The weather was clear.
Sunlight spilled across the tiles at the entrance of the police station, glaring and harsh to the eyes.

Jiang Zhilin stepped along the dappled walkway of light and shadow.
Dressed in a crisp black shirt, his hair neatly in place, he bore no resemblance to the man who had stood in silence outside the hospital the day before.

Inside the station, the atmosphere remained busy, phone rings weaving together with the clatter of keyboards.

Only when he walked in did something shift—
for a brief moment, the entire floor seemed to be muted.

No one asked questions.

No one dared to.

“Morning, Captain Jiang.”

A team member greeted him softly, the tone restrained.

He merely nodded and continued on toward his desk.

A cup of freshly brewed black coffee sat on the desk, still steaming.
Beneath the coaster lay a neat stack of files and sticky notes.

—Prepared by one of the team.

He did not sit down right away. Instead, he stood there, looking down at the immaculate cover of the documents—almost painfully orderly—while his fingers absentmindedly brushed the trench coat pocket.

Last night, that fabric had been soaked through with blood.

Now it had been washed clean, spotless.

And yet, the sensation lingered.
As if his fingertips still carried that cold, damp touch—one that no amount of washing could erase.

At last, he pulled out the chair and sat down, opening the first page of the post-operation report.

Outside the glass window, sunlight fell along the edge of the papers.

Yet all he felt was cold.

The sound of pages turning rose between his fingers—one page after another.
Dense lines of text and serial numbers swept past his eyes, yet Jiang Zhilin’s focus gradually sharpened.

Not reading—
filtering.

—Discarding the irrelevant. Isolating the abnormal.

Most of the pages were operational summaries: enemy site listings, zones of engagement, casualties, records of infiltration and kills… nearly flawless.

Until his eyes caught on a single line.

“Undercover operative code S-7 was exposed in the final stage and subsequently killed. Preliminary assessment: the operative was likely compromised at an earlier phase. The opposing side delayed action, suspected to have deliberately allowed the operation to proceed.”

His gaze paused.

The sentence lodged itself like a nail, driven into his retina—impossible to pull free.

He set the file back on the desk.
Fingers interlaced slowly, a sharp pulse flickering at his temple.

He remembered that person.

Dragged out from the lower left corner of the footage—
his body soaked in blood, still wearing the disguise prepared for the infiltrator.

At the time, Jiang Zhilin had thought it was faulty intelligence, bad luck on the operative’s part—
withdrawal delayed by a moment too long.

But this line made it clear.

That person had been discovered long before.

The opposing side had simply… not acted.

Why leave him alive?

Why wait until just before the operation began to take him?

And why—
after killing only one person—did the enemy stop there?

The conversation he had overheard in the hospital corridor the day before surfaced again in his ears—

“…If they’d gone all out back then, we wouldn’t have survived.”

He lowered his gaze to the report, his brow knitting tighter by the second.

Some threads had begun to loosen.

But it still wasn’t enough.

Like a puzzle missing several pieces, the full picture refused to take shape.

He pulled the report closer again, fixed his eyes on that single line, and read it through—word by word—three times.

Then he set the file back on the desk.

His back remained straight, his posture flawless,
but his eyes were no longer as calm as they had been moments before.

Jiang Zhilin pushed his chair back and headed for the records review room.

No notification. No explanation.

The duty officer saw him, gave a silent nod, and stepped aside.

His clearance was high enough.
No signatures were required.

Seated.
Logged in.
Surveillance footage and infiltration-mission communication records pulled up.

The screen lit up, familiar images playing once more—
the exterior cameras around the warehouse, synchronized viewpoints from each team as they moved in, and the audio recordings from the communication channels before the operation began.

No rushing forward. No change in speed.
Just repeated watching and listening, as if forcing every detail to carve itself back into his mind.

Minute by minute, time slipped past.

A segment of the recording played again—
a text update from Team A during infiltration: “Entered designated zone. S-7 still no response.”

Jiang Zhilin’s fingertip paused on the timeline.

He remembered.
At that point, S-7 should already have been lying in wait inside the warehouse—by all logic, a status update should have come through long before.

Yet not until the operation was underway, not until the opposing side revealed themselves, did S-7 appear on screen—
dragged out, like bait that had already given up resisting.

He rewound the footage a few seconds, cross-checked it against communications from the other teams, then pulled up data from the previous day—
equipment sign-out records, personnel schedules, even infiltration gear logs.

And then he saw it.

S-7’s sign-out time was two hours earlier than planned.

Supposed to depart with the others—
yet he had left the base alone, well ahead of schedule.

No one asked why.
No one reported anything unusual.

Scrolling further back, he found another detail—S-7 had taken a call shortly before leaving, from an unregistered number.

The call was brief. Only one minute and twelve seconds.

He froze the record on that single entry, his gaze turning faintly cold.

Suddenly, he remembered the piece of intelligence that had once given him pause—

the informant who had previously refused to speak, only to suddenly agree to cooperate, even providing the location of the site and the infiltration routes.

At the time, it had seemed like sustained police pressure had finally paid off.
He had briefly questioned the informant’s sincerity, but the thought had passed.

Looking back now, he saw it clearly.

That timing—

fell exactly a few days before S-7’s early infiltration.

It wasn’t just the decision to place an undercover operative inside the warehouse.

The one who had handed the undercover his way in—
even the first point of entry—
had been Shen Yanxing.

Layer by layer, he had laid it all out.
Pushing the informant into cooperation.
Feeding the breach straight into enemy hands.
Scheduling death ahead of time.

Even making himself believe that everything had simply gone “according to plan.”

So it wasn’t that someone finally talked.

It was that he let go.

Who notified S-7?

Who sent him out early?

He hadn’t wandered in by mistake—
he had been led there.

And the enemy—why wait until the final moment to drag him out?

Not for interrogation.

Not to kill.

—But to be seen.

At last, Jiang Zhilin spoke, his voice barely above a whisper.

“…What are you trying to tell me?”

No one answered.

Only the footage and data looping endlessly on the screen,
speaking, in silence, of another version of the truth.

His eyes remained fixed on the screen, unblinking.

The data, the footage, the voices replayed before him second by second, as if someone had a hand around his throat, forcing him to watch the outcome over and over—

I pulled the trigger.
I killed him.

I… buried him with my own hands.

Breathing faltered.
A deep breath was attempted—only to meet a throat drawn so tight it nearly choked him.

Palms cold, damp.
Vision blurring.

Slowly, his head lowered, shoulders trembling faintly.

“What did I… do?”

The words were so soft they were almost inaudible, like air leaking out of a ruptured chest.

Eyes closed, he forced himself to recall Shen Yanxing’s gaze that morning—

Not accusation.
Not anger.

But… acceptance.

As if he had already known how this would end.

No last words left behind.
Only that final look before the shot.

Clean.
Empty.
Nothing at all.

As if telling him: You were always going to pull the trigger.

His chest rose and fell violently, as though something inside had been torn open.

How could he—

How could he say nothing—

How could he decide… on his own—

He wanted to speak, but no words came.

Lips trembling, his voice shattered into fragments before it could leave his throat.

He pushed himself up, the chair scraping out a dull thud—
then staggered backward, collapsing onto the floor.
Hands clutched his head, breathing ragged and out of control.

The ringing in his ears swelled, that sentence detonating again and again inside his mind—

I killed him.
I killed him.
I killed him.

The screen was still lit, the footage looping.

—Shen Yanxing standing there, drawing his blade, driving it in, saying calmly,
“I didn’t get anything out of him. He’s already dead.”

He killed hope.

He killed the truth.

He killed the man who had only wanted to protect himself…

And now—
he couldn’t even force out a single I’m sorry.