She paused, her hands gripping the sides of the podium with enough pressure that her knuckles showed white. "I want you to understand what that ans. What it’s like to be innocent but treated as guilty. To have everyone you trusted turn away in just a matter of weeks. To have your family disown you. To have your na beco synonymous with betrayal and violence."
Her voice stayed steady, but Lu Zeyan could see the slight tremor in her hands, whether genuine emotion or carefully crafted performance he could no longer distinguish. "In prison, I was poisoned." This revelation got another strong reaction from the crowd: gasps of shock, more frantic note-taking, and whispered exclamations. "By inmates who knew my case, who believed I’d killed an old woman and wanted to punish for it. I nearly died. The poison damaged my nervous system, changed my eyes from brown to this."
She gestured to her jade-colored eyes, and caras zood in eagerly, capturing every detail of their unusual appearance. "This is what surviving looks like. This is what fighting to stay alive when everyone believes you’re a monster looks like. And this happened in just weeks, imagine what years would have done."
Shuyin’s voice dropped even lower, becoming more intimate, drawing the audience in closer as though she were sharing a confidence with friends rather than addressing hostile strangers. "I don’t bla those inmates. They were told I was guilty. Just like everyone else was told I was guilty. Just like Lu Zeyan was told I was guilty. The system failed all of us."
Beautiful, Lu Zeyan thought with distant professional appreciation. She’s absolving everyone while making herself the martyr.
Wang Jing would be absolutely thrilled. "But I’m not here to talk about bla," Shuyin continued, her tone shifting toward sothing more hopeful and forward-looking. "I’m here to talk about the truth. And the truth is complex. The truth is that good people can be deceived. That soone you trust can fail you without being evil. Those systems we rely on can be corrupted."
She looked directly into the caras now, her jade eyes almost glowing under the harsh stage lights, creating an effect that was simultaneously beautiful and unsettling. "Lu Zeyan made mistakes. He should have questioned the evidence more thoroughly. He should have fought harder for from the very beginning. But I understand why he didn’t. The lies were convincing. The fabricated evidence was professional. Even I, knowing I was innocent, sotis wondered during those weeks if I was losing my mind. If maybe I had done those things and just couldn’t rember."
Her voice cracked slightly on those last words, and Lu Zeyan saw tears beginning to form in her eyes, real ones, or at least convincing enough that no cara would be able to tell the difference. "So yes, I forgive him."
The words were simple, direct, devastating in their emotional impact. "Because holding onto anger would only give a different kind of prison. And I’ve been in prison long enough, even a few weeks felt like an eternity."
The room had gone completely silent in a way that felt almost sacred, the kind of hush that falls over crowds witnessing sothing profound and genuine.
Even the most cynical reporters, the ones who’d seen every kind of human tragedy and learned to maintain professional distance, looked visibly moved by her words.
"We’re still engaged, our engagent hadn’t been annulled yet..." Shuyin continued, and Lu Zeyan felt his heart skip slightly at the declaration, the public commitnt that they hadn’t fully discussed beyond the strategic implications. "We’re taking things slowly, working through what happened, but we’re committed to each other. To rebuild what was broken. To prove that love can survive even the worst injustice."
She reached for his hand, and Lu Zeyan took it automatically, their fingers intertwining in a gesture that the caras captured from a dozen different angles.
They looked at each other, and for a mont, Lu Zeyan almost believed the narrative they were selling, that they were two people who loved each other, who’d been torn apart by circumstances and were now fighting their way back to each other against impossible odds.
"I don’t know what the future holds, for us..." Shuyin said, turning back to address the crowd while keeping his hand firmly in hers. "I don’t know if my reputation can ever be fully restored. But I know this, I survived. I’m standing here, free after just weeks of hell, telling my truth. And I have Lu Zeyan by my side, supporting , making ands for what happened. That’s more than I ever thought I’d have again."
She stepped back from the microphone slightly, the signal that she was done with her prepared statent, and the room exploded into controlled chaos.
Questions ca from every direction, reporters shouting over each other in their desperation to be heard:
"Miss Shuyin, will you be pressing charges against those who fabricated evidence?"
"Mr. Lu, when do you plan to remarry Miss Shuyin?"
"Who specifically was responsible for the false evidence?"
"Miss Shuyin, how do you feel about Lu Zeyan now?"
"Will there be a criminal investigation into the original prosecutors?"
Wang Jing’s voice ca through Lu Zeyan’s hidden earpiece, crisp and commanding: "Take questions from section three, row two, that’s one of ours."
Lu Zeyan pointed to a middle-aged woman in a conservative suit who stood as if she’d been waiting for this exact mont. "Yes, you in the blue jacket."
The woman’s press badge identified her as being from a friendly financial news network, one of the outlets that Wang Jing had cultivated relationships with over years of strategic public relations work.
"Mr. Lu, can you tell us more about the tiline of your investigation? When exactly did you begin to suspect the conviction was wrong?"
Perfect, a softball question that allowed him to expand on the narrative they’d carefully constructed over the past few hours. "The doubts began almost imdiately after the conviction," Lu Zeyan said smoothly, his voice carrying the weight of genuine regret. "I was reviewing so old business records and noticed discrepancies in the financial evidence that had been used in Shuyin’s trial. It was small, just a few numbers that didn’t align with our actual accounting. But it bothered ."
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