In the spring of 2016, my little sister went missing during a school field trip, falling into an abandoned mine shaft. It took three days to find her. But here was the bizarre part: The canteen she carried was completely full of water, yet her autopsy report stated she died of severe dehydration. She had literally died of thirst. Because of her tragic and gruesome death, my parents couldn't handle the blow. One died; the other went insane. A once-happy family was utterly destroyed. Ten years later, I became a PhD candidate in Criminal Psychology. When I returned to that abandoned mine shaft and repeatedly replayed the events of that day... I uncovered a blood-curdling truth that completely shattered everything I thought I knew. 1 April 12, 2016. A Saturday. It was my sister’s twelfth birthday. In our hometown, a child's twelfth birthday is a major milestone. It means the child has firmly planted their feet in the world and officially entered their teenage years. But my sister met her end on the exact day she was supposed to become a teenager. I was attending college in the city back then, and I specifically took the bus home to celebrate her birthday. Coincidentally, my sister, who was in the sixth grade, had a school-organized spring field trip to Blackwood Mountain that very day. My mom initially didn't want her to go, but my sister had been looking forward to visiting Blackwood Mountain for ages. So, the birthday dinner was pushed back to the evening. My mom prepared a windbreaker, a sun hat, a canteen of water, and some snacks for her, reminding her to come home early that afternoon. "You guys aren't allowed to secretly eat the birthday cake! Wait for me to come back before you put the candles in!" My sister playfully ordered my mom and me, still worried we'd start without her. "Hey, Chloe, I heard there’s a really beautiful type of Ghost Orchid on Blackwood Mountain. How about I bring a few branches back to make bookmarks for you?" She sneaked a cautious glance at me, trying to butter me up. The night before, while playing a computer game, she had accidentally deleted the Organic Chemistry term paper I had worked so hard to write. Organic Chemistry was my absolute most hated and headache-inducing subject. I was currently forcing myself to rewrite the paper from scratch, so I angrily snapped back, "You said it yourself! If you don't pick them for me, don't even bother coming back home to see me!" In reality, I didn't actually care about those Ghost Orchid bookmarks. I was just angry at the time and wanted to give her a hard time. Back then, none of us knew that while the Ghost Orchids of Blackwood Mountain were famously beautiful... They could only be admired from afar. 2 "She fell off the cliff because she was trying to pick those Ghost Orchids for me. I didn't know until she died that those flowers only bloom on the steepest, most treacherous cliffs." "For many years after that, I always wondered... if I hadn't said that awful line, 'If you don't pick them, don't come back,' would my sister still be alive?" Ten years later, I sat across from my PhD advisor, Professor Arthur Vance, and recounted the story. Even after all these years, I still broke down in tears. "When did they find your sister?" Professor Vance pulled out a tissue and handed it to me. "Three days later." "I remember it so clearly. It was an early morning, and the sun was shining on her shriveled, sunken face. It felt so warm." "My mother passed out on the spot. My father had a massive heart attack." "I was the only one left to sit there and keep her company." The coffee maker off to the side bubbled quietly, the sound exceptionally loud in the dead silence of the office. "Honestly, finding a body after someone goes missing in the mountains is rare. It was a tragic stroke of luck that you even found her," Professor Vance said as he stood up, poured a cup of coffee, and gently pushed the warm bone-china mug toward me. "Hundreds of people searched the mountain back then. The police, my parents, friends, relatives, my father's former students—graduated and current—and even a lot of local volunteers rushed over to help." "The police used her last known location as a radius. They checked surveillance cameras, canvassed the area, and interviewed every rural neighborhood within a ten-mile radius." The moment they found the body, my mother lunged at me, tearing at my clothes, screaming in absolute despair: "You knew it was her birthday, and you still cursed her! How could you be so vicious?!" My father, who had been a high school teacher for half his life, was overcome with grief and rage. He rushed over and slapped me across the face three times, pointing a trembling finger at me while cursing: "I've spent my life educating people, how did I raise such a cold-blooded, selfish animal?! Why wasn't it you who died?!" He announced right then and there that he no longer had a daughter. Facing the disgusted and judgmental stares of everyone around me, I didn't hide, and I didn't defend myself. I numbly endured all the beating and spitting. Because even I felt that I was the one who forced my own sister to her death. I deserved it. I deserved to die. I tried hard to swallow the burning lump in my throat and continued: "At first, everyone thought my sister's death was an accident, until the autopsy report came out." "Her cause of death was utterly baffling. She didn't die of hypothermia. She wasn't killed by wild animals or snakebites. And she definitely didn't die from the fall." Professor Vance, who was stirring his coffee, stopped. "Then how did she die?" "She died of thirst." "Dying of dehydration after going missing in the wilderness is pretty common, isn't it?" Professor Vance tapped his mug. "But... what if her canteen was completely full of water?" I stared at him, asking word by word. "Is it possible someone took her water before the accident, and then, afraid of being held responsible, quietly put it back after she died?" Professor Vance asked, looking at me. I shook my head. "The search party that found my sister's body consisted of exactly three people: my father, one of his former students, and a search-and-rescue volunteer. Moreover, the crime scene investigators confirmed there were only three sets of footprints around her. There was no fourth person." "What about her classmates? Teachers? How were her interpersonal relationships at school?" I tried hard to recall the situation back then. "My sister had excellent grades, a very easygoing personality, and the police interviews found no evidence of grudges, bullying, or being bullied." "So it goes without saying there was nothing wrong with the water in the canteen, right?" I nodded. Professor Vance's expression darkened. 3 "Did they do a full autopsy?" "Yes. I was a college sophomore at the time and had already taken a forensic anatomy course. I requested to observe the entire autopsy process. Her body exhibited classic pathological signs of fatal dehydration." Professor Vance patted my shoulder. "That must have been incredibly hard on you." No one knows what it feels like to watch your own flesh and blood being dissected right in front of you. Every cut felt like it was slicing into my own skin. The extreme agony numbs you to the point where you can't even shed a single tear. "So... that's why you switched from a forensics major to clinical medicine..." Professor Vance flipped through my resume, looking at me with deep sympathy. "Yes. I developed a severe psychological block. I could never dissect a corpse again." "Later on, I went into clinical medicine. I researched all of the human body's stress responses and dehydration mechanisms. Ultimately, I crossed disciplines and applied for your PhD program." "So, you applied for my Criminal Psychology PhD program just to have me help you reconstruct this decade-old cold case?" Professor Vance looked at me, a bit incredulous. There's a running joke in academic circles: Getting into Dr. Vance's PhD program is harder than scaling Mount Everest. Perhaps this was the first time he had ever heard such a motive for pursuing a doctorate. "Yes. Becoming your student was so I could meet you, but more importantly, so I would earn the right to speak with you on an equal footing." "You are a renowned criminal investigator and a leading authority in criminal psychology in this country. You've solved countless cold cases." "I'm begging you to guide me in uncovering the truth. I need to know if my sister's death was an accident or murder." "I need to know why, when she had water, she died of thirst!" "If her death was purely a tragic accident, then I'll let her rest in peace. But if she was murdered, I will exhaust my entire life seeking justice for her!" Even though I tried my hardest to control myself, I practically screamed those last few sentences. After my sister died, my mother fell into a deep depression and eventually passed away. My father went insane and was institutionalized. A once-happy family was ruined. In every dream I had over the past ten years, I desperately wanted to hug my sister. I wanted to ask her: Why didn't you drink the water? I wanted to tell her that her big sister didn't blame her for losing the Organic Chemistry paper. And that I didn't want the Ghost Orchid bookmark at all. I just wanted her to come home safely. If she came back, this family would come back. But that was forever impossible. 4 Professor Vance stayed silent for a moment before saying, "Tell me the specific autopsy results." "The body was highly desiccated. The skin was dry, wrinkled, and had a leathery appearance. Her eyes were slightly open, and the eyeballs were sunken due to fluid loss. Because the blood was highly concentrated, livor mortis was unusually dark and abnormally distributed. The blood inside her heart and major vessels was dark red and highly viscous. Body cavity fluids were significantly reduced." After countless sleepless nights of research and review, my sister's autopsy report was permanently etched into my mind. Even the visual memory of the autopsy itself flashed before my eyes again. Professor Vance stopped stirring his coffee. "In April, the nighttime temperature at the bottom of an abandoned mine shaft on Blackwood Mountain usually drops to around 50 degrees. A twelve-year-old child trapped there for three full days would generally die of hypothermia." I took a deep breath and said, "That is the most bizarre and anomalous part of the autopsy." "When a person experiences severe hypothermia, the gastrointestinal mucosa undergoes a stress response, producing massive dark brown hemorrhagic spots. In forensics, we call these 'Vishnevsky spots'. But my sister's autopsy report showed her gastric mucosa was perfectly intact. There were absolutely no signs of cold exposure." Professor Vance's eyes instantly sharpened. "No hypothermia... but instead, she exhibited characteristics of hyperthermia?" I nodded, my voice trembling uncontrollably. "Yes. The medical examiner's final conclusion was that her direct cause of death was multiple organ failure induced by extreme dehydration—in other words, dying of thirst." "What's even more horrifying is that her organs showed pathological signs of extreme 'dehydration fever'." "When a person is severely dehydrated, their body can't produce a single drop of sweat. The cooling system completely shuts down. It was as if she was locked inside an invisible oven. She was literally 'dry-roasted' to death by her own core body temperature!" "As for why she didn't freeze to death, I went to the scene and spent a night there years ago. I found out that the bottom of that pit wasn't cold at all." I unzipped my backpack and spread a yellowed geological survey map on the desk. "I looked up the geological data for Blackwood Mountain. Even though the mine shaft is only a couple hundred feet deep, its bottom connects to an active geothermal fault line." "That geothermal fault keeps the bottom of the pit at a constant temperature of around 77 degrees Fahrenheit year-round. With no wind, it's essentially a natural incubator." Professor Vance's gaze hardened. He stared at his black coffee, tapping his knuckles lightly on the desk, deep in thought. The office was so quiet that only the ticking of the clock could be heard. After a long while, he asked another question: "What were the results of the toxicology and exclusionary diagnostics?" "Blood and vitreous humor tests showed extreme elevations in blood sodium and blood oxygen. She must have gone completely blind at least a day before she died." "There were no signs of food or mineral poisoning. Her body only had minor abrasions, ruling out blunt force trauma or assault." I rattled off the facts in one breath. "Any signs of sexual assault?" I shook my head. "None. But... there is one thing that has always baffled me." Professor Vance gestured for me to continue. "The autopsy and crime scene evidence indicated that my sister likely took her last breath sometime between the afternoon and night of the third day she was missing. The body was discovered exactly on the morning of the fourth day. It's too coincidental. It feels like... like..." "Like someone had been standing by, watching her coldly the entire time, intentionally waiting until she was completely dead before letting you guys find her?" Professor Vance stared at me without blinking. "Yes, it was found entirely too 'conveniently'." I nodded slowly. "During those three days, she endured the ultimate agony of dehydration fever. For a healthy adult, the absolute limit of survival without water is three days. Let alone a twelve-year-old child. The killer timed it perfectly to ensure she was dead." "How was this case classified back then?" "Because my sister's cause of death couldn't be logically explained, it was still classified as an accidental death. But Detective Miller, the lead investigator, disagreed. He said there were too many suspicious elements, and calling it an 'accident' was incredibly irresponsible. Later on, someone even suggested my sister committed suicide by intentionally refusing to eat or drink. But she clearly had food in her mouth..." "Are you saying when she was found, she had food in her mouth?" Professor Vance interrupted me, unable to hold back. "Yes." I nodded, my eyes burning with unshed tears. "Her mouth was completely stuffed. It was the snacks my mom had packed for her the morning she disappeared." Professor Vance's expression grew even more solemn. "What about her stomach?" I shook my head. "Nothing. It was empty." The hand Professor Vance was using to hold his coffee mug suddenly tightened. "Were there signs of climbing or scrambling in the pit? Was there dirt on her clothes and shoes?" "Yes. All ten of her fingers were scraped raw. The nails on her left middle finger and right index finger were completely torn off..." My eyes burned as I fought down the dull ache in my chest. "...She was still clutching a few dried Ghost Orchids in her hand... the ones meant for me..." Professor Vance stared at me and said, word by word: "No hypothermia. Anomalous dehydration fever. A container full of water, and a mouth stuffed full of food she couldn't swallow. Chloe, I can confirm with absolute certainty that your sister's death was a homicide." 5 My heart violently contracted, and the coffee mug in my hand nearly slipped. "Wh... why?" Even though I expected the result, my voice still trembled uncontrollably. Who would do this to a child who had just turned twelve? What kind of deep-seated hatred would drive someone to torture a little girl so sadistically? "There was dirt under her fingernails. There were signs of scrambling. Her nails were torn off. This proves she exhausted every ounce of her strength trying to survive." "And a person fighting that hard to survive does not commit suicide." "Have you ever considered that it wasn't that she didn't want to drink the water, but that she couldn't drink it?" My scalp went numb. "What do you mean?" My first instinct was that this was absurd. What could possibly threaten a desperate child so much that she would leave a full cup of water untouched and literally allow herself to die of thirst? "There was some external force that made her too terrified to drink, or completely unable to drink." Professor Vance's eyes blazed. "If that's the case, then this external force understood your sister incredibly well." "Therefore, it must be someone she knew. Perhaps someone she was very familiar with." My mind went completely blank, as if I had been struck by lightning. My entire body froze. For ten years, I had visited that abandoned mine shaft countless times, obsessively turning over every blade of grass and bush at the crime scene. Time and time again, I sat at the bottom of the pit, trying to reconstruct the events of that day. Hoping to find even the slightest clue. But in the end, I found nothing. I had considered countless possibilities. Did the fall give her brain damage? Did she feel like her family didn't love her enough, so she stubbornly refused to drink out of spite? ... But I had never, ever considered that she couldn't drink the water. 6 Right at that moment, my phone rang. It was Mrs. Higgins, a volunteer from the neighborhood stray cat rescue. She told me that the stray cat I had been rescuing had something terrible happen to it. "Chloe, honey, your cat is dead. I'm so sorry. She was so wild, she ran off outside for two days. When she came back, I poured her a bowl completely full of cat food." "I don't know what happened to her, it's like she caught some weird disease. She stuffed a mouthful of kibble into her mouth, but she just wouldn't swallow it. She'd spit it out, put it back in, and literally forced herself to starve to death..." I started rescuing stray cats three years after my sister died. I named this particular orange cat "Lily," using my sister's name. My head buzzed loudly, and I almost dropped my phone. "A mouth full of food, unable to swallow, guarding a bowl of food while starving to death..." How terrifyingly similar was this to my sister guarding her water bottle, dying of thirst with unswallowed snacks in her mouth?! Professor Vance noticed my pale face. "What happened?" I took a deep breath and repeated what Mrs. Higgins told me. "It looks like that person has been around this whole time." Professor Vance's gaze darkened. He grabbed his car keys from the desk. "Let's go. We need to examine that cat's body." Half an hour later, we were standing on a balcony looking at the cat's corpse. The orange cat's body was already completely stiff, its mouth half-open. Sure enough, its oral cavity was stuffed with soggy, viscous cat kibble. Its chin was covered in dried saliva. Its cloudy eyes stared into the void, full of helplessness and unwillingness. What kind of torture did it endure before it died? That extreme desire for food, only to face the agonizing inability to swallow it at the very last second—it instantly pulled me back to that mine shaft from ten years ago. Mrs. Higgins nervously rubbed her hands together, repeatedly explaining how bizarrely the cat had died. "This kind of death is really rare, you know? I haven't seen it in at least ten years. Back then, there were a few cats and dogs that died looking almost exactly like how Lily looks right now..." Hearing Mrs. Higgins say this, a violent shiver ran through my body. Ten years ago? That was exactly when my sister's accident happened. I violently grabbed Mrs. Higgins's wrist, my voice trembling as I demanded: "Mrs. Higgins, what did you just say? Ten years ago? Where did you find those dead stray cats and dogs ten years ago?!" "Who usually went to feed them? Did you see any suspicious people around? Please, think carefully, this is incredibly important to me!" Mrs. Higgins was startled, then shook her head blankly. "It's been ten years, honey. How could I possibly remember clearly? And nobody really paid much attention to the stray animals out there anyway." "Chloe." Professor Vance pulled me back from the brink of a breakdown. "Don't rush this. Let's dissect the cat's body and confirm things first. You can't just look at the surface." I nodded. 7 We brought Lily's body back to the anatomy lab. The bright fluorescent lights flickered on, casting a harsh, pale glare on the emaciated orange cat. "Remember, everything that is done leaves a trace. The more the perpetrator does, the more flaws they expose," Professor Vance said. I put on my sterile scrubs and pulled on rubber gloves. Ten years. The moment I held a scalpel again, my hands still trembled uncontrollably. But there were some things I had to face. I had to forge armor out of my courage. Only then could I go onto the battlefield and fight. Chloe, you can do this. Believe in yourself. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and tried with all my might to steady my nerves. The scalpel started at the cat's oral cavity, making a precise, incremental incision. I carefully separated the muscle tissue, exposing the esophagus and trachea. Professor Vance stood to the side, his brows tightly furrowed. I cut down the throat straight to the stomach. In that instant, my pupils contracted sharply, and my breathing stopped. "What is it?" Professor Vance keenly noticed my reaction. "The entire esophagus..." My hand holding the scalpel froze in mid-air. My trembling gaze swept over every inch of the exposed tissue, and the hair on my arms stood on end. "There is no mechanical obstruction. No signs of toxic corrosion. No pathology in the smooth muscle." "It is exactly the same as my sister." "Ten years ago, the killer practiced on stray cats and dogs. Only after perfecting their method did they move on to killing a human." Professor Vance's eyes were dark. "Chloe, you are a PhD student in criminal psychology. Show me your professional discipline. Step back and look at this as an objective observer." "Go back and take a hard look at the people around you. Don't let a single one slip by." "If you only focus your eyes on your sister's death, you'll miss too much. Investigate your mother's suicide and your father's insanity as well." "Professor Vance, do you mean... all of this was man-made?" I gripped the edge of the dissection table so hard my knuckles turned white, breaking out in full-body goosebumps. For ten years, I believed it was my one angry sentence that destroyed my entire family. But now, an icy chill, like a venomous snake silently locking onto its prey, crawled frantically up my spine. "If my guess is right, that person has been by your side this entire time." Professor Vance's expression was exceptionally grave. "I need you to contact the detective who worked your case immediately and check two things." "First, your family's social network. Relatives, friends, neighbors, even your parents' colleagues. Make a list." "Second, find out who was near your sister's class on the day of the incident, or anyone who frequently interacted with her class. You will find something." Professor Vance paused, then added, "If you identify a suspect, do not alert them. Come to me. Remember that." Perhaps fearing I wouldn't take it seriously enough, he added one final instruction before leaving the room: "You've waited ten years. Don't rush it now." 8 March 5, 2026. I found Detective Miller, the officer who oversaw my sister's case back then, and relayed Professor Vance's deductions to him. He slammed his hand on his thigh. "Back then, we focused our investigation entirely on a twenty-mile radius around the crime scene. The one thing we never considered was an acquaintance." "If we follow the two threads Professor Vance suggested, they form a net. Whoever gets caught in that net is our suspect." "Don't worry, Chloe. I will drag this person out of the shadows for you!" Feeling like a breakthrough was imminent, Detective Miller instantly looked ten years younger, walking with a renewed spring in his step. On March 6, my sister's case was officially reclassified as a criminal homicide investigation. Professor Vance joined the task force as a consulting criminal investigator. That same day, I asked Detective Miller to pull the neighborhood surveillance footage from the past week. I fed photos of the stray cat, Lily, into an AI program to trace its movement patterns. I used the fastest method to identify anyone it interacted with over the last few days. But there was nothing unusual. It wasn't until the fourth day that an old security camera near a local bodega captured a blurry but familiar figure. On that day, I had visited the abandoned mine shaft on Blackwood Mountain and re-examined the decade-old crime scene. When I looked at those remaining, heavily blurred footprints at the scene, a specific possibility suddenly struck me. An icy chill shot up from the soles of my feet, traveled up my calves, and pierced straight into my skull, making my scalp tingle. What if one of the three people who initially found my sister's body was the killer? Then, after arriving at the scene, their earlier footprints would simply blend in. Or they could have been "accidentally" blurred out by them. Professor Vance had hypothesized that the killer was someone familiar to my sister. But just how familiar? I had to go confirm it myself. Before I went, I met with Professor Vance again. After listening to my deduction regarding the footprints at the scene and the discovery in the surveillance footage, he only said one thing: "Chloe, remember, you are a criminal psychology scholar. You cannot stare into the abyss for too long. When the abyss stares back at you, do not let it consume you." 9 March 11, 7:25 AM. On the way to the State Psychiatric Facility to see my father. I received a call from Detective Miller. The background check on the people related to Blackwood Mountain on the day of the incident was complete. "Chloe, because this case is highly sensitive, and for your personal safety, my superiors and Professor Vance agreed to keep you updated on the investigation so you aren't caught off guard and give the killer an opening. The investigation results and the suspect's files have been sent to your email..." After reading the files in my inbox, I laughed. I laughed until my lungs burned. Combining the surveillance screening from the past few days, yesterday's re-examination of the crime scene, and all the little details of my family's life over the years... I touched a horrifying truth that completely flipped everything I thought I knew upside down. 10 At exactly 8:00 AM, I walked into the facility I had visited countless times over the past five years. After my mother passed away, my father's mental state slowly deteriorated. Every time he saw me, he would lunge forward, looking like he wanted to strangle me. I thought he resented me, hated me, and refused to see me. So I had to hire people to take care of him. Later on, as he became increasingly incoherent, I had no choice but to admit him to the psychiatric facility. But every time he saw me, his emotional state would become wildly erratic. To avoid triggering him, for the last five years, I would only visit once every two months, just to look at him from a distance. That was it. This was also the first time since he got "sick" that I went in to deeply and carefully understand his medical condition. No one knows that my father, a high school teacher, always wanted to be a psychiatrist. Because of this, he didn't just spend years studying the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5); he practically self-taught himself clinical psychiatry, neurobiology, and behavioral psychology. Now that he was a long-term resident at a psychiatric hospital, I guess you could say he achieved his dream. His attending physician, Dr. Caleb Shaw, was the only one of my father's former students who went into clinical psychiatry and psychology. Before my sister's accident, the two of them were like mentor and friend, and he was a frequent guest at our house. He was also the only person who didn't blame me after my sister's accident, and the only one who comforted me.
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