"Ms. James, are you sure you really sank your e-bike here?" The officer climbed back onto the bank, his expression grim. "There's no vehicle at the bottom of the river—just this one fragment. And based on our preliminary investigation, the e-bike wreckage at the explosion site does match your vehicle registration."
"I don't know what's going on..." I clutched my head, my mind spinning into chaos.
I remembered it so clearly. I'd pushed the e-bike to this exact spot, strapped rocks to it, and watched it sink beneath the surface.
But now the bike was gone. All that remained was a single fragment.
Had I remembered wrong? Had I never sunk the bike at all—had I pushed it straight to the village entrance instead?
No. Impossible. I remembered the bite of the frozen surface against my skin. The weight of the rocks lashed to the seat. The bubbles rising as the e-bike slipped beneath the water.
Those memories were too vivid. Too real. They couldn't be false.
"Doreen, stop making excuses!" My mother's voice cut through the crowd, shrill and tearful. "A life for a life, a debt repaid—that's how it works! We may be poor, but we can't have someone in this family doing something so monstrous!"
"Exactly! Does it and then won't own up to it—what kind of person does that?"
"She always seemed so quiet and honest. Who knew she was this rotten inside!"
The villagers' insults sliced into me like knives.
I looked around. Every face was at once strange and familiar.
In my last life, they'd cursed me the same way. For twenty straight years.
But before I died in that life, I'd learned the truth. I'd learned I was innocent.
This time, even I was starting to doubt myself. Had I really sunk the e-bike in the river?
"I want to see the surveillance footage," I said suddenly. "There's a camera at the village entrance, isn't there? Check whether I pushed the bike through there!"
The officer nodded. "We've already pulled the footage. Unfortunately, that particular camera broke down yesterday. It hasn't been repaired yet."
My heart sank.
"Then... what about other cameras nearby?"
"We checked. You were recorded pushing the e-bike out of the village at six a.m., but after that, no camera picked you up."
"What about the road to the river? Are there any cameras on the hill behind the village?"
The officer shook his head. "The back hill is wasteland. No surveillance."
Despair closed in around me.
No footage to prove I'd sunk the bike. No bike to prove my innocence. Everyone was pointing fingers at me, and even my own certainty was crumbling.
Had I really not sunk it? Had my e-bike actually caused the explosion?
"Sis, don't do this to yourself." Phil walked over, his face arranged into a picture of concern. "Even if it was an accident, we won't blame you. We're family. We'll get through this together."
He reached out a hand to help me up.
Looking at that fraudulent face, a wave of nausea hit me.
In my last life, he'd said the exact same thing.
"Sis, we'll get through this together." And then I was the only one who bore anything. He was the only one who benefited.
"Get away from me." I shoved his hand aside. "I don't need your fake sympathy."
Phil's expression flickered, then instantly rearranged itself into wounded innocence. "Sis, I know you're under a lot of pressure, but how can you treat me like this..."
"Enough!" My father charged forward and drove his foot into my shoulder. "You ungrateful wretch—you screw up and then have the nerve to snap at your brother? You've lost your mind!"
I crashed to the ground. My shoulder burned white-hot with pain.
My mother threw herself at me next, pinching and slapping in a frenzy. "I'll beat the life out of you, you curse on this family! You killed two people and now you want to drag us all down with you! Why don't you just die!"
I curled into a ball on the ground and let them hit me.
