"...We asked around. We didn't know the names of the people involved—not the victim or the driver—but the police found out who they were and caught him. He wasn't from Minqing. He was a long-haul truck driver. Traffic police tracked him down, the insurance paid out, and he was arrested. They should be going through the legal process now, for hit-and-run or something... We can be sure that driver hit her. They found blood on the truck and everything. They have all the evidence."
"Mm."
"We got the full story and told Ranran. But she... How do I put it..."
"It seemed like she didn't disbelieve us."
"Didn't disbelieve us?"
"Yeah. The day we found her and told her, we were pretty happy. The five of us had arranged to go out to eat together. I'd asked an upperclassman about it, and Xiao Ai had always known. We'd told them before that Li Peng and the others were concerned, and would ask about things every now and then. Ranran had never asked. When we told her, she didn't believe we'd be able to find anything out. We got the news and told her over dinner that day, but she still had that same look—so lifeless, so... so, how do I put it? Cold, I guess. She barely ate. We hadn't eaten with her for several days. We were in the same dorm room. Our other classmates asked if something had happened in her family, or if we'd fallen out. There were six of us in the room, and the other three didn't know about this. We just said we were going to Shaozhuang for a trip. They'd asked about it at the start of term, too, so we made something up... They all thought something had happened in Shaozhuang and