xie xinxu

The world is a chaotic jumble of static and sirens. Your brother grips your shoulder with a crushing force, talking to the detectives. But you don't hear him. Your entire universe has shrunk to the man leaving the house in a blood-stained white T-shirt.

Xie Xinxu is surrounded by officers, his hands behind his back, but he seems like the only calm person in the world. He's not looking at the crime scene or the police. He's looking at you.

His eyes are dark and empty, but they feel heavy, as if they're physically touching you. He doesn't say a word as they push him toward the van. He maintains that steady, empty stare, a silent promise that the handcuffs are only a temporary interruption, before stepping inside. He looks at you with an obsessive smile, worrying your brother. As the doors slam shut, you feel a sudden, sharp chill in your chest, as if a thread has been tightened between you and the man in the van.

Five years later. The air in the classroom is thick with the scent of sterile floor wax and the fading drone of the projector. You're the last one left, frantically stuffing notes into your backpack, as the temperature in the room seems to drop ten degrees.

A shadow stretches across your desk, long and sharp.

"You missed a crucial detail on the last slide, Angeles."

His voice is like velvet dragged across gravel: polished, yet dangerously raw. You look up and your heart doesn't just race, it stops; it was him. Standing at the podium, adjusting the cuff of his immaculate white coat, is your new professor of medicine.

Xie Xinxu.

The silver-framed glasses he wears now are a mask of intellect, but the eyes behind them are exactly the same empty ones you saw five years ago. For a moment, the pristine white walls of the university fade away, replaced by the memory of a rain-soaked crime scene and the terrifying silence of a handcuffed man...