A Perfect Crime by A. Yi

did you kill her?’
    ‘Water.’
    ‘We’ll give you water after you answer.’
    This was a stinking deal, it struck me. I still had my dignity after all.
    ‘Please continue,’ they said.
    But I turned my head and waited, without looking at them. They took the lid off the jar and were about to water me, when I raised my head up high.
    ‘We can convict you with the evidence, we don’t need your confession,’ the old guy said.
    ‘Then get to it.’
    He tapped his pen awkwardly and waved his hands.The other policeman gave me his notes.
    ‘No need,’ I said, and signed it.
    He told me I still had to read it, but I just wrote:
I hereby declare that I have read and confirm there are no mistakes.
    N ot long after, they took me back to the military academy apartments. The police had cordoned off the area, but that hadn’t stopped a crowd gathering. Wherever I went, they swarmed after me. I was an animal in a zoo. I looked out at them and smiled. This provoked a middle-aged man, who moved through the crowd holding up a stick as if to hit me, to beat me with the morality I had been missing all along. I struggled, wanting to hit him back. The others retreated. Only he stood firm.
    The trees had turned yellow.
    In the past, I never took any notice of the cycle of leaves growing and wilting. But now they were yellow. The last time I would see them turn yellow. My neighbour, Mr He, led the way, resolute but silent. I could almost see the dust rising beneath his feet. In the event of corners or stairs, he would extend his right hand as a signal to the rear. Once his duties as public security activist were completed, he hung around watching, following. As if they might consult him at any time for hisexpert opinion. But there was no need to trouble him with such matters.
    I went to the door of Auntie’s apartment and looked out at the sky. It was empty, peaceful in its deepest reaches. A death omen, I said to myself.
    The windows on both sides of my old room were sealed shut and the washing machine had been placed by the door. The tape had been removed and stuck to the wall. They pulled the light switch, gave me a plastic doll and knife and asked me to begin. But I didn’t know how.
    ‘Kill her,’ they said.
    My uniform didn’t have pockets, so I stuck the knife into my waistband. I held the model from behind, covered her nose and mouth. I stood still.
    ‘Keep going,’ they said.
    ‘She fought back.’
    ‘Move her yourself.’
    I swayed her in my arms, whispered in her ear, let go and pulled out the tape. I covered her mouth and then tore it away. I started screaming.
    They shrank back at first, then surrounded me.
    ‘That’s her screaming,’ I said.
    ‘That bit you can leave out.’
    ‘No, I can’t.’
    I started screaming again, quite the actor. I coveredher mouth, took the knife from my waist and jabbed it at her abdomen. Unfortunately the blade just slid, rather than piercing. But I kept stabbing her. I pushed her over to the window and drew back the curtain with the knife. I let go of the model again and began retching against the wall. I then crouched, scratched her face and held her down.
    At that moment everything felt blurry (like when the washerwoman stops what she’s doing and stares into space). A large shadow on the wall. Crazed blows, as if I was really stabbing her. They were replaying everything, the shadows, and I felt a twitching in the darkest recesses of my memory.
    I took her into my arms, tipped her updside down into the washing machine and said, ‘It was a switchblade, I seem to remember.’
    I thought they might ask me to show them some other locations in this pongy city, but they said there was no need. The policeman who’d fallen from the motorbike was lucky, he was doing fine now.
    T he next day we moved to a meeting room, which consisted of a red table reflecting the afternoon light. A female officer brewed some tea for me while the others set up a camera and opened their notebooks.