THAT ONE DAY

27 July 2020 ~ Wang Lei, my best friend died. No, not died, got murdered. 3 total, no wait..it was 4 stabs. All of them in the stomach. Can you believe it? But, the fact that is more surprising is that he got murdered in his own house. I was the first one to reach his house after he got murdered. The house sounded quiet as ever. Not a single sound. Not a single ray of light. All dark, nothing visible. Suddenly I heard some sounds. Some strange sounds. I was afraid. I panicked. I ran out of the house. I went in half an hour later, only to find him lying on the ground in the living room. He got stabbed and was bleeding heavily from his stomach. All his blood crept to me. I immediately called the police and the ambulance. He was struggling to say some words, but before he could say that, he left the world forever. Now, I knew I was into trouble for sure...big trouble. The fact that I was the only person right now covered with blood, with a person who got stabbed was terrifying...this could lead me into big trouble. And what I expected, happened. The police got no other fingerprints or footprints of any other person. Police took me to the police station and I wasn't allowed to leave till my name was cleared. Clearly, this was gonna take a lot of time. My elder brother – Shu Hui decided to take over this case on my behalf. For once, I thanked God that he was a lawyer. He asked me politely whether I had killed Leilei. I refused. He shouted at me for the first time ever. He was usually calm but he suddenly lost his temper. He whispered to me that he could only solve the case only if he knew the truth. He asked me one last time if I had murdered him. I firmly refused.

Wang Lei's mom was a single mother. She used to beat up the boy sometimes for god knows what reason. LeiLei was a quiet and a reserved boy. He never used to talk to anyone in school except me. He had no enemies as far as I know. I have known him for 10 years now. We went to the same primary school and the same high school. After hearing about his death, his mom's heart tore into pieces. I didn't actually quite pity her. I actually even suspected her of killing her own son because previously she used to beat him every day. He used to get a lot of bruises, and would often show up at my house covered up in blood. It would be no big surprise if she killed him. She was the biggest suspect after me.

I got questioned. About my alibi, I had only one which was the shopkeeper from which I bought some snacks which I decided to eat with LeiLei. But, wow, what a coincidence, the shopkeeper closed the shop for some days to visit his hometown. LeiLei's last call was made to me. The fingerprints and the footprints in the house were also mine. All pieces of evidence pointed to me. But only I and Leilei knew that I was not the murderer.

Leilei's phone was seized. The police found some 20-30 photos..out of which 95% were the photos of me and LeiLei. One photo was his family's in which his mother, father and he himself was there. He was very small when his parents got divorced. Apparently, his father was a selfish man and he hated LeiLei for no reason. He used to get home drunk and beat up his wife for giving LeiLei more importance than him.

The post mortem report of LeiLei showed signs of struggle before the murderer stabbed him.

Shu Hui was totally immersed in the case. I could totally feel that he wanted to get me out as soon as possible. He often visited the crime scene to check out any new clues. It took him just one day to figure out every item in the house was arranged too perfectly to be a witness to a crime. He thought that if LeiLei showed signs of struggle before he got stabbed, then some items in the house must have moved or some things must have been broken, but the crime scene showed no such thing. It meant that the murderer had taken those things with him. Moreover, it was difficult to make out who the murderer was because the CCTV outside the house and in the lift was broken for the past some days when the murder happened. The only footage they had was of the people entering the building. There were three people who entered the building during the time of the murder: me, LeiLei's mom, and one man in blue clothes. I must say that the murderer must have planned it out so well because whoever that person is, he/she managed to copy my style of dressing and walking very well. I must appreciate him/her for that.

The next day, Shu Hui went to investigate, he saw that in the CCTV footage of outside the building that when the police was arriving, at the same time a man wearing black clothes came out of the building. So he went asking all the security guards whether he had seen a suspicious man on the day of the murder or whether they knew the man wearing the black clothes or whether he had visited the same floor where LeiLei lived. The security told him that there was no one wearing black clothes who went to the same floor as LeiLei lived. It was so obvious that the man who entered the building in blue clothes had enough time to change his clothes in the lift because LeiLei's house was on the 32nd floor. Shu Hui also understood how the murder took place but had no physical evidence. And he had to still find out who was the identity of the person who murdered LeiLei, what was that person's relation with him, and why did that person want to kill LeiLei.

1 week after the murder, a piece of news came that shocked me out very badly. The shopkeeper from which I bought the snacks and who was my only alibi had returned and was found dead in his shop. Wow, the only evidence that could save me had gone! I must thank the murderer for all this. He managed to push me to a corner that had almost no escape.

But another question arose, in the mind of the police, that whether the person who murdered LeiLei's was truly someone else and that's why he killed the shopkeeper so that I could be left with no alibi and I could be blamed for it forever or the shopkeeper's death was also co-incidental.

3 days later, when Shu Hui went to the crime scene to find if there was any other concrete evidence but was instead attacked. A tall man, in black clothes, wearing a mask attacked him with an iron rod. It hit my brother's head and he fell unconscious. Hearing the voice of the iron rod bang on his head, the neighbors of the house came out to see what happened. The person who hit my brother ran away before anyone could notice. The neighbors called the police and an ambulance as fast as they could. The house was under seizure of the police and it was an investigation area so anyone without a search warrant or legal rights couldn't enter. The police and the ambulance came. The next day, Shu Hui woke up. He recalled that it like the same man who came out of the building on the day of the murder because my brother recognized that his belt was the same as the man that day.

While all the attention was on my brother, a news even more shocking came out. LeiLei's mother was found dead in the apartment she currently rented in after her son died. Shu Hui immediately requested his subordinates to find the exact match of the belt as he described and find that belt online or in shops and call that website or shop to find about the purchasers of this belt so that they could at least have some people to track on.

Shu Hui's subordinates found out that this belt was 2 years old and it was a limited edition only. There was only one buyer in the city where they lived. They soon found the buyer's address.

Shu Hui assumed that the murderer's next target would be him only so that Shu Hui would not be able to defend me and I would be blamed for the murder of LeiLei forever. The main reason I think the murderer didn't kill my brother that day itself was that he had already hit my brother with an iron rod and it had made a sound loud enough for people to suspect that something was wrong in the house, and if the murderer also killed my brother, he wouldn't have time left to run away.

Shu Hui planned everything with the help of the police. They decided to put up a trap to catch the murderer. Two nights after, someone broke into my brother's house. It was the murderer as expected. He tried to attack my brother from behind. But, instead of finding my brother there, he found the criminal police there. Before the murderer could attack the police, they charged towards him and managed to arrest him.

The murderer was someone I could never guess of. It was LeiLei's father. His father later confessed at the police station that he had become rich a few years back but started gambling. Later he lost everything because of that habit, so he asked LeiLei for money but when LeiLei refused several times, he decided to kill him and flee with the money. He also asked LeiLei's mom for money but she refused, so she too met with the same fate shortly after.

As for me, I was released from the police station, but the loss of my best friend could never make me happy again.

I MISS YOU LEILEI.