Hegel's Confession Volume 1 Chapter 8

 “Both of Li Ling’s older sisters married at sixteen-, seventeen-years-old, just so they could leave their painful family behind, whereas Ling, being a great student, has always stayed dedicated to schoolwork.”

“It was fortunate she did well academically, as she could live on a scholars.h.i.+p at school. Because of her impoverished background, many fees were also waived for her, enabling her to reach high school and then college. Of course, she also promised to support her brother through school and beyond.” Teng stopped recounting what he’s learned to get a gla.s.s of water.

This was pretty similar to what I imagined. How Ling grew up was the key. Teng continued after drinking some water. “There’s another discovery. I looked into her social media activity. She rarely contacts anyone, including her family, but she often logged onto a website called Dark Angel. The weird thing is, I’m a good hacker but can’t recover the posts she’s deleted, nor find out who started the site.”

 “Dark Angel? What kind of website is that? Why would Ling delete her posts?” I thought this was unusual.

Teng said this was the problem, and he needed some time to crack the site. The other stuff posted on the site seemed to be mostly real experiences which were negative and fitting of the dark theme. There was one post by a girl who said she was raped by her foster father at fifteen, and how she ran away and eventually became a prost.i.tute.

I was curious and wanted to see for myself, but Teng waved his hand. ”Don’t waste your time, you can only log on after midnight. I only saw it once before the site disappeared.”

 “You’re saying the site could only be seen after midnight? What else did you see on there?” I had more doubts now. What a weird website!

Teng grimaced, “whoever did the site was an expert hacker. The homepage looked great, there’s a black background, with a lot of gold dots that eventually combined into an angel with wings. The angel looked so real too. I was looking around when I first got on, but before I could recover Ling’s post, I was stopped.”

 “Looks like we need Ling to explain the website.” Haoran, who was silent until now, suddenly spoke.

I didn’t disagree. Teng didn’t even know about the academic paper we saw yet. Now, we could be certain Ling did everything, we just needed to know how. The mysterious website was another part of the puzzle.

Haoran’s phone rang, and he quickly got up after talking for a bit. “They did find mescaline in Zhou Nan’s stomach. Let’s go talk to Li Ling.”

Our eyes met as I nodded and followed him. Teng looked confused, not sure of our understanding. “Hey, where you going? Wait for me.”

Li Ling had nowhere to go, so she was still in the interrogation room after our interview; supposedly she thought this was a safe place. I felt this was a game she was playing, acting terrified because of some imaginary pen oracle.

I walked into the room holding two cups of coffee. Ling rested her head on the desk, seemingly asleep. As I walked closer, she woke up with a start and sat up warily. When our eyes met, the panic in her eyes lessened. “It’s you!”

I was conflicted watching her reaction. I felt bad for how she grew up. The kind of life where your parents didn’t care about you, where they verbally and physically abused you, must have been horrible.

Not only was her abuse horrific, she had to watch her parents treat her brother with unconditional love, which was probably something one had to experience to truly understand. If she could have had a mentality that wasn’t distorted by her experience, she could have had a better life, but she has destroyed her life with her choices.

 “How are you doing?” I asked gently as I put coffee on the table.

Ling took a deep breath and picked up the coffee. “I’m okay, thank you.”

 “No need to be so polite. Now that things are the way they are, I want to talk to you.” I asked in a nonchalant way.

 “About what?” She asked quickly, as if she was curious of my question.

 “Is this your perfume?” I put down the perfume found in her cosmetic case on the table. Seen from this angle, the scratches have disappeared.

Ling seemed a little surprised at the sight, not understanding the connection. She nodded, “yes, it’s a gift from Lin Xiao. You know I can’t afford something like this.” Her tone contained some unidentified emotion.

“So you know the price of this perfume?”

Ling hesitated. This may seem like a bizarre question. But she didn’t realize the link between the perfume and the case. “Yes, I do know. Lin Xiao said when she gave this to me that it was 1300 yuan or something. I didn’t want it since it was so expensive, but she said she didn’t like the scent, and it’d be a waste to throw it away.”

 “Lin Xiao gave you the perfume since she didn’t like it? So you were pretty close then, the gift was over a grand. She was quite generous.” I came to a realization as I played with the perfume bottle.

Ling was silent as looked down, maybe she was avoiding something or she felt bad for the victims.

I asked again, watching her reaction. “Was this perfume new when she gave it to you?”

Ling looked impatient at my question. “Yes, it was new. But even if it was new, Lin Xiao didn’t want it. What does it matter?” She blurted and then realized her tone and statement was too much. Biting her lip, she continued, “sorry, I’m a little tired. I haven’t slept well lately. Can I go home and rest?”

I shook my head at her request. “You’re our target for protection and nowhere else is safer than the precinct. I’m afraid you have to stay here a while, and our conversation isn’t over yet.”

Ling may have realized something. She looked anxious as she breathed deeply and looked around. She may be regretting staying here, now she couldn’t leave even if she wanted to.

Her thoughts seemed more jumbled as she said, “what do you want to ask? I’m the victim, okay? I’m so scared, maybe I’m the next to die!”

 “Don’t worry, as long as you cooperate, you’ll be fine. If you don’t want to talk about this perfume, we can talk about something else. I heard you were very nice to the other girls in your room. You cleaned and did laundry too... so you got along well with them?”