking:

“Fang Jiabei, right? Your homework.”

Fang Jiabei stopped short. When she turned and took the homework he extended toward her, her heart was thundering — she didn’t even dare look at his face.

She thought about it: among all the boys who had laughed at her and pushed her out, Ban Sheng had never once joined them. When everyone in the class called her “freak” or “fish-scale girl,” only he had ever spoken her name — clearly, accurately.

Fang Jiabei had never expected this quiet attachment to lead anywhere.

Some people — you watch them from a distance, and that’s enough.

When Lin Weixia transferred in during Year Eleven, Fang Jiabei recognized her immediately — the girl who had appeared at Liang Jiashu’s grave multiple times.

At first Fang Jiabei was wary of Lin Weixia, even warning her to stay away from Ban Sheng. But over time, Lin Weixia had helped her repeatedly — doing so much for everyone around her. When Fang Jiabei asked why she treated her so well, Lin Weixia said “because I’m the same as you.” What Fang Jiabei had been through, Lin Weixia had experienced too — she understood it all.

So Fang Jiabei invited her home to read manga.

And then Fang Jiabei gave Lin Weixia the video — with one condition: that Lin Weixia remove the footage of Ban Sheng before posting it. Lin Weixia agreed. But in the end she broke her promise.

Because Lin Weixia didn’t want to let the truth be obscured.

All the questioning concluded. The results were in.

The female officer straightened her notepad and stood. She looked at the handsome young man before her, and out of pure personal curiosity, asked Ban Sheng:

“There’s one thing I don’t quite understand. According to other students, you had actually helped Liang Jiashu several times before — and yet you chose to cast yourself as the wrongdoer. Why?”

The answer was silence. Only the echo of voices in the interrogation room remained.

No matter how much more they asked after that, nothing further would be forthcoming.