UCS Chapter 114.2

The Bai Mingyue before him was steadier and calmer than the file had indicated, like an outsider watching a film whose ending he already knew. He was familiar with every plot point, yet was still sitting quietly in the cinema, waiting for the moment that had astonished him on his first viewing.

Gao Shi’s heart gave a sudden lurch.

…

Among the new information Gao Shi had received, there was not only material about Bai Mingyue, but also some details about the kidney transplant. After waiting for Gao Gusheng in the coffee shop and heading home together, Gao Shi took out the files and read through them again. On this reading, he noticed something off.

Bai Mingyue had collapsed suddenly one day. After that collapse, the examinations had revealed the problem with his body.

That was the first suspicious point.

At this point in the timeline, the Bai Mingyue of the past life had still been abroad, fighting desperately to turn things around, and the situation had been nowhere near this severe. This deterioration had come as though out of nowhere.

And yet ever since Bai Mingyue returned to the country, Gui Yan had treated him as though he were the most precious thing in existence. Not only did he give him the best of everything within his power, he had also quietly injected a substantial sum of money into Bai Mingyue’s family, giving it new vitality and temporarily staving off the threat of bankruptcy.

Because in Gui Yan’s mind, Bai Mingyue was the kind of otherworldly person untouched by worldly affairs, and so all of this had been done quietly, never disclosed to Bai Mingyue.

Which meant the news Bai Mingyue received would have been this: one day, his father and older brother suddenly called to tell him that the family crisis had been temporarily resolved.

In other words, after coming back, Bai Mingyue’s circumstances had been going smoothly in every respect. So why had his condition suddenly taken a turn for the worse?

Since the diagnosis, Gui Yan had been actively searching for a donor for Bai Mingyue. Whether Bai Mingyue was lucky enough or Gui Yan was lucky enough, in barely a month a suitable donor had been found.

For ordinary families, waiting for a donor could take years, decades, or even an entire lifetime of waiting with nothing.

They were remarkably fortunate.

And yet the investigators could find no trace of the person who had donated the kidney to Bai Mingyue.

That was the second suspicious point.

Gao Shi had someone draw on the Gao family’s resources to dig into what lay hidden behind all this. Three days later, a file landed on his desk. Brought before him along with it was a family.

This family were the relatives of the kidney donor.

At first they refused to say a word about the matter. But the person Gao Shi had sent used three hundred thousand yuan to loosen their tongues.

“Sir, great sir, you must stand up for my brother!”

The man at the front dropped to his knees and knocked his head on the ground before Gao Shi. Gao Shi frowned. The two bodyguards beside him gently but firmly helped the man back to his feet. “Our employer doesn’t go in for that sort of thing. Just speak plainly.”

The family of three before him had originally been a family of four. The person who had donated the kidney was the kneeling man’s older brother.

“They said if they could have my brother’s kidney they would give us five hundred thousand. The money came through alright. But then all they gave me was an urn of ashes and another hundred thousand. They said my brother had complications during the transplant surgery and didn’t make it, and that the hundred thousand was the compensation stipulated in the agreement.”

In the sound of the younger brother’s wailing, Gao Shi quickly flipped through the file.

In this family, the older brother had been born with an intellectual disability.

After discovering their son’s condition, the parents had quickly had another child.

The older brother, despite his disability, was physically strong and an excellent farm hand. He managed the washing, cooking, tending fires, feeding pigs, and all manner of daily tasks without trouble, and with great dexterity.

He was not aggressive in the slightest. He would only grin his simple smile. When his younger brother, who despised him, pushed him into the mud, he would only say over and over: “Little brother, little brother, it’s dirty here, Mum doesn’t want you playing here.”

But he was, in the end, a person with a disability. Both parents felt they could not rely on a disabled son. For their old age, they could only count on the younger one.

The younger son was raised with every indulgence.

Unfortunately, excessive doting left him with a full set of bad habits. He was idle and lazy, with a taste for good food and an aversion to work.

But he did not think it mattered. After all, there was the fool of an older brother to handle things at home.

He was often ashamed of his older brother, feeling that having a fool in the family was an embarrassment to him. The irony was that he himself had little to be proud of. He had a fully functioning brain, yet his academic results were shockingly poor. He dropped out after finishing middle school, went to another city to find work, and made nothing of himself there either. Instead he was dazzled by the wider world, and had been taken in by the police on multiple occasions for various offences.

But because he had a glib tongue and channelled all his energy into petty cleverness, his parents still believed this younger son was the sharp one, destined for great things.

As for the older son, who laboured tirelessly around the house, yes, he was quick with his hands and did his work well, but he was still a fool, and what future could a fool have.

That was how the parents thought. That was how the younger brother thought too.

So when the younger brother heard that someone was looking for a kidney match, he did not hold much hope. He brought his older brother, who had come into the city to deliver sweet potatoes, along to be typed. It was purely a matter of since it’s free, we may as well try. He had not expected the match to actually succeed.

That same evening, someone arrived at their home with a contract and a box of money.

He had never seen so much money in his life, packed into a box, layer upon layer of vivid pink banknotes dazzling his eyes. He signed the contract without a second thought. The five hundred thousand stayed in the house. The fool of an older brother was handed over.

The parents hesitated briefly at first, but once they saw the money they too fell silent. Everything at home needed money. Their younger son would be getting married soon and would need money for a house.

The older son, fool that he was, had held his younger brother back plenty over the years. Now that he could finally be of some use, let him be of use. Besides, would it not eventually be the younger brother’s responsibility to support this older brother of his anyway?

And so they told the foolish older brother: you are going to have a small procedure done. It won’t hurt.

The older brother understood nothing. He only knew that if he went, his parents would be happy, and his younger brother would be happy. So he went with a cheerful heart.

And never came back.

After the foolish older brother was gone, the younger brother spent the money in reckless abandon, wild with joy. The parents, however, found themselves deeply unsettled. Over the years they had grown thoroughly accustomed to their older son keeping the household in perfect order, leaving them with nothing to worry about.

Only after the older son was suddenly gone did they begin to notice the role he had played in daily life.

Though in the end it did not matter much, since he would be coming back soon enough. He had only lost a kidney. The work would still get done as before.

That was what they thought, right up until the urn of ashes came back. Together with a hundred thousand yuan.

The younger brother was furious. He could not accept it. He could not accept that his brother had died and all they got back was a hundred thousand.

One kidney alone was worth five hundred thousand. Surely a human life was worth at least six hundred thousand? How had they arrived at a hundred thousand?

Besides, with him gone, who would do the housework? Who would tend the fields? Was he supposed to do it himself? The more he thought about it, the more he felt the foolish older brother had died for an absolutely terrible price. They deserved eight hundred thousand… no! One million at minimum!

The younger brother took the urn of ashes and went to demand an explanation, only to be shown the contract, which stated that in the event of surgical complications, the compensation would be one hundred thousand yuan.

The younger brother was dumbstruck. He had been so dazzled by the five hundred thousand that he had completely failed to notice the compensation clause.

But what could he do? The other party was a large company. The younger brother liked to throw his weight around, but only with his older brother and his parents. He could not throw his weight around with a large company.

He did not even dare to find a lawyer and ask whether this contract was legally valid.

He was at a complete loss when the Gao family arrived, bringing money with them.

“Is my brother’s life not worth a million? And they gave me a hundred thousand! My brother, my own flesh and blood! We came out of the same womb, born of the same mother! I have to get justice for him!”

The man’s voice suddenly dropped. He looked left and right, then said in a hushed tone: “Do you have a grudge against this family, sir? Just say the word and I will bring my parents to kneel and wail at the foot of their building, mourning for my brother. We’ll carry his portrait and his ashes and make enough of a scene that their company has no peace. You can benefit from the situation too. As for me…”

He rubbed his hands together, a fawning smile on his face. “I just want justice for my brother. Whatever you see fit to give for the trouble, I’ll take.”

Gao Shi looked at him in silence, his gaze carrying an indescribable coldness.

“We will contact you if there is a need. Keep quiet in the meantime.”

After dismissing them with an even tone and having someone see them out, Gao Shi took the evidence to the police station. Everything they had done already constituted organ trafficking.

But it was not enough. He had something else in hand, something he had investigated about Gui Yan a month earlier.

The events had occurred half a year ago. The evidence had been carefully erased. It had taken him a full month to piece it all together.

After handing all the evidence over to the police, he turned and went to the Spirit Management Institute.

In recent days he had assigned someone to keep watch on Bai Mingyue and Gui Yan.

It was not surprising that the Gui Yan of the past life had been able to discover that Gao Gusheng and Bai Mingyue were a compatible match. But how had he found out in this life?

Because of Gao Gusheng’s particular constitution, even routine school health checks were handled by the family physician, who would bring the completed report to the school. Proper compatibility matching was entirely out of the question.

If he himself had dreamed of premonitions about the future, was it possible that Gui Yan had too?

And what about Bai Mingyue, who radiated that persistent sense of wrongness? Had he perhaps dreamed of it as well?

Gao Shi thought of the look in Bai Mingyue’s eyes as he watched the retreating figures of Gao Gusheng and Gui Yan. He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose.

An inconceivable yet entirely plausible theory took shape in his mind.

Perhaps in their past life, Bai Mingyue had framed Gao Gusheng not out of jealousy or wariness, but because of a twisted… affection for him.

***