Chapter 3

I had to admit she could cook. The pork hock gleamed on the plate, fragrant enough to awaken anyone's appetite.

Sun Lin patted her apron and smiled.

“Only one dish today. You'll have to make do.”

I laid out the bowls and chopsticks and teased her.

“With something this huge? We'll be doing well to finish it between us.”

Then I shrugged.

“Shame Jiarui's missing out. Though I suppose her admirer will take her somewhere good too.”

Sun Lin's smile froze.

“Her admirer?”

“Mm. A little short, a little dark, but fairly good-looking.”

Her face grew worse. She frowned slightly.

“Mu Yang?”

Something stirred in me.

“Who?”

“Nothing.”

She came back to herself and forced up the corners of her mouth.

“Let's eat.”

We picked up our chopsticks, each lost in our own thoughts. I ate a piece of pork without tasting it and drank a glass of water. Silence settled over the table.

Then, without my noticing when it had begun, my eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Sun Lin's profile blurred into overlapping images.

“Sun...”

She seemed to catch me very gently. Her low voice sounded by my ear.

“Huan, get some sleep.”

“Everything will be all right when you wake up.”

Fear surged like a tide. I tried to open my eyes, but all strength had left me.

Before darkness swallowed me, I dimly heard the doorbell.

Who...

I woke in my dorm bed.

When I sat up, Li Meng was beside me, looking after me.

I grabbed her.

“Where's Sun Lin? What happened?”

Li Meng laughed, pressing a hand to her forehead.

“You're asking me? Qin Huan, I never knew one glass could knock you out.”

“What?”

“There was alcohol in Sun Lin's drink. You had one glass and passed out.”

I shook my head blankly.

“That isn't right...”

“Then where are they?”

The question came out disjointed.

Li Meng poured me some water.

“Su Jiarui's gone home. Those quacks really hurt people. She had a cyst in her abdomen and they never found it. Luckily it's benign, so she's gone home for surgery.”

“Sun Lin's always been frail. She invited you over to say goodbye. She's back in her hometown too. She needs to recuperate.”

Li Meng smiled as she scolded.

“That's all, and you still managed to give everyone a fright.”

“That's all?”

My head hurt terribly. Panic threatened to drown me.

No.

How had everything turned into this?

What was wrong...

“Sweetheart, are you feeling better?”

Mom's voice suddenly rang out. I froze, my thoughts cut short.

She came in with a lunch box.

“Come on. Get up and eat first.”

“You really don't know how to take care of yourself. I was going to surprise you with a visit, and you nearly scared me to death instead.”

“Mom...”

My eyes stung. I threw myself into her arms and cried.

“Oh, getting clingier as you grow older?” She slowly patted my back. “You're nearly twenty.”

But I couldn't take in a word.

Whatever had happened during that time, I didn't want to think about it anymore.

Exhaustion crashed over me. In the end, I accepted my family's arrangements and went to study in Australia.

As though I'd had a dream, then woken much too abruptly.

Five years later.

After finishing my studies and returning home, I arranged to have dinner with Li Meng.

She'd just returned too. Her voice was still clear, like chips of jade falling into a stream. It helped me relax.

“It's been so long since we got together,” I said with a smile. “Even hearing our own language feels wonderful now.”

“Tell me about it,” she smiled. “Being abroad really makes you homesick.”

The words were pleasant, but things had changed. A little distance had grown between us.

We'd become increasingly polished, well-educated, the sort of people others admired.

But we were no longer nineteen-year-old girls with high ponytails, running around campus.

After several rounds of drinks, my eyes began to grow hazy again.

“It's a little lonely, just the two of us.”

I giggled.

“It'd be nice if Jiarui and Sun Lin were here. Are they still back in their hometowns?”

Silence fell over the table.

After a long time, Li Meng forced a smile, took a sip, and said, “Qin Huan, you're drunk again. What are you talking about?”

“I'm not!”

I glared.

“I can hold my drink much better now!”

“Stop being stubborn.”

She pressed me back into my chair and took my glass.

I pouted.

“I'm really not drunk. You still haven't told me. Do you keep in touch with them?”

Her lips tightened. She turned away.

“Qin Huan, you're drunk.”

“Jiarui and Lin have been gone for years. I know what happened terrified you, but... you can't keep living with it forever.”

I stared, unable to understand.

Gone? Gone where?

Hadn't they gone home?

Alcohol dulled my senses, but I saw the pity and grief on Li Meng's face with terrible clarity.

I clutched my head and crouched down. Memory surged backward along the river of time to that afternoon five years ago.

The sealed doors of memory burst open.

And all I could see was red covering the ground.

All four girls in our room had ranked in the top four of the freshman campus beauty poll.

We had countless admirers. We stood out wherever we went.

And so we caught the eye of Mu Yang, a notorious campus playboy.

He was patient. He and his gang of friends waited for months, until the day of the rehearsal, when they cornered the other two girls.

A drink full of sleeping pills opened the gates of hell.

It was supposed to pass in silence.

But Su Jiarui and Sun Lin both became pregnant.

It was unbelievable, almost absurd, but it had really happened.

Then came Jiarui's pregnancy test.

The hospital ultrasound hadn't been wrong. Neither had the campus doctor lied.

She really had been pregnant before. By the time she went to the campus clinic, she no longer was.

In the intervening week, without my knowing anything, Mu Yang and his friends had approached Jiarui and Sun Lin.

At first, their greed had known no bounds. They'd intended to go further, confront the girls, and force them into an ongoing sexual relationship.

They hadn't expected both girls to be pregnant.

However vile they were, Mu Yang and the others were still young. They panicked.

Almost without hesitation, they demanded that the girls end the pregnancies.

To keep them from going to the police, Mu Yang brought out the video he'd made in the auditorium, intending to use it to silence them.

He also told his father—Professor Mu, who taught us advanced mathematics.

Wanting to protect his son, Professor Mu secretly went to the security room and destroyed all the auditorium's archived footage.

He also used the inspection team's arrival as a reason to urge the leadership to tighten campus controls.

That was why we'd met obstacles everywhere.

Nowhere to seek help. Nowhere to escape.

In the end, Su Jiarui gave in. She ended the pregnancy.

Sun Lin made a very different choice.

She clung to Mu Yang, acting coy and playing the fool, saying she wanted to have the baby.

She left campus. In reality, she was waiting for a chance to take revenge.

She waited until that day.

“Mu Yang was greedy from the start. He wanted all four of us. So Sun Lin made you pass out, put you on the bed, and called him over.”

“While he was taking off his trousers, she stabbed him to death.”

Li Meng held me gently, grief darkening her eyes.

“She never expected that you'd drunk so little you'd wake up halfway through.”

I listened in a daze, then fell back into that terrifying afternoon.

Sun Lin was covered in blood, a dagger clenched in her right hand. Beneath her lay Mu Yang, stabbed beyond recognition.

Her lower belly had begun to swell, but she'd bound it tightly, as though she hated what was growing inside.

“Qin Huan.”

She lowered her eyes, not looking at me.

“I frightened you. I'm sorry.”

I huddled on the bed, staring at her with wide eyes.

Sun Lin went on as though talking to herself.

“I hate him. He destroyed all of us. Why should he get to go on living so freely?”

“Go.”

Dazed, I asked, “What happened? What about you?”

“Me?”

She seemed to give a faint laugh.

“Don't worry. I'll turn myself in.”

“As for what happened...”

She paused.

“If you care about me, don't ask.”

She dropped the dagger, helped me up, and pushed me outside almost roughly.

I stood at the door for a long time, then went downstairs in a fog.

I'd barely walked a dozen meters from the building when a great crash sounded behind me.

I turned.

Sun Lin lay silently in a pool of blood.

Strangely, in that instant, I seemed to see her face.

It was extraordinarily calm.

“I'm sorry.”

Five years later, Li Meng apologized to me.

“I knew from the beginning. Lin was close to me. She told me.”

“But I didn't know what to do. I was afraid too. That animal Mu Yang might have come after me.”

“So I didn't help them. I brought forward my departure and left the country.”

Li Meng tipped back another mouthful of wine, then fell silent.

The dark red liquid looked like another kind of blood, fragrant in the glass.

I gave a bitter smile.

“Forget it.”

“Even if time turned back, we couldn't fight people with that kind of power.”

Her expression suddenly changed.

“Not necessarily.”

She lowered her voice.

“When she was alive, Jiarui seemed to be trying to collect evidence for the police. After she died, I forgot about it.”

“But her car accident happened so suddenly. Looking back, it's almost as though...”

As though she'd been silenced.

My heart began racing again.

Had Jiarui really obtained evidence?

Where would it be?

Had it already been destroyed?

I clutched my head, frantically searching every word she'd said, everything she'd done.

Somewhere to keep the evidence...

A shaft of midday sunlight suddenly pierced the fog in my mind.

“Qin Huan, when you get back to the dorm, take the USB drive from the bottom of my wardrobe. My paper's on it. Could you check the formatting?”

But there'd been no paper assigned then.

I sprang up, grabbed my bag, and hurried home.

Startled, Li Meng reached to stop me.

“Li Meng.”

I turned.

“What if there really is a chance?”

Jiarui and I had been best friends since middle school.

I'd packed, sealed, and kept most of the belongings she'd left in the dorm.

Wrapped among a jumble of odds and ends, the USB drive lay quietly, glinting coldly.

My hands and feet shook. It took several tries just to start the computer.

By the time I opened the folder, cold sweat covered me.

Jiarui had organized everything in meticulous detail.

I fought to steady my hands and opened the files one by one.

The disgusting truth lay exposed before me.

Like a piece of flesh left to rot in hiding for years, only to stink even more foully when brought into the light.

Those things didn't deserve to be called human.

I collapsed into my chair. The ringing in my ears wouldn't stop.

Why hadn't she told me directly?

My heart hurt beyond words. Tears rolled down my face.

Even if it was dangerous, I would have done everything I could...

Outside, the sunset blazed red, just like that brilliant evening sky in our second year of university.

I reached for my phone and called Li Meng.

“If you had another chance...”

It was hard to speak.

“What would you choose?”

There was no answer.

Just when I thought she wouldn't say anything, her hoarse voice came through.

“For five years, I've dreamed of having that chance every night.”

Back then, only Mu Yang had died.

His father, the professor, had been devastated, but at least he'd saved himself.

His friends had found ways to silence Su Jiarui, then slept soundly.

They couldn't have it so easy.

The next day, I walked into the police station alone.

The USB's contents shocked every officer present. A case was opened at once. Even the chief was alerted.

Professor Mu was brought in that very day. Faced with irrefutable evidence, he confessed.

I looked coldly past the officers at that haggard old man, then turned away.

He wasn't the main target.