Gao Ming ran his fingers along the edge of the photograph. The scissors had made very neat cuts; the perpetrator seemed to have enjoyed the process.
"I wonder how many of us will survive in the end."
Gao Ming had once believed his classmates were all innocent, and he had considered saving everyone. But as events unfolded, he realized things were not that simple.
An accident had occurred in the Three-City Border Tunnel ten years ago, but Liu Yi had found nothing about its aftermath, nor anything about what had ultimately happened to the people on the bus.
Back in the auditorium, class monitor Yuan Hui's words had deeply shaken Gao Ming. That recurring nightmare of his might have been what actually happened back then, only everyone had forgotten it for some reason.
"When the bus crashed ten years ago, we might all have been on it..."
Ten years later, his classmates had gathered again for all sorts of reasons, and a bus from the East District Investigation Bureau had brought them into the school.
Standing by the window, he looked outside. The bus that had brought them here was still parked on school grounds. Shrouded in darkness and rain, it looked utterly out of place.
"Bus, leaving school, the accident, one extra student, a ten-year cycle..."
The vibration of his phone interrupted Gao Ming's thoughts. He looked at the screen. Wang Jie was urging him to hurry back to the dormitory; they seemed to have made an important discovery.
When Gao Ming returned to Dormitory 1314, he saw Xishan pinned down on a bed the moment he stepped through the door. His hands and feet were bound, and his face was bruised.
"What are you doing?"
"This fucking idiot!" Wang Jie grabbed a chair, looking ready to beat Xishan