Truth Press Conference
The crystal chandelier of the Montage Hotel shattered into stars before Zhong Hua's eyes. Seven chandeliers hung from the dome, each shard of glass reflecting her pale face, as if she were being watched by countless versions of herself.
As she leaned against the backstage pillar, taking a deep breath, blood seeped from the bandage on her right hand, dripping down her fingertips and spreading into tiny red patches on the off-white carpet. It was the wound that had reopened when the bandages were removed and the dressing changed that morning; now, the blood droplets clung to her fingertips like tears hanging in the air. Her assistant handed her painkillers for the third time, the foil packaging crumbling into powder in her palm: "Is the live streaming equipment ready?"
“Reporter Zhong, are you sure you want to do this?” Intern Xiao Zhou’s voice trembled as she twisted the hem of her skirt and looked toward the side door. “Gu’s legal team is in the third row, and…” Her words hung in the air—in the center of the third row below the stage, the black suits of the Gu family elders looked like a silent dark cloud, and the family crests on their lapel pins gleamed coldly under the spotlight.
Zhong Hua ripped off the sling on her left arm, revealing a bandaged wound. The cast had just been removed yesterday, and the bruise beneath the gauze was still bleeding—a remnant from three days ago when she tried to retrieve an evidence bag destroyed by Gu's bodyguards after being transferred from the ICU to a regular ward. She had lunged at the IV stand, the metal scraping against the tiles with a piercing sound; even now, the memory of that sound made her ears ring. Now, as she buttoned her shirt in front of the vanity mirror, the person in the mirror still bore a bruise on her left cheek—a cut from debris in the mudslide. The scab at the edge of the wound curled up on her cheekbone, like a withered leaf about to fall.
"Three minutes to go." The stagehand's voice pierced through the crack in the door, bringing in the noise from the corridor.
She suddenly turned and grabbed Xiao Zhou's wrist, her knuckles turning white from the force: "Help me pin this to my collar." It was a ginkgo leaf-shaped brooch, made of brass, its edges worn smooth—Ah Yu had pried it out of her clenched hand yesterday while she was unconscious. He had been squatting by the hospital bed, gently prying open her curled fingers with a cotton swab, his eyelashes brushing against the back of her hand, causing a soft tickle. "You've been clutching it for three days," he said softly, "like you're clutching a lifeline."
The moment the live stream started, the sound of camera shutters exploding like hailstones filled the room. As Zhong Hua walked onto the stage in her seven-centimeter heels, the stitches on her right leg screamed in pain. It was a wound from being cut by steel bars in the mudslide; every step felt like needles ripping at her flesh. But she stood ramrod straight, her gaze sweeping across the sea of people below. In the fourth row, she saw colleagues holding cameras, and in a corner at the back, she spotted several figures wearing masks—villagers from the chemically polluted area who had taken a long-distance bus at five in the morning, clutching crumpled medical records.
"I'm standing here today not as a reporter." Her voice carried through the microphone throughout the venue and also through the signal lines to countless mobile phones, "but as a victim of the Gu Group arson case, and also... Gu Yanting's ex-wife."
A commotion instantly erupted in the audience. An elder from the Gu family in the third row abruptly stood up, his sandalwood cane slamming heavily onto the floor with a dull thud. The lawyers in black suits simultaneously opened their file folders, the rustling of papers like the fluttering of insects. Zhong Hua raised her hand to press her earpiece, her fingertips touching the pain-relieving patch behind her ear—the one the nurse had applied that morning, its minty scent sending shivers down her spine. The screen began playing surveillance footage: two years ago, late at night, in the flames of Gu's Chemical warehouse, a figure wearing Gu Yanting's signature watch was pouring accelerants. But that person was at least five centimeters shorter than Gu Yanting, and his left shoulder slumped slightly when he walked—a lingering effect of a broken collarbone Gu Yanming had suffered while skiing years earlier.
"Before committing suicide in prison, Gu Yanting entrusted his lawyer to deliver this video." Zhong Hua's fingertips stained the speech manuscript with dark red blood, and the four characters "Gu Group" on the page were wrinkled from being soaked in blood. "He confessed to all the crimes in his suicide note, just to protect the real arsonist—his cousin Gu Yanming, the current CEO of Gu Group."
The large screen suddenly switched images. Gu Yanming's triumphant smile at the shareholders' meeting appeared side by side with the gait analysis report of the blurry figure at the arson scene. The expert's red stamp was in the lower right corner, like a drop of congealed blood. The commotion below the stage turned into a wave of gasps. Zhong Hua heard her own heartbeat drown out the static of the microphone, thumping against her ribs, overlapping with the heartbeat she had heard three years ago outside the Civil Affairs Bureau—that day, Gu Yanting had stood before her in the same way, dressed in a suit and tie, clutching the divorce papers, saying, "Zhong Hua, don't investigate anymore, it's not worth it."
“And these.” She pressed the remote control, and the screen scrolled through a chain of evidence showing the Gu family’s years of tax evasion and falsification of environmental monitoring reports. At the very end was a hospital diagnosis report; on the yellowed pages, the names of seventeen villagers were crammed together, all of whom had contracted leukemia three years ago due to chemical waste pollution. The first one listed was a seven-year-old boy; in the photo, he was wearing a mask, his eyes shining like stars submerged in water, and he had just stopped treatment last month.
A loud crash came from the third row as a chair overturned. As Gu Yanming's bodyguards broke through the security cordon and rushed over, Zhong Hua instinctively protected the microphone in front of her chest, but was suddenly pulled to the side and back by a force. She fell into an embrace that smelled of disinfectant; the fabric of a white coat brushed against her wound, causing her to gasp in pain. "I found the voice recorder you left in the ICU," Ah Yu's voice whispered in her ear, her breath coming in short gasps.
She turned her head and saw him holding up the silver voice recorder, the blade still stained with her blood. It was a recording of Gu Yanming threatening her, which she had made before she lost consciousness. At the time, a mudslide had just occurred, and she was lying in a ravine with intermittent cell phone signal, so she could only record that phone call with the recorder. When she woke up, her phone was long gone, and she assumed the recording had been buried in the mud along with it.
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