The wrongdoer shows no remorse, while the victim is left with endless self-reflection.
Qin Nan couldn't comprehend how the world could be so absurd.
Ye Sibei watched him quietly, tears streaming down her face. She felt something precarious teetering in her heart, filling her with fear. Hastily wiping her tears, she spoke hoarsely, "Right or wrong doesn't matter. Let it go."
Seeing the woman who kept evading, he stood up abruptly and grabbed her hand. "Let's go to the police."
At the mention of "police," Ye Sibei immediately refused, "I won't go."
Qin Nan remained silent, gripping her wrist with stubborn determination as he dragged her toward the door. Ye Sibei resisted with all her might, screaming hysterically, "I won't go! It's over! Why report it now when we didn’t back then?"
"I won’t go! Let me go, I won’t go!"
Ignoring her, Qin Nan pulled her step by step toward the exit. She began hitting him, shouting, "I'm fine! I don’t need the police! I don’t need it!"
As he dragged her closer to the door, she suddenly stumbled and fell to the ground. "Qin Nan, have you ever thought about me?!"
He froze, turning back to see Ye Sibei collapsed on the floor, weeping as she looked up at him.
Her eyes were filled with pleading and resentment. One wrist was still in his grip, while her other hand tried to pry his fingers loose.
Her sleeve slipped down from the struggle, revealing her slender, pale arm crisscrossed with scars. He saw them but couldn’t bear to look.
Finally, his gaze settled on her eyes—on the fear in them.
As if he were the one trying to ruin her life.
"Are you really fine without reporting it?" His voice was low and rough.
Ye Sibei nodded desperately. "I am fine. I don’t need the police. If you want a divorce, then divorce me. I just beg you for one thing—let it go."
"As long as neither of us speaks of it, it’ll be over."
Something heavy lodged in Qin Nan’s chest. He glanced around the house—beer bottles, cigarette butts, the mess everywhere.
Ye Sibei seemed to notice, scrambling to her feet in panic. "I’ll clean up. I’ll clean it right now."
"Ye Sibei," Qin Nan watched the woman hurriedly gathering bottles, suddenly overwhelmed by an indescribable helplessness. He stared at her back. "If injustice isn’t resolved, the wound will fester forever."
She froze as he spoke with cruel clarity, "This is just the beginning."
"You’ll rot bit by bit, inside and out. You’ll spend half your life trying to heal this wound. You’ll keep wondering why it was you, what you did wrong, why the wrongdoer gets to live happily while you’re stuck like this."
"Right now, people might still pity you, thinking you’re like this because of what happened. But in the future, when everyone forgets your pain and only sees you failing at life, they’ll just think, 'Ye Sibei is a mess.'"
Clutching a bottle, her body trembled slightly, as if holding it could steady her emotions.
"It doesn’t matter anyway," she comforted herself. "This is just who I am. My mother always said, people have to accept fate."
"Fate can be changed."
Qin Nan looked at her back. "You have to try to win, just once. Just once...""But I've never won!"
Ye Sibei finally couldn't hold back anymore. She turned to look at him: "Do you think I haven't tried? I have."
"When I was little, I thought studying hard could change my life, but it didn't."
"I thought working hard could change my life, but it didn't either."
"I thought the hardest part was always the present, that as long as I endured, the best was yet to come. But what was the result?"
"There are always more hardships waiting for you in the future, always more shortcomings you can't overcome."
"I'm not hardworking enough, not disciplined enough, not cautious enough, not smart enough. I'm overly sensitive, foolish, emotionally unintelligent. At 27, about to have a child, no company wants me. At 26, without a stable job and with a younger brother, what right do I have to be picky? I went to university only to end up with a monthly salary of 3,000, less than what others earn from manual labor. Haven't I been criticized enough in life?"
"You want me to win—with what?"
"Right now," Ye Sibei's words were mixed with sobs, almost inaudible. She raised her hand and pointed at herself, "I have only one wish—"
"I want to live a good life."
"I want to live like a normal person—not rebellious, not resistant, without any expectations, just going with the flow."
"Is that too much to ask?"
Qin Nan didn't speak. He looked at the woman staring at him.
At this moment of confrontation, her eyes were clear and resolute, completely different from her usual timid self.
He suddenly realized—no.
She said she wanted to give up, to live without rebellion, resistance, or expectations.
But it was precisely because she hadn't given up, because she was rebellious, resistant, and full of expectations, that she was in pain.
Another version of herself that had never given up was alive inside her, yet she used her body as a cage to trap that self.
"Ye Sibei," Qin Nan didn't dare to look at her, afraid he'd be swayed by her. He lowered his head, "If you want to live like a normal person, then come with me to report this to the police."
With that, Qin Nan stepped forward, grabbed her wrist again, and pulled her toward the door.
This time, neither of them resisted. Ye Sibei stumbled along, and Qin Nan held her loosely, as if both had reached the brink of collapse, neither with any strength left.
Mustering the courage to reach the door, Qin Nan had just opened it when he saw Ye Nianwen standing outside.
He was still wearing that cheap suit, his usual black backpack slung over one shoulder—a bag he'd carried for years without replacing.
The usual smile was gone from his face, as if he'd grown up in an instant, standing quietly in confrontation with Qin Nan.
No one knew how long he'd been standing there or what he intended to do. After a long silence, Ye Sibei spoke hoarsely: "Why are you here?"
"Chuchu said my brother-in-law beat up Fan Jiancheng, so I came to check."
Ye Nianwen forced a smile: "I heard you arguing and didn't want to interrupt. Maybe we should go inside first."
"Move aside."
Qin Nan glared at him. Ye Nianwen didn't speak at first, then lowered his head and said quietly, "Reporting it now... the chances of winning the case are very low."
Before he could finish, Qin Nan suddenly slapped him, grabbing Ye Nianwen's head and slamming him against the wall: "Is this what you should be saying to your sister?! You're a lawyer, and this is what you tell your sister?!"Ye Nianwen's glasses were knocked askew as he slumped against the wall, breathing shallowly from the pain. "I can't let my sister fight a lawsuit she's destined to lose."
"You're not her. You're not her family," Ye Nianwen's voice trembled slightly. "You don't understand what she'll have to endure. From the very beginning, she'll be questioned. Everyone will ask why she was drinking that night, why she went out after dark, why she wore that body-hugging skirt, what her relationship was with the perpetrator."
"They'll scrutinize her past, her family, every possible misstep in her behavior. They'll claim she deliberately seduced him, that she's framing an innocent man. If the case fails, people will say it was a honey trap, a failed extortion attempt, that she's a mistress trying to climb the social ladder—or worse, imply she's in some illicit profession."
As he spoke, Ye Nianwen kept glancing at Ye Sibei standing nearby. His eyes were red, desperately holding back tears. "I understand your anger. If you can't accept this, you can file for divorce."
"But I can't... watch you destroy my sister."
Qin Nan remained silent. Ye Nianwen didn't move either. Ye Sibei stared into her brother's eyes, and in that instant, she suddenly understood.
That day—Ye Nianwen had seen.
He knew.
That's why he could describe her clothing so accurately, knew what had happened to her, why he'd said those things to her that night, why he'd insisted on walking her home.
Yet her brother, a lawyer, had chosen silence in that crucial moment.
She almost wanted to laugh. Hugging herself by the doorway, she gazed at Ye Nianwen.
Ye Sibei smiled.
It all seemed so absurd to her.
She raised a hand vaguely, as if to say something, then thought better of it. Finally, she just said, "Let him go."
Qin Nan didn't move. Ye Sibei stepped forward and gently pulled his hand away.
The two men stood facing each other. After a long silence, Ye Sibei spoke: "See? It's only just begun, and you've already been in two fights. If you can't even handle hearing these words, what will you do when we actually report this to the police?"
"Violence solves nothing. Actually, everyone here is being very rational—my mother, my brother—they all support my decision. Because my decision is the right one."
Qin Nan looked up at her. Ye Sibei met his gaze with unsettling calm. "Go get ready. It's Dad's birthday tonight. Let's not trouble the old man with this."
The standoff continued until, finally, Ye Sibei turned and patted Ye Nianwen's shoulder. "Take your brother-in-law home. I need some time alone."
With that, she entered the house and closed the door behind her.
Left alone in the hallway, Ye Nianwen hesitated before speaking to Qin Nan: "Brother-in-law..."
"You knew all along?"
Qin Nan cut him off. Ye Nianwen lowered his head. After a long pause, he turned to look at the surrounding low-rise buildings, as if gathering tremendous courage. "On the morning of April 9th, I went to the hospital looking for potential clients. The police wouldn't let me see the victims, so I waited near the corner of the victim's ward. I thought—when the victim comes out, I'll see who it is. When the police aren't around, I'll approach them. I'll say I'm a lawyer, that I can help them seek justice. 'Please trust me.'"
Ye Nianwen mimicked his imagined speech with a hint of self-deprecating humor. He gave a small, bitter laugh. "Then I saw my sister and my mother."
"Your mother knew too."Ye Nianwen didn't speak. Qin Nan took a deep breath and nodded: "As expected of a family."
After saying this, he quickly turned and headed downstairs. Ye Nianwen hesitated for a moment before chasing after Qin Nan, calling out as he ran: "Brother-in-law, it was me and Mom who stopped my sister from reporting to the police! All the fault lies with us, not her weakness—"
"I know it's not her weakness!"
Qin Nan stopped abruptly and roared, glaring at Ye Nianwen: "The weak one is you!"
Ye Nianwen froze in place. Qin Nan stepped forward: "When you failed to get into a key high school in ninth grade, it was your mom who paid the school selection fee for you. To scrape together that money for you, she didn't give your sister a single cent for her education. Your sister found her own way to finish high school and get into university."
"In university, you lived off your family's allowance to date and join clubs, while your sister worked part-time to support herself. She even felt ashamed to ask your parents for money to buy a computer."
"After graduation, you lived off your family, ate off your family, and even demanded money from them to get married. Do you think your down payment came from nowhere? Your sister took out a personal loan—50,000 yuan—for you!"
"Ye Nianwen, didn't you know all this? Aren't you aware?"
Ye Nianwen's face turned deathly pale, his voice trembling: "I... I didn't know about the 50,000..."
"Couldn't you have known?" Qin Nan cut him off, exposing him: "You could have, but you chose not to! Every time your parents wronged her, you played dumb because you benefited from everything taken from her. You were afraid of losing such an easy life."
"Just like all the sacrifices your sister made for you in the past—you were always the last to know, and then you'd say sorry to ease your guilt. If you'd ever acted like a decent human being even once, your sister wouldn't have ended up like this."
"You didn't dare to take her to the police, claiming it was for her own good—but have you seen how she's living?! Is this 'for her own good'? No, this is to avoid causing trouble for yourselves! So everyone else can go on living peacefully—except your sister!"
"You're just a coward, a parasite, a hypocrite who grew up sucking your family dry while pretending to be righteous and kind!"
"If you truly cared about her, if you truly wanted what's best for her, you should fight for justice for her. You should tell her she's done nothing wrong, that she deserves to live with dignity in this world!"
"But have you ever done that?" Qin Nan lowered his voice. "No, you haven't."
"I used to wonder countless times why she became the person she is today. Now I finally understand."
Qin Nan took a step back.
"Because your whole family—every single one of you, including me—" Qin Nan's eyes reddened, "not one person ever told Ye Sibei that she was born without fault, that she deserved to live well."
"Never once."
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