Chapter 5

Laura Nie POV

I didn't push the door open.

Taking half a step back, I turned to the agent and the buyer with a faint smile.

"Today isn't very convenient," I said. "Why don't you come back another day to view the place? I'm quite busy these couple of days."

The buyer started to say something, but the voices inside suddenly cut off.

Frank pulled the door open and stepped out, sweat beading on his forehead from panic, his shirt sleeves rolled up.

"Laura?" he asked in a hushed voice. "When did you get here? Did you... hear all that just now?"

"Just passing by." I shifted my bag to my other hand. "The agent set up a viewing, so I walked up to take a look. I didn't go in."

"You didn't go in?"

"No."

He stared at my face for a long, heavy moment.

The knuckles of his hand gripping the doorframe tightened, bit by bit.

Cecilia followed him out, lingering right behind him, one hand still clutching his sleeve.

"Ms. Nie, please don't misunderstand. Mr. Zhuang and I just came up to take a look. He said this place..."

"I'm not misunderstanding anything," I cut her off.

I didn't even spare Cecilia a second glance.

Cecilia's fingers twisted tighter around his sleeve.

"Go ahead and look," I said. "I'm leaving."

Frank didn't move out of the way.

"Wait a second." He took half a step forward. "What happened to your wrist?"

Only then did he catch sight of the brace on my hand, his expression instantly tightening.

"I took a fall."

"When did this happen? Why didn't you tell me?"

"If I had told you, would you have had the time to care?"

He had no answer for that.

His Adam's apple bobbed. It took him a long time to squeeze out, "I only brought Cecilia up here because I suddenly remembered this place and wanted to show her around. That's all."

"Okay."

"Don't be like this."

"Like what?"

I asked so flatly.

His face looked even worse than when he had first pulled the door open, as if he would rather I threw a massive scene right then and there.

In the past, even if I merely scraped my knee, I would call him three times in a row. He was probably waiting for that version of me.

That version of me had vanished the second he arrived at that intersection and uttered his very first sentence.

"Cecilia's ankle is still sprained. I'm going to take her home first," he said. "You should hurry to the hospital and get that checked out, too."

"All right," I replied briskly.

He froze for a second.

From the far end of the hallway, a faint cracking sound suddenly echoed.

This building had been classified as unsafe for a long time.

Dilapidated wooden planks from demolitions were piled up in the hallway corners, and the peeling plaster flaked off with the slightest touch.

Downstairs, an old scavenger had glanced up earlier and yelled, "Watch out up there!" but no one had taken it seriously.

The wind howled through the window frames missing their glass panes, whipping up dust devils that swirled through the entire corridor.

The wall groaned again.

Immediately following that, a fissure cracked open across the partition wall above our heads with a sharp snap, showering down chunks of plaster and debris.

"The wall is collapsing!" the agent screamed.

Before anyone could even react.

Frank lunged forward almost purely on instinct.

He swept Cecilia into his arms, rolling his entire body over her and using his own back to shield her from the collapsing wall.

Bricks and concrete slabs rained down mercilessly, slamming against his back and the arm he used to shield her.

Cecilia shrieked, cowering tightly against his chest.

A thick cloud of dust billowed up in an instant, filling the hallway with the suffocating, metallic stench of dirt and blinding everyone.

Standing two steps away, I had no time to dodge.

A half-broken wall collapsed entirely, burying me along with my bag beneath it.

A searing, excruciating pain ripped through my leg, and I crashed sideways onto the floor.

I heard a soft, sickening snap from inside my calf.

After that sound, the leg no longer belonged to me.

Blood seeped through my pant leg, staining the gray dust beneath me into a dark, spreading stain.

Broken brick shards slashed across my arms and cheeks, leaving trails of blood streaming down.

"Laura!" Frank finally turned his head.

His own arm had been gashed open, blood dripping down his sleeve, but he didn't even look at it.

Shielding Cecilia, he scrambled out of the rubble. The moment he saw me pinned beneath the wall, all color drained from his face, and he scrambled over in a frenzy to haul the bricks away.

But right then, I couldn't clearly hear what he was shouting.

Half my body was trapped under the wall, my leg was immobile, and my ears were ringing violently.

I could hear people running up and down the stairs; I could hear someone screaming for an ambulance.

Yet in my mind, those two fleeting seconds remained crystal clear.

When the wall groaned, he had been two steps away from me, and one step away from Cecilia.

He had lunged toward Cecilia.

The day of the crash, when I sat by the roadside waiting for him for over ten minutes, I had still believed in one thing: when push came to shove, at the critical moment, he would always pull me out first.

That collapsing wall had crushed that belief into dust.

From this point on, I had nothing left to wait for.

The brace wrapped around my right wrist for days was burning hot under the pressure of the bricks, its edges already soaked in blood.

Right before I lost consciousness, a thought suddenly struck me.

The kraft paper envelope containing the signed agreement was inside my bag. When the wall crashed down, the bag had slid away, landing on a pile of rubble two steps away.

That was the only way out I had quietly secured for myself over the past six months.

I couldn't let it stay crushed there, and worse, I couldn't let him see it and suspect anything.

Gritting my teeth, I braced myself with my unpinned arm and dragged myself forward, inch by agonizing inch.

Jagged brick shards tore through my palms and scraped against my knees until they bled. My entire body trembled, my vision blacking out in waves of sheer agony, but I kept crawling. I crawled through the thick dust, crawled over the sharp debris biting into my flesh, crawled past the sound of him screaming my name, all the way to the bag. I pulled the envelope out and clutched it fiercely against my chest, gripping it so tightly that my knuckles turned white.

Only when it was securely held did I finally let out that breath.

"Laura! Laura, look at me!" Frank had already shoved half the bricks off me, frantically trying to gather me into his arms.

I parted my lips, wanting to say something, but darkness swallowed my vision.

As Frank reached for me, my instinct took over, and I pressed the envelope even tighter against my chest.

He scooped me up and dashed down the stairs, blowing past Cecilia, who was still standing in the hallway, without pausing for a single second.

In his arms, my hand remained locked over my chest.

My final thought was: as long as it's safe, that's all that matters.