Chapter 1: 1

The ear piercing screech of car brakes broke the silence of the night and the car in front of me suddenly came to a stop. The resounding noise of a collision could be heard through my windscreen. I quickly slammed the brakes but I was too late. This second collision and the lurching of the car made my head slam against the steering wheel. One second before I lost consciousness, I started praying that this car was as safe as the salesgirl who sold it to me claimed it was.

My head hit the steering wheel and started bleeding as my entire world went dark. The safety airbag I had expected did not pop out of my steering wheel to cushion the impact.

I think I lost consciousness at this point. It might have just been a few seconds or it could have a few minutes. Either way, when I raised my head again in my giddy state, the first thing I saw was the blood on my steering wheel.

As I struggled to sit upright, I touched my forehead and my now blood covered hand made me a lot more alert.

What just happened? I looked up and saw that a red Peugeot 408 had collided with a truck head on. The truck was old and battered, so it was hard to tell if this collision had caused it any damage. But it wasn’t the same for the Peugeot 408. The brand new front of the car had been crushed so badly, I almost couldn’t bear to look.

Was my car damaged too? With that in mind, I ignored the fact that my forehead was still bleeding and was more determined to check my precious car instead. It had cost me more than $50,000 after all.

Just then, there was a noise as the driver’s door of the Peugeot 408 was pushed open from the inside. The door swayed a little before a hand appeared.

I was terribly shocked and held my breath as I watched that one hand struggle to come out of the car. After a while, the entire arm had emerged from the car, then a head, then another hand. The victim was finally drained of energy by the time he managed to get his upper body out of the car and lay there without moving.

His car seemed to be pretty safe. Several airbags around him had popped out, but he seemed to be very badly injured. He was covered in so much blood.

When I first saw how badly hurt the victim was, the first thought I had was to try and save him. But I quickly realized one problem. I wasn’t going to be able to come out of this accident unscathed. One would assume that I had crashed into his car from behind because I had been tailgating him.

Under normal circumstances, I would definitely be the party at fault. But this situation was a little more complicated. A truck had come towards this Peugeot 408, causing it to brake suddenly, which resulted in my car crashing into the Peugeot 408 because I couldn’t brake in time. If you looked at it that way, I was actually a victim too.

As a result, my initial thought about saving him disappeared almost immediately after that. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to save him. I was afraid that I would be implicated and be forced to take responsibility.

Nobody dared to help an old lady when she fell down anymore, never mind such a terrible traffic accident.

With that thought in mind, I quickly smeared the blood on my forehead across my face evenly, and quietly placed my head on the steering wheel again to pretend that I was still unconscious.

But just then, the victim suddenly turned to look at me. He glared so fiercely at me, as if he was filled with hatred for me.

The one who caused him to be so severely injured was the truck driver. I just happened to be behind him. So why was he staring so fiercely at me? Also, there was something strange about the way he was staring at me. It was as if we had a terrible feud or something.

But why?

I didn’t dare to look straight at him anymore. I shut my eyes, took a deep breath and tried to calm my anxious heart down. At that moment, the memories that I had lost temporarily from the impact of the collision suddenly flooded my mind again.

This Peugeot 408 was the one that had been driving very closely behind me and had sounded his horn the entire way. I was a new driver and couldn’t drive very quickly, so someone honking from behind to hurry me did happen from time to time. Usually, I would stick to one side of the road and let the driver overtake me. But this time, for some reason, I had indignantly refused to do so. Not only did I not move aside to let him through, but I drove even more slowly and purposely drove in the middle of the road to make it impossible for another car to overtake mine. We had nearly reached the end of the road when he became so angry with me that he took the risk of overtaking me by driving into the opposing lane of traffic. That was exactly how his car ended up crashing into an oncoming truck.

I broke out into a cold sweat just thinking about this. An even more terrifying thought filled my mind after that.

If I hadn’t been travelling slowly and taking up the entire lane on purpose, this Peugeot 408 would have overtaken me a long time ago. He wouldn’t have ended up driving into the opposing lane and he wouldn’t have ended up in a road accident.

Once I recalled everything, the way the victim glared so angrily at me just now made sense. I wasn’t the one who knocked into his car, but this accident was the result of a sequence of prior actions. This driver was injured all over because of me.

But the problem was that while he was badly injured, he wasn’t going to die. If I didn’t attempt to save him and make amends for what I did earlier, what was I going to do if he managed to survive this and spun a story in front of the police to push all the blame on me?

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All of a sudden, I felt the selflessness of Lei Feng in me, and was inspired by how Luo Shengjiao* had saved those children at the expense of his own life back then. My face was covered with blood but I decided to bravely ignore my injuries, remove my seatbelt and get out of the car to save the man.

To my surprise, while the airbags in this car were as good as none, the seatbelt was really tight. I tried so hard to unbuckle it but it simply refused to budge.

Just then, I heard the sound of a vehicle door opening again. I looked up to see the truck driver hop out of his truck and run swiftly towards the victim.

I was stunned for a moment before realizing what was going on. The truck driver was probably thinking the same thing as me and was hoping that rescuing the victim would reduce any blame on him. If that was the case, then who lent a helping hand first would be very important.

There was no time to think. I quickly tried to unbuckle my stupid seatbelt again, but it was so stubborn that no matter how hard I tried, it refused to even budge.

Just when my face was turning red from just trying to yank the seatbelt out, I heard a bloodcurdling cry. I looked up and the next thing I saw made me gape in horror as my soul nearly left my body in terror. I saw the truck driver squatting next to the victim, lifting the victim’s head and slamming it down again and again onto the road!

Doong! Doong! Doong! The sound of the man’s head hitting the road repeatedly echoed in the dark night, like the sound of a demon’s footsteps as it walked through hell.

That truck driver…he wasn’t trying to rescue the victim. He was trying to kill him!

I simply couldn’t believe that a truck driver dared to be so bold. Since the collision had failed to kill the other man, he was going to finish the job himself!

I just watched on as the victim struggled and wailed until he didn’t make noise anymore and my heart actually felt a lot more relieved. This case had gone from being a traffic accident to a homicide. I was going to go from being the one responsible for a road accident to a witness to a murder.

Initially, I was secretly happy about this new situation. But I wasn’t happy for long. I suddenly realized that I might never make it to see the police, because after that truck driver was done killing that man, he slowly got up and walked towards me.

Was he going to silence me too?

I broke out into a cold sweat and my first thought was to play dead. But I quickly threw that idea out. I had been working so hard to unbuckle my seatbelt just now, so it would be difficult to trick him into thinking I had passed out again. I wasn’t going to just surrender to this cold blooded murderer either. Fighting back might actually work since he wasn’t armed, so I might make it.

But it was as if that truck driver had read my mind. He suddenly reached behind him and pulled something out that gleamed like the moon in the sky. I focused my eyes on it and realized it was actually a knife!

I paled instantly and any courage I had to fight back instantly disappeared. My best way out of this situation was to jump out of this car and run. But this accursed seatbelt…I was going to die because of this so-called safety feature!

While I was still struggling, I suddenly felt a shadow over me. I looked up to see that the truck driver was already outside the car. His threatening face was plastered against my car window and his expression made all my hair stand on end in terror.

By the time I realized that my next best course of action would be to lock the doors, he had already pulled my door open and raised the knife high into the air.

I shut my eyes and thought, that’s it. That’s it. It’s over. I’m not going to survive this after all. My heart started pounding wildly and my chest tightened as I heard the sound of something swooshing through the air. I seemed to have lost consciousness again at this point as I fell backwards in my chair.

Before I fainted, I thought I heard the sound of a car’s engine coming closer and I could even hear shouting.

I had no idea whether I was just imagining things or not, but there was one thing I was sure about. That was that before the knife came plunging towards me, I had already fainted from fright.

TL notes:

* Lei Feng: Chinese soldier in the People’s Liberation Army who was supposed to be very selfless and even the ‘personification of altruism’

Luo Shengjiao: saved a child who had fallen into the -20 degree water while ice skating, losing his own life in the process

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