Hospital 444
Chapter 88 - 1 The Disappearing Husband

Chapter 88: Chapter 1 The Disappearing Husband

Lu Yanran woke up as usual... on this morning.

Still groggy with sleep, she subconsciously reached to touch her husband, Zhang Bei, sleeping beside her.

But she touched nothing at all.

Lu Yanran immediately opened her eyes wide and saw that... she was alone in the bed.

And the spot where her husband had been sleeping was already cold.

Glancing at the clock, she saw it was only six in the morning.

In her memory, her husband had never gotten up so early.

Lu Yanran got out of bed, slipped on her slippers, and walked outside, calling out, "Darling? Darling? Where are you?"

However, no one answered Lu Yanran.

No lights were on in any of the rooms outside, and there were no signs of cooking in the kitchen. Zhang Bei’s suit was still hanging on the rack; it was the same one he had been wearing out for the past couple of days.

With three full hours left until her husband had to go to work, and only one hour needed to get to his workplace, there was no need for him to leave so early, right?

She immediately went back into the room, picked up her fully charged phone, and checked it.

On checking, she was shocked to find...

...that since three o’clock in the morning, there had been over a dozen missed calls from her husband! But because she had set it to silent, she had missed all the calls!

"What the..."

Lu Yanran immediately called her husband’s phone.

She began to worry, fearing that something had happened.

Recently, her husband indeed seemed to have a lot on his mind and had been overeating and overdrinking, constantly buying food until the fridge was nearly bursting. Lu Yanran had asked him about it, and he said it was just work pressure, so all she could do was urge him to take it easy. After they had married six months ago, she had quit her job to become a full-time housewife, which meant they no longer had much in common to talk about at work.

Now...

Could something really have happened?

The call connected quickly.

"Hello, hello, hello, darling? Are you alright? Where are you now?"

Then, she immediately heard her husband’s response.

"Yanran... I, I’m locked up now!"

What? Locked up?

"Listen to me, Yanran, I probably won’t be able to escape... Listen carefully, Yanran, I have stored enough food at home. Pay attention to what I’m about to tell you, in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator, there’s a bag of meat in a red plastic bag, remember, you must eat at least one gram of that raw meat every morning and evening, remember it’s raw meat! Recently when cooking, I’ve also been giving you this amount. Remember, you must remember, to eat at least one gram every morning and evening! Also, don’t leave our building for more than twelve hours, absolutely not more than twelve hours! And one more thing, don’t call the police! Don’t tell the police about these things! You mustn’t!"

Lu Yanran was stunned, her brain unable to process so much critical information at once.

"After you eat, go to our room, and then..."

Lu Yanran hurriedly asked, "What’s wrong? What’s wrong, darling?"

Then, a strange noise came through the phone.

That sound, indescribable in words, at first Lu Yanran thought it was just static, but it felt unlike that.

"Darling, darling? Darling..."

The call was disconnected just then.

Lu Yanran felt her body trembling and hastily tried to call again.

But this time...

The phone indicated "The number you are dialing is out of service."

What’s going on? How could it be... out of service now?

Lu Yanran was momentarily panicked, her hands and feet going numb. It took her more than ten seconds before she snapped out of it and dialed 110.

Though her husband had told her not to call the police, in such a situation, she could think of no other solution but to report it.

"Hello... Is this the Public Security Bureau? My, my husband seems to have been kidnapped..."

Lu Yanran was not a local. She had come to W City many years ago, where she met her husband, a local.

Her husband, Zhang Bei, had a rather rigid personality and liked to do things by the book, which was exactly what Lu Yanran liked about him. His parents had passed away early, leaving him only a house. Later, they sold that house and bought the one they were living in now. Although the location wasn’t great, being a second-hand property, the price was reasonable. The money from the sale covered the full payment, so there was no need to worry about monthly housing costs anymore. After the renovation was complete, the newlyweds moved in two months ago.

For Lu Yanran, finally having a house in a foreign land was a dream come true, of course, she didn’t contribute a penny, so her name wasn’t on the property deed. Nevertheless, she was fully content. Although the location of Sunset Tower, the name of their building, was quite average, the thought of no longer having to scrimp and save to pay for ever-increasing rent made her life quite comfortable.

But...

How could she have encountered such a thing?

Before the police arrived, she opened the fridge and indeed found a plastic bag containing meat in the freezer.

The meat looked to be about two to three pounds. Eating two grams a day, it was equivalent to a little bit of minced meat and would last a long time.

What on earth was this substance?

After the police arrived, she grabbed the officer’s hand and said, "Officer comrade, please save my husband. He was sleeping beside me last night, how could he... be taken away and locked up overnight by someone?"

The officer tried to reassure her, "Don’t worry, we will first locate your husband’s cellphone."

Meanwhile, a female officer asked, "Can you tell us in detail what your husband said on the phone?"

Lu Yanran suddenly remembered her husband’s words.

Something about meat in the fridge...

She recalled that in the past month, her husband indeed used to prepare breakfast for her early on, and he would also help her with dinner. A gram of meat, if mixed into food to be eaten without detection, was certainly an easy feat.

Of course, it couldn’t be something bad, otherwise, her husband wouldn’t have told her about it.

But why didn’t he want her to tell the police? Could it be something shady?

After weighing her options, she ultimately did not disclose this to the police.

"Has your husband offended anyone recently?" the female officer continued to inquire.

"No... but..."

"But what?"

"The people in this building... seem a bit strange..."

Upon hearing this, the female officer’s expression turned serious and she asked, "Strange how?"

Right then, a forensic technician came out and said, "We need to check for luminal reactions here too."

"Luminal..." Lu Yanran suddenly remembered something and said, "Is that what they use in crime shows to check for bloodstains?"

"Right."

The technician began spraying luminol, and then, they turned off the lights.

But... no bloodstains were found anywhere.

There were also no signs of a struggle in the room.

"We’ve already sent someone to check the surveillance in the hallway," the police officer said, turning to Lu Yanran. "Miss Lu, you just mentioned you find the people in this building strange. What’s strange about them?"

"We’ve only been living here for about two months. When we first moved in, I gradually started to feel something was off."

Coming from a rural background, Lu Yanran was used to greeting her neighbors. When she first moved in, she even made some food and knocked on her neighbors’ doors, hoping to build good relationships, as the renovation must have caused quite a disturbance to them.

But what was strange was... when the doors opened, the neighbors’ expressions were very peculiar. No matter who it was, their faces seemed frozen, without any emotion, completely expressionless. She tried to offer food to the neighbors, and they all refused quite rudely before shutting the door directly.

One or two behaving this way could be normal—there are always those with odd personalities—but when everyone on the floor acted the same, that was abnormal. Moreover, ever since then, no matter who she encountered in the building, their response to her greetings was always the same cold expression.

As time went on, she began to wonder... had she and her husband offended the people in this building somehow?

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