But Shane was no longer the man he used to be. He knew that an audience's curiosity needed to be cultivated. To end everything in the first trial would be far too dull. So he restrained his urge to pause time, letting the story build through its twists and turns before unleashing the climax.
He saved that climax for the third trial.
11
At the third trial, Ryan Cross still insisted he hadn't killed anyone. The courtroom debate remained tediously long, but Shane knew this groundwork was necessary. Only when everyone present was losing patience did he quietly snap his fingers and pause time.
When he returned to his seat and let time resume, he saw Ryan Cross suddenly roar from the defendant's box: "I killed her! I killed her! I killed her!"
People exchanged glances, their faces wearing expressions of "just as we thought."
Fearing Ryan Cross had lost control, the police led him away.
After a brief recess, Ryan Cross returned to the courtroom. He looked haggard and confused, his whole demeanor dazed.
He didn't try to justify himself, the way some might have.
Shane knew he was exhausted too.
Lying for that long must have been quite a burden, he thought coldly, watching Ryan Cross nod and confirm each of his crimes before the judge.
Yet this time, Shane was wrong. Ryan Cross truly hadn't killed anyone.
A year later, in an unrelated rape-murder case, a bearded man confessed that Ryan Cross's case had actually been his doing.
Soon afterward, Ryan Cross's brother Ian Chase got the verdict overturned. The investigation concluded that Ryan Cross was indeed innocent.
Tragically, months earlier, Ryan Cross had killed himself in prison.
12
"Are you the one who killed my brother?" The man's appearance startled Shane. For a moment he thought Ryan Cross had come back for revenge. But looking more closely, he realized it was his brother, Ian Chase.
Shane had seen Ian Chase on television.
He'd been eating fruit in the living room with his new wife Asha. She'd stared at the screen and sighed about how terrible it was that an innocent man had been wrongly convicted.
Shane had silently peeled his lychee without responding, though inwardly he felt shaken.
He hadn't considered that the evidence gathered by the police could be flawed. If he hadn't tampered with Ryan Cross's dialog box, perhaps this outcome could have been avoided.
That final suicide—Ryan Cross must have been in utter despair. He was innocent, so why wouldn't the whole world believe him? Why couldn't even he believe in himself? The thought made Shane's chest tighten with guilt over his mistake.
But ultimately he told himself to keep his composure. After all, no one had discovered that he was the one who'd precipitated this tragedy.
The comments under his public account were full of sympathy for Ryan Cross, and no one blamed Shane.
—"Shane merely reported the facts of the case. If anyone's to blame, it's the real criminal for leaving all the clues pointing at Ryan Cross!"
Seeing everyone say this, Shane finally relaxed. But now Ian Chase stood before him, demanding answers.
Shane avoided Ian Chase's gaze and said, "I don't know what you're talking about."
"You're the one who made my brother confess, aren't you?" Ian Chase stepped closer.
"Please get out of my way!" Shane barked.
Ian Chase didn't budge.
"Before the third trial, I visited my brother. At first, even I thought he'd killed someone and was just refusing to admit it. But he firmly told me he hadn't. He begged me to believe him and swore he'd never confess to a crime he didn't commit." Ian Chase's eyes glistened with tears as he spoke. "In the end, I believed him. I told him to keep denying it, to trust that justice would prevail..."
"I'm sorry, I really have somewhere to be. Please stop saying such strange things in front of me!" Shane tried to push past, but Ian Chase grabbed his arm.
"You're not going anywhere!" he roared. "You destroyed justice!"
Ian Chase continued without pause. "When my brother confessed in court, I was stunned. I was heartbroken—I thought my beloved little brother had lied to me after all..."
"Later I went to visit him in prison. He kept telling me he hadn't killed anyone! I said, 'You already confessed—why are you still lying?' He cried and said he didn't know what happened to him that day in the third trial. He hadn't wanted to say anything at all, but suddenly the confession just came out!
"'Maybe someone was controlling what you said?' I demanded. He was silent for a long time, then said in despair: 'Even you don't believe me, brother?' Those were the last words he ever said to me!" Ian Chase seized Shane's collar.
"Let go!" Shane yanked free and stumbled backward, falling to the ground.
He looked up and saw that the dialog box above Ian Chase's head was rapidly flashing with text.
"Hah? Looking at my dialog box?" Ian Chase pointed at his own head.
Shane's eyes widened in astonishment. "You... you can see it too?"
"I thought so." Ian Chase crouched down and gripped Shane's chin.
"Recently, to help exonerate my brother, I read your public account. And to look for similar cases, I read all your previous posts too. Then I noticed that in about 20% of the cases you wrote about, the suspects went from refusing to confess to suddenly confessing. So I asked the officer handling my brother's case to check the records.
"And the data showed that the number of cases in this city where suspects suddenly confessed after initially denying guilt matched exactly the number of cases you covered on your account. But you don't attend every trial—how is it that you happened to be present at precisely those cases?"
"Maybe coincidence? I wondered about that too." Ian Chase gave a cold, derisive laugh. "At first I thought investigating you was absurd, so I set it aside and focused on exonerating my brother first. But then, as luck would have it, I ran into your ex-wife, Sophia Xiao."
Hearing Sophia's name, Shane froze, uncomprehending.
What could meeting Sophia change?
"She gave me this notebook." Ian Chase produced a small booklet from inside his coat.
Shane had so many notebooks for material, he couldn't possibly remember them all. He stared at Ian Chase in confusion.
Then his eyes went wide—because he watched Ian Chase open the notebook and remove a knife concealed inside it.
Ian Chase gripped the knife and advanced. Shane scrambled backward in terror. Suddenly remembering he could pause time, he tried to snap his fingers. But time didn't stop...
Shane trembled, snapping his fingers repeatedly, but nothing happened. Only then did he notice that the dialog box above Ian Chase's head had vanished.
Was this the consequence of being exposed? Shane's mouth fell open in shock. He tried to scream for help, but Ian Chase clamped a hand over his mouth and drove the knife into his chest.
He shoved Ian Chase away with all his strength, and the blade ripped free from his body.
The pain made him forget to scream—he could barely breathe. He collapsed to the ground, blood pooling beneath him, some of it spattering onto the fallen notebook.
Ian Chase steadied himself and stared coldly down at Shane, dark flames flickering in his eyes. Then he bent down, picked up the notebook, raised the knife once more, and walked toward Shane...
13
"I heard someone was murdered in the alley last night. Terrifying!" A blonde woman ran into an old friend at the neighborhood gate, and their conversation turned to the local news.
"I'll say! They said he was some famous writer who specialized in murder cases."
"So it was a revenge killing?" The blonde woman's eyes lit up as she handed her garbage bag to her son. "Xiao Yu, go throw this away for Mommy."
The boy nodded, obediently carrying the garbage bag toward the dumpsters.
As he approached the bin, he noticed a small notebook among the trash.
A few red drops stained the notebook—paint, probably, the boy thought. He picked it up and flipped it open. Before he could read more than a few lines, his mother's voice rang out: "Xiao Yu, that's filthy! Didn't I teach you about hygiene?"
The blonde woman bade her friend goodbye, rushed over, and knocked the notebook from the boy's hand, then snatched the garbage bag from his grip and tossed it in. "Hurry up, you'll be late for school!"
The unsealed garbage bag split open in the dumpster, and the filthy waste quickly buried the notebook.
The boy was dragged forward by his mother, but he kept glancing back, thinking about the sentence he'd read.
"Today, I opened my door for a walk, hoping to record some details of life as material, only to find that the whole world had somehow changed..."
"So what happened?" he murmured to himself, pondering. But the thought soon slipped from his mind, because this morning his mother had agreed to buy him his favorite breakfast from KFC.
Standing at the counter, he happily accepted his tray, glanced at the server's name tag, and said, "Thank you, Aunt Sophia."
The server froze for a moment at hearing her name, then smiled. "What a polite young man." She turned and called out, "Next order, please."
"Pork patty burger with purple potato." Ian Chase pulled his cap lower, stepped forward, and handed over his money.
Sophia took the cash and said, "Thank you."