Criminal Psychology

Even the best TV show would become boring after watching it for over 12 hours, and continuing to watch it would make one irritable.

But since she was the one who asked for the TV, no matter how painful, she must watch till the end.

Shen Lian squirmed unhappily in her chair, while Lin Chen sat across from her, maintaining a pose of half-dressed light sleep, with no intention of talking to her at all.

“Consultant Lin, this is fatigue interrogation, which violates the United Nations Human Rights Convention,” she finally couldn’t help protesting.

Lin Chen half-opened his eyes. His dark and sleepy eyes stared at her, and his words were quite cheeky. “Miss Shen Lian, you should know that I nearly died of sepsis half a month ago, and in order to save you, I was injected with a drug that is very harmful to the nervous system, which has led to high levels of depression and even addiction symptoms. Despite this, I’m still here, accompanying you and talking to you, even though I’m sick. You should be grateful.”

“Then I should just die, so you don’t have to work so hard,” Shen Lian retorted irritably.

Lin Chen closed his eyes but spoke very lucidly. “Before the results come out, you’re not willing to die.”

Shen Lian didn’t know when Lin Chen started speaking so casually to her, but apart from his slow movements, Lin Chen himself didn’t seem to have any signs of depression. She stared at Lin Chen for a while and asked, “Are you upset? Do you want to talk about it to cheer me up?”

Lin Chen shook his head and turned his face to the other side, showing off his fair and fragile neckline, refusing to look at her.

“So, are you actually not confident about the voting results?” She leaned forward and asked, somewhat annoyed.

“You’ve been fretting over the same question so many times. It seems like you’re the one who’s not confident,” Lin Chen said. He straightened up with a self-control that Shen Lian could feel, opened the drawer, took out a file, and threw it on the table. “Since you want to talk so much, let’s talk about the time when you were molested.”

The abrupt change of topic left Shen Lian needing some time to wrap her head around it in order to face the document on the table.

It was an old file, and the name of the principal police officer was signed in the red box on the right bottom of the cover—Bian Yuan.

“Who do you want to talk about first? Chen Jianguo, Bian Yuan, or the old homeless man who saved you?”

Shen Lian knew that they must have thoroughly investigated her past, but when Lin Chen suddenly brought it up, she still found it inconceivable. “You really don’t care if you upset me.”

Lin Chen sat up straight, pointed to the TV, and said, “After all, that’s my biggest confidence.”

The program being replayed was an interview with a family member of one of the criminals. The mother of the murderer, Sun Zhen, was being interviewed. The woman should have been middle-aged, but her temples were gray, and she looked old and pitiful. She kept telling the reporter in front of the camera that her son had drunk too much and accidentally stabbed someone to death.

The judge had sentenced him to life imprisonment, which meant his crime wasn’t punishable by death. Moreover, her son had been very obedient during his imprisonment and would soon have a chance for his sentence to be reduced. The woman kneeled in front of the TV, weeping and begging everyone to give her son a chance.

Of course, the middle-aged woman omitted in her narration the history of Sun Zhen’s repeated violent assaults. In her mouth, Sun Zhen was just a little boy who made a mistake once.

Shen Lian snapped back to reality, looked at the file on the table, and had a vague sense of what Lin Chen was about to say.

“Are you satisfied with who you are now?” He asked her, but didn’t give her time to think and continued, “Overall, you’ve caused a lot of trouble, helped your comrades voice their opinions, and it seems you’re doing quite well. But since antisocial personalities are extremely selfish, I want to ask, setting aside the collective, are you satisfied with who you are now, proud and unregretful, feeling like you wouldn’t regret it even if you died right now?”

Stared at by Lin Chen’s cold gaze, Shen Lian found herself unable to move. She really wanted to find something to argue with, but at that moment, her mind inexplicably went blank.

She swallowed and, for a change, wanted Lin Chen to keep going so she wouldn’t have to think about this question.

But Lin Chen, being as sharp as he was, clearly knew how to seize every opportunity.

So he probably gave her about five minutes to think, which was so long that the program had started interviewing the family of the victim in the Sun Zhen case.

“I am very satisfied,” she said forcibly, with a tone of conviction.

Lin Chen nodded. “So, imagine for a moment that nothing happened back then. That man didn’t violate you, the old vagrant didn’t die, you as a girl whose personality differed from others, just stumbled and grew up; how would you evaluate such a you?”

Shen Lian narrowed her eyes, staring coldly at Lin Chen.

Lin Chen interrupted her before she could speak. “Your first reaction is to feel very lucky, isn’t it?” He paused and said, “What I mean is, you think that if nothing happened that night, it would have been the best, right?”

“But it happened.” Shen Lian licked her lips.

Lin Chen nodded. “So, you finally admit that this incident changed your life?” He leaned back in his chair and said seriously, “Just like Sun Zhen’s mother, who spoiled her son, thinking that the moment her son stabbed someone to death while drunk decided everything that followed.”

“Of course not.” Shen Lian looked at Lin Chen’s condescending face. “You see, this is where we fundamentally disagree. Even without this incident, my family, my genes, and my problematic mind would determine that I would inevitably be antisocial and that we would become enemies, Consultant Lin.”

“That’s just your personal view,” Lin Chen said lightly, as if those things were really not important.

Shen Lian laughed. She suddenly felt relieved that she even wanted to thank Lin Chen for his sharp questions that finally made her dare to face these things. “Admit it, Consultant Lin. Although you say it, in fact, born criminals in your society have only one way—a dead end.”

Lin Chen said seriously, “You’re wrong, Shen Lian. This is one of the wrong beliefs he instilled in you. In fact, people are experiencing different events every day, so choices are made every moment. As long as a person is alive, he has choices. Some choices are easy, some are difficult; some people are swayed by choices, some people really make choices.”

……

When Lu Xu was locking the door of the late-night snack bar, it was almost dawn. According to the instructions of the proprietress, he turned left, and the house with the light on not far away was the polling station.

Unlike what he had imagined, the polling station was neither too hot nor too cold, with an inexplicable sense of solemnity fitting the atmosphere of the early morning.

Across half a street, Lu Xu vaguely saw some sleepy journalists squatting at the location of the polling station, but no one had the energy to take pictures.

There were a few elderly people coming out of the polling station, and the only people who could get up and move at this point were the elderly. However, as he got closer, he discovered that those stooped figures he vaguely saw weren’t only early-voting elderly people. There was an old couple distributing flyers.

Lu Xu walked to the edge of the small flower bed at the door and was stopped.

The old woman with a small bouquet of flowers on her head handed him a flyer, but perhaps because he had a fierce face, she looked at him with a subconscious vigilance.

Lu Xu shrugged and walked away without paying too much attention. Under the light of the polling station, he glanced at the flyer.

It was an introduction to four criminals, which he had already seen a lot of on the TV in the shop today. But as he was about to put the flyer in his pocket, he realized that there was a letter written in blood on the back of the flyer.

The letter detailed how the usurer, Zhao Yi, had forced a desperate woman into a corner, eventually leading to her suicide.

The old woman’s crying voice came faintly from the wind. “Zhao Yi drove my granddaughter to death. I beg you, good people, that beast deserves his crime! My granddaughter was in debt to him because she wanted to treat her old grandmother. It should have been me who died, not my poor little granddaughter. I beg you! I beg you!”

The old woman knelt down as she said this, and the old men and women who had come to vote comforted her. The cries, the tragic accusations, and the comforting words were unsettling.

Lu Xu looked at the scene and suddenly remembered that his mother seemed to have knelt down in front of the police station in the same way.

The woman who failed to bribe with her body knelt in front of the police, begging the law enforcers to give her son another chance, but clearly, the strict law wouldn’t change because of a woman’s knees.

But today, it may change due to an old woman’s kneeling.

Lu Xu felt it was very gratifying, but also had a feeling of annoyance that he couldn’t describe. However, he was here for revenge today, so he unhesitatingly chose to walk straight into the polling station, and he must not turn back.

The time was still early, and not many people were in line at the polling station. There was a small, deep-blue tent partitioned off with a rainproof cloth in the farthest area. After lifting the curtain to go in and vote, no one would know what that person chose.

Lu Xu presented his ID to the staff. After it was checked and approved, the staff handed him a simple ballot, with a question he could almost recite backwards.

—I will vote in favor of executing four criminals who were not assigned capital punishment to save more people.

A. Yes
B. No

Lu Xu looks at the government worker next to him, at the old man coming out from behind the curtain, and then back down at the multiple-choice question on the ballot. He felt a sense of reality and absurdity he had never experienced before.

The staff member lightly pushed his shoulder, indicating that he could go in and vote.

He walked into the small tent, dumbfounded, like a marionette.

It was a tiny space that could only accommodate one person standing. The lighting was dim, which felt even more oppressive for someone as fat as him. In front of him was a surveillance camera, a simple pencil on the table, and a locked voting box. He peeked into the voting box, only seeing layers of white paper.

Lu Xu placed the ballot on the table, staring at the blunt 2B pencil, still feeling incredulous. Just by picking up the pencil, he could indirectly decide Qian Bao’s life and death?

He felt there was no reason not to fill in “Yes”, but every time he reached for the pencil, it felt as heavy as a thousand pounds. He realized he didn’t even have the courage to pick it up.

From afar, the faint crying of an old lady made this cramped space even quieter. This might be the first time in Lu Xu’s life that he felt the world was so heavy yet so serene. The quietness made him question: This choice should be a no-brainer, so why can’t he choose “Yes”?

The light was still on, the pencil was still there, no one was rushing him. Time flowed meaninglessly. Gradually, Lu Xu seemed to see his dazed life. He saw the clueless boy standing at the dock facing the police, saw himself being pinned down by the police over and over again, saw the judge speaking time and again, the jail door closing time and again. And then, all these complicated images disappear, freezing at the simplest moment.

A young prison guard patted his shoulder and told him, “Be good and never come back again.”

It was only in such quiet moments that he finally understood the meaning of this phrase he had heard so often. This wasn’t some automated farewell, nor false advice, but a sincere hope.

“Reform and be a good person.”

This was probably the fairest chance the world gave to every criminal who didn’t deserve to die. It was also the maximum goodwill formed when all viewpoints converged. He had enjoyed such forgiveness many times before, but at that time, he didn’t think he still had a chance.

Looking at the paper on the table, Lu Xu felt he didn’t need to think any more.

When he left the polling station, Lu Xu started to cry.

The old man handing out leaflets in the morning light was hunched over and unsteady on his feet.In the distance was a weak sunrise. He raised his head, looking at the hazy daylight, and wished he could tell his 17-year-old self—Don’t go to the docks for 50 yuan, you fool.