The ride home should have taken twenty minutes. On any other night, that would have been considered fast.
Tonight, it felt like a death sentence.
The taxi sped off from the bathhouse (one he had managed to hurl on the way running) with a harsh rev of the engine, cutting through the bright-lit streets of Shanghai. Neon signs flickered above them—restaurants still open, convenience stores glowing under fluorescent lights, street vendors calling out their last sales of the night. The city was alive, restless, breathing in a rhythm that never seemed to slow.
Lian Yu sat in the back seat, his clothes still damp, clinging uncomfortably to his skin. Water from his hair had begun to dry in uneven patches, leaving a faint chill behind—but he didn't notice it.
His eyes were fixed ahead. Unblinking.
Tense.
Beside him, Luo kept stealing glances, his brows drawn together in growing confusion.
The taxi driver weaved skillfully through the traffic at first, slipping between lanes with practiced ease. The road stretched ahead under a canopy of streetlights, their glow reflecting off polished car roofs like scattered gold.
For a brief moment—It seemed possible.
That they would make it in time.Then—
Brake lights. A long, endless line of red.
The car slowed. Stopped. And didn't move again.
Traffic.
Heavy. Immovable. Suffocating. The driver clicked his tongue under his breath, leaning slightly forward as if that alone could push the car ahead.
"Ah… this area," he muttered. "Always like this at night."
Outside, the street was alive in a different way. This wasn't the polished, quiet luxury of the upper districts. This was raw, loud, unfiltered life. Hawkers lined the sidewalks, their stalls overflowing with goods—skewers sizzling over open flames, steam rising from dumpling baskets, plastic tables crowded with late-night diners.
Vendors called out prices.Customers bargained loudly. Scooters squeezed through impossible gaps, horns blaring in short, impatient bursts.
Some people moved with purpose, rushing home after long hours of work. Others lingered, as if the night itself was their livelihood—because for many of them, it was.
This street never slept. It couldn't afford to.
It wasn't a slum—but it wasn't quiet either.
It was survival. It was noise.
It was life in its most stubborn form.And on any other day—
Lian Yu would have loved it. He used to.
Back in high school, when life was simpler, when his biggest concern was getting through exams and avoiding unnecessary trouble, this same kind of traffic had been… comforting.
His school had been far—an hour's drive from home on a good day.
The route cut through half the city, from crowded residential streets like his own to wider roads lined with office buildings and glass towers. In the early mornings, the city would still be waking up—shop shutters rattling open, buses filling with sleepy students, the air cool and heavy with the promise of another long day.
But the traffic—
The traffic never cooperated. An hour would stretch into two.
Sometimes more.
He remembered sitting by the window of the bus, his head resting lightly against the glass as the world outside crawled past in slow motion. The hum of the engine, the occasional jerk of movement, the distant chatter of other students—It had always lulled him to sleep.
There were days he would drift in and out of consciousness, barely aware of how much time had passed. If he hadn't been naturally alert, he might have missed his stop more than once. He had seen it happen.
A classmate—dead asleep—had been carried two stops past his destination before anyone noticed.
Lian Yu had laughed at it back then. But he had always made sure it never happened to him.
Back then—
Time had been something to waste.
Now—
It was something he didn't have enough of.
The memory shattered. The present came rushing back.The car wasn't moving.
Not even an inch. His fingers curled tightly against his knees.
Move. His chest tightened. Move!
Every second felt heavier than the last, pressing down on him, suffocating him.
He wanted to get out.
Run.
Push through the crowd, shove past the cars, ignore everything and everyone until he reached home.
His body even leaned forward slightly, ready to act—
But a hand grabbed his arm. Firm. Steady.
"Look outside," Luo said quietly.
Lian Yu froze. He turned his head.And saw it.
The chaos.
Cars packed tightly together, leaving no space to slip through. Motorcycles cutting dangerously close. Pedestrians weaving unpredictably between vehicles. A single wrong step—one moment of distraction—and it would be over.
He clenched his jaw.
Yes—he wanted to save them. More than anything. But what good would that do—
If he didn't make it there at all?
If he became the one who needed saving?
Slowly, painfully, he leaned back into his seat.
But he couldn't sit still.
His leg bounced restlessly. His fingers tapped against his thigh without rhythm. His breathing was uneven, shallow, betraying the storm inside him.
The driver glanced at him through the rearview mirror. "What's wrong with you?" he asked casually. "You're making me nervous."
Luo didn't laugh this time. Instead, he turned fully to Lian Yu, his voice lower, more serious now.
"What exactly is going on?" he asked. "Why won't you say anything?"
There was no answer.
Because Lian Yu wasn't really there anymore. His mind was elsewhere.
(Are they okay?)
The thought repeated, over and over, louder each time.
(Nothing has happened yet… right?)
His nails dug into his palm.
(Please… let me make it in time.)
In this second chance—There were things he would never allow to happen again.
No matter how small.No matter how insignificant they seemed at first.
Because he knew—
He knew exactly how those small moments could grow into something irreversible.
And this— This was not small. If he failed again—If he arrived too late again—
Then there would be no excuse. No forgiveness. Not even from himself.
His gaze hardened slightly, fixed on the unmoving road ahead.
This time…
(No matter what it took—I will not lose them again.)
___
He kept convincing himself. It wasn't too late. It couldn't be too late. Even as Luo's question lingered unanswered beside him, even as the taxi crawled forward with the stubborn slowness of something half-dead, Lian Yu clung to that fragile thread of belief.
The street ahead began to look familiar.
Too familiar.
The dimly lit storefront on the corner with its flickering sign. The cracked pavement that dipped slightly near the drainage grate. The narrow alley that cut between two aging apartment blocks like a wound that had never quite healed.
His street.
They were close. Closer than he had dared to hope—And then he saw them.
A figure
Silhouetted briefly under the weak glow of a streetlamp before slipping into the shadowed entrance of his apartment building.
Familiar. Painfully so. His breath caught.
His heart didn't just sink— It dropped, violently, like something torn free.
No.
No—no, no, no—
His hand moved instinctively, fumbling as he checked the time.Almost thirty minutes.
Thirty.
The number felt like a verdict. Just a few minutes more—That was all it had taken last time. Just a few minutes. His vision blurred at the edges, panic crashing in all at once, drowning out everything else. The sound of the engine, the chatter outside, even Luo's presence beside him—
Gone.
Before either Luo or the driver could react—
The door was already open. And Lian Yu jumped. The sudden movement sent the driver into a panic. Tires screeched violently against the asphalt as he slammed the brakes, the entire car jolting forward with a force that snapped Luo against his seat.
"Are you out of your mind?!" the driver shouted, his voice sharp, laced with raw fear. "Do you not care about your life?!"
But Lian Yu barely heard him. The world had narrowed. Reduced to one point. One destination.
He staggered slightly when his feet hit the ground, the abrupt impact sending a jolt up his legs. For a split second, his balance wavered—but he caught himself.
Turned.
His face was pale.Not from the jump—
But from something far worse.
Fear, pure, unfiltered.
The kind that hollowed a person from the inside out.
His eyes found Luo.
And when he spoke, his voice was barely there, strained and uneven from breathless urgency.
"Call the police," he said. "On this street."
Luo blinked, thrown completely off balance. "What—?"
"There had been an attempted murder."
The words didn't land. They couldn't.
They made no sense—not here, not now.
Luo frowned, confusion tightening his features. "But there hasn't—"
Lian Yu shook his head sharply.
"There is going to be one," he said. "Now."
The certainty in his voice was terrifying.
Not frantic. Not doubtful. Just Certainty.
And before Luo could ask anything else—
Before logic could catch up— Lian Yu turned and ran.
He wasn't lying. He couldn't afford to be wrong. Because he knew. He knew exactly what waited beyond that door.
The apartment building loomed ahead, its structure old but sturdy, concrete walls stained faintly with time and weather. The lights inside the entrance flickered slightly, casting uneven shadows across the tiled floor.
Twenty floors. That was what the apartment has. And his was on the tenth.
Too high. Too far.
He burst through the entrance, his footsteps echoing sharply in the confined space as he rushed toward the elevator. His hand slammed against the button repeatedly, as if force alone would make it come faster.
The indicator light blinked. Slow.
Descending from somewhere above.
Too slow.
Each passing second clawed at him, tightening around his chest like a vice.
No. He couldn't wait. He wouldn't. He turned sharply—
And ran for the stairs.
The stairwell was dim, lit only by a single overhead bulb on each landing. The air was heavier here, enclosed, carrying the faint scent of dust and damp concrete. He took the steps two at a time.
Then three.
His body protested immediately. Breath hitched. Lungs burned. His legs screamed under the strain, muscles tightening, threatening to give out with every upward push.
Running up stairs was nothing like running on flat ground. Each step demanded more.
Took more. Drained more. But he didn't slow down. He couldn't. His heartbeat roared in his ears, loud enough to drown out everything else. His vision began to blur slightly, dark spots creeping into the edges.
He was suffocating.
Dying.
That was what it felt like. But still— He climbed. One floor. Two.Five.Seven—
His hand slammed against the railing to steady himself as his footing faltered for half a second. His chest heaved violently, each breath sharp and ragged, scraping against his throat.
Keep going. Ten.
The number barely registered before he was moving again. The hallway stretched out before him, long and dim, the overhead lights casting a dull yellow glow that seemed weaker than usual.
Everything felt— Wrong.nToo quiet. Too still.
He ran. Past closed doors. Past silence.
Until— Building 8A. His door. He didn't hesitate. Didn't knock. Didn't think.
The door burst open under the force of his push. And the moment he stepped inside—
The world changed. It hit him first as a smell.
Faint. Metallic. Sharp.
His body recognized it before his mind did.
Blood.
The room was in disarray. No—
That was too soft a word. It was devastation.
Glass littered the floor in jagged fragments, catching the dim light like scattered shards of ice. Broken bottles, shattered ornaments, overturned furniture—everything lay in chaos, as if the space itself had been torn apart from the inside.
The air felt heavier here. Darker. Even the shadows seemed thicker, clinging to the corners of the room like something alive.
And beneath it all—That smell.
It wrapped around him, familiar in the worst possible way. His stomach twisted violently.
Because he knew it. Too well, the first time Cold. Sterile.
A hospital room that smelled too clean, too empty. Two bodies. At different time intervals. Covered.
Still.
His mother. Ciao Ren. The memory struck like a blade. The second was much worse. So much worse.
Cici.
Her face—No.
He shut it out. Forced it back. But the image lingered anyway, distorted and broken. The unrecognizable remains. The silence that followed.
Even now—
He didn't understand why she had done it.
Why she had gone that far. Why she had left him like that. And yet—The smell remained the same. Unchanged. Unforgiving.
Even if he had been asleep. Even if he had been dead. He would have recognized it.
Blood.
His gaze dropped. And there it was. The traces of it.
Dark and scattered.
Across the living room floor. Something inside him snapped.He moved.
Fast.
Toward the bedroom. The door was half-open. And when he pushed it—
The scene inside burned itself into his vision.
Cici.
On the floor, her hands gripping tightly onto his father's leg, fingers clenched as if letting go meant something worse than pain.
Her face was covered in blood. Bright against skin that should have been untouched. Unharmed. Beautiful.
And yet, it was stained. For a moment—
There was no sound.
No thought. No breath. Only red. Because he didn't need to ask. Didn't need to guess.
There was no shadow of doubt. His father stood there. And Lian Yu knew—
He had done this. Cici had tried to stop him.
Tried to protect their mother.And this—
This was the price she paid.
____
The truth had never been hidden.
It had only been buried—layered beneath silence, sacrifice, and the quiet desperation of a woman trying to hold her family together with nothing but endurance.Their father was a useless man.
No—
"useless" was too kind. He was shameless.
A parasite that fed on the very people who once trusted him. He cheated. Not discreetly, not with guilt—but boldly, disgustingly. He brought women into their home, into the very space that was meant to be sacred. Their mother's bed—their matrimonial bed—reduced to nothing more than a place for his indulgence.
And their mother…
She had known. Of course she had known.
A woman always knows. But she said nothing.Not because she was weak—
But because she was strong in the most tragic way.
She endured it for them. For her children.
For Lian Yu. Because he was a scholarship student. Because his future depended on reputation, on stability, on the illusion of a proper home. A scandal like that could stain everything. Could follow him into classrooms, into whispers, into judgment.
So she swallowed it. Every humiliation.
Every betrayal. Every night she had to pretend not to see. And when the money ran out—as it always did—
He came back. Not as a father. Not as a husband. But as something uglier.
He would storm into the house, eyes sharp with greed, hands already reaching. Whatever little they had—hidden savings, emergency cash, even coins meant for food—he would take it.
And if she refused, if she dared to say no—
He beat her. Without restraint. Without shame. Until she collapsed. Unconscious and broken.
That—
That was the man standing in front of him now.
And that—
Was everything Lian Yu had sworn he would never become. Never a cheat.Never an abuser. Never someone who made the people who loved him feel small… afraid… worthless.
But life had a cruel way of holding up mirrors at the worst possible time. Because only after living through everything. After losing everything, did he realize, with a horror that hollowed him from the inside out…
He had become just like him. Not in fists.
No—
He had never raised his hand against a woman. But words? Words could cut deeper.
He cheated.
Betrayed someone who trusted him.
Emotionally cornered his fiancée until love turned into obligation. Spoke to his sister with a sharpness that left scars no one could see.
And his mother, his best friend. He hadn't hit them. He hadn't shouted. But he had been absent.
Cold on different occasions. Ignorant on many significant ways. Careless in ways that still hurt. Was that not another form of harm? Another kind of abuse? The realization coiled around his chest like a tightening chain.
And today. The 23rd—
It all began.
This was the day Cici lost her leg. The day his mother received a diagnosis he had been too shattered to even remember.
The day everything broke.
The beginning of a nightmare that stretched far beyond what he had understood at the time. And only later.
Too late—
Did he uncover the final truth. The one that refused to let him sleep. The one that turned grief into something darker. His father had killed their mother. Not by accident. Not by chance.
But deliberately.
Thst night, he had sent a message to her, threatening her using the children. Using every possible means to get her to come to the place he texted.
And when she refused— When she chose dignity over his desperation—He got into a truck… And ran her down. Like she was nothing.
Why?
Because he owed money to the loan sharks.
Because he had been foolish enough to take loans he couldn't repay—lured by a pretty face, a soft voice, empty promises. And when the consequences came—
He blamed her.
Blamed the woman who had already given him everything. The memories hit all at once. Sharp.Unforgiving. His vision blurred
Not from weakness—
But from the sheer weight of it. Tears gathered in his eyes. But they didn't fall.
Because something burned hotter.
Anger. Pure. Consuming.
When he spoke— His voice was low.
Controlled. But it carried something terrifying beneath it.
"What do you think you are doing?"
It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. Neither was it dramatic. It cut through the room like a blade. If he had spoken like this in a boardroom, men twice his age would have faltered. Deals would have shifted. Power would have bent.
Now—
It sounded like death had decided to speak.
"Son, that's—"
"Get out of here." His mother's voice came sharp and immediate, cutting off the man before he could continue.
Her face was pale, her body trembling—not just from pain, but from fear. Fear for him.
"We will handle this," she said.
Cici nodded weakly beside her, her grip still tight on their father's leg despite the blood staining her hands.
If this had been before—If this had been his past life—He would have listened.
He would have left.
Run. Escaped. Too afraid to interfere.
Too afraid to act. Too afraid to even call the police. And because of that—
That man had walked away. Free. Untouched. Unpunished. But not this time.
Not again. Something in Lian Yu snapped.
Clean.
Irreversible. He ignored them. Every word.
Every plea.
"I told you, didn't I…" His voice dropped further, colder. "Never touch them again."
And then— He moved.Fast.
Before anyone could react, his hand shot out, grabbing his father by the collar—no, higher— His throat. Fingers tightening. Lifting. And then—
Crack.
The punch landed with brutal force.
The sound echoed in the room, sickening and sharp. The man's head snapped to the side, his body staggering under the impact.
Shock filled his eyes.
This—This was new.
This son who had always stayed quiet.
Who had always endured. Who had never fought back—Had just hit him. Hard enough to shift bone.
"I told you, didn't I…" Lian Yu's voice trembled now—not with fear, but with rage barely held together. "Not to hit them again."
Another punch.
Crack.
This time, something gave. A tooth.
Blood followed immediately, spilling from the man's mouth as he gasped, disoriented.
"It hurts—stop! It hurts!" he cried, his voice breaking, hands coming up too late to defend himself.
But Lian Yu only smiled. And that smile—
It wasn't relief. It wasn't satisfaction.
It was something darker. Something that made even the air in the room feel colder.
"Good," he said softly. "Now you know how painful it is when you beat them."
And then he pushed him—Hard.
The man stumbled backward, collapsing onto the floor. Lian Yu didn't stop.
He lunged forward, straddling him, fists rising and falling in relentless succession.
One punch.
Two.
Three—
Each one heavier than the last. Each one carrying not just the present—But the past.
Every scream he hadn't stopped. Every tear he hadn't wiped away. Every regret. Every loss. This life. The previous one .
All of it—
Crashed down with each blow.The man beneath him quickly became unrecognizable.Blood smeared across his face, his features swelling, distorting, his resistance weakening with every second.
Still—
Lian Yu didn't stop. He couldn't.Didn't want to. "This is for them—!" Another punch.
"For her—!" Another.
"For everything you did—!"
He was smiling. Actually smiling.
And that—
That was what terrified them the most.
"Stop—! Stop him!"
Cici's voice broke through, strained and desperate. She grabbed him with what strength she had left, pulling at his arm.
"Let me go!" he snarled, struggling against her grip. "This bastard needs to die—he needs to—!"Another punch—
But this time—
It didn't land. A hand caught his wrist.
Warm. Shaking. He froze.
Slowly—
He turned. To see the person. And the moment he did, he paused completely because:
His mother.
Her eyes were filled with tears, her face pale but resolute. "You will kill him," she said.
The words hit harder than anything else.
The room fell silent. The weight of what he had been about to do—
What he wanted to do—
Crashed down on him all at once. His breath hitched. His vision cleared—
And what he saw beneath him was no longer just an enemy. It was a man on the brink of death.
His hands—
Were covered in blood.
"M… mom…" His voice cracked, small, uncertain, as if he had suddenly become that helpless boy again.
She shook her head, tears slipping down her cheeks.
"But—"
Bang!
The door burst open. The sound was loud enough to shake the air. Footsteps followed immediately—fast, urgent.
"Police! Don't move!"
Luo rushed in first, breathless, eyes wide as they took in the scene—the blood, the destruction, Lian Yu frozen in place above his barely conscious father.
Behind him—
Uniformed officers filled the doorway, their presence sharp, authoritative, undeniable.
For a moment—No one spoke. No one moved.
And then—
Reality settled. Heavy. Unavoidable.The police were here.