07 Haze

I am Jin Ze, and I am also the Left Eye.

Jin Ze’s single sentence made my heart leap straight into my throat. I felt that he was acting extremely abnormal today, almost bizarrely so.

Clutching my baton, I said to him, "Get out here! Are you really Jin Ze?"

That’s right, at that moment I suddenly doubted whether this person really was Jin Ze. Given Jin Ze’s sunny and cheerful image, he shouldn't be capable of such behavior; Jin Ze wouldn't randomly crawl under my dormitory bed just to scare me.

Furthermore, I hadn't even seen his face. He was wearing a mask, and human voices can be imitated.

I suspected that whoever this person was, he had originally hidden under my bed with malicious intent, but just as he did, his phone rang and startled me awake. That was why he was now trying to impersonate Jin Ze and make a run for it.

His next action only deepened my suspicions. Instead of crawling out from under the bed, he said to me, "Chen Mu, get in here."

He was telling me to go under the bed, which of course I refused to do. Pointing my baton at him, I said, "If you don't come out right now, I'm going to call for help and have you arrested."

No sooner had I finished speaking than he reached up, tore off the mask, and turned his head slightly to look at me.

I saw his sharply defined, resolute face. The light from outside cast beneath the bed illuminated his features, making him look even more handsome, especially his profile, which could only be described as flawless.

"Uh, Jin Ze, what... what are you doing under my bed?" I couldn't help asking, while simultaneously letting out a breath of relief.

In a very stern tone, Jin Ze said, "Get in."

And so I obediently crawled under the bed, thinking that perhaps there was some secret hidden beneath it that Jin Ze wanted me to see.

Once I crawled in, however, I found that everything under the bed was completely normal. There were no severed eyes or hidden wiretaps like the ones I had imagined in my paranoia.

I turned to look at Jin Ze in confusion. He was simply lying flat on the floor with his hands cradling his head, staring blankly at the wooden slats of my bedsprings above.

Knowing that Jin Ze must be in a bad mood right now, I didn't pressure him. I simply copied him and lay down on the floor right beside him. I could even hear his heartbeat, as if we were lounging lazily on a beach, basking in the warm sunlight. But the warmth we were bathing in now was not sunlight, but gloom.

***

Suddenly, Jin Ze turned to me and said, "Chen Mu, you remember what I told you before, don't you? We cannot choose our past, but we can choose our future. Angels and demons are separated by only a hair's breadth; it all depends on how we choose."

I nodded at Jin Ze, a sudden sense of foreboding rising within me. Why was he suddenly telling me this? Could it be that my condition had flared up again, and I had been sleepwalking and doing bad things? Was he hiding under my bed earlier just to observe me?

Before long, however, Jin Ze continued, "Chen Mu, there is a demon dwelling inside everyone's heart. It all comes down to whether we can suppress it. I came to see you today because I want you to help me suppress the demon in my heart."

Hearing this, I froze for a moment, thinking to myself: Does he want me to climb on top of him and pin him down?

I quickly dismissed that lewd thought. Jin Ze must have meant something much deeper, so I said directly to him, "If there's any way I can help you, just name it."

Jin Ze went straight to the point: "Let me tell you a story first."

I nodded, and Jin Ze continued: "A group of children once lived in an orphanage, and every so often, people would come to adopt them. These children all had different personalities—some were naturally reclusive, some were born cheerful, and others were cold on the outside but warm on the inside. Different people have different natures. One of the children belonged to the first category. He was rather withdrawn, disliked interacting with others, and practically had no playmates. Later on, however, he made a friend—his only friend—and that opened a crack in his isolated heart. But just half a month after he made this friend, that crack in his heart closed up again, because his only friend was about to be adopted."

Hearing this, I suspected that the withdrawn child in Jin Ze's story was actually him, but I didn't ask. I simply listened as he went on.

"This child desperately did not want to lose his friend; he was terrified of becoming a lonely outcast again whom no one cared about, but he was completely powerless to stop it. And so, on the very day before his only friend was scheduled to be adopted, he did something that would become his lifelong nightmare."

Following Jin Ze's words, my heart leaped back into my throat.

Jin Ze continued, "That child tricked his only friend into going to the small woods behind the orphanage, where there was a pile of sand. He lied to his friend, saying they were going to play a game, and then he buried his friend in the sand. He wanted to kill his friend so that he could stay here forever."

At this, my heart gave a violent shudder. On one hand, I was frightened by the child's ruthlessness; on the other, I was telling myself that this child couldn't possibly be Jin Ze—Jin Ze would never do such a thing.

Jin Ze pressed on, "In the end, though, his heart failed him. He didn't bury his friend to death; instead, he used a pair of handicraft scissors to gouge out his friend's left eye. Because as long as that friend lost his left eye, he would never be adopted again..."

I couldn't help interrupting to ask Jin Ze, "What happened after that? Do you know that child? Is he connected to this case?"

Jin Ze suddenly turned his head to look at me and said, "That child was the Left Eye, and the Left Eye is me."

At those words, my left eye thanced with a sharp, sudden pain, as if my eyeball had been instantly ripped out.

***

I hastily asked Jin Ze, "What? And then what happened?"

Jin Ze continued, "After that, I was sent away for psychological treatment for a whole month. When I came back, the child whose left eye I had gouged out had already been adopted—not by the original family, but by another one. I've tried searching for him ever since, but I've never been able to find him. As for me, after the psychological therapy, I became much more cheerful. To remember this lesson and constantly remind myself of it, I gave myself a nickname: Left Eye, and had everyone call me Left Eye as well. Gradually, I integrated into the orphanage community and truly made friends. Eventually, everyone forgot about the incident where I gouged out someone's left eye, but it remains a lifelong pain in my heart."

Hearing this, I hurried to comfort him: "Everyone has a sordid past, especially since you were so young back then. You shouldn't blame yourself too harshly."

As soon as I said this, I suddenly realized something, and I hurriedly asked Jin Ze, "I found a photo from your orphanage earlier, showing you and Hao Hao together. That Hao Hao is Fang Lin, and you must have known that all along. Why did you never say anything?"

Jin Ze sighed and said, "That is my inner demon, Chen Mu. Do you know? I blinded my friend's left eye so he wouldn't be adopted, and that family ended up adopting another child instead. That child was Hao Hao, who later became the transgender Fang Lin!"

Hearing this, a wave of profound shock washed over me. Then I began to understand why Jin Ze had kept silent and why he was afraid to face it. In a sense, it was like the butterfly effect: due to a twisted act in his childhood, Jin Ze had directly shaped the tragic lives of two people.

Yet I couldn't blame him. After all, everyone has shadows in their past. I patted Jin Ze's shoulder and said, "Jin Ze, you don't need to overthink it. Although the events started because of you, as you said yourself, everyone has a past. The important thing is how we choose our future, and your future is already more than enough to make up for your past mistakes. Think of all the bad guys you've caught."

Suddenly, Jin Ze seemed to grow a bit agitated. He whipped out the clown mask, put it back on, and said to me, "No, but I wasn't him. Chen Mu, do you know? I've encountered the exact same problem as you. Actually, regarding that twisted incident of gouging out the eye in my childhood, I have zero memory of it at all. My real memory is of hiding alone in my bed that night, crying under the covers all night until I fell asleep. But when I woke up the next day, the director and the others caught me and claimed that I had gouged out my friend's left eye."

I froze. I knew Jin Ze wasn't capable of such a thing! I hastily asked him, "Are you saying someone framed you?"

Jin Ze shook his head. "I wanted to say yes, but the orphanage had surveillance cameras. They captured footage of me coming out of the sand pile holding scissors, so I had no choice but to admit to it and undergo psychological treatment. They told me I had intermittent dissociative identity disorder. And that is precisely one of the reasons why I've always wanted to help you. I'm not just helping you; I'm helping myself as well, because we are completely helpless in such situations—even more bewildered than ordinary criminals."

Hearing Jin Ze's words, my jaw dropped and I remained speechless for a long time. I never expected Jin Ze to have such a bizarre experience in his past—that he had suffered from dissociative identity disorder when he was very young, and that it had happened only that once, never to recur.

I said to him, "It's fine, it's all in the past now. Don't dwell on it."

Yet even as I said this, I felt as though things weren't that simple. Given that Jin Ze had no recollection of the eye-gouging incident whatsoever and had suddenly suffered from a split personality—just like me—could there be some kind of connection between all of this?

Just as I was pondering this, Jin Ze suddenly said to me, "I, too, once thought that past had been sealed away and the gloom in my heart swept clean. But looking at it now, someone wants to dig up that past. Chen Mu, the truth is, I secretly followed you to the crime scene. Bao Dafa's body was buried in a mound of dirt, while Huang Feifei had her left eye gouged out. This matches the dark shadow of my past blow for blow. It's obviously targeted at me. Do you know one of Bao Dafa's identities? He was a sponsor of that orphanage."