— Even the Executioner Was Once a Victim
There was no sun in the village.
Light came from somewhere behind the clouds—faint, gray, as if someone had pulled back a dusty curtain through layers of fog.
All of Red Flag Village was frozen in that pale light, as though every wall and every tree had been drained of time. What remained was only waiting—and repetition.
Professor Les stood at the entrance of an abandoned granary, facing a virtual scroll that slowly unfolded before him.
Archive ID: 0001-A
Title: "Village Informant List"
Status: Semantic Index Cleared
Remaining Data: Blank fields, faint handwriting smudges, residual mental wave patterns.
He reached out, brushing his fingertips across the scroll.
The names appeared faint, their ink broken and trailing.
Each one ended with a red "×"—a symbol marking identities that once existed, but were since erased from the system.
SYSTEM PROMPT:
"This document was generated the night before the struggle session.
Compiled by the Tribunal Team through 'intense discussion.'
80% of the names were submitted through mutual accusations by villagers."
Les's finger paused on the name of a woman called "Aunt Wang."
—She had reported her son-in-law, claiming he was "landlord residue" who muttered in his sleep about running away.
—She reported her neighbor for "failing to attend three criticism meetings."
—She even reported her youngest son for "eavesdropping on a radio broadcast—content unclear."
Les closed his eyes.
It wasn't anger.
It was sorrow—sorrow touched with grief.
A deep and shattering recognition of why people make such choices.
---
He walked back into the village.
That morning, Red Flag Village seemed just as quiet as the night before.
But beneath the silence, something had begun to stir.
Men stood in front of their houses, swinging hoes at invisible enemies—striking scarecrows suspended in mid-air.
Women simmered thick, murky stews over their stoves, the air heavy with a sharp stench.
Children played in the mud—not "Catch the Eagle" anymore, but a new game: "Judge Catches Landlord."
They crafted paper hats from mud. Whoever wore one became the target of stones.
It was all—rehearsal.
Rehearsing what?
Rehearsing how to hate.
---
"Do you know why they can't see us?"
Doudou appeared beside Les again, his voice still soft, like wind slipping through the cracks of a dream.
"Because they don't want to."
Les turned toward him.
In the boy's eyes, there was no light—just a dull, endless gray.
"They know what happened," Doudou said. "They just chose not to remember."
He tugged on Les's coat and pointed toward a slope at the village's edge.
"They'll go there… to decide who dies first."
---
They climbed to the top of the hill, where the ruins of an old ancestral shrine stood.
Its columns were cracked, the stone lions worn and faceless.
Inside, several men in black vests—village officials by the look of them—sat in a circle, conducting a meeting.
At the front stood a blackboard with fresh writing:
"Loyalty Grading Assessment: Today's task—each member must submit one 'suspect name' with justification. All reports subject to multi-level verification."
Piles of paper slips littered the table—anonymous accusations, each more trivial than the last.
An older official read them aloud in turn:
—"Li Lao-wu skipped three political study sessions. Heard he's hiding silver coins. Possible hidden capitalist."
—"Aunt Wu's house still has ancestral tablets. Feudal remnants."
—"That boy from the east end didn't bow when the Revolutionary Guard passed. Problematic attitude."
They read, tallied scores, and recorded everything with mechanical ease.
Their faces bore no shame—only the casual expression of daily routine.
Like feeding pigs. Or turning soil.
Les stood at the shrine entrance and noticed a new line appearing beneath the blackboard:
"Reporting is political awareness. Silence is class betrayal."
The words glowed red—not handwritten, but embedded by the system as a behavioral directive module.
Just as he stepped forward to enter, the scene warped.
The air thickened.
Light twisted.
And ash-gray rain began to fall around the shrine—not water, but fine flakes, like burned scraps of confession paper drifting from the sky.
Within the ash, faces fluttered down—those of the people who had vanished after being reported.
They opened their mouths, but no sound came.
Their eyes were hollow, yet fixed directly on Les.
A system prompt echoed again:
"You have entered [Collective Subconscious: Fear Fragment].
Would you like to extract authentic memory?"
Les hesitated—then said quietly, "Yes."
And in the next moment, he saw it:
A lynching—so real, even the blood had weight.
---
It was a "night interrogation."
Three "suspects" had been dragged to a ruined temple behind the village.
The only light came from torches.
No paperwork, no formal questioning—only a ring of people surrounding them, each one stepping forward to "accuse."
Then came fists.
Then bamboo poles.
Then clubs and sticks.
Blood splattered across the floor, rising in clouds of steam.
But what shook Les the most—wasn't the violence.
It was their faces.
—They were crying as they struck, whispering, "We don't want to…"
—Their hands trembled as they gripped the sticks, while others behind them pushed: "Harder."
—There was no hatred in their eyes—only the desperate will to survive.
They weren't mobs.
They were victims—turned executioners by the system.
At that moment, the illusion stopped simulating.
It began recording.
One of the three "suspects" was Doudou's father.
The next morning, Doudou had his first bowl of fresh rice.
Les clenched his fists and tore himself from the vision.
He stood at the village entrance, facing the wooden scaffold where a new red flag was raised each day.
For the first time, he spoke aloud:
"You're not cleansing the past.
You're manufacturing silence."
His voice sliced through the still air like a crack in glass—triggering something deep in the system.
The entire village froze.
Time stopped.
Meta-System Alert:
"Historical loop destabilizing.
Initiate forced memory lockdown?"
Les shook his head.
Coldly, he said:
"No. Let them remember."
And just as he spoke, a distant gong rang out from the meeting hall.
The struggle session had officially begun.
Les knew:
The real horror was still to come.