At this moment, the horizon was already beginning to turn pale.
On the outskirts of the old district north of Linjiang No. 1 High School stood a row of low, weathered buildings. Inside one shabby rented apartment, a girl who looked almost identical to Lin Wansu lay asleep on a bed with her eyes closed.
Her features seemed almost as though they had been carved from the same mold as Lin Wansu’s, yet the impression she gave was entirely different. There was a natural aloofness and pride between her brows. Even while asleep, she seemed difficult to approach, the complete opposite of Lin Wansu’s gentle warmth.
However, her tightly furrowed brows and rapid breathing made it clear that she wasn’t sleeping peacefully.
Suddenly, Lin Wanning’s eyes snapped open, and she bolted upright in bed.
“Sister!”
She gasped for breath, her forehead and back drenched in cold sweat.
The dream had felt far too real.
In the dream, a building was being consumed by raging flames. Her sister was trapped behind a red-hot iron door, desperately pounding against it.
Lin Wanning ran toward her with everything she had, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get any closer. All she could do was watch helplessly as the flames swallowed her sister’s figure.
Lin Wanning pressed a hand against her chest. Even after a long while, her violently pounding heart refused to calm down.
It was already light outside.
The old curtains couldn’t completely block the morning sunlight, and several pale gray beams slipped through the gaps, falling across the cramped bedroom.
Lin Wanning picked up the old Nokia beside her pillow and checked it, only to discover that the battery had long since died and the phone had shut itself off.
She plugged in the charger, then instinctively looked toward the other bed.
The blanket was neatly folded.
Her sister wasn’t there.
“Did she go to another part-time job?”
Lin Wanning frowned.
Sometimes, Lin Wansu took temporary early-morning jobs, helping breakfast shops move supplies or stocking shelves at supermarkets. To avoid waking her younger sister, Lin Wansu would always leave as quietly as possible.
This had happened before.
Yet for some reason, Lin Wanning couldn’t shake the uneasiness in her heart today.
She put on her slippers. Although she knew it was pointless, she still searched the tiny apartment.
No one was in the kitchen.
No one was in the bathroom either.
Lin Wanning stood in the cramped living room and stared at the bowl on the small dining table.
Half a steamed bun had been placed beneath the overturned bowl, with a small dish of pickled vegetables beside it. It was the dinner she had left for her sister yesterday.
Her sister hadn’t been home when Lin Wanning returned from her part-time job last night, but she hadn’t thought much of it at the time.
Now, however, it seemed possible that her sister hadn’t returned all night.
The uneasiness in Lin Wanning’s heart grew even stronger.
She returned to the bedroom. On the old wooden desk beside the bed were their admission tickets and ID cards, along with a battered laptop.
That laptop, which was nearly ready to fall apart, was probably the most expensive thing in the entire apartment.
She picked it up and plugged it in. A sticky note fluttered out from underneath the laptop.
Written on it in Lin Wansu’s neat, delicate handwriting were the words:
“Wanning, no matter how your college entrance examination turns out, Sister will always be by your side.”
Her sister must have written the note long ago and hidden it beneath the laptop. As long as Lin Wanning used the computer to check her results, she would find it.
Lin Wanning stared at that single line. It felt as though something had gently pierced her chest, and moisture gathered in her eyes.
Her sister was as gentle and thoughtful as ever.
But hadn’t her sister promised to be with her? Find the original chapter at g.com.
Lin Wanning returned to the bedside and picked up the phone that had just begun charging and could barely turn on. The first thing she did was call Lin Wansu.
However, instead of her sister’s gentle voice, a cold automated message came through the receiver.
“The number you have dialed is currently switched off.”
Lin Wanning began to panic.
She called again.
The phone was still switched off.
Remembering the nightmare, a chill slowly crept up her back.
She forced herself to remain calm.
Maybe her sister’s phone had simply run out of battery. Perhaps the place where she was working had poor reception.
Things like that had happened before. She couldn’t frighten herself over a single nightmare.
Lin Wanning took a deep breath and returned to the cracked old wooden desk.
She sat down and pressed the laptop’s power button.
The computer started painfully slowly. Its cooling fan hummed loudly, and the screen flickered twice when it finally lit up. They were borrowing Wi-Fi from the neighbor next door, so even loading a webpage took half a minute.
The college entrance examination results portal was already open.
Lin Wanning spread her admission ticket beside the keyboard. Her fingers hovered above the number keys, but she couldn’t bring herself to type.
Whenever she had imagined the moment she checked her results, her sister had always been sitting beside her.
Her sister would be even more nervous than she was, saying, “It’s okay,” while secretly clutching the hem of her clothes.
Then, the moment the score appeared, her sister would probably start crying before she did.
But now, Lin Wanning was alone in the room.
She pressed her lips tightly together and finally began entering her admission ticket number.
She pressed Enter, and the page changed.
The system began loading.
It was only a little more than 10 seconds, yet to Lin Wanning, it felt unbearably long.
She had waited for this day for so many years.
Ever since the day their parents died. Ever since the first time her sister shoved a steaming bun into her hands while claiming that she wasn’t hungry. Ever since the night Lin Wanning heard her sister hiding in the bathroom and secretly crying.
She had been waiting for this moment all along.
She wanted to get into a good university and take her sister away from this place.
She wanted her sister to never again have to work endless part-time jobs, never again have to wear old school uniforms faded white from repeated washing, and never again have to lower her head before anyone.
When the results page finally appeared on the screen, Lin Wanning closed her eyes.
After taking a deep breath, she opened them again.
There was no specific score displayed in the center of the page. Instead, there was only a conspicuous notice.
[Your ranking is among the highest in Jiangnan Province. Your exact score is temporarily unavailable.]
Her score had been withheld.
According to the usual practice of previous years, this only happened to the very highest-ranking students in the entire province.
In other words, she had done extremely well, perhaps even better than she had expected.
Yet Lin Wanning merely stared at the message for several seconds. There wasn’t the slightest trace of joy on her face.
She softly called out, “Sister.”
The only sound in the apartment was the humming of the laptop’s cooling fan.
The uneasiness in Lin Wanning’s heart completely overwhelmed whatever happiness her college entrance examination results should have brought her.
She stood, unplugged her phone from the charger, changed her shoes, grabbed her keys, and prepared to search the shops where her sister often worked part-time.
At that moment, a rapid knocking suddenly sounded from outside the door.
Lin Wanning froze.
Her sister would never knock like that.
The next second, her phone began vibrating as well.
A caller ID appeared on the screen.
Her homeroom teacher, Li Jian.
Lin Wanning stared at the name, and the uneasiness in her heart reached its peak.
For some reason, she suddenly remembered the red-hot iron door from her nightmare.
She forced herself to stop entertaining such impossible thoughts.
The most likely explanation was that her homeroom teacher had found out about her college entrance examination results and was calling her because of that.
Wasn’t that far more reasonable?
Her phone continued ringing while the knocking outside grew increasingly urgent.
“Wanning, hurry and open the door!” Aunt Wu’s panicked voice came from outside. “Are you home? Even your homeroom teacher has been calling me!”
Aunt Wu was the neighbor who lived across from them and ran a small restaurant nearby. She had always taken good care of the two sisters. They had even listed her phone number as their emergency contact at school.
Lin Wanning walked toward the door while answering the call.
At first, only the chaotic sound of wind came through the phone. Then Li Jian’s uneasy voice finally sounded.
“Wanning, are you at home right now?”
Lin Wanning tightened her grip on the phone, and her voice suddenly became unnaturally calm. “I am.”
“Your sister… Lin Wansu. Did she come home last night?”
The instant those words fell, Lin Wanning’s heart began pounding violently.
She didn’t answer.
Realizing how abrupt and confusing his question sounded, Li Jian hurriedly added, “Don’t panic. Something happened at the school, and I only received the news recently. Do you want me to come pick you up right now?”
Lin Wanning’s voice was frighteningly hoarse. “What happened to my sister?”
The other end of the call fell silent for a moment.
That brief silence felt more like an answer than anything he could have said.
Lin Wanning’s grip tightened little by little. The battered Nokia creaked in her hand as though she were about to crush it apart.
“Speak!”
Li Jian became even more flustered. “The old warehouse behind the school caught fire last night. Your sister’s homeroom teacher called me. A student from her class said… said your sister might have been there. The school and the fire department are still trying to confirm what happened.”
The old warehouse.
A fire.
Her sister might have been there.
Lin Wanning understood every one of those phrases individually, yet she couldn’t seem to connect them into a coherent sentence inside her mind.
An overwhelming terror closed around her, and her vision briefly went black.
The nightmare she had just experienced had suddenly bled into reality.
Lin Wanning’s legs gave way. She instinctively grabbed the edge of the table, her entire body nearly collapsing to the floor.