Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I don’t even know how I hung up the phone.

Uncle Wu was tidying the goods in his little shop. He asked gently, “What’s wrong, Yanwei? You look awful.”

I didn’t dare tell him the truth. “It’s nothing. It’s too hot. I think I’m getting heatstroke.”

When a person is extremely nervous, their face and eyes change.

I was afraid Uncle Wu would notice something was off, so I deliberately asked one more question. “Uncle, where’s Wu Zhe?”

Uncle Wu gave a wry smile. “Who knows where Xiao Zhe has run off to again. His mother went out looking for him.”

I sighed.

Uncle Wu was disabled and couldn’t work, so he ran this tiny convenience store of just a few square meters.

His wife, Aunt Wei, worked at the oil refinery. They were both especially kind people, but their eldest son, Wu Zhe, was mentally disabled and often wandered around outside.

“Yanwei, take these.”

Uncle Wu grabbed a handful of candy and stuffed it into my pocket. “Eat them. I remember you get low blood sugar sometimes.”

I lowered my head, tears falling out of my control. I hurriedly tried to give the candy back to Uncle Wu. “No, Uncle. If my dad finds out, he’ll hit me.”

Uncle Wu smiled. “It’s fine. We just won’t tell that biased father of yours. If he gets nasty with you again, come find me. I’ll back you up.”

Crying, I nodded and thanked Uncle Wu again and again before leaving the shop.

Uncle Wu was a good man. But good people never seemed to have good lives.

There was no moon tonight. Everything around me was pitch-black.

My mind was a mess. I remembered locking the door before I left. How had An’an gotten out?

Had she gotten mad at me and hidden somewhere?

I hurried home and searched under the bed, inside and outside the cabinets, and under the sofa several times.

Nothing.

She didn’t have a key. How could she possibly have gotten out of the house?

The key…

There were four keys to our home in total. Dad, Aunt Ma, and I each had one, and there was one spare.

I rushed to the desk in one stride and pulled open the drawer with shaking hands.

The spare key was gone.

My throat went dry. My heart pounded wildly.

Could An’an have not wanted to stay home, slipped the key out through the crack in the door, and asked someone to unlock it for her?

An’an was timid. Her mother had taught her since she was little that she wasn’t allowed to talk to strangers. Then was it someone she knew who had opened the lock for her?

A sliver of hope rose in my heart.

I went first to look for Chang Dongting, who lived diagonally across from us.

Chang Dongting was in fifth grade this year, and both her parents were employees at the oil refinery.

An’an usually loved trailing after Chang Dongting, Gao Xiaohuan, and the other elementary school girls, playing with them.

Maybe, just maybe, An’an was at their place right now!

I knocked on the Gao family’s door and asked whether Chang Dongting had seen my little sister.

Chang Dongting was in a rush to finish her summer homework and didn’t even have time to talk to me, so she had her mother come out and pass along the message that she hadn’t seen her.

My heart sank another notch, and I hurried to several other homes.

They all said they hadn’t seen her.

Both my legs were trembling. My teeth were chattering.

Where had she gone? Where on earth had An’an gone?

I knew that right now, I should hurry and call Aunt Ma and Dad, but I didn’t dare.

Last year, a little boy in the senior class at kindergarten bullied An’an.

Aunt Ma, who was usually so gentle and beautiful, had gotten into a public brawl with that boy’s mother and knocked out three of the woman’s teeth.

She had also issued a vicious warning: if that brat dared lay so much as a finger on her daughter again, she would absolutely kill him.

So if I had lost her precious daughter, she would kill me, wouldn’t she?