My wife's prized student tortured me to death. My wife—a forensic examiner—falsified the autopsy report the moment she had the chance.

Then the killer, Sebastian Barnes, married her. My soul has never known rest.

Not until a serial killer on the run across the country kidnapped Sebastian.

The video spread across the internet like wildfire.

On camera, Sebastian was drenched in blood, fingers missing.

A mechanical voice droned in the background：

“The March 18 Dismemberment Case. The killer, Sebastian Barnes. Refuses to confess. Sentence: death by a thousand cuts.”

“Next, the accomplice, Julia Baxter. You have three hours to turn yourself in. Otherwise……you can come piece your dear husband back together yourself.”

The internet exploded.

But Julia Baxter—my wife, distinguished anatomy professor at Harbor City University, Harbor City's chief medical examiner—was still in her kitchen, oblivious, busy at the stove.

Making dinner for Sebastian, who was running late.

……

The table was already covered with dishes.

Professor Baxter, who once guarded her hands more carefully than her own life, was holding a knife, carving chrysanthemum tofu.

“Honey, are you happy with this now?”

The voice message she sent Sebastian sounded helpless and indulgent.

“I skipped your conference, I know. I'm the worst. Punish me however you want, okay?”

“Come on, answer me. Don't sulk.”

Nine p.m. She was reheating the dishes for the third time.

I drifted behind her, calmly counting the minutes.

This was the tenth year since my death.

In three more hours, Julia Baxter would die the same way I did.

Today. My death anniversary. Also her wedding anniversary with Sebastian Barnes.

A phone rang, shrill and urgent.

“Julia, something's happened! Something's happened to Sebastian!”

The color drained from Julia's face. She ran for the study.

The computer sat on the desk, as if someone had taken control of it, looping a mechanical voice：

“Turn yourself in, or your husband dies.”

She spun around instantly, stumbling as she reached the front door.

She ran every red light on the way.

Nine thirty. Julia sat in the iron chair of the interrogation room.

In the dim room, the camera hijacked by the killer blinked with a red light.

“Professor Baxter. You're late.”

Hearing the familiar mechanical voice, Julia clenched her fists and drew a long breath.

At Captain Bennett's nod, she spoke.

“I'm Julia Baxter. Whatever your conditions are, name them.”

“Yes, I ran that autopsy on the March 18 case. And I will swear on everything I am—there was no falsification. None.”

The captor wasn't satisfied. Sebastian's scream cut through, then was muffled.

Julia shot to her feet, and the iron chair yanked her back down.

The kidnapper sat in front of the camera, his pixelated face shifting in grotesque twitches.

“Professor Baxter, Joel Sullivan was your husband. He was tortured and dismembered, and you went out of your way to cover for his killer.”

“These past ten years, have you been sleeping well at night?”

“Ex-husband.”

Julia pushed her glasses up, her gaze cool with contempt.

“Joel Sullivan was suspicious, oversensitive, and twisted in his own head. That marriage was over long before anything happened.”

“Before the March 18 case, we were already in divorce proceedings.”

“Sure, we had some unpleasantness over Sebastian before that, but that's ancient history.”

She folded her hands and sat up straight.

“I'm a forensic examiner. Fairness and impartiality are what I do. Every single time.”

“Tampering with an autopsy over personal feelings? I wouldn't do it. I couldn't do it.”

Her patience ran out. She lowered her voice to a warning：

“What, you want to avenge him? Then go find the real killer.”

“Release Sebastian. Now. Because if you don't, I will not let this go.”

The kidnapper laughed.

“Is that so?”

“Professor Baxter really thinks I have no proof?”

“Proof doesn't scare me.”

Julia was certain she'd covered every trace.

“I don't care if you're doing this for Joel Sullivan or anyone else. No one's going to believe a murderer.”

“Smear us all you want. Sebastian and I are clean—completely innocent!”

“And Joel? He can't even stay quiet in the grave. Should've been dust and ashes a long time ago.”

I stood behind her, a twisting ache deep in my chest.

I'd been dead a long time, but the love and the hatred hadn't faded.

Day after day, night after night, I watched them live their happiness while the memory of being torn apart ground through me without end.

“He must've been quite the charmer. Dead and gone, and people are still crying injustice on his behalf.”

Julia let out a cold laugh, glancing around the room.

“Joel Sullivan, if your ghost is here, listen carefully.”

“You threw acid on Sebastian and scarred him for life. I never even settled that score with you.”

“I'm carrying Sebastian's child now. If you keep stirring up trouble from the other side, don't blame me for digging up your grave and whipping what's left of your corpse.”

I drifted in front of her.

Those eyes that once brimmed with love held nothing now but a resentment so sharp it burned.

Julia, do you really think I'd haunt you even in death?

Ten o'clock. Another scream.

Blood spattered the camera lens, and Julia jerked backward.

The kidnapper wiped the lens with a blood-soaked glove,

leaned in close, and let out a low, amused laugh.

“I'm not here to watch you perform.”

“Professor Baxter, if you won't talk about yourself, then let's talk about Sebastian Barnes.”

“How'd he get you to fake the autopsy—sleep with you?”

The words hit and Julia's breathing broke hard. Behind the gold-rimmed glasses, her eyes went lethal.

“How do you know that?!”

A single instant of exposure.

She caught herself almost immediately, smoothed her expression, and signaled Captain Bennett to pause.

She walked straight out of the interrogation room and knocked on the tech division's door.

“I can stall for another hour at most. The kidnapper's patience is running out.”

“Sebastian is still in their hands. You need to trace that IP address as fast as possible.”

She paused, hiding the tremor that had crept into her hands without her realizing.

“One more thing. The kidnapper is wearing a designer gown. Track it down. Only a handful were sold in the entire city.”

I drifted behind her, watching her leave the tech room and step into the corridor.

She stood alone and dug her nails hard into her palms.

She opened the phone's photo album, scrolled deep, and found my picture. She stared at it for a long time.

“Joel Sullivan, why won't you leave me alone?”

“It was just an accident. You're already dead—why can't you forgive him?”

“You always were petty……”

She tilted her head back.

Her body slid down the wall, all the strength gone from her legs, until she crumpled to the floor.

Inside the album was a folder named after him.

Tens of thousands of photos, every one taken by her own hand.

The one glowing on the screen showed me holding up a wedding ring, laughing.

In ten years, she had looked at it more times than she could count.

But she could never bring herself to look at the ring itself—the one they'd pried from my shredded flesh.

Julia couldn't let herself remember the moment she'd written those words: “No notable forensic leads found on the remains.”

She closed her eyes and walked back into the interrogation room.

On the other side of the wall, the tech team was rapidly narrowing the search, closing in on the kidnapper's location.

I followed close behind Julia, watching her feign grief, her jaw clenched so tight the muscles stood out.

I wanted to reach out and slap her across the face, again and again.

But my hand passed through nothing.

The clock read ten thirty.

After several rounds of back and forth, Julia's composure was fraying. She paced the room.

“What do you want me to say?!”

“If it'll bring Sebastian back alive, I'll die in his place!”

The kidnapper stared at her. Then the laugh came—loud, unrestrained.

“Professor Baxter, you know exactly what to say.”

He raised one hand and mimed shaking a reagent bottle.

Julia's body went rigid.

Of course she knew.

The reagent bottle—that was where every last sin began.

On the other side of the soundproof glass, someone who'd worked an acid case before couldn't hold back：

“Both sides share some blame here. Is it really necessary to keep hammering at Julia's role?”

“Seriously. She's probably just stalling. An hour and a half until the deadline and he kills the hostage!”

Inside the room, Julia's face had gone so pale it was almost translucent.

Captain Bennett frowned slightly and pressed her earpiece, relaying through the wire.

“Tech just traced the kidnapper's signal to……Professor Baxter's residence.”

“I've already sent a team to rescue Mr. Barnes. All you need to do is keep the kidnapper talking.”

Julia let out a hard, shaking breath of relief.

But the next instant her pupils shrank to pinpoints—because the kidnapper had just produced the real evidence, the kind that ends everything.

On camera, a bloodstained piece of shirt fabric appeared.

Striped. The stitching was clearly amateur, but neat.

“This belonged to Joel Sullivan. It was on him the night he died.”

“I've examined it. The killer's fingerprints and blood are still on it.”

The kidnapper coughed, a dry, exhausted sound, and took a sip of water before continuing.

“Professor Baxter. You hid this in your home. Did you really think I wouldn't find it?”

That was the first shirt Julia ever made for me by hand. An anniversary gift.

Ten years ago, I wore it to dinner and was murdered.

Julia said nothing. Slowly, she turned her face away.

The panic in her eyes was impossible to hide.

Her hands lay on the table, every finger trembling.

“Impossible.”

She murmured it, so faintly that only I, pressed against her back, could hear.

In the silence of the interrogation room her heartbeat hit like something detonating—beat after beat after beat, fast and savage, a sledgehammer cracking against her ribs.

A night from ten years ago flashed through Julia's mind. A rainstorm.

Sebastian, drenched in blood, coming to find her.

Lightning illuminating his features, half-dissolved by acid, like a helpless ghost.

“Professor Baxter, I killed someone……”

“Don't wait for him. Joel's not coming back……I didn't mean to, Professor……the pain in my face, it was too much.”

“Professor, I don't want to go to prison……please.”

Back then, she'd given in.

For the next half hour, Julia didn't move.

No matter how Captain Bennett urged her, she sat as though turned to stone, not saying a word.

I drifted overhead, watching her, my thoughts impossible to still.

The first time we met, I was wearing a striped shirt.

She was carrying a heavy anatomy textbook when she crashed into me. Before I could even speak,

Julia had already launched into a perfectly straight-faced explanation：“Blunt-force impact can cause contusions and subcutaneous bleeding. You should let me walk you to the infirmary.”

I only found out later that she'd engineered the whole thing—camped out in the library for a full week waiting for me, then tipped off a friend in the medical school. Make sure the injury sounds serious. Insist he needs someone with him for the follow-up.

Julia was never a romantic person.

Spending every day with the dead had made her quiet, hard to get close to. People called her the dissection fanatic.

But only I knew

that after anatomy lab we'd sneak off to the alley behind campus for offal hotpot.

She couldn't handle spice, but she'd order the hellfire broth without flinching.

“When you love someone, you want to do the same things they do.”

She could replicate my walk perfectly, every small habit. She knew the length and width of every bone in my body—had even commissioned a little plastic skeleton figure built to my exact proportions and clipped it to her backpack, fiddling with it every day.

The day I proposed, I was out in Westmere State for an academic conference.

And somewhere in that same region, a killer who only targeted young men was still on the loose.