“Open the door!”
“It’s only right to repay a debt!”
“Damn it, Wang Xiaoning, you bitch, you took the money and hid, didn’t you? If you have the guts, hide for the rest of your life!”
“There’s a sound inside the room, break down the door!”
“Yes, break down the door!”
The old, rusty iron door was pounded with a loud thud, and it scraped against the floor, making a creaking sound, as if the furious crowd outside would smash it open the next second.
In the cramped and chaotic corner of the room, there were two women huddled together.
The older one was in her thirties, with a tired face, dressed in tattered clothes. She tightly held the smaller one in her arms, with one hand covering the girl’s lips, afraid to let her make a sound.
The smaller girl, only about eight or nine years old, was petite and wearing obviously oversized, worn-out clothes. Her face had some stains, but her pair of almond-shaped eyes were particularly bright. However, at this moment, the girl’s eyes were fixed on the banging iron door, filled with fear.
As the iron door seemed about to give way, the woman finally made a decision. She gritted her teeth and pushed the girl under the bed.
“Darling… don’t worry, don’t be afraid… don’t make a sound…” The woman’s hands trembled incessantly, but she still forcefully pushed the girl under the bed. “Everything will be fine… Mom is here, nothing will happen…”
The people outside heard the noise and started smashing harder.
With a final loud bang, the door was broken open.
The girl curled up under the bed, seeing countless feet of people squeezing into their room from outside, hearing their menacing voices:
“Wang Xiaoning, pay back the money!”
“You filthy whore, pay back the money!”
The mother cowered, her voice filled with tears, “I… I truly don’t have any money left. Please, can you be understanding and give us more time…”
Her mother is described as a shrewd, gentle, and bold person. In her memory, she never spoke with such a fearful voice to anyone.
Because of this, the girl huddled under the bed. Despite tears streaming down her cheeks and trembling uncontrollable, she followed her mother’s instructions and tightly sealed her lips, afraid to make the slightest sound.
The world outside the bed grew louder and louder. It wasn’t just the shouts of men, but also the metallic sound of clashing weapons and the screams of a woman.
Finally, the world suddenly fell silent.
Her mother collapsed to the bed, blood trickling from her fingertips and seeping onto the floor beneath.
Unable to control herself any longer, the girl’s hoarse throat let out a piercing scream:
“Ah—!”
…
A piercing scream echoed through the night sky outside the hospital.
The woman jolted upright from her hospital bed, hugging her legs tightly as if to curled into a corner, the fear still evident in her almond-shaped eyes.
She had that nightmare again.
Ever since the debt collectors started coming in relentless waves, she had often been plagued by such terrible dreams.
In reality, her mother had passed away from an illness.
After her mother’s death, the debt collectors had no reason to come after a ten-year-old child like her, unless the drunken neighbor next door occasionally knocked on her door when he was intoxicated. But it had been a long time since anyone had visited her home.
Yet, she couldn’t escape the shadows of her nightmare…
The woman quickly made a decision – she would first go to the eastern district to collect two bags of bottles to sell. On her way back, she could conveniently buy a pack of instant noodles. The cabbage behind the house hadn’t been completely picked yet, so she planned to secretly take some without anyone noticing.
However, as she opened her eyes again, her vision gradually became clear, and she immediately sensed that something was wrong.
She wasn’t at home!
She shrank under the blanket, looking around anxiously.
The room she was in now was much larger than her own house. The walls were white, and the ceiling was also white, spotlessly clean without a single blemish.