Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I lost my guaranteed university admission spot.

Shortly after the college entrance exams ended, my homeroom teacher brought some classmates to visit me in the hospital. Looking at those vibrant, youthful faces, I forced a smile until the class beauty covered her nose.

“Do you guys smell that? Why does it stink in Qin Song’s room?”

It was the smell of urine; the lazy caregiver hadn’t changed me in time.

In that moment, I was so consumed by shame and indignation that I wished I could just die. The moment my classmates stepped out of the ward, they began discussing their plans with a sense of relief.

“Hey, where are we going to hang out later? Let’s go to that KTV in Dongcheng; they have the best selection of Korean songs!”

“Ugh, coming to the hospital is such bad luck. I need to buy some pomelo leaves to wash off the bad vibes.”

Ten years of paralysis was enough to completely kill off the high-spirited, competitive Qin Song of the past.

But now, I had been reborn.

I was reborn at the very moment before the killer knocked on the door.

In this life-or-death crisis, the despair, pain, and fear suppressed for so many years transformed into a cold, sharp calm-for my own sake, and for my grandmother’s.

I had to fight for my life!

In 2008, mobile phones weren’t yet common among students. There was only one old-fashioned landline in the house. I lunged toward it to call the police, but the receiver was ice-cold and silent-no signal.

It seemed the killer had cut the power to the entire building before coming upstairs.

To get my grandmother into the right mindset as quickly as possible, I lied to her: “Remember Song Jiajia from my class? Her dad is the police chief. He just called me and said two murderers are fleeing toward our neighborhood! They’re in uniform, one fat and one thin, and they’ll likely pose as maintenance workers to get inside!”

In the darkness, my grandmother’s eyes were filled with confusion.

No sooner had I finished speaking than a heavy pounding echoed from the door.

“Open up! Maintenance, here to check the wiring!”

My heart jolted, my throat burning with tension. The killers were here!

The knocking grew increasingly crude and agitated. “Open the door! The power is out and you don’t want it fixed? Do you want to live like this or what?”

Grandmother grabbed my hand, utterly at a loss. “Song Song, could there be some kind of misunderstanding?”

I hid her in the storage closet and lowered my voice. “It’s only been five minutes since the power went out. Have you ever seen a maintenance worker show up that fast? The whole building is dark; if they were fixing it, they’d be at the main breaker. Why would they come to our unit?”

Such a glaring flaw, yet in my past life, I hadn’t noticed it at all!

I had drawn the curtains early. The room was suffocatingly quiet, save for the ticking of the clock. I prayed desperately that the two men would just leave, but suddenly, I realized something was wrong.

The killer’s choice of words was wrong!

I hadn’t responded at all, yet they kept shouting for me to open the door. From beginning to end, they never once asked:

“Is anyone home?”

This proved that their attack wasn’t a random occurrence. They had targeted my home from the very start!