The telephone rang in the dead of night.
‘Hello?’ Sah took her hand out of heaps of blankets and grabbed her phone on the bedside. Her thumb drifted across the screen instinctively. She didn’t even need to open her eyes to take the call.
‘Sah! We got something over here. At the hillside. West Town Hill’, Wan cried out, barely covering the sound of the pouring rain.
‘Is Mr. Dong not there?’ Sah patted her forehead, wanting to get rid of the headache from her hangover.
‘He’s working in the south of the city and can’t leave.’ Wan noticed that her voice was nasal, so he could tell that she had been crying.
‘Mmhm. I’ll come then.’ No matter how reluctant Sah was, she still had to leave her bed, as well as her unfinished, sweet dream.
‘I’m sorry, Sah…’ Wan kept on apologising. He knew how important this day was to Sah. Despite being a workaholic, she took the day off and stayed at home all day. She didn’t want to see anybody. She didn’t want to see people who knew her under those pitying gazes of theirs. She didn’t want to talk about how great her day was.
‘Don’t be silly! You’re not the one who made me upset!’ Sah deeply knew that as a leader of the team, she couldn’t act on impulse.
Having written down the address, Sah hung up. Five minutes later, she took a taxi and went to the hill at the west of the city.
Outside the car window, droplets of rain slowly grew out of their needle-like nature and into pea-shaped. With the roaring wind and the crackling thunder, the sky was split by fitful gleams. It was like a scene from a nightmare.
People always said, ‘You are what you think.’ It suddenly struck Sah. Would the scene also change along with my emotions?
It was Sah and Zhun Kit’s wedding day one year ago today. The patch of grass behind the church glistened in the sun.
Sah called Zhun Kit, who said he was on the way to the church and told her not to worry about him. Before he hung up, he didn’t forget to charm her with the cheesy line that only belonged to the two of them. ‘The grass grows as far as our love goes. ’
A few simple words were enough to describe the scene the two had met beside a river in a foreign land, the countless letters they had been exchanging to lay their hearts bare for each other, the romance in the air on their dates, the endless streams of emotions that drove them both to unfold the next stage of life…
Two hours passed, yet there was still no sight of Zhun Kit. Instead, her mother whisked her way here in a panic while lending an arm to Sah’s father, whose face was covered in blood. ‘We saw Zhun Kit and Man Ling messing around at the parking lane behind the hill! We caught them red-handed! They hit Dad and then ran off with their car!’
‘Zhun Kit and Man Ling? No, it couldn’t be… It couldn’t be!’ Sah, who was usually reserved and calm, was now yelling and darting towards the path. She didn’t want to grab hold of what they just said, but rather any clues that will prove her parents wrong. Maybe they had mistaken them as another couple. Or perhaps Zhun Kit and Man Ling wanted to surprise her. Or maybe…
‘Maybes’ didn’t exist in the real world. They were narcotics specially for those who escaped from reality.
The pool of blood on the ground shook her rational side awake. The area of the bloodstains showed the brutality of the assailant. The footprints of large pointed-toe shoes and middle-sized high heels revealed how frantic they were when they were scrambling away. The short, dark tyre tracks indicated how the anxious driver had been as he immediately tread onto the pedal after just having started the car. The buttons of a man’s shirt and the pearls of a necklace scattered on the ground unveiled the chaos that had been unleashed upon this ground…
‘Sah!’ Wan and Mr. Dong followed behind her quickly. They were worried that she might do something outrageous again. She was one elite member of the police force, not someone who could be easily held down by young hooligans or fat, slow old men.
Sah gave no answer. She hung her head low and stared at the ground blankly.
‘Sah Sah!’ Her parents went after her, with her fellow bridesmaids propping them up.
‘This is the third time.’ A sense of despair crept upon her calm voice.
There was certainly no need for an explanation. Everyone knew what she was referring to. The first time was when her then boyfriend, Zhi Wai, flitted away to avoid paying his debts. The second time was her ex, Ka Heng, who had met his one true love while travelling alone, and had explained all of this with only a few words written on a postcard. This was the third time; Zhun Kit was two-timing with her childhood friend Man Ling.
Everybody wanted to comfort her, yet not a word came out of them.
An unforeseen, violent storm turned up in the cloudless sky, followed by the howling wind and showers of rain, which instantly washed away the wet bloodstains, as if nothing had happened in the first place. The path was still as quiet as it had been all long, and Sah was still the one who was left behind.
She got out of her car after reaching the foot of the hill.
Sah was listening to Wan’s briefing of the case while putting on a raincoat within the police line.
‘Around nine at night, a male resident who lived by was walking his dog. The dog suddenly went off leash and went missing after it had run up the hill. At nine thirty, the male resident contacted two of his friends to look for the dog. At eleven thirty, one of his friends found the dog, which was holding a decomposed finger in its mouth. They rang the police after then.’ Wan didn’t take his eyes off her face, and deduced how she felt by judging her expression.
‘Where’s the body?’ Sah pretended to concentrate on putting her gloves on, turning a blind eye to Wan’s odd look.
‘Right up front. A member of the searching team found it. They’re still digging up the body as it’s buried deep under.’ Wan knew what her temper was like and quick-wittedly led the way.
The scene was closely surrounded by tall trees, so it was difficult to set up large excavators and lighting equipment. The rain slowed down the digging even more.
Sah took a glimpse of the arms and sleeves of the body dug up, and shivers went down her spines.
It couldn’t be! It couldn’t be!
Her mind was desperately trying to run away, but her body leaned forward to take a good look at it.
The royal-blue-coloured long-sleeved floral shirt, the rose-gold cufflinks mounted in obsidian, the four violet eyelets on the sleeves which she picked out…
Millions of thoughts flooded her mind all at once.
‘Zhun Kit!’ Sah lost control of herself and pounced forward. Spreading her fingers, she desperately started to dig away the piles of soil that was covering the body.
‘Sah! Stop her! Quick!’ Wan and two other colleagues dragged her away.
‘Zhun Kit’s still alive! I have to save him! I have to save him!’ Sah wrenched herself free from the grips of the three strong men, plunged forward, and continued digging.
The three tried to stop her again and pressed her down on the ground with great force, all while letting her wail as she broke down.
‘Zhun Kit!!!’443Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhwUuMipGYL
