She had thought it was only a scene from a nightmare, yet it had actually appeared in her home. The terror of that instant felt like falling from a great height, her heart suspended in midair.
"How is this possible..."
Tang Hanlu was wide awake now. The sweat on her back pressed her clothes against her skin, making her feel chilled.
"The key, right! The front door key!"
Tang Hanlu grabbed her schoolbag and tipped it upside down over the bed. Books and homework scattered everywhere, but the key was nowhere to be seen.
Her pounding heart seemed wrapped in a great mass of shadows. Tang Hanlu grew increasingly frantic.
"It's not in the inner compartment or any of the pockets. Where did I lose it? I remember putting it in my schoolbag!"
Mother's phone kept ringing. Large beads of cold sweat slid down Tang Hanlu's forehead. She didn't dare stay inside, but the hallway was even more dangerous.
"Calm down. It could just be a coincidence."
Reassuring herself, Tang Hanlu picked up her phone and went to the master bedroom door. She took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and looked beneath the bed.
There was no murderer or corpse. Mother's phone was wedged in exactly the same place as in the nightmare.
Tang Hanlu hurried over and picked up the phone, deftly unlocked the screen, and ended the call on both phones.
The ringing stopped. Tang Hanlu returned to the living room and opened Mother's contacts, hoping to find a colleague who could tell Mother to hurry home.
"Whenever I need you most, you're never here. Work, work, you're busy working every single day. What exactly do you do all day?"
Swiping through the screen, Tang Hanlu examined Mother's contacts. Besides the names sorted alphabetically, several numbers