The Night of the Broken Promise

The message said the girl's mother would come to pick her up a little later.

The police brought news of her death instead.

In 2025, Wen Qitong returned to the county town to help her father move. Her father had already brought home an eight-year-old girl, planning to feed her dinner and wait for her mother to come get her.

The girl's mother, Hao Lingyi, had died in the break room of the truck fleet where Wen Qitong's father worked. The suitcase and phone she had left there had both disappeared.

Twenty-four years earlier, Wen Shaoting had driven drunk and killed Lingyi's six-year-old younger brother. He had served his sentence and paid compensation. Over the years, he had also done many things to help the Hao family.

Before the murder, Lingyi had already bought a ticket to leave. Her child was waiting, and the ticket was still there, but she never made it to their meeting.

Jia He investigates the missing suitcase, while Wen Qitong is forced to face her father's past anew. Picking up the child, bringing clothes, fixing things for others: all of it had once been called caring for them.

But Lingyi had clearly been preparing to leave. Why, in the end, could she not get out of that room?