Chen Mo stood outside Hope School for the Deaf and Mute, holding his daughter's hand. From inside came nothing but an unsettling silence.
The principal handed him a contract demanding an exorbitant “job security deposit.” He silently signed his name, his knuckles turning white as he clenched his fist.
The pattern Zhang Hui had carved into her desk began to show a regular sequence. As he tried to decipher it, a shadow kept flashing past the window.
The food in the cafeteria grew scarcer by the day. When Xu Na fainted from hunger, she was still clutching her schoolbag. He secretly slipped her some bread, only to discover it was all rotten, raw meat.
On that damp, rainy night, muffled thuds and whimpers came from the girls' locker room. He rushed over, but the school groundskeeper stopped him with an iron grip. “The pipes are broken. It's slippery.”
As the dean's ruler came down and rose again, he stepped in front of Zheng Tai. Every gaze in the hallway froze.
When the dorm supervisor grabbed Zhang Hui by the nape and forced her head into the cold bathwater, he finally saw the numbers she'd carved: his daughter's medical record code.
The principal slipped a thick envelope into the police chief's hands and whispered with a smile, “Those sick children in the orphanage... they're more valuable alive.”
He raised his trembling right hand in front of the floor-to-ceiling window in the principal's office, making a gesture he had never made before. Suddenly, the fog over the entire city began to move.
