Chapter 125: He Xiao Yi’s past.

After dinner, they each set out to their own rooms. As soon as the group left, Liwu collapsed against her husband’s back. She whispered, “They hate him. Whatever happened here, it has corroded the town.”

Weijun shrugged. “I saw the way some of the town folk looked at him. It was as if they wanted to walk right up to him and spit on him.”

She pushed away and collapsed on the bed. While adjusting her body, she said to him, “I need you to share a room with He Xiao Yi while we are on this case. Keep an eye on him. He doesn’t go out and nobody comes in. If he needs to talk about his past, he will have an ear that listens.”

“Why would he talk to me?”

“Because…” Liwu sat up, “Xuanji is a conspiracy theorist and he makes light of everything. Linlin is a gossip. Su Jin lacks understanding for others often. I am his rival, in a way. The Chief is his boss. That leaves you..the stranger with secrets of his own. I know him well enough to know that he will talk to you and not me.”

Weijun nodded grimly, took a bath and grabbed a pillow. After he left, Liwu called her mother and explained all that had happened, even though Majesty had already relayed it.

In the room next door, Weijun and He Xiao Yi were facing each other. One was feeling awkward for being in a place where he was not invited and the other was laughing because Tai Liwu had reacted exactly as he expected.

“Let me guess,” Weijun said, amused, “she told you to make me talk.”

Weijun took a beer from the fridge. “Marriage is all about making one’s wife happy. I go where the madam says I should go.”

He Xiao Yi snorted. “Get me a beer as well.” He stretched his hand out. As Weijun grabbed another beer from the fridge, Xiao Yi said softly, “With all that has happened, everyone will find out anyone. I am sure Majesty is already poking around.”

“You have my ears.” Weijun handed him the beer.

“There was a little girl,” Xiao Yi began, voice low. “Everyone called her Lala, she lived next door. She was like a sister to me. Her brother was my best friend. Our families were close. We laughed, played, shared everything.” His eyes glistened, but his tone was hard. “One day, she was found in a manhole. Dead.”

He swallowed, the memory clawing at him. The hours of horror and fear as they searched for her. He took a hard sip of his beer. “Naturally, an investigation followed and I was pulled into it. I used to babysit her because our families were close and I was often at her house. Because I often took her out for ice cream, to the playground….they accused me. Her parents turned years of free babysitting services and innocence into something warped and perverted. They said I was the only one in the town that could have lured her out. It just so happened that they found her hair clip outside my window. That was enough. The whole town turned against me. My family too.”

He Xiao Yi’s fists clenched. “The chief arrested me, paraded me around. They threw me in jail as they waited for DNA results. Of course, they didn’t find any because I had not touched the hair clip. I had an alibi too, I had been in the library of the academy at the time Lala disappeared. None of it mattered.

For two years, they treated me like a pervert, an outcast. Every look, every whisper, every door slammed in my face. My family hated me because my presence made them feel unwelcome in the town. My brother told people I was adopted. My mother pressured me to confess and apologize to Lala’s parents, which I refused.

I was sure that my brother’s daughter knew something and the moment I said something about it, my father punched me. The next day, posters labeling me as a pervert where all over the town. I think my brother and sister-in-law did it. Her father was the town mayor at the time and he was also pressuring me to confess.

I was innocent, and I repeated it to everyone. But it did not help. Professor Ce dumped me from his twenty best students. The academy suspended me, but we all knew it was an expulsion. On my seventeenth birthday, I left. Filled with hatred. I will never forgive them.”

Weijun listened, heavy with the weight of He Xiao Yi’s confession. He could hear the boy Xiao Yi had once been, crushed beneath suspicion and betrayal. He could see the scar carved into his soul, a scar that no investigation could erase.

He Xiao Yi’s voice trembled, but his eyes burned. “Do you know what it’s like to be innocent and still condemned? To have your own mother tell you to your face that she wished you had never been born. To have your father become violent, one punch, one slap and then a steady punching bag for all his anger. To have your name removed from the family register on your birthday. I was a child. I had proof of my innocence. And yet they made me into a monster anyway.”

Silence filled the room. Weijun wanted to comfort hum, but he knew He Xiao Yi would reject it. The man’s hatred was fortress, built brick by brick from every betrayal.

Finally, He Xiao Yi whispered, “I will never forgive them. Not my family. Not the town Not anyone.”

Weijun nodded slowly. “You have been in the bureau for many years. Have you ever thought about proving your innocence officially?”

He Xiao Yi looked away, jaw tight. “It was my whole reason for becoming a police officer. I realized it a long time ago that no matter how much I shouted, the past would not be changed. Not in this town. Not in a place where nobody wanted to hear me.” He looked at Weijun and said, “You can tell your wife my story and tell her not to bother breaking her neck opening the eyes of these people.

They chose their villain and nothing will ever change that. Not even if the criminal is caught and paraded before them.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep