I. Payment Form
My friend Su Wan was grabbed by her brother at the entrance to the operating room. Su Jiancheng slapped a blue payment form against her face, its corner scraping the edge of her eye.
“If you don’t transfer the coins in Dad’s wallet into my account, I’m not signing this.” He spoke in a low voice, making no effort to avoid the nurses walking back and forth in the corridor. “If this delays things, you’re the one being unfilial.”
Su Wan was still clutching the informed consent form she’d just gotten from the nurses’ station. Her father’s name, Su Guoping, was written on it, and the name of the surgery had already been filled in. All that was missing was a family member’s signature. The clock on the wall showed 9:17 p.m. The anesthesiologist had just poked his head out of the door to hurry them along.
“An eighty-thousand-yuan payment slip, and you’re still trying to bargain with me?” Su Jiancheng pushed the slip closer and pointed at the payee section. “Transfer it to this account. I’ll sign as soon as it’s done. And where’s that little tin box? You went for a checkup with Dad this afternoon, and the box was gone when you came out. Just hand it over.”
I stood slightly behind Su Wan. I’m her coworker, Wu Shan. I’d only driven her to the hospital that evening to sign a form and pay a bill. I hadn’t expected to walk straight into this mess.
Su Wan lifted the slip away from her face. The paper had left a red mark by her eye, but she didn’t rub it. She just looked down at the amount: eighty thousand yuan exactly. The payee was Su Jiancheng, and the bank wasn’t one of the ones the hospital usually used.
Su Jiancheng reached for the consent form in her hand. Su Wan pulled it behind her back. One corner of the form was torn, but he didn’t manage to take it.
“Dad needs a family member to sign before surgery. I’m his daughter, so I can sign too,” Su Wan said. “I’ll go pay at the cashier now. The money won’t go through your account. We can talk about the tin box after Dad comes out.”
Su Jiancheng turned sideways to block the corridor. He pulled the household register out of his jacket and waved it in her face, then turned to the nurse who had just come out. “She isn’t the family member in charge. The doctor recognizes the eldest son. If you dare sign on your own and something goes wrong, you’re responsible. I’ll make it clear to the relatives too: you’re holding onto the coins and refusing to save Dad.”
The nurse paused, looked at them both, and said either child could sign. It was written on the back of the consent form; the nurses’ station would verify their identities. Su Jiancheng tried to explain again, but the nurse had already gone inside.
The anesthesiologist leaned halfway out of the doorway and looked at them. He said that if they delayed another fifteen minutes, tonight’s surgery might have to be rescheduled. Su Wan pressed the torn corner of the consent form twice to smooth it out, hitched up her bag strap, and turned to me.
When Su Jiancheng saw her leaving, he raised his voice a little, as if speaking for my benefit—or for the people by the entrance to hear. “I was with Dad all afternoon. I called the ambulance. I brought him here. And now she’s the one who gets to play the hero.”
Su Wan glanced at him. “The form says what time he was brought in. Now move.”
“Shanshan, come with me to the cashier.”
Su Jiancheng grabbed her bag strap and said quietly, “If you pay the wrong account or hide the box, I won’t approve this surgery. The whole department will know you delayed it.”
Su Wan pulled the strap out of his fingers and slipped under his arm. Su Jiancheng called her name from behind, telling her not to pay the wrong account. She didn’t turn around.
As we walked toward the cashier, Su Wan told me that her sister-in-law, Zhao Lijuan, hadn’t called until 8:25. She’d only said Dad needed surgery and told her to get there quickly. She hadn’t said when he’d been brought in or that things had already reached the point where they needed her signature. After the checkup that afternoon, Dad had said Jiancheng would come pick him up and told her to go back to the office for a meeting.
Two: The Corporate Account
The cashier’s office was brightly lit. Ms. Zhang, at the window, took the blue slip from Su Wan, glanced at it, and pushed it back.
“This isn’t one of our hospital payment slips,” Ms. Zhang said. “And the account name isn’t the hospital’s. Where did you get it?”
Su Wan laid the slip flat on the counter and pressed a finger to the line with the account name. “My brother gave it to me by the operating-room door. He said he wouldn’t sign the consent form unless I transferred the money into this account.”
Ms. Zhang frowned and pulled a genuine hospital prepayment notice from a drawer. It showed a deposit of thirty-two thousand yuan exactly, payable to the hospital’s corporate account. The account details were printed clearly. She placed the two slips together and held them up behind the glass for Su Wan to compare.
Su Wan checked the account number on the fake slip digit by digit. Not a single digit matched the hospital’s corporate account. The amounts differed by nearly fifty thousand, and the account names were even farther apart.
“The deposit is thirty-two thousand, paid into the hospital’s account. We never issue an eighty-thousand-yuan slip like yours,” Ms. Zhang said. “If you want to pay, use this one. And the eldest son isn’t the only one who can sign. Any child can. It says so on the back of the consent form.”
“I’m taking this fake payment slip with me,” Su Wan said.
Ms. Zhang nodded. “We don’t keep your personal papers. I’ll give you the receipt for the real payment. You can keep the fake one.”
Su Wan put the two slips together and took a photo. The fake slip’s account name and the real slip’s corporate account were both in the frame. She opened her phone wallet and glanced at her $ETH. She had enough to cash out the thirty-two thousand yuan, but she locked the screen and handed over her debit card instead. It would leave her short this month, but she didn’t want to touch her crypto for the sake of that fake slip, much less send the money to Su Jiancheng’s account.
As the receipt printed, Su Jiancheng happened to walk over from the far end of the corridor. He slapped a hand down on the counter ledge.
“Who told you to pay?” he demanded. “Didn’t I say to transfer it to my account so I could handle everything? I’ll deal with the hospital bills. Stay out of it. And this might not even be her own card. Don’t take it yet.”
Ms. Zhang looked up at him, then at Su Wan. “The person paying has put her ID at the window.”
Su Wan passed her ID through. The name matched the debit card, and her relationship as the patient’s daughter matched what she’d registered at the nurses’ station. Ms. Zhang turned the receipt for the corporate account around for Su Jiancheng to see. “It’s already been paid to the hospital. How you discuss things as a family is up to you. As far as my paperwork is concerned, everything is in order.”
Su Jiancheng’s face darkened. He glared at Su Wan. “You’re quick to act. You can afford to pay thirty-two thousand, but what about those twelve Binance Coins? They’re Dad’s, from his exchange account. Were you planning to siphon those off too?”
Su Wan folded the receipt and stacked it with the fake slip, then put them in the consent form. “What am I siphoning off? I haven’t even touched his phone. I’m going to sign the consent form now. If you stop the doctors, Dad’s the one who’ll suffer, not me.”
She turned and walked away. Su Jiancheng tried to stop her again, reaching for her shoulder, but a security guard by the cashier’s office stepped forward and asked if they needed to take their argument outside. Su Jiancheng had no choice but to let go. He followed us toward the operating room, repeating that if anything went wrong during surgery, she’d be entirely responsible.
Before signing at the nurses’ station, Su Wan asked what time her father had been admitted. The nurse checked the form and said he’d arrived at the emergency department at 7:40 p.m., then been transferred upstairs later. Su Wan noted the time in her phone without calling anyone out just then.
The staff at the nurses’ station checked Su Wan’s ID and proof of relationship, then asked her to sign the consent form. She wrote her name carefully, stroke by stroke, set down the pen, and added a contact number. Someone inside took the paper. The operating room light was on, and the doors closed.
Su Jiancheng stood at the door, still clutching the household register. For the moment, he didn’t call out to stop anyone. He stared at Su Wan’s bag for a couple of seconds, then suddenly asked, “Where’s the box? Take it out now. You can pay those thirty-two thousand, but you can’t walk off with Dad’s things too.”
Su Wan pulled her bag’s zipper closed. “For now, we wait for Dad to come out. If you’ve got nothing else to do, go wait outside.”
Three: The Little Tin Box
We sat down in the family waiting area. Su Wan rested her bag on her lap and opened an inner pocket, but didn’t show me what was inside. She felt around with her hand. I only saw her fingers touch something hard, wrapped in tape, before she quickly zipped the pocket shut again.
“This afternoon, at the medical checkup center, Dad slipped it to me,” Su Wan said quietly. She didn’t hide it from me. “He said Jiancheng had been asking about the passcode lately, and told me to hold on to these two things for now and not ask too many questions. There was also a piece of paper. I didn’t look at it closely then. I thought it was a receipt and tucked it away.”
She opened the inner pocket a little again, revealing the corner of a folded receipt from a securities branch, then zipped it shut. The waiting-room light on the wall still read “In Surgery.” A cart rolled down the corridor, its wheels squeaking once over the vinyl floor before fading away.
“He asked for the tin box right away,” Su Wan said. “That’s when I knew he wasn’t after the thirty-two thousand.”
Someone at the nurses’ station called Su Wan over and said that a patient’s clothes and phone could be collected and registered by an immediate family member. Su Wan went over, signed the register, and collected an old cloth bag and a black phone. Su Jiancheng immediately reached for it. His fingers were already closing around the phone when Su Wan turned aside, blocked him with her shoulder, and pressed the power button first.
“Let go first,” I said, stepping halfway between him and the phone to block his other hand. Su Jiancheng swore at me and asked what kind of family member I thought I was. I didn’t answer. I just told Su Wan to check the screen first.
The screen lit up. There was no passcode. Several notifications appeared in quick succession: some texts from the hospital and a red dot on the wallet app. Su Wan angled the screen so I could see too, keeping Su Jiancheng’s hands away from it.
At the top was a withdrawal notification from the wallet app. At 5:06 p.m., twelve Binance Coins ($BNB) had been transferred out. A short note followed the recipient address—the same abbreviation Su Jiancheng often used. The next line showed that there were no spot assets left in the account, and no other transactions pending confirmation.
Su Wan’s thumb paused over the screen. She took a screenshot first, framing the time and address, then scrolled through the records again. There was no mention of the box her father had handed her that afternoon. She sent the screenshot to my chat, then copied the recipient address into her notes. She checked the 5:06 p.m. timestamp and the abbreviation in the note once more, making sure she hadn’t misread them, then looked up.
Su Jiancheng saw what she was doing and lunged for the phone. His fingertip had already touched the power button. “That’s Dad’s phone! What gives you the right to look at it? Are you taking screenshots to frame me?”
Su Wan backed half a step toward the wall and gripped the phone tightly. Her voice was tense but clear. “At 5:06, Dad hadn’t even gotten into the ambulance yet. You transferred the coins at home. That eighty-thousand-yuan payment slip you shoved at me by the door was just an excuse to get the tin box too.”
Su Jiancheng swore, then changed his story. He said their father had given him the verification code himself, and that he’d transferred the coins to make things easier that night. The family’s money was supposed to be managed by the son, anyway. Su Wan only replied, “Whether Dad could give you a verification code at 5:06 is something he can tell us himself when he wakes up.”
He raised his voice and threatened to call security, accusing Su Wan of stealing a patient’s belongings and snooping through his phone. The nurses’ station told them to keep their voices down and not block the corridor. If they had a dispute, they could take it outside or wait for the police to record their statements.
“Then wait,” Su Wan said.
She held the phone and cloth bag against her chest without taking out the tin box. She only said to me, “Don’t leave yet. When Dad comes out of surgery, we’ll go through all of this, one thing at a time.”
Su Jiancheng had gone outside the waiting area to make a call. He wasn’t speaking loudly, but I still heard him say, “Bring Aunt Suqin over.”
Four: The Unfinished Voice Message
Less than twenty minutes later, Zhao Lijuan came down from the elevator with Aunt Suqin. My sister-in-law’s eyes were red, and she clutched a tissue. Aunt Suqin came in calling Su Guoping’s name, then pointed straight at Su Wan.
“Where have you hidden your father’s box?” Zhao Lijuan’s voice was loud enough for everyone in the waiting area to hear. “Jiancheng told me you went for a checkup with the old man this afternoon, and something was missing when you came back. He’s still in there, and you’ve already started moving his assets?”
Suqin chimed in immediately. “Jiancheng is the eldest son. He should be the one paying and signing. You went and paid thirty-two thousand yourself, and now you’re grabbing his phone. What’s that supposed to mean? Do you think your father won’t make it through this, so you’re trying to get ahead of things?”
Other families in the waiting area looked up. Someone shifted their chair a few inches away. Su Wan stood up and spread the payment receipt and the withdrawal screenshot across her lap, but she didn’t show them the tin box.
“I’ve paid the hospital deposit into its corporate account. The eighty-thousand-yuan slip my brother gave me had his own name on it,” Su Wan said. “The coins in Dad’s exchange account were transferred to his address at 5:06 p.m. If you want to ask about the box, wait until Dad can speak for himself.”
Zhao Lijuan didn’t even look at the two papers. She turned to the people around her, dabbing at the corner of her eye with her thumb as she spoke. “Did you hear that? She won’t even show us the box. The old man’s still in there, and she’s taken his things. What kind of daughter does that? I’ve already told everyone in the family group chat. You can all judge for yourselves.”
Her phone was still on speaker, and people in the group were already replying, “Hand the things over first,” while others asked how Su Guoping was doing. Su Wan’s phone vibrated too. A cousin’s WeChat message popped up, asking if she’d really taken the box. She didn’t explain herself in the group. She took screenshots of the messages first.
Suqin took over and stood in the middle of the corridor, blocking Su Wan from going to the nurses’ station. Zhao Lijuan went over to the station and told them not to let this daughter into the recovery room, in case she tampered with the old man’s things again. The nurse only replied, “Visiting is arranged according to the doctor’s orders. Please set family matters aside for now.”
Su Jiancheng added at just the right moment, “I’ve already called the police station. Misappropriating an ailing father’s property isn’t something you can settle with a family argument. We have witnesses and evidence right here.”
I saw Su Wan’s phone light up. There was an unheard voice message on the lock screen, timestamped 4:40 p.m., from “Dad.” She’d only glanced at it during a meeting that afternoon and hadn’t had a chance to open it.
Her finger slid to the message. Her thumb hovered over the play button, but she didn’t press it in front of everyone. She pulled me behind a pillar as if she were about to play it, but then Zhao Lijuan’s voice carried over from the corridor. Su Wan locked her phone again. “If I play it now, they’ll just say I faked it. I’ll keep it for now.”
The operating-room light was still on. A doctor came out and said the surgery was still in progress, and asked the family to keep quiet. Zhao Lijuan used that as an excuse to dab her eyes again, making her voice sound even more plaintive as she asked the people around her if they’d heard.
Then she called the family group chat again and repeated that the box was missing and her younger sister had gone to sign the consent form on her own. Su Wan didn’t try to wrest the floor from her. She took a photo of the withdrawal screenshot, the payment receipt, and the fake slip together, then sent it to our chat.
“Keep a copy for me,” she said.
I nodded and checked that all three photos were in my gallery. Across from her, Su Jiancheng was giving someone an address over the phone. He said his sister was in the surgical waiting area at Central Hospital, holding their father’s wallet and phone, and asked them to come over as soon as possible.
Suqin was still blocking the corridor, demanding to know whether Su Wan had taken the box. Su Wan glanced at her but didn’t answer. She just hugged her bag a little tighter.
Five: Held for Safekeeping
The police arrived before the surgery was over. There were two officers. The one leading them introduced himself as Officer Ma. He first asked who was related to the patient, then questioned everyone separately and told them to stop arguing in front of the waiting area.
Su Jiancheng slapped the household register onto a chair and said he was the eldest son, that he’d been busy trying to save his father all afternoon, and that his sister had taken a tin box full of coins during the confusion and snooped through their father’s phone. Zhao Lijuan added that the box had gone missing after they left the medical checkup center, and Su Wan must have taken it. Many relatives could testify that the old man still had the box that afternoon.
Officer Ma asked what I’d seen. I said I’d seen Su Jiancheng slap a payment slip bearing his own name against Su Wan’s face by the operating-room entrance and stop her from signing. Later, the cashier had stated in front of everyone that it wasn’t a hospital slip, and that the deposit was thirty-two thousand yuan, paid into the hospital’s corporate account. I hadn’t seen the tin box opened. All I knew was that Su Wan had accompanied her father to a checkup that afternoon.
Su Wan handed Officer Ma the fake payment slip, the hospital receipt, and the 5:06 p.m. withdrawal record. She explained that she was the daughter who had signed the consent form and paid the deposit, and that her father had personally given her the box at the medical checkup center that afternoon, around 3:45. Officer Ma asked if she had the box with her.
Su Wan was silent for a few seconds, then took the little tin box wrapped in old tape from her inner pocket. A line of ballpoint writing had faded on the tape: “For Wanwan to keep. Jiancheng, don’t touch.” The handwriting looked like Su Guoping’s usual signature when he signed for deliveries. She set the box on the table but didn’t immediately take her hand away.
Zhao Lijuan reached for it, but an officer stopped her. Su Jiancheng immediately said, “Doesn’t this prove she’d been planning it all along? Maybe she wrote that herself. Dad can’t speak right now, so she can’t be allowed to keep it. She’s already looked through his phone and taken screenshots. There’s no telling if she’ll move the coins inside too.”
Officer Ma looked at the tape, then at both sides. He said there was a dispute over the box, and since their father was in surgery and couldn’t confirm anything, the police station would log it and hold it for now. They’d deal with it once he could express his wishes. He asked Su Wan to put the box in an evidence bag herself, sign the seal, and recorded the withdrawal screenshot and the number on the fake slip. Su Wan also wrote a brief statement as requested and provided a copy of her ID.
Su Wan’s hand paused at the mouth of the bag, but she signed anyway. I saw her fingernail press a white mark into the edge of the paper. She’d received the box from her father that afternoon, and now she had to hand it over. Officer Ma gave her a copy of the temporary seizure inventory. She tucked it into the consent form with the fake slip. As the seal was applied, Zhao Lijuan gave a quiet snort.
“There’s 0.8 $BTC inside. It’s Dad’s,” Su Wan said slowly. “I haven’t used any of it. I’ll cooperate with checking the records, but I’m not the one who transferred those twelve Binance Coins.”
Officer Ma told them to wait until the surgery was over. They could finish their statements tonight or tomorrow morning. Neither side was to grab the patient’s phone or belongings again. If necessary, the nurses’ station could hold them. Suqin snorted and said, “That’s what a guilty conscience looks like. She dared to take it, but not keep it. Now she’s cleared her hands.”
The operating-room door opened a crack just then. A nurse came out and said the patient had been moved to the recovery room. His vital signs were fairly stable, but they couldn’t allow a long visit that night. Su Wan started toward the room, but Su Jiancheng blocked half the doorway and told the nurse he was the primary contact. He said not to list his sister’s name and to call only him with any updates.
The nurse looked at them both. “Su Wan signed the informed consent form, and the payment receipt is hers. We can’t change the contact person for now.” Su Jiancheng clenched his jaw but didn’t try to block the door again. He only tossed out, “I’ll see you at the police station.”
Su Wan looked at her father through the glass. Su Guoping still hadn’t woken up. A tube was in his mouth, and the restraints around his wrists looked new. She didn’t say anything. She just folded the hospital receipt in half again and put it in the now partly empty inner pocket of her bag. When she zipped it up, there was less inside, and it made less noise.
Six: Account Ending in 0793
We weren’t allowed to stay long in the recovery room. We returned to the corridor bench, and only then did Su Wan pull the folded receipt out of her bag. When her father had slipped it to her that afternoon, she’d assumed it was a receipt for the checkup or a payment. She’d carried it around ever since, and its edges had softened.
It was a receipt from a securities branch. The date was in the middle of the previous month, and it had two lines: “Revoke three-party authorization; former authorized person: Su Jiancheng.” “Change securities-bank transfer account to account ending in 0793, account holder Su Wan.” Below that was Su Guoping’s signature and the branch stamp. A handwritten note on the paper read: “Keep this.”
Su Wan spread the paper across my knee and traced the two lines with her fingertip. Then she opened her bank messages. One from 2:58 p.m. had come in while she was in the meeting room. She’d turned her phone face down and hadn’t opened it: “RMB 486,000 transferred out of securities account via bank-securities transfer. Deposited into account ending in 0793.”
Put together, the two documents made the situation clear. That afternoon, Su Jiancheng had first moved the available funds from their father’s securities account, trying to send them somewhere he could control. But the money had gone into Su Wan’s account, not the old bank card he held for his father, ending in 6621. His demand for eighty thousand at the door and for the tin box was because the 486,000 yuan hadn’t gone where he expected.
“He wasn’t doing it for tonight’s deposit,” Su Wan said. “He’d already moved the funds he could that afternoon. When they didn’t go into his card, he searched Dad’s house and came after the tin box.”
She took photos of both the message and the receipt, then sent them, along with the withdrawal record, to the number Officer Ma had left when he took their details. She wrote a restrained message: “The money transferred from the securities account belongs to my father. It went into my account first. I will not treat it as my personal money; it is reserved for medical expenses. Please record this. Please also check where the twelve Binance Coins went. I’ll cooperate with an account review and won’t transfer this money out tonight.”
After sending it, she lowered her bank app’s daily outgoing transfer limit to just enough to cover further medical expenses. She took a screenshot and sent it to me and Officer Ma. With the limit changed, no one could pressure her into transferring the 486,000 yuan all at once.
She also arranged the events by time in her notes: at 2:58 p.m., the money went into her account; at 5:06 p.m., the coins were transferred; at 9:17 p.m., he blocked her at the operating-room door with the fake slip. When she’d written all three times down, she turned her screen toward me to show me, but didn’t explain further.
As soon as she’d finished, Zhao Lijuan called Su Wan’s phone. She put it on speaker, and my sister-in-law’s voice came through, shrill and urgent. “You transferred the money from your father’s account into your own card too? Jiancheng just checked. There isn’t a cent extra in 6621. You changed the account binding ahead of time—that means you’d planned this all along! We’re going to court tomorrow to apply for an injunction. Let’s see if you can still play the dutiful daughter with that money.”
Su Wan waited for her to finish. “Dad went to the branch himself last month to change the account binding. The receipt is in my bag, and it has his signature. I won’t spend a cent of that money as my own. If you apply for an injunction, I’ll cooperate. Tonight, the only money I’ll take out of that account is for medical expenses. If you’re going to accuse me of moving the money, then give the police the 2:58 p.m. message and the 5:06 p.m. withdrawal record too.”
Zhao Lijuan swore a couple of times and hung up. At the end of the corridor, Su Jiancheng was on the phone with his back to us, speaking so quietly that I could only make out “It didn’t arrive” and “The box was seized.” He slapped the windowsill but didn’t turn around.
Su Wan folded the receipt again and put it in the empty layer of her inner pocket. She glanced at the bank message, saved the 486,000-yuan deposit record separately in her gallery, then laid her phone face down on her lap.
Seven: When He Arrived
Only then did Su Wan open the voice message from 4:40 p.m. She turned the volume very low and set the phone between us. It was only eight seconds long. In the background, there was a gasp and the scrape of furniture being dragged. Su Guoping called out to her: “Wanwan, the key’s in the shoebox… your brother’s rummaging…” A dull thud cut him off.
4:40 p.m. Su Wan had just seen the ambulance dispatch form at the nurses’ station while filling in the admission details. The call time was listed as 7:07 p.m. More than two hours lay between them.
Su Wan listened to the message again, then forwarded the file to me and to Officer Ma. Her knuckles were white as she pressed send.
She called the property management office at her father’s apartment complex, gave them the unit number, and asked for the access records from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. The person on duty initially refused to share them, repeating that the homeowner had to ask. Su Wan said the police were involved and that they could verify it with Officer Ma. Only then did the person reply, “At 4:20 p.m., Su Jiancheng’s access card was used at the building entrance. There was another exit record just before 7:00. You’ll need to wait for the system’s official export. We can help retrieve it tomorrow.”
Su Wan had saved the number for Mrs. Zhang, the neighbor across the hall, after she’d helped her father receive a package the year before. Mrs. Zhang said she’d heard drawers being rummaged through and cupboards being opened across the hall shortly after four that afternoon. Later, she heard Su Guoping calling for someone. His voice wasn’t loud, but it sounded as if he was on the floor.
She’d knocked and asked if he needed help. Su Jiancheng had called through the door that everything was fine, told her not to get involved, and said he’d take him to the hospital himself in a bit. When she saw him head downstairs again, it was almost seven. He was carrying a plastic bag, and the old man hadn’t come out with him. Su Wan asked what was in the bag. Mrs. Zhang said she couldn’t see, but she was sure he’d gone downstairs alone first, and the ambulance had arrived later.
Mrs. Zhang agreed to repeat her account at the police station the next day. Su Wan noted the key points of the call in her phone, then sent Officer Ma the original voice message, the access times, and the ambulance dispatch form. Her final line read: “Please record this as a timeline. I’m not asking you to decide what happened yet. I just want to make sure these details are preserved.”
“He wasn’t trying to save him,” Su Wan said evenly. “He searched the house first, then called. He just told everyone he’d been with Dad all afternoon and called the ambulance the moment he noticed something was wrong.”
A little after eleven that night, the recovery room said we could look in on him once more. Su Guoping woke for a while. The tube had been removed from his mouth. His voice was still hoarse, but he recognized people. Su Jiancheng tried to step in front of the bed and said this wasn’t the time to ask him questions, but a nurse moved him aside and allowed him to stand only at the doorway.
Su Wan leaned closer and first asked, “After the checkup this afternoon, did you tell me to go ahead and leave, saying he’d come to pick you up?” Su Guoping nodded and managed to say, “He didn’t come,” before a coughing fit interrupted him. She then asked three things: whether he’d given her the tin box that afternoon; whether he’d told her to keep the receipt from the securities branch; and whether he’d asked Jiancheng to transfer the twelve Binance Coins from the exchange.
Su Guoping nodded, nodded again, then shook his head. He tapped the blanket twice with his fingers. His words came out broken, but we could hear them: “The box… was for you. That paper… too. The coins… I didn’t tell him to move them. That account money… use it for medical bills. Don’t give it to him.”
Officer Ma came in afterward and added a few key points to the statement. He read the confirmations aloud to Su Guoping and had him make a fingerprint on the form confirming his answers while he was conscious and aware.
Su Jiancheng said from the doorway that his father was confused and that his words couldn’t be taken seriously. The nurse glanced at the monitor and said that he’d just correctly stated his name and today’s date, and that it would be noted in the record. Su Jiancheng tried to explain that the money was “just being set aside for medicine,” and that he’d been the first to notice something was wrong that afternoon. Su Guoping glanced at him but didn’t respond.
Zhao Lijuan stood farther away. She’d stopped crying and turned off her phone, which still had the family group chat open. Aunt Suqin looked uncomfortable. She muttered, “Let’s make sure he gets better first,” stopped mentioning the box, and headed toward the elevators.
Eight: The Key
The next morning, the police station asked Su Wan to come and collect the little tin box. Su Guoping’s confirmation was attached to the evidence bag, so the dispute was no longer an issue. Officer Ma told her to check that the seal was intact and that the writing on the tape was still there before signing the collection form. Su Wan checked it all, put the box in her inner pocket, took a photo of the collection form, and sent me a copy before leaving the counter.
Officer Ma also informed us that a case had been opened over the twelve Binance Coins transferred out using her father’s account. A request for the platform’s assistance would be sent through the proper channels. They would also look into the source of the fake payment slip bearing Su Jiancheng’s name. Recovering the coins would take time; they wouldn’t arrive that day, and no one could guarantee that the full amount could be returned immediately.
The 486,000 yuan transferred from the securities account was registered as Su Guoping’s property, temporarily held in Su Wan’s account and to be used for medical expenses as he’d instructed. Su Wan wrote a statement on the spot promising not to use it for anything else, and provided a way to report her spending to her father and the police station each day.
Mrs. Zhang also came by as promised and gave an account of what she’d heard and seen the day before, then signed her name. Property management agreed to submit the access records once they’d been exported through the proper channels. They would continue investigating the timeline around the delay in getting Su Guoping to the hospital, rather than jumping to conclusions in the corridor.
Zhao Lijuan still hadn’t filed the paperwork for the injunction she’d threatened. Su Jiancheng signed his interview statement. When he came out and passed through the corridor, he didn’t look at Su Wan. The law would take its course, and no verdict could be reached in a single night, but what he had to face was no longer just a family argument.
Su Wan took the tin box back to the hospital room. Su Guoping asked her to open it. He looked at the old tape, ran his finger over the words, then pushed it back to her and told her to keep holding on to it. He also told her to replace the lock cylinder on the door and stop telling Jiancheng the passcode. Su Wan didn’t argue. She wiped the box clean, put it in her bag’s inner pocket, and zipped it shut. That afternoon, she arranged for a locksmith to come.
She paid the subsequent hospital bills from the reserve funds, transferring each payment to the hospital’s corporate account according to the receipts. She photographed every transaction and sent the records to her father and Officer Ma. She didn’t touch any of her own Ethereum. The thirty-two-thousand-yuan deposit from the previous afternoon was also reconciled against the reserve funds and included in the hospital’s billing, so it wouldn’t get mixed up with her father’s money—and no one could claim she’d paid out of pocket and then tried to get reimbursed.
At noon, I went with her to Su Guoping’s old apartment to pick up a change of clothes. The signs of a search were obvious as soon as we opened the door. The spare key was still in the shoebox, just as the voice message had said, under a stack of old receipts. There were several fresh scratches by the doorframe. The drawers had been left open, and the medicine box and passbook pouch had been moved.
Su Wan folded her father’s clean clothes and pushed each drawer back into place, returning the medicine box where it belonged. Standing in front of the ransacked drawers, she called to confirm the time the lock cylinder would be changed that afternoon. They’d make only two new keys, one for her father and one for herself. She took an old brass key off her own keyring—the one Su Jiancheng had given her years ago, saying it would make it easier to care for their father. She looked at it but didn’t put it back on the ring.
As we went downstairs, Su Jiancheng’s car was parked by the building entrance. He lowered the window a little and first asked whether their father had mentioned him that morning. Then he said that if she touched even one cent of the 486,000 yuan, the matter wouldn’t be over. Su Wan didn’t respond. She placed the brass key in the groove on his car door and spoke quietly.
“If you want to enter Dad’s home from now on, you go through him first.”
He started to open the car door, but only raised his hand halfway. Su Wan had already turned away. The security camera at the entrance was pointed at the driveway, and this stretch would be recorded. She didn’t add another word.
I walked with her toward the bus stop. The little tin box in her bag’s inner pocket bumped gently against something, just as it had when her father slipped it to her at the checkup center. This time, the zipper was fully closed. When we reached the stop, she hugged the bag against herself and patted it once before raising her hand to flag down the bus.
Fictional story. All characters and events are fictional. This does not constitute investment advice.
#虚构故事 #FamilyProperty