“Zhou Lin, are you inside the building?”

My partner’s voice came through the earpiece.

“Yes, everything’s normal.”

I gripped the gun in my hand tightly. Zhou Shaobo had agreed to let me bring a gun, which meant he definitely had a weapon as well. His intentions remained unclear, and the police couldn’t figure him out yet.

I walked slowly through the building, feeling a sense of disorientation at times. The building still retained the appearance of the orphanage it once was. At one point, I thought I heard the sound of two children running.

That was me and him when we were young.

[He grabbed my wrist, and we ran as fast as we could. I watched the thin figure in front of me, he didn’t turn back, but his innocent voice lingered in my ears. “Ah Lin, don’t cry. One day, I’ll take you out of here.”]

I ascended the stairs. Those two boys seemed to run with me.

[The taller boy shielded the shorter one in his arms. The little boy kept crying, “Brother, am I going to become one of those monsters too?” The taller boy turned around, knelt in front of him, and wiped his tears away. “No, you won’t. I won’t let that happen.”]

The second floor still had many cages. I stopped there. I saw a boy pressing his hand tightly over his mouth, trying not to cry out loud. Another boy was being dragged by his hair by a man in a dress.

[“Brother! Brother!!!” The boy’s heart-wrenching cries echoed through the hallways, but the heavy rain and thunder drowned out his sorrow.]

… This was our childhood, Zhou Shaobo’s and mine.

The orphanage was just a cover. The headmaster was a cross-dresser, and in reality, they made money by exhibiting deformed children. They performed surgeries on the abandoned children, turning them into grotesque figures: stitching dog faces onto children’s faces, artificially creating conjoined twins, or amputating kids’ limbs and placing them in bottles—just to satisfy the twisted curiosities of wealthy businessmen.

Zhou Shaobo and I were picked up together. We slept in the same bed from an early age. Zhou Shaobo was smart and won the headmaster’s favor. I was quiet, but because I stayed close to him, I didn’t face harm as early as the others.

We found the only book in the orphanage and read it together. It was about a handsome police officer capturing criminals. From then on, both of us dreamed of becoming police officers.

“This uniform suits you, Ah Lin.”

The playful voice snapped me back to reality. I looked up. A man standing on the stairs was smirking down at me.

“Where’s the little girl?” I raised my gun and pointed it at him, asking.

“Is that all you want to know after seeing me?”

“Cut the crap.”

“Ah Lin, you’ve really become a righteous cop, haven’t you?”

“……”

Wherever he moved, my gun followed.

“Alright, alright.”

“The little girl isn’t here. She’s in warehouse 475. You’d better send someone quickly. The food and water I left for her might not last much longer.”

Immediately, I heard movement in the earpiece as my colleagues began arranging transport. I knew they were sending someone to rescue the girl. I took off the earpiece and tossed it aside. Then, I fired two or three shots in Zhou Shaobo’s direction. I missed; they hit the glass. As expected, he had anticipated the move and dodged.

Still, he kept talking.

“You really fired? Is that how you treat your brother, huh?”

I sneered.

I continued searching for his location.

“You called me here just to have me kill you, didn’t you?”

“Come down, so I can shoot you and end this.”

When we were younger, Zhou Shaobo and I didn’t need many words to communicate. Now, even fewer were needed.

A bullet grazed my cheek and embedded itself in the wall behind me.

“It’s not about you killing me. It’s about seeing which of us takes the other out first.”

---

I shrugged. “Makes no difference to me.”

Do you know what a snowball fight is? Zhou Shaobo and I had countless ones as kids. Now, we were crossing a thick snowfield again. Snow from the pine trees fell around us.

Countless times, I tackled him into the snow, burying my face in his chest, seeking the only warmth I could find. But now, even that warmth, I would strip away.

This was our last snowball fight. After all, whoever got hit this time wouldn’t just lose the game — they’d lose their life.

I held my breath, moving carefully down the corridor. Even the tiniest sound could give away my position.

I shouted deliberately, “You know what, brother? The person I hate most in this world is you.”

When we were kids, Zhou Shaobo and I tried to escape countless times, but we always got caught. One day, Zhou Shaobo took a brutal beating from the headmaster so that I could get away. I heard him screaming but turned back halfway to throw myself on top of him.

He asked me why I didn’t run, and I told him I wouldn’t leave him. He held me in his arms, and I wasn’t sure who got beaten more, him or me.

But I didn’t want to run. I wanted to go to hell with him. Time and again, I thought that way.

“Who asked you to save me? Why the hell did you have to feel sorry for me?”

I’d beg him not to die when I cleaned his wounds. When there was no medicine, I’d plead with him, but sometimes, he really was close to death.

I went to the headmaster. The headmaster said, “You’re just a burden.” He said, “Your brother likes you, don’t you know?”

I said I didn’t. Then, the headmaster broke my wrist. He gave me a bottle of saline solution and said that even though I was useless, I had a good voice.

“You piece of trash. A drug addict. A scumbag. I’m ashamed to even know you.”

The headmaster tried to sew me to another child. Zhou Shaobo stood in front of me and said he’d take my place. The headmaster touched his face and said, “You’re so pretty, how could I bear to hurt you?”

I ran up and pushed the cross-dressing headmaster down, biting his face. Then, I watched as Zhou Shaobo was grabbed by the hair. The headmaster didn’t hit me, he hit him.

But I was the one crying. I was the one screaming, until my voice was gone.

I didn’t understand why I was in so much pain when the barbed whip wasn’t hitting me.

But that day, Zhou Shaobo just grabbed my wrist and said, “Stop crying, stop crying. As long as I’m here, I won’t die.”

“You think I, as a cop, would be impressed by you?”

“I hate you more than anything in this world.”