The midsummer heat clung to the air like damp cloth, heavy and suffocating, as eighteen-year-old Bruce Chen stepped off the prison transport. Sunlight glared off the armored van, painting the world in a harsh, unforgiving glare. Iron cuffs bit into his wrists and ankles, the cold metal gnawing at his skin, rattling with every reluctant shuffle. Guards, faces set like stone, urged him forward through the rust-flecked gates of Harbor City Prison, a fortress of sorrow looming against the sky, its walls stained by decades of despair.
One week earlier, at the graduation banquet, laughter and music had filled the air, swirling around Bruce like a distant memory. His classmates, faces flushed with excitement and mischief, had egged him on: "Go confess, she's leaving tomorrow!" With cheeks burning and hands trembling, Bruce finally stood before Lily, the campus beauty, her smile radiant, her eyes unknowable, a girl he had cherished in silence for three long years. The words tumbled from his lips, fragile and desperate, a confession laid bare beneath the glittering lights.
Lily's rejection came swift and merciless, each word slicing through Bruce's hope like a knife disguised as a smile. Her laughter, light and cold, echoed in his ears, leaving him exposed and raw.
Humiliated, Bruce staggered to the drinks table, his heart pounding with shame. He drowned his sorrow in spirits, glass after glass, the burn of cheap liquor numbing his senses as the banquet hall spun around him. Laughter faded into a blur, and darkness folded over him like a shroud.
Dawn's first light dragged him from stupor, harsh and unyielding. Bruce lay sprawled on a hotel bed, the sharp stench of stale alcohol clinging to his clothes. Beside him, Lily's body was splayed, naked and battered, her skin mottled with bruises like storm clouds against pale marble. Her lifeless eyes stared at the ceiling, wide and glassy, as if searching for answers that would never come. A red ligature mark circled her throat, a cruel necklace of violence.
Panic crushed the air from Bruce's lungs. His hands shook as he tried to piece together the night before, but memory eluded him. Within the hour, police burst in, their voices harsh and accusatory. Two hotel employees and three classmates claimed they had seen a drunken Bruce drag Lily upstairs. Bruce protested, pleaded that he remembered nothing, but their words sharp and certain, drowned him out. A perfunctory autopsy, a rushed trial, and in less than a week, the verdict was delivered: thirty-five years for rape and attempted murder. The court never bothered to ask why a penniless student had booked the city's most expensive suite.
At the prison gate, transfer day turned the entrance into a stage of grief and fury. The air shimmered with heat and anguish.
On one side, Lily's relatives, draped in funeral white, wailed for retribution, their cries piercing the morning like sirens of sorrow.
On the other, Bruce's parents knelt on the blistering asphalt, their faces streaked with sweat and tears. In trembling hands, they held a cardboard placard, its message scrawled in their own blood, "INNOCENT. UNJUST. WRONGED." a desperate plea for mercy and truth.
When the armored van braked, both families surged forward, grief and rage colliding in a storm of fists and curses. Guards with batons struggled to pry them apart, their shouts lost in the chaos. Amid the turmoil, Bruce's father, Jin Chen, blood streaming from a scalp wound, still roared after the departing vehicle:"Son, don't be afraid! We know you're innocent! I'll clear your name even if it costs my life!"
Tears blurred Bruce's final glimpse of daylight, the world dissolving into a haze of heartbreak and injustice.