Whispers of the Innocent

18

If, in 1997, it had truly been my father who died, and not that sheep, then by now, the degree of decay of my father's remains would be similar to that of the sheep. So, the skeleton of the first scapegoat could serve as a reference.

Starting in 2007, I made trips back to my hometown every three months, ostensibly to tidy up the old house, but in reality, to retrieve a piece of the sheep's skeleton.

I used the decay of the sheep as a reference to adjust the temperature and humidity of the ecological tank, thereby controlling the rate of decay of my brother's body. By 2011, the second scapegoat's rate of decay had caught up with the first.

Later, I also collected soil from the mountains below my hometown for testing and, in advance, cleaned my brother's bones and placed them in the mountain soil to ensure that the soil environment and microbial conditions would ultimately be consistent.

Thus, in just four years, the skeleton had taken on the appearance of a body that had decayed for ten years in a temperate region.

After graduating, I worked at a research institute, and many of the tests were secretly completed using the institute's equipment. Once everything was settled, in 2011, I resigned from my job at the research institute and became a writer.

In 2011, I delivered the second scapegoat to a secluded spot in the mountains of my hometown. Half a month later, I anonymously reported the location of the remains to the police using a public phone. The police determined that the individual had died approximately 10-15 years prior, around 1996-2001, which coincided with the time my father disappeared in 1997.