Chapter 3 They Knew We Were Home
I lost my guaranteed admission.
Not long after the exam ended, my homeroom teacher brought classmates to visit. Looking at those bright, lively faces, I forced a smile, until the class beauty covered her nose.
"Do you smell that? Why does Qin Song's room stink?"
It was the smell of urine. The lazy caregiver had not changed me in time.
In that instant I was so ashamed and furious I wanted to die. The moment my classmates left the ward, they started talking as if a weight had lifted.
"Hey, where are we hanging later? Let's go to that KTV in the east district. Best Korean songs!"
"Ugh, coming to the hospital is so unlucky. We should buy some pomelo leaves and wash it off."
Ten years of paralysis was enough to kill the old Qin Song completely, the one who had been high-spirited and competitive.
But now, I had been reborn.
I came back to the moment before the killers knocked.
The despair, pain, and fear I had bottled up for too many years went still.
I lunged for the landline.
In 2008, phones were not that common among students yet. We only had an old landline at home. I lunged for it to call the police. The receiver was ice-cold, with no signal at all.
It seemed the killers had cut the power to the whole building before they came upstairs.
To get Grandma into the right state as fast as possible, I lied to her.
"Remember Song Jiajia from our class? Her dad is the police station chief.
He just called me. Two murderers are fleeing toward our compound!
They're in uniforms, one fat, one thin. They might pretend to be repairmen and come to the door! "
In the dark, Grandma's eyes were full of confusion.
The moment I finished speaking, a heavy knock sounded at the door.
"Open up. Repairmen here to check the lines!"
My heart jolted. My throat burned with tension. The killers were here!
The knocking grew rough and impatient. "Open the door! Power's out and you don't want a repair? You want this or not?"
Grandma grabbed my hand, at a loss. "Songsong, could there be some misunderstanding?"
I hid Grandma in the storage cabinet and lowered my voice. "It's only been five minutes since the power went out. Have you ever seen repairmen this fast? The whole building is out. They'd fix the main switch. Why would they come to our place?"
Such an obvious hole, and I had not noticed it in my last life!
I had pulled the curtains shut early. The room was so quiet it felt suffocating, with only the clock ticking. I prayed they would just leave. Then, suddenly, I realized something was wrong.
The killers' wording was wrong!
I had not answered once, but they only kept shouting to open the door. From start to finish, they never asked a single question:
If anyone was home.
That had to mean this was not chance. They must have locked onto our home from the start!