Chapter 1

Chapter 1

July 12, 2020

Back then, the nearby subway station hadn’t been built yet.

Most parents drove to pick up their children.

After school, Ding Yutong’s mother would always lead her by the hand to my stall to buy a red bean cake.

Then, they would drive away in a small electric car.

She would always say to me with a beaming smile:

“Uncle, your red bean cakes are so sweet!”

Once, she even told her mother:

“The thing I look forward to most every day is eating a red bean cake!”

Ding Yutong-that was the girl’s name.

I only found that out later, while watching her parents break down in tears.

It was raining heavily the day she disappeared.

On rainy days, there were twice as many cars picking up children as usual.

Because of this, the kindergarten would release the children in two separate groups.

There was an interval of about twenty minutes between them.

Senior Class 2, which Ding Yutong was in, was scheduled for the second group.

But when all the children in the class had left, the head teacher noticed one child was missing.

Ding Yutong hadn’t come out.

The teacher had just performed a roll call while they were lined up waiting.

She rushed to find her.

But after searching the entire campus, Yutong was nowhere to be found.

The problem was that during the entire dismissal period,

Yutong’s Mom had been waiting outside the gate, and she hadn’t seen her either.

Later, the school suggested that Yutong must have run out with the first group of students.

The school and the police reviewed the facial recognition logs and surveillance footage.

They found no sign of Yutong leaving.

Besides, her mother was right at the gate.

Even if she had run out, she should have gone looking for her mother.

And so, on that evening of thunder and rain,

Ding Yutong simply vanished.

Chapter 2

August 6, 2024, 9:00 AM

Four years passed just like that.

Yutong was never found.

The kindergarten from back then had already become a ruin.

During those four years, I passed the exam to become an auxiliary police officer.

After being assigned to a post, I was often on patrol in this area.

The perception of time seemed to slow down here.

I could almost see the bustling gate and a little girl running toward me, saying:

“Uncle, your red bean cakes are so sweet.”

Everything felt like it happened yesterday.

It wasn’t until I had the chance to organize files at the station

and opened the case file for Ding Yutong’s disappearance that I realized four years really had passed.

That little girl, who was just over five years old,

had reached the point where she could be legally declared dead.