Chapter 8
Screams filled the room as the students were scared out of their minds, screaming at the sight of Joey who had been ‘resurrected‘.
The Journalists had varied expressions, but they simultaneously reached for their cameras and snapped pictures, as if coming to an unspoken consensus.
This was a big scoop, headline–worthy, even! Captain Pierce, the man who had been given a three–day memorial as a martyr, was alive!
The professor was the first to react, grabbing Joey and demanding an explanation.
“I don’t know anything!” Now that the ruse was up, Joey had no choice but to lie through his teeth. “I woke up to myself being dissected, so I’m the one who needs answers here!”
“Was it a case of suspended animation?”
The professor wiped the sweat off his forehead.
In all his years of practice, he’d encountered suspended animation a few times, so it wasn’t completely unheard of.
“Y–Yes! I’m sure that was it!” Joey quickly nodded, being given a simple out instead of admitting to faking his death in front of so many people.
The professor pulled up Joey’s death certificate in response, and said, “Tell Doctor Sloan to come see me at once.”
Winnie’s legs had already turned to jelly, but she had no choice but to force herself to walk into the room. “Are you the one who certified his death?” The professor asked pointedly. “You examined him and declared death due to organ failure. If it were suspended animation, his organs wouldn’t have failed at all!
Winnie stuttered, uhm–ed and ah–ed, but couldn’t utter a full sentence.
Joey had suffered nothing but superficial injuries, after all, and the whole thing was a ruse to make me grateful for a sacrifice he didn’t make. That was why she declared that his organs had failed during her examination.
“It… It was indeed suspended animation…” She stuttered. “I–I accidentally misdiagnosed his condition.”
“It’s fine, I won’t press any charges for it!” Joey said, trying to cover for her. “It was just a minor medical incident, and she didn’t do it on purpose.”
The professor’s gaze flitted between the two of them, before he relented. “If that’s the case, then let’s
leave it at that.”
Joey was over the moon with joy, thinking that his lies remained unexposed.
“Now come over here and apologize to Winnie!” Joey barked at me as if I was his slave. “If it weren’t because of your attitude, she wouldn’t have given me the wrong diagnosis!”
Clearly, he still thought I was the old, compliant Nina that I always was. Even when Winnie was the one at
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fault, his very first instinct was to make me take the fall.
“No, you’re mistaken,” I sneered. “I don’t think she’s made a mistake at all.”
“W–What do you mean?” Joey asked, visibly panicked.
In response, I only waved the memory card in my hand. “Make sure to cover up your loopholes when you lie next time, alright?”
After that, I found myself a laptop and played the videos I took of him during the wake period right then and there.
In the videos, Joey grumbled under his breath about how cold the coffin was, all while being wrapped in a warm blanket, fed food by his parents, and even given affection by Winnie, who had snuck in while no one was there.
The scene was disgraceful, to say the least.
“You set me up?” Joey asked incredulously.
He’d endured lying there in the coffin for three days straight because he could see the light at the end of the road, that his dreams of living a carefree life abroad were going to be a reality.
He thought his plan was flawless, but I’d recorded it all and broadcast it for everyone to see.
“Why can’t I scheme against you when you did it to me first?” I said, laughing at the top of my lungs.
The journalist immediately swarmed Joey like sharks hungry for prey.
“Captain Pierce, why did you fake your death? What was your motive?”
“In the video, you mentioned having your wife bear you and Doctor Sloan’s baby… Is there something more between the two of you?”
“Were you having an affair?!”
“How could you commit arson when you’re the captain of the fire department? Did you ever consider that the entire building might have burned down because of you?!”
