Three days later, two people came down from the commune.

One was Secretary Wu from the commune Women's Federation-a short woman in her fifties with an air of authority honed by years of mediating disputes at all levels. She carried a cloth bag stamped with red characters instead of a purse-the kind issued for attending a county conference. The bag was new, but she had already filled it to bulging with documents.

The other was Officer Xu from the commune police station, a man of about thirty, with a crew cut and a sunburned neck. He had a notebook in his hand, and whenever he heard something that struck him, he would suck in a breath through his teeth and write it down.

They sat in the office at the school. The office was small, only the width of a single room. The desk was covered with students' notebooks, a few pieces of chalk, and a half-empty jar of paste. The windows were high, propped open with wooden sticks, admitting a sky like a washed-out blue cloth.

Chen Xiulan sat facing them, both hands resting on her knees. Her gauze had been replaced with a proper square bandage, white, standing out sharply against her dark skin. She had put on her best clothes-a peacock-blue printed blouse, a black skirt, shiny leather shoes-sitting upright, like a student reporting for duty.

"Teacher Chen, please describe what happened that night in detail." Secretary Wu sat across from her, notepad open, her gaze fixed on Chen Xiulan's face, watching her expression, eye movements, and the rhythm of her breathing.

"I was heading to the wheat field-to check when it would be ready for harvest-"

"What time?"

"About eight. It was just getting dark."

"Did you see anyone on the way?"

"No."

Secretary Wu paused her pen and glanced at the notebook. She had already interviewed six people before coming to see Chen Xiulan. Their accounts were largely the same, but there was one detail that didn't fit: all six people said that between seven and eight that evening, Liu Mancang had been drinking with a few laborers by the threshing ground. He had downed almost a pound of cheap spirits. By the time he stumbled toward home, it was already past eight. The distance from the threshing ground to his house was about a quarter mile, taking ten minutes on foot. If Chen Xiulan encountered Liu Mancang in the wheat field at eight, he would have needed to change direction halfway through his drunken stupor and run back south. But when asked where he was, Liu Mancang said he blacked out and couldn't remember anything.

"Go on."

"He... grabbed me from behind and threw me down. I screamed. No one heard." Chen Xiulan's voice was very low, very controlled. Each word seemed to have been weighed on a scale before she let it out.

"You said you grabbed a rock and hit him. The wound on his head-was that from the rock?"

"I don't know. I was terrified. I just grabbed something random and swung."

Secretary Wu looked at her again, this time a beat longer. The answer was too neat. Like a rehearsed script. But she couldn't say that to the woman before her-a woman who might have been violated, her testimony imperfect but the "evidence" plain to see. If she pressed too hard, she would be seen as heartless. If she didn't press enough, she would miss the truth.

Officer Xu spoke up: "Teacher Chen, we found a pair of plastic sandals at the bottom of the pond near your wheat field."

Chen Xiulan's hands clenched on her knees. But she controlled it. She only flexed her fingers slightly, then relaxed them. The motion was so tiny that anyone who wasn't watching closely would have missed it.

"When I was running away, my sandal strap broke and fell off. I don't know exactly where it fell."

"But the sandals we found were a pair, stacked together. Not separated. If the strap broke while you were running, the two sandals should have been left in different places. How did they end up stacked together in the pond?"

"I don't know." Chen Xiulan looked up, meeting Officer Xu's eyes directly. Her gaze was pure, with no dodging-the expression of someone who genuinely didn't understand the question. "Maybe Liu Mancang threw them after me?"

Officer Xu stopped writing. He looked at her. The woman's eyes were clear, the corners of her mouth carrying a faint trace of grievance. But the angle at which she answered the question was precisely calibrated-to deflect without explaining. He had dealt with cases at the commune for seven years. He had seen that look before. In people who were lying. And also in people who were telling the truth with some details they couldn't share. The difference between the two was so fine that even he couldn't always tell them apart.