Chapter 8: Dark Diamond (4)
"You're not Mayfly."
Who are you.
"Two friends went to pick mulberries. There are mulberry trees on both the southern and northern hills. One boy went north, one went south. Before sunset, neither came home."
Elyse ground him down, one sentence after another:
"So — before sunset, did you kill your friend? Mayfly?"
"For Shen Huaiqiu's sake, didn't you."
"But Shen Huaiqiu died at your hands too. You sealed her body inside the wall. The White Tower of Tika — it's the tomb you built for her, isn't it?"
The girl's low laughter drifted through the dark —
"You're disgusting."
The White Tower was labyrinthine. Li Yufu moved slowly along the wall. Elyse shadowed him constantly, like a vengeful spirit demanding his life.
— After four months in the Black Room, she'd grown accustomed to the world of darkness.
A creature truly forged in a nest of vipers.
"In an era when information transfer was primitive, you assumed Mayfly's identity. You played both sides. In 1993, you orchestrated the Nawzain Massacre that shocked multiple nations, resulting in the deaths of ten intelligence operatives."
She said —
"And you redirected the blame — the biggest drug lord in Myanmar at the time, Zhawang, was killed. From then on, you rose to power in northern Myanmar. No one knew your true identity. Only people from that era, like Duan Po, remembered Mayfly."
"They always assumed you were the defected Mayfly."
"So who are you really?"
Li Yufu had found the exit to the lower floor.
Who was he, he wondered — he was no one.
A wild-growing weed in a drug village, a bastard who didn't even know his father's name, a shadow trailing behind Mayfly, a petty schemer who fell in love with his friend's wife.
"Kunjiao — tell me, what was Mayfly's real name?"
Xiao Run, he thought silently.
"Xiao Run," he called out hoarsely, speaking his name at last.
After so many years.
The older brother who'd taught him to read and write, who'd spoken Chinese to him, who'd promised to take him back to China. The one whose smile showed white teeth — and whose expression, when Li Yufu's dagger pierced his heart, had been one of shock and agony.
That year, he was nineteen. Xiao Run and Shen Huaiqiu were twenty-one.
Now he was forty-six. In the White Tower, Xiao Run and Shen Huaiqiu were still twenty-one.
Li Yufu gently ran his hand along the wall. Cold stone. On the side only he knew about, his friend and his beloved slept forever.
He really was disgusting, the girl was right.
He'd betrayed others, yet coveted a believer who would never turn — was this his comeuppance?
With eyes like Shen Huaiqiu's, and a heart like hers — the same heart that wanted him dead.
Li Yufu bolted for the stairs below.
—
Bang!
In the darkness, Elyse raised the handgun she'd found in the drawer and fired. The bullet struck the floor near his feet. Li Yufo threw himself around the corner and fired wildly back.
Shen Huaiqiu's eyes.
He panted, sweat slicking his palms.
"Little one, why bother?" He called from behind a marble column, trying to persuade her. "None of this really concerns you. Walk away. Go back and live properly."
Elyse laughed from the other side of the corridor.
"Kunjiao, since I came back to northern Myanmar a year ago, I never planned on walking out of here alive. I've been ready for a long time. How about you — are you ready to die?"
She was just an ordinary person — not even a proper intelligence operative, because she'd never gone through any official vetting process. Only three people in the world knew her true identity. Even if she died here, she'd die as a phantom — buried forever under this blood-soaked earth.
But even so — even if it was worth nothing, even if it was meaningless —
"I'm dragging you to hell for judgment. Your sins are deep — you don't deserve to live."
Li Yufu went calm.
"Little Elyse, you've always been a quiet girl. Why are you suddenly talking to me so much today?"
Elyse fell silent.
"You're out of bullets, aren't you?"
The forgotten handgun had held only a single round!
He lunged from cover and sprinted for the exit. Downstairs, there was a tunnel cut into the mountain! The assault force had reached the hillside — as long as they entered the White Tower, as long as he detonated the explosives before leaving!
He'd still win!
Kunjiao trembled with savage exhilaration, hitting walls and corners as he ran, insensible to pain, barreling toward the tunnel.
A flash of fire exploded in the distance. By the light that flared and died, Li Yufu glimpsed the tunnel entrance — it was already open. His remaining men, unable to wait for him, had fled ahead.
If he could just reach it —
In the same instant, Elyse's mind went blank. She was almost without thinking when she threw the gun aside and hurled herself forward, locking her arms around Li Yufu from behind, driving a thin utility-knife blade into his lower back and dragging it across with all her strength!
A red signal flare burst through the window outside. In its ominous light, Elyse's eyes burned incandescent!
Li Yufu screamed. He twisted and seized her, flipping the featherweight opponent over his shoulder and slamming her to the floor.
A thunderous impact.
The back of her skull struck the ground. Elyse's vision exploded into sparks, then darkness — the world tilted and spun like a broken film. A colossal wave of nausea surged through her chest.
Still too weak. Fighting — she'd always hated it.
She thought.
"Sonofabitch!" A string of furious Burmese curses. Through the kaleidoscope of her vision, Kunjiao, hunched and contorted, clutched his wound. A vicious light crossed his face as he kicked Elyse square in the abdomen.
Again and again — the force intended to shatter her, as though a vital organ had been ruptured. She rolled soundlessly, a gush of sweet warmth flooding her throat.
Today was probably it… she exhaled…
When the next kick came whistling toward her, she seemed to gather a final scrap of strength, seized his ankle, and held on — held on with everything she had, with the grip of someone who would never let go!
Kunjiao stumbled.
In this instant, he finally tore off the mask of civilization, exposing the feral cunning of the petty schemer from the drug village. Furious punches and elbow strikes rained down on the girl's head and face.
She hunched her shoulders, trying to dodge. But soon, warm blood began trickling from her ear.
Blood in her mouth, too.
Oh — her teeth.
The teeth that had bitten off a killer's nose. The teeth that had been pulled. The teeth that Councilor Yang had arranged for the Chinese Chamber of Commerce to pay for, to have repaired.
A girl's only, pitiful weapon.
She lunged and sank her teeth into Li Yufu's leg, clamping down on a mouthful of flesh, twisting her neck with every ounce of strength —
Kunjiao howled, staggering, grabbing her hair and yanking backward.
It didn't matter. She wouldn't let go, and she wouldn't release —
Maybe it was the adrenaline of near-death, but the pain was fading. Instead, gripping him with arms and legs became almost effortless. A fierce conviction blazed in Elyse's heart: this man was not getting away.
Never letting go…
That soft whisper in her mind spoke again — they told her —
Hold on to this man, and the people he slaughtered, the heroic souls buried underground, could fly free from this hell.
Winter Lee. Xiao Run. Shen Huaiqiu…
And so many others — braves and ordinary people whose names were never recorded. They would rise on the wind, over mountains where ghosts wailed, over burning poppy fields, over the white smoke of gunfire, over the silent stone border markers, flying home.
To the homeland she, too, would return to.
The drug lord, screaming in agony, ripped the utility knife from his back and drove it down at Elyse's head.
You once received a hope that was rare and heavy, born from hell.
You must hold it carefully, cradle it, carry it into the light.
Let it grow. Let it bloom.
She did it.
She was a diamond forged in darkness.
In her slowing hallucination, the blade's tip streaked closer, a slash of blinding crimson. Elyse's eyes opened wide, and an unexpected peace filled her heart. She watched death fold its wings and descend, lifting her, humming a ferryman's song, carrying her away.
The blood-soaked girl was pinned to the ground by Kunjiao's final strike — a knife through her throat.
Her hands released.
The girl finally let go of the bitter breath she'd been holding for two years.
She didn't hear the roar of voices and the thunderous breach from outside.
——————
"A Miniature Epilogue — For Those Whose Suffering Will End in Sweetness"
One year later.
Farther south, in the deep south — a small city called Er, on a street called October Fifth Alley. An auntie returning from the morning market ran into the young woman who'd moved in this year, and called out cheerfully in the local dialect:
"Long Ying! Where are you off to —"
The reply came in a slow, unhurried voice:
"Auntie, I'm working overtime today — oh, where'd you buy these lotus seeds? They look so fresh."
The auntie laughed, patted her arm fondly:
"Take a few to eat, they're sweet. Little one, don't ride your bike so recklessly!"
"Got it —"
Crunch — she bit into a lotus seed, and the little one zoomed past the alley mouth on her bicycle. She caught a glimpse of someone standing there, leaning against a car door, waiting — who knows how long.
She froze, brakes shrieking, and whipped around.
"Miss Long."
…Old friends, after such a long parting — all well?
A fairly ordinary greeting, but even so, Zhou Mi paused before he could say it smoothly: "I heard there's a kind of rice noodle here in Er that's very good. Can I treat you to some?"
He added warmly: "As much as you want. Don't be polite."
The great wind scattered the long darkness, carrying hope back to the world of the living.
Planting it carefully in the light.
Let it grow. Let it bloom.
The girl broke into a grin — the kind of radiant, bright smile that a young person ought to have — one Zhou Mi had never seen on her face before:
"Make it three bowls, then!"