NP Chapter 3

The Altered Musical Score

The morning of the rainy season was so humid it felt like you could wring water out of the air. Liang Rui stood in the walk-in closet, her fingertips gliding over a row of neatly ironed white shirts. Finally, she chose one made of linen—Ling Yu had secretly stuffed it into her closet last week, saying, “Wearing this in the summer won’t make you look like a walking iceberg.”

Her phone vibrated on the vanity. A message from her assistant: “President Liang, the remittance records from Swiss Bank have been checked. There is indeed a problem with that transaction from 2009.”

Liang Rui’s fingernails tapped out a string of passwords on the screen. As the encrypted file unfolded, her gaze froze on a line of numbers—December 24, 2009, Su Wen’s account received a transfer of 500,000, and the remitter was shockingly listed as “Ling Yu.”

Ling Yu? Impossible. She was only seven years old that year.

“Sister R!” Ling Yu’s voice crashed in with the knocking on the door, “Have you seen my school uniform shirt?”

Liang Rui quickly locked the screen: “In the dryer.”

The door was thrown open. Ling Yu barged in with messy hair, wearing a T-shirt that was obviously a size too big—it was Liang Rui’s, the hem hanging down to the middle of her thighs, and there was toothpaste stain on her collarbone. The girl’s eyes swept over the linen shirt on Liang Rui, and her eyes suddenly lit up: “Wow! You finally wore it!”

“Get out.” Liang Rui gripped her phone tightly.

“You’re such a stingy person.” Ling Yu made a face, but suddenly moved closer, “Huh? Are you investigating Mom’s affairs?” Her gaze landed on the phone screen, where a new message had just popped up: “Confirmed the signature from 2009 is forged.”

Liang Rui clasped the phone behind her back. The two were close enough to count each other’s eyelashes, and Ling Yu’s breath, carrying the scent of mint toothpaste, brushed against her face. This distance made the hairs on the back of Liang Rui’s neck stand up, but she did not retreat.

“Is it the car accident investigation?” Ling Yu asked softly, “Didn’t the police say the case was closed?”

Liang Rui’s Adam’s apple bobbed. There were too many suspicious points about that “accident” three months ago: the cut brake lines, the deleted call records in Su Wen’s phone, and this forged remittance slip… But at this moment, Ling Yu’s eyes were too bright, like the surface of a lake before a storm, reflecting an uneasy light.

“Just a routine financial audit.” Liang Rui took off her glasses and wiped them, “The shirt will get wrinkled.”

Ling Yu pursed her lips and turned around. The collar of the T-shirt slipped to one side, revealing a small musical note tattoo on her shoulder blade. Liang Rui’s pupils shrank suddenly—it wasn’t an ordinary musical note, but a precise E-flat triplet, exactly the same as the tattoo under Su Wen’s collarbone.

“When did you get that tattoo?” Liang Rui’s voice was as taut as a string.

“I went with a classmate last week.” Ling Yu shrugged carelessly, “It hurt like hell, but—”

“Wash it off.”

The air instantly froze. Ling Yu slowly turned around, the smile fading from her face: “Why should I?”

“Underage tattoos violate school rules.”

“Mom had one too! She—”

“That’s why she died so young!” The words slipped out before Liang Rui could stop them. Ling Yu’s face turned white, as if she had been slapped.

Raindrops began to patter against the window. Liang Rui watched the girl’s back as she stormed out, her fist slamming hard against the closet. In the mirror, the woman’s hair was disheveled, and the collar of her linen shirt was torn open, revealing the faint scar below her collarbone, shaped like half a musical note.

The rain continued until evening. When Liang Rui called Ling Yu for the third time, the call went straight to voicemail. Surveillance showed that the girl had rushed out of the residential complex that morning, with only her phone and schoolbag.

“Check her credit card spending records.” Liang Rui said to her assistant on the phone, raindrops dripping onto her desk from her hair. The executives in the conference room looked at each other—the president had interrupted the quarterly financial meeting just to find a truant girl?

“President Liang…” The assistant’s voice was hesitant, “Miss Ling’s location is at Rose Garden Cemetery.”

The rain blurred the car window. Liang Rui ran three red lights, and the Maserati’s tires splashed water half a meter high at the entrance of the cemetery. She didn’t bring an umbrella, and she stepped through the cemetery area with one foot deep and one foot shallow in her high heels, and her expensive lambskin-bottomed shoes were quickly soaked with mud.

In front of Su Wen’s tombstone, Ling Yu curled into a ball, her school uniform jacket wrapped around her body, soaked. She was holding something in her arms, shivering slightly in the rain.

“You’re here.” She said without raising her head, her voice hoarse.

Liang Rui’s Gi handbag fell into the mud. She squatted down and found that Ling Yu was holding the old Bayer Piano Primer—the first sheet music Su Wen had bought for Ling Yu, with the date written on the title page by the mother and daughter together.

“My fifth birthday present.” Ling Yu opened the inside page, and the rain had already blurred the handwriting, “Mom said… you helped her pick it out.”

Liang Rui’s fingertips trembled slightly. She remembered that afternoon, in the music room of the Saint Sound Conservatory of Music, Su Wen hugged the newly published sheet music and spun around: “Rui Rui, look! This version has the clearest fingering annotations, perfect for Yu Yu’s enlightenment…”

The rain suddenly subsided. Liang Rui looked up and found that Ling Yu had somehow spread her coat open, like a small tent over the tops of their heads. Water droplets hung on the girl’s eyelashes, refracting a strange light in the twilight.

“I’m sorry.” They said at the same time.

Ling Yu chuckled, her nose still red, “Copycat.” She opened the sheet music to page 17, “Look here, the notes Mom wrote.”

On the yellowed pages, Su Wen’s delicate handwriting was noted: “Fingering is wrong here, play according to Rui Rui’s version.” Liang Rui’s breath caught—this was a passage from Chopin’s Etude “Farewell,” and she had indeed discovered a problem with the publisher’s fingering back then.

“So you see…” Ling Yu’s voice was as light as a sigh, “You’ve always been there.”

Liang Rui’s glasses were covered with water vapor. She took off her glasses and suddenly felt the girl’s warm fingers caress her collarbone—the musical note-shaped scar.

“What’s this?” Ling Yu asked.

The sound of the rain suddenly faded away. Liang Rui remembered the blinding operating lights in the medical school laboratory when she was eighteen, and Su Wen’s trembling hand holding the tattoo needle: “Rui Rui, you’re crazy! You have congenital heart disease, why are you doing this kind of surgery…”

“It’s a scar.” Liang Rui heard herself say, “In college… a stupid memento.”

Ling Yu’s eyes were amazingly bright in the twilight. She suddenly moved closer, her lips gently touching the scar: “Then I won’t wash off my tattoo either.”

Liang Rui’s whole body stiffened. The girl’s lips were like a butterfly flitting past, but they ignited a string of sparks on her skin. A dangerous emotion swelled in her chest, and she stood up abruptly: “Let’s go home.”

In the car on the way back, Ling Yu fell asleep holding the sheet music, her head tilting little by little towards the driver’s seat. Liang Rui turned on the heater and quietly moved the girl’s head to her shoulder. In the rearview mirror, she saw the scar on her collarbone glowing an unnatural red.

In the study at midnight, Liang Rui worked in front of three monitors. On the left was the company’s financial report, in the middle was the car accident investigation report, and on the right… She clicked on an encrypted folder, which contained all the emails Su Wen had sent her in the three months before her death.

“Rui Rui, that money really wasn’t borrowed by me.”

“Someone is imitating my signature.”

“I feel like I’m being followed…”

The latest decrypted email attachment was a blurry surveillance video. Liang Rui repeatedly played the scene: Su Wen was in front of the ATM machine when she suddenly turned her head halfway through the operation, looking at something off-camera in horror. A figure wearing a baseball cap flashed by, and then the picture turned into static.

“Not asleep yet?” Ling Yu’s voice came from the door. She was hugging a pillow, barefoot on the carpet, and one of the buttons on her pajamas was buttoned wrong.

Liang Rui quickly switched screens: “Soon.”

“Liar.” Ling Yu sneaked in, curiously looking around, “Wow, this place is like an FBI command center…” Her gaze suddenly stopped at a corner, “Is that… Mom’s piano?”

Liang Rui’s heart skipped a beat. In the dark corner of the study, the long-sealed white grand piano was covered with a dust cloth, revealing only a corner of gilded carvings—it was the prize Su Wen had won at an international award, the piano that Ling Yu had played since she was a child.

“After the car accident… I brought it back from the scene.” Liang Rui said softly, “I just never found the right time…”

Ling Yu had already lifted the dust cloth. The piano’s lacquer surface was as good as new, except for a distinct scratch on the right side. The girl’s fingertips stroked the scratch and suddenly froze: “This wasn’t caused by the car accident.”

Liang Rui walked closer to examine it. The shape of the scratch was strange, as if it had been deliberately scratched by a sharp object. Even stranger, the scratch ran right through a line of small characters engraved on the inside of the piano board—”To SW, may the music always be with you. LY 2009.”

“LY…” Ling Yu frowned, “Not me, I was only seven years old in 2009.”

Liang Rui’s blood instantly froze. Of course she knew who LY was—Lin Ye, Su Wen’s ex-husband, Ling Yu’s biological father, the man who had been sentenced for domestic violence when they were seniors in college. Shortly after he was released from prison in 2009, that suspicious remittance appeared in Su Wen’s account.

“Maybe it was the tuner.” Liang Rui calmly pulled back the dust cloth, “Go to sleep, tomorrow…”

“You’re lying to me again.” Ling Yu looked directly into her eyes, “There are red paint chips in this scratch… the same as on Mom’s car.”

The rain outside the window grew heavier again. Liang Rui looked at the stubborn girl in front of her and suddenly realized that Ling Yu was no longer a child—she had inherited Su Wen’s keenness, and she had also inherited her own stubbornness. Continuing to hide the truth might be the real harm.

“Listen.” Liang Rui took a deep breath, “I need you to remember something. Before Mom passed away, did she ever mention seeing anyone? Or… did she receive any strange gifts?”

Ling Yu tilted her head to think, and suddenly her eyes widened: “Yes! A music box, with no name.” She ran back to her room and returned a moment later with a delicate little box, “Mom told me to keep it safe, saying it was important…”

The moment the music box was opened, the melody of “Für Elise” flowed out. Liang Rui immediately noticed something was wrong—the third measure had been deliberately changed, the original E lowered by a half step. When the song was halfway through, a hidden compartment at the bottom suddenly popped open, revealing a micro storage card.

The process of the computer reading the storage card felt like a century. Finally, a scanned document appeared on the screen—an IOU from 2009, with the borrower’s name signed as “Ling Ye,” but the guarantor’s signature was shockingly Su Wen’s forged signature. At the end of the document, written in red pen, was: “Debt cleared, interest paid with life.”

Ling Yu’s hand tightly gripped Liang Rui’s sleeve: “So the car accident was…”

The alarm suddenly pierced the night sky. Liang Rui’s phone popped up with a security system alert: “Detected the window on the 3rd floor has been breached.” In the surveillance footage, a figure wearing a baseball cap was flashing past the study window.

“Get down!” Liang Rui pulled Ling Yu down to protect her. Almost at the same time, the study’s floor-to-ceiling window exploded, and a cold wind wrapped in broken glass howled in. The dust cloth was blown away, and the white piano gleamed with a cold luster in the moonlight, the scratch looking like a hideous wound.

Ling Yu was trembling in Liang Rui’s arms, but she was clutching the music box tightly. As the sound of sirens grew closer, she suddenly raised her face, tears sparkling in the moonlight: “You’ll always protect me, won’t you?”

Liang Rui didn’t answer. She just hugged the girl tighter, her fingers unconsciously stroking the musical note scar. When she was eighteen, Su Wen asked her why she endured the excruciating pain to get this tattoo, and she said it was a “spell to seal away pain.” Now the spell was failing, and the warmth in her arms was heartbreakingly real.