Lin Yue didn't move.
"Stand before it," the woman in grey repeated. "Let the mirror see you."
Lin Yue walked toward the mirror. Her footsteps made no sound. The room was silent. Even the prosecutor had stopped breathing.
She stopped in front of it.
The mirror's surface rippled. Like water. Like something waking up.
Then —
Images appeared.
A young woman. Lin Yue. Younger. Before prison. Before the trial. Before the bruises.
She was in a kitchen. A man was screaming at her. His face was twisted. His hand was raised.
The mirror showed it all. The first time he hit her. The second. The tenth. The night she went to the hospital. The nurse who wrote "fell down the stairs" and looked away.
The mirror showed the night he died. The struggle. The knife. Zhang Feng's face in the background, watching, waiting.
The mirror showed the trial. The prosecutor with the kind face. The question: "If you were so afraid, why did you stay?"
The mirror showed her silence.
The mirror showed prison. The walls. The doors that locked behind her. The old woman guard who left extra bread on her tray. The infirmary. The heart attack that wasn't a heart attack.
The mirror showed her death.
---
Lin Yue stood before the mirror.
Watching.
Her face didn't change. Her hands didn't move. But I could see it — the weight of everything she had been carrying for three years. The weight of seeing it all again.
The mirror showed one more thing.
A young girl. Fourteen years old. Sitting in the back of a courtroom. Crying.
Lin Yue's sister.
The mirror showed her now. Older. Still alive. Still waiting. Still hoping her big sister would come home.
Lin Yue's hand reached toward the mirror.
Then stopped.
---
The mirror went dark.
The room was silent.
The woman in grey looked at Lin Yue.
"The truth has been seen," she said. "The Court has witnessed it."
She looked at the prosecutor.
"The defense has spoken. The accused has shown herself. What say you now?"
The prosecutor didn't answer.
He was looking at the mirror. His face was still. But his hands — his hands were shaking.
"The truth," the woman in grey said, "is not the same as justice. But it is the foundation of it."
She stepped back.
The light shifted.
And then, the woman in grey's voice echoed in the room.
"Goodness gets its reward. Evil gets its retribution. If there is no consequence yet, the hour has simply not come."
The chairs were gone. The prosecutor was gone. The woman in grey was gone. The mirror was gone.
---
Lin Yue stood alone in the center of my office.
She looked at me.
"I thought it would feel different," she said. "Telling the truth. Having it seen."
She sat in my chair. The one I couldn't touch. The one I sat in anyway.
"It doesn't."
---
The Court returned at dawn.
I didn't sleep. I didn't need to. I sat in my chair, the one I couldn't touch, and watched the light shift from grey to grey. Outside, the city was waking. Inside, nothing moved.
Lin Yue sat across from me.
She didn't speak. Neither did I.
There was nothing left to say.
---
The woman in grey appeared between us.
She didn't walk in. She didn't step out of shadow. She was simply there, standing in the center of the room, her arms at her sides, her face unchanged. The same grey dress. The same stillness. The same eyes that had seen centuries of cases like this one.
"The Court has deliberated," she said.
She looked at Lin Yue.
"You were convicted of murder. You served three years. You died in prison. The living closed your case."
She paused.
"The dead do not close cases. They only finish them."
---
She turned to me.
"You brought evidence you could not touch. You brought a witness the living could not hear. You brought a truth the living did not want to see."
She paused again.
"The Court does not weigh innocence. The Court does not weigh guilt. The Court weighs truth."
She looked at Lin Yue.
"You were not the one who killed your husband. You were the one who survived him. You were the one who was afraid. You were the one who stayed silent to protect someone else."
I held my breath. Three years of waiting came down to this.
Lin Yue didn't move.
"That is the truth," the woman in grey said. "The Court has found it."
---
The prosecutor was not there to hear it.
I looked around the room. The chair he had sat in was gone. The light was the same soft, old light. The silence was the same. But something was different. Something had shifted. The weight in the room was lighter. The air was easier to breathe.
But I didn't feel relief.
I felt empty.
The woman in grey spoke again.
"The truth does not undo what happened. It does not bring back the years. It does not bring back the dead."
She looked at Lin Yue.
"But it is recorded. It is held. It is not forgotten."
She stepped back.
"The case is closed."
---
Lin Yue stood.
She looked at me. Her face was still. Her hands were still. But something behind her eyes had changed. Something that had been waiting for three years had finally arrived. Not relief. Not peace. Something quieter. Something smaller.
"Thank you," she said.
I didn't answer. What was I supposed to say? You're welcome? Sorry it took three years and your death to get here?
She looked at the photo of my mother. The one on the shelf. The one waiting for a call that would never come. The one she had asked about twice now.
"Call her," she said. "Before it's too late."
She looked at me.
"You still have time."
---
I wanted to tell her that I couldn't. That I was dead. That phones didn't work for me. That my mother wouldn't hear me even if I tried.
But she knew that.
She was saying it anyway.
She began to fade.
Not slowly. Not the way things fade in memory. It was faster than that. One moment she was there, standing in my office, looking at the photo of my mother. The next, her edges were soft. Then her hands. Then her face.
She smiled.
"I thought justice would feel different," she said.
Then she was gone.
---
I sat there for a long time.
The files were still there. The degree still on the wall. The photo of my mother still on the shelf. The paperclip still on the desk. Nothing had moved. Nothing had changed.
Lin Yue was gone.
I picked up the pen. The one I could touch. The one that still listened.
I wrote her name.
Lin Yue.
I looked at it for a long time. The ink was black. The paper was white. The letters were small. They didn't say enough. They never would.
I waited for the relief. The rush of victory. The feeling that I had done something right.
It didn't come.
I was still dead. She was still gone. Zhang Feng was still alive, sleeping in her apartment, keeping her phone on his nightstand.
What was the point?
---
The woman in grey remained.
She stood in the center of my office, her arms folded, her face unchanged. She looked at the empty space where Lin Yue had been. Then she looked at me.
"You did what you could," she said.
"It wasn't enough."
"It never is."
She walked toward the door. The door that hadn't been there before. The door that would disappear when she did.
She paused.
"Zhang Feng will not be tried. The living will not see what you have seen. The dead will not speak for him."
She looked back.
"But he knows what he did. He has always known. He will carry it with him. That is not justice. But it is something."
She paused again.
"And when the day comes for him to come to this court —"
She paused, then continued.
"Retribution may be late, but it always comes."
She stepped through the door.
The door closed.
The room was my office again.
---
I sat in my chair.
Empty.
I don't know how long I sat there. Time doesn't move the same way anymore. It stretches. Loops. Slips when you stop paying attention.
Then — a sound.
A knock.
Not on my door. The door to the office was closed. No one could see me. No one could hear me. No one could knock on my door.
But I heard it.
I stood. Walked through the door. Through the lobby. Through the hallway that smelled of dust and old paper.
The front door of the building.
On the other side, standing in the cold morning air —
Ruan Qing.
She wasn't looking at the door. She was looking at me. Through the glass. Through the wall. Through the distance between the living and the dead.
She could see me.
She held up her phone. The screen was bright. A message. A name. An address.
"The journalist," she said. "He's ready to see you."
She turned and walked away.
"I stood there. Blankly. And asked, 'What journalist?'"
Lin Yue was gone. The case was closed. The truth had been found.
But Zhang Feng was still alive.
And there were others. Others like Lin Yue. Others who had died before their cases were finished. Others who were still waiting.
I walked through the door. Through the lobby. Through the hallway that smelled of dust and old paper.
Outside, the street was waking up. A woman with coffee. A man checking his watch. A kid weaving through traffic on a bike.
Normal. Ordinary. Alive.
I followed Ruan Qing.