Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 333: You Are Wrong

Chapter 333: You Are Wrong

*Trigger Warnings: Suicide*

I followed behind Bai Long Qiang as he made a beeline for where he wanted to go.

We crossed bridges into different buildings, each one decorated with an official picture of the Leader at every entrance. There were pictures on the walls of other bases and parts of the country, as well as men who I could only assume were commanding officers based on their uniforms.

"Hey," I called out to him, and he continued forward. "Isn’t that...?"

He looked over his shoulder at the picture I had stopped in front of. If it wasn’t for the uniform, I would have thought that it was Bai Long Qiang.

"My grandfather," snapped the man, clearly not as interested in going down memory lane as I was.

But I was utterly lost in a maze of buildings; I needed to try and orient myself in some way, and the pictures were the best way to do it.

"Okay then," I grunted as I continued to follow behind him.

We had to be in the heart of this base. It felt like we had been walking for hours up and downstairs, and I was tired.

Finally, he stopped at one of the doors in the middle of the hallway.

It was closed, one of the few I had come across to be closed, and Bai Long Qinag was trembling.

"This is my father’s office," he grunted just as I saw the nameplate beside the door.

"I see," I replied, not sure what else he wanted from me.

"I yelled at him the last time I was in there," continued Bai Long Qiang as he continued to stare at the wooden door. "I think it was about that training exercise that he had sent us on. I don’t honestly remember. But I do know that I stormed off."

I stood silently beside him, offering my support but not knowing what to actually say.

"I assumed I would be back in a week and have a family dinner. The argument completely forgotten. The Bai men have a temper; we all knew that, so no one really took the fights seriously. But I should have told him goodbye at the very least... I wish I told him that I loved him and I was proud to be his son. I wish I told him that I wanted to be a fraction of the man that he was."

Bai Long Qiang stopped speaking, and I tilted my head to the side to see his face.

There were tears flowing down his cheeks as he silently cried. His body didn’t move an inch. His breathing never changed, and unless I was looking at him, I would have no idea that he was even crying.

I opened my mouth but then quickly shut it. I wasn’t going to offer empty words, and since I had no idea what to say, I would just not say anything at all.

He reached forward and placed his hand on the chrome knob, turning it slowly.

There was a slight click, and the door was opened.

"Not locked," he said, staring down at the knob in his hand. "Dad always locked the door whenever he left."

I nodded my head.

Given all of the dead we had to walk around, I couldn’t see him staying in his office, letting the massacre occur without him trying to intervene. I might not have liked the man most of the time, but he was military through and through. He wouldn’t have sat back and just let it happen.

Pushing the door all the way open, we were confronted with a wall of rot.

Someone had died in here.

Bai Long Qiang let out a low whimper, and I turned to look at the rest of the room.

Front and center stood a massive desk. It looked to be a cherry wood with ornate scrollwork over the front of it.

But on top was a partially decomposed corpse. With the door shut and no airflow, it made sense that there was still enough to the body to easily identify him. Even if he wasn’t wearing his uniform.

There was a thud beside me, and I took my attention away from the corpse to look at the man who had just fallen to his knees.

Letting out a low keening sound, he started to rock back and forth as his head hung down.

"How?" he murmured over and over again. "How did this happen?"

Walking over to the body, I finally saw a gun in his right hand and what was probably brain splatter against the wall to the left.

"He killed himself," I said softly, studying the body. The entrance wound looked to be a bit darker, letting me know that he probably placed the gun right to his head before he pulled the trigger.

There was discoloration all over his body from the decomposition; his lower body would be much darker as all the blood settled to his legs and waist.

"No, not possible; Dad would have never killed himself. Someone must have killed him and then made it look like a suicide. That is the only reasonable explanation," hissed Bai Long Qiang, coming to his feet.

I nodded my head, letting him vent his emotions. I wanted to throw it back in his face that at least when he found out his dad was dead, he had loved ones around him, unlike me. But I knew that I couldn’t compare the situations.

So, I bit my tongue.

"You are wrong," he hissed again, a wild look on his face as he swung his attention around to me. "I knew you didn’t like him, but that isn’t a reason to pretend that this is anything but a murder."

Once again, I just nodded my head and looked back down at the desk. No matter what I said, it wouldn’t come out right. So there was really no point in saying anything.

On the corner of his desk, away from the body, lay a yellow envelope with Bai Long Qiang’s name neatly written on it.

"I think he left you a letter," I said softly, pointing to the envelope.

"It’s probably telling me who killed him. He would have known," he answered, practically jumping on the paper.

I just nodded my head as he tore it open and started reading the last words from his father.