I'm Benjamin Hale, a forty-six-year-old mystery novelist. Been obsessed with detective stories since childhood, I eventually turned that passion into a career. Though I studied biotechnology in college, I now make a living through writing—though that field of study hasn't been entirely left behind. At the very least, it still plays a role in another one of my interests.

Aside from writing, my greatest hobby is keeping reptiles. Turtles, frogs, lizards—these cold-blooded creatures, each with their own unique form, fascinate me. At home, I've set aside an entire room to create a massive terrarium, carefully designed to mimic a tropical rainforest environment, ensuring they have the most natural habitat possible.

Caroline, my wife of many years and my most loyal first reader, initially had her doubts about this. She couldn't understand my fascination and was even somewhat resistant, thinking these creatures were cold and strange. But easygoing as she is, over time, Caroline slowly grew used to them—perhaps even fond of them. Now, she takes care of them more diligently than I do. We never had children, but these little creatures have brought a different kind of warmth into our home. More often than not, when I'm buried in my writing, losing track of time, she's the one who takes on the role of the responsible "reptile parent."

That night, I had been writing until midnight, finally typing the last period on the page. Rubbing my temples to ease the dull ache, I got up to stretch and noticed how quiet the house had become. The only sounds were the occasional soft movements coming from the reptile room.

I pushed open the door and was surprised to find Caroline still awake. She was sitting in front of the glass tank, intently watching a tree frog. It rested silently on a broad leaf, its turquoise skin glistening under the light with a faint, damp sheen. Its eyes were half-closed, as if lost in a long, drowsy dream.

Hearing my footsteps, she didn't turn around. Instead, she murmured, "You know, I used to be really afraid of these cold-blooded animals."

I walked over and sat beside her, teasing, "And now you take better care of them than I do."

She shrugged, a faint smile on her lips. "I guess I got used to them. They're actually kinda cute." She paused, then asked casually, "Ben, is there any animal you're afraid of?"

I hesitated for a moment, a peculiar thought surfacing in my mind.

"Yes," I said seriously. "I'm afraid of goats."

Caroline gave me a puzzled look. "Goats? Why? They're so gentle."

"They are," I said, lowering my voice, my gaze darkening. "But their eyes... their eyes are unsettling."

She raised an eyebrow. "Unsettling how? You're being all mysterious."

Leaning back in my chair, I let my gaze drift around the reptile room. Inside the glass enclosures, the lizards lay still on their wooden perches, tails slightly curled. Their long, golden slit pupils watched me in silence—like a group of indifferent observers.

"You don't seem sleepy yet," I said, turning back to Caroline. "Let me tell you a story. The protagonist's name is Benjamin Hale."

She hugged her knees, watching me with interest. "Alright. But... why your name?"

"To make it more immersive."

Story I

I'm Benjamin Hale, born in a small, unremarkable town in Tennessee. Obsessed with mysteries and detective stories from a young age, I dreamed of becoming a police officer one day, solving bizarre cases and uncovering long-buried truths—just like the heroes in those books. As a teenager, I was naïve and confident, convinced that life would unfold exactly as I had planned. Everything felt within my control. But fate has a way of shattering expectations with sudden twists.

That twist came in the summer of 1999. I was 21, heading eagerly to my entrance exam for the police academy. My father drove me there himself. His old Chevy pickup rattled along the country roads, the radio crackling with intermittent country music. Outside the window, endless fields of wheat stretched beneath the blazing sun, the air thick with the scent of soil and gasoline.

We hardly spoke on the way. Father kept his hands on the wheel, eyes fixed on the road ahead. In the sunlight, the lines on his face seemed deeper than usual.

When we arrived at the test site, just as I was about to step out of the truck, Father suddenly called my name. I turned back to see him staring at me, his expression unreadable, as if he had something to say but then swallowed the words back down.

In the end, he just patted the steering wheel and said softly, "You're gonna do great, Ben. I'm proud of you."

I didn't think much of it at the time. I assumed it was just the usual words of encouragement and nodded before heading into the test center.

That day, I did well. When the final test ended, I rushed outside, eager to share my excitement with my father.

But he was gone.

He had never left me waiting before. Whenever I had important training in town, he would always be there, leaning against his pickup with his hands in his pockets, a cigarette between his lips. When he saw me, he'd tap the side of the truck and say, "Done for the day, boy? Get in."

Then I'd hop into the passenger seat, bragging about how cool I'd done, and he'd chuckle, shaking his head. "Don't get cocky. You've got a long way to go." He'd press down on the gas, the truck rolling forward steadily, the setting sun painting the sky in streaks of fire. His hands never wavered on the wheel, as if he had control over everything.

But this time, he wasn't there.

I searched the crowd, pacing back and forth, stopping strangers to ask, "Did you see a middle-aged man? About six feet tall, wearing an old denim jacket and a trucker hat?"

No one had noticed him. He was too ordinary—so ordinary that people barely registered his presence.

The sun dipped below the horizon, the crowd thinned out, and the streets grew empty. Unease crept into my chest.

He's fine. Maybe he just went home ahead of me.

Clinging to that thought, I hitched a ride back home. But when I arrived, the house was empty. Father had vanished.

My mother told me he had been unusually irritable the night before my exam. They had argued over something trivial, and she figured he might have stormed off to cool down. "He'll be back in a few days," she said.

It felt like a flimsy explanation, but what else could I do? We didn't report his disappearance out of concern for scandal. Instead, we quietly reached out to a few relatives and my father's friends. No one had seen or heard from him. Days passed. Then weeks. Nothing.

That police academy entrance exam truly became a turning point in my life—but not because I got in. It was the day my father disappeared without a trace.

I couldn't understand why he had abandoned us. Looking back, there had been no warning signs. For as long as I could remember, Father had always been a steady, reliable man—reserved, practical, a traditional dad who showed his love through quiet acts of care. I had never once doubted him. And yet, he left us just like that.

Mother later suggested, "Can it be that he went looking for your brother?"

My brother, five years my senior, had been born with a visual impairment. He ran away from home as a teenager and never came back. He, too, had disappeared from our lives.

Could that be the reason? My gut told me no.

A month after my father vanished, our neighbors finally noticed something was wrong and filed a police report. They helpfully described my father's height, weight, and appearance.

When the cops arrived, their expressions were serious. They weren't just there to investigate a missing person. They were collecting fingerprints everywhere.

Something felt off.

A few days later, they came back with a revelation that shattered everything I thought I knew.

In 1985, a gruesome massacre had taken place on a remote farm in Arkansas. A family of five had been slaughtered. The crime scene was in a remote area, and the family lived in isolation, so there were no direct witnesses. The police investigated their social connections but found nothing. The killer wasn't someone with a personal vendetta, just a stranger passing through. This made solving the case significantly more difficult. Investigators lifted the suspect's fingerprints from the victims and the murder weapon and gathered a general description of a possible perpetrator through interviews. But even with these leads, they hit a dead end.

A young detective named Evans had fixated on it. He and his mentor had chased down every lead, to no avail. The years passed, the case was buried. Until fate intervened.

By sheer coincidence, in 1999, Evans was transferred to our town. When my father's disappearance was reported, something clicked in his mind.

The police took my father's fingerprints and compared them to the ones found at the crime scene fourteen years earlier.

It was a match.

My father, James Hale, was the killer.

When I heard the news, it felt like a hammer blow to the chest.

In 1985, I was seven years old. Father was a long-haul truck driver, always traveling around, bringing me baseball cards every time when he came home. He'd take me hiking, his strong, warm hands guiding me over the rough terrain. I had never known those hands were stained with blood.

He had picked me up from school, told me to behave, praised me for being a good kid. All those memories—riding in his truck, laughing, the wind in my hair—suddenly turned colorless, fragmented, decayed. The towering figure I had trusted more than anyone collapsed in an instant; the deep fatherly love I once believed in shattered like an illusion. My world broke apart and reassembled, the heavy, echoing thud fading into silence, leaving only one cold, inescapable truth—my father was a murderer.

He had butchered five people, then returned home as if nothing had happened. He had carried on like a normal husband and dad. And in 1999, he had run away again—this time, from us.

This was not just an emotional blow for us—it was a real, tangible setback. Trapped under a shadow I couldn't escape from, my dream of joining the police academy was shattered.

In the end, I never became a police officer. Instead, I enrolled in community college and studied biotechnology. After that, it was all routine—studying, graduating, working—blending into the crowd, unremarkable in every way.

After my father disappeared in 1999, he was never seen again. The massacre case remained unsolved. Over time, public interest faded, but the police never gave up. My father was officially listed as a fugitive and put on a wanted list. My family had already fallen apart. My mother passed away not long after I graduated from college. My brother had been away for years, never returning. I moved to the city where I live now, leaving our old home empty.

After graduation, I worked at a microbiology research institute for a few years. My daily life was monotonous—apart from writing novels, I kept reptiles. Then, in 2009, I met my true love, Caroline. We got married and settled into an uneventful life.

Until 2011. That year, a set of bones was discovered deep in a remote mountain ravine near my hometown.

Based on the local climate and the state of decomposition, they estimated that the person had died 10 to 15 years ago—sometime between 1996 and 2001. That time frame matched the year my father went missing—1999. The estimated bone age suggested the person had died in their 30s or 40s, which also aligned with my father's age at the time—45.

The body had completely skeletonized, making fingerprint identification impossible. But forensic science had advanced since then, and DNA testing had become a powerful tool.

Back in 1985, when the massacre happened, the police had only managed to collect the suspect's fingerprints. When my father disappeared in 1999, they compared his prints and confirmed he was responsible for the 1985 massacre. But DNA technology was still limited at the time—they could only preserve blood samples and determine blood types, not perform full DNA profiling. So, the police had never collected my father's DNA. They had, however, stored a sample of my blood in their database.

By 2011, forensic DNA analysis had come a long way. The police extracted DNA from the skeleton and ran a comparison. The results confirmed that the remains belonged to my biological father.

It had taken decades, but thanks to advancements in forensic science, there was now irrefutable proof. The police informed me soon after.

Even after all these years, I still remembered what my father was wearing the day he took me to my police academy entrance exam—an old denim jacket over a striped T-shirt. The tattered clothing clinging to the bones had traces of that same striped pattern.

The death of the fugitive meant the case was officially closed. The shadow my father had cast over me was finally lifted.

And since it was over, there was no reason to bring it up. That's why I never told my wife.

—————

When I finished telling the story, she stared at me, wide-eyed. "Is this...real?"

"Don't worry about that."

Caroline wasn't letting it go. "Benjamin, I don't know much about your past. I only know you were raised by a single mother, that your father went missing years ago, and that your mother passed away later too. I know these memories can be painful for you, so I've never pried.

"But today, you told me this story. And the protagonist—he's also named Benjamin. His father also went missing. His mother also passed away. He studied biotechnology in college, later wrote novels and kept reptiles, and in 2009, he married Caroline—me. So this story... it's exactly your past, isn't it?"

I smiled. "It's just to make the story more immersive, to enhance your reading experience. Think of it as a story, nothing more. Now, tell me what you think?"

Caroline gave me a doubtful look but eventually chose to believe me. She thought for a moment, then said, "You started by saying you were afraid of goats. But this story seems to have nothing to do with the goat."

She paused. "And something doesn't add up. In the story, after the father disappeared, the mother and son searched for a month without reporting it to the police. In the end, it was a neighbor who called it in. That seems strange. A few days might make sense, but an entire month? It's like they weren't really worried about him.

"The plot is intriguing, but the storytelling too straightforward. It's just—father was a murderer, then he went missing, then they found his remains, and the case was solved."

"You're right," I said after a pause. "The story isn't over yet. What I just told you was only the surface narrative. Now comes the hidden truth."

"My father never died."