My mom is waiting for treatment, and you're summoning me to be a hero?

Gao Yang looked at the chaotic scene, his legs trembling.

That trembling wasn't from fatigue or tension, but from fear seeping from the very marrow of my bones.

This feeling made his knees so weak that they could barely support his body weight.

He moved step by step toward the crowd, his steps getting smaller and slower.

Among the crowd, some people were making phone calls, some were tiptoeing to peek inside, and some were shaking their heads and sighing.

The sound of several middle-aged women whispering to each other reached Gao Yang's ears clearly.

"Tsk tsk, the adults in this family are something else. How could such a young girl run off by herself? Sigh."

"What does this have to do with that young girl? It's obvious that the car was driving in the wrong direction."

"Not only that, I saw the driver lying motionless in the car and thought he had passed out, but when I went over to check, he was snoring and reeked of alcohol."

"Ugh, what kind of mess is this?"

……

Gao Yang's lips trembled uncontrollably as he listened to these words.

He shook his head almost imperceptibly, as if the muscles in his neck had become so stiff that they could only make the slightest movement.

He kept muttering something, his voice so soft that only he could hear it.

"It's not her...it shouldn't be Tian Tian..."

Just as he was about to squeeze into the edge of the crowd, something in the green belt made his pupils suddenly contract.

They were a pair of little shoes, a pair of pink little shoes.

It lay quietly in the low bushes of the green belt, its shoelaces still tied with a crooked bow.

"I love these shoes the most because my brother bought them for me."

The color drained completely from Gao Yang's face in an instant.

The cake box slipped from his loosened fingers and hit the ground with a dull thud.

He rushed into the crowd.

The onlookers were knocked off their feet by him, and someone shouted, "Hey, what's wrong with you?" but he didn't hear them at all.

All he could see was that tiny figure lying in a pool of blood.

a little girl.

She was wearing the same floral dress she had worn that morning, but the row of sunflowers printed on the hem was now mostly soaked in blood.

Her hair was loose, her eyes were closed, and traces of dried tears still clung to her eyelashes. The corners of her mouth were slightly turned down, an expression she only showed when she was in the most pain.

A middle-aged couple knelt beside her.

The mother held the little girl tightly in her arms, her hand covering the bleeding wound on the child's forehead, and she let out one heart-wrenching cry after another.

The father squatted down beside her, holding his daughter's drooping little hand in one hand and vigorously wiping his face with the other.

He kept wiping, but the tears just wouldn't stop; the more he wiped, the more there were. He hunched over, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably.

Gao Yang saw the little girl's face clearly.

His knee felt like it had been kicked hard from behind, and he fell to his knees.

"Tian...Tian Tian..."

The name was shattered beyond recognition when it came out of his mouth, as if it had been bitten into pieces between his teeth and squeezed out bit by bit.

He raised his hand, wanting to reach forward and touch that drooping little hand, to touch that little face stained with blood, to pick her up.

Just then, a tremendous force slammed into his chest, pushing him backward.

He looked up blankly and saw two faces so distorted they were almost unrecognizable.

They are his parents.

The mother's hair was disheveled, her makeup was ruined by tears, and her eyes were so red they looked like they were about to bleed.

She stared intently at Gao Yang, her eyes devoid of any warmth, filled only with overwhelming resentment, like a red-hot knife stabbing straight into his chest.

"Because of you!"

Her voice was shrill and inhuman; she pointed at him, her nails almost digging into his face.

"It's all because of you!"

The father stood behind the mother, his usually gentle face now filled with cold anger, his facial muscles twitching violently, and his lips trembling.

The words that came out came out one by one, each word like a nail driven into Gao Yang's heart.

"If you hadn't lied to her, she wouldn't have come looking for you on her own! Do you know how hard it was for us to find her?! There were so many people on the street, why her of all people?! Why?!"

The father's voice grew louder and louder, eventually turning into a roar.

His parents pointed at him and condemned him, their faces contorted with grief and anger.

Gradually, they ceased to resemble humans and became two demons.

This is a scene from a dream; everything here has detached itself from reality.

Gao Yang stared wide-eyed in horror, his mouth agape but no sound came out.

He tried to back away, his hands bracing against the rough asphalt, desperately rubbing backward, leaving a messy trail on the ground.

But the two hideous demons continued to approach, their voices overlapping and creating a piercing reverberation.

"It's all because of you!"

"You killed her!"

The surrounding crowd began to gather around.

The faces of those people, which were originally blurry, became clear one by one, and then began to distort.

Everyone's face is changing; their eyes are becoming empty holes, while their mouths are opening wider and wider.

Their voices surged in from all directions, engulfing Gaoyang like a tidal wave.

"So it was because of him, he's the real killer."

"Gao Yang, you've ruined your sister."

"Are you bored? Why would you lie to her? Are you out of your mind?"

"How did such a six-year-old girl end up with such a brother?"

"He's the one who ruined it, it's him."

……

Countless arms stretched out from the crowd, pointing directly at him.

Those fingers extended from all directions, becoming more and more numerous and denser, as if trying to pierce through him entirely.

Gao Yang retreated desperately, pressing his palms to the ground and scraping his knees along the ground, until he had retreated to the outermost edge of the crowd.

Just then, his hand touched something sticky.

He instinctively turned his head to look.

It's that cracked cake.

The cardboard box had completely fallen apart, and cream was smeared all over the ground. Pink strawberry jam and white whipped cream were mixed together, gleaming ambiguously under the dim streetlights.

A few words were crookedly written on the cake surface with red jam.

Gao Yang wishes his younger sister, Gao Tiantian, a happy 6th birthday.

The words were now facing him.

Besides these, there was also a pair of feet next to the cake.

Her feet were very small, and she wore white socks with a small red flower embroidered on the top.

My shoes are gone, and there's a shallow scratch on my ankle, like it was scraped by bushes, and a thin scab has formed.

Those feet stood quietly beside the cake, their feet sinking into a mixture of cream and blood, yet they remained completely unstained.

Gao Yang was startled and slowly raised his head.

Gao Tiantian stood there, looking down at him.

Then he bent down, and the corners of his mouth slowly turned up, revealing two newly replaced front teeth.

"I don't blame my brother. He's the best to me."

The sound faded.

The light screen flickered violently, and the image froze in that frame.