In 2025, I died on a beltway.
The moment I pressed the brakes to the bottom, I knew it was fake - it wasn't malfunctioning, it was someone tampering with it. I've been looking up stuff for eleven months, it's worth my life. Mine.
When I opened my eyes again, it was September 2005 in Heishi County.
A twenty-five-year-old face with forty-five-year-old eyes. On the seventh day of reporting, I was the youngest police trainee in the entire police station: I had no gun, no file, and I had to be questioned three times before I spoke a word. The same sentence comes from the mouth of a forty-five-year-old person as experience, but it comes from the mouth of a twenty-five-year-old person as empty words.
But I remember the next twenty years.
I remember that six days later, a villager named Wang Mancang in Hewan Village would die in the Yellow River. The case file is nine pages long, with a four-word conclusion: Accidental fall into the water. I wrote a line of notes on the side of the file - the deceased had circumferential subcutaneous bleeding on both ankles and had been immobilized before falling into the water.
Today is September 12th.
Six days.
I know who's going to die, when I'm going to die, I know how I'm going to die.
What I don't know is that there are several people on the signed papers who want him to die.
