I sat by Emma's bedside all night while Sophie slept on a chair outside.

When Emma woke up, she immediately asked for soup dumplings from the west side of the city and insisted that I go buy them.

I didn't want to leave her side for even a moment and suggested gently, "Why don't you let your mom go? Daddy is worried about you."

The hospital was an hour and a half round trip from the west side; I didn't trust Sophie to take care of Emma alone.

But Emma stubbornly shook her head. "No! I want you to buy them!"

With no other choice, I called Sophie into the room and instructed her to watch over Emma carefully and not leave her side for any reason.

After being beaten by me last night, Sophie seemed more compliant than usual and promised sweetly, "I won't leave her side for a second; just hurry back."

Before leaving, I placed my spare phone in the cabinet. "If anything happens, use this phone to call Daddy."

Emma nodded with wide eyes. "Daddy, hurry! I'm starving!"

I rushed to the parking lot and texted Sophie: [Emma's mood seems off; pay extra attention to her. Don't provoke her—stay close!]

Sophie assured me confidently: [Don't worry; Emma is my daughter too. I care about her.]

But when I returned with the soup dumplings, Emma was missing.

Sophie clutched her left cheek and glared at me angrily. "Kyle, it's not my fault she's missing! What good does hitting me do?"

I kicked toward her stomach in frustration. "I told you not to leave her side! What were you doing when she left the room?"

Sophie glanced nervously at her phone. I opened her call log—she had been on a thirty-minute call with Ethan.

I threw the phone at her face in rage. "If anything happens to Emma, you and Ethan will regret it for the rest of your lives!"

The phone hit Sophie's forehead hard enough to draw blood as I stormed out of the room without looking back.

Emma was found in the afternoon, or rather, she was pulled from the water.

I held her cold, stiff body and wept silently.

Sophie was sprawled over her, wailing, "Emma, my dear daughter, how could you do something so foolish?"

I frantically combed through her hair, pulling out the seaweed that clung to it, choking on my words as I said, "Emma, how could you leave Daddy behind? What am I supposed to do now that you're gone?"

In that moment, I wished I could just throw myself against something hard and end it all. If only I had gone to pick Emma up last night, none of this would have happened.

My child was about to take her college entrance exams next year. With her grades, she would surely get into a good school.

She would finally start the university life she had longed for; she would follow her dream of becoming a translator and get married and have children by the time she was 35.

But now, everything was gone. She had ended her life at such a young age.

I sat at the morgue entrance for an entire day and night. A police officer, unable to bear my grief any longer, handed me a bottle of water. "Kyle," he said gently, "we can't cremate your child until we catch the criminals..."

I stiffened and turned to him. "I know; there's still so much to do. I'll get my emotions in check."

I pointed to the evidence bag he held and quietly asked, "Can I have the phone inside? It's the one I left for Emma yesterday."

The officer immediately opened the bag and retrieved the phone. "No problem. There's a recording from your daughter on it; you might want to listen."

He patted my shoulder and sighed, "Take care."

I forced myself to drive home. As I looked around at all of Emma's little trinkets scattered throughout the house, I broke down again.

After forcing myself to eat a bowl of noodles, I picked up the charged phone with trembling hands and opened the recording.

"Daddy, I'm sorry," Emma's voice came through with a quiver. "Please forgive me for leaving without saying goodbye. I just don't have the courage to face my life anymore. Last night, I thought about a lot of things—I wanted you to send me abroad for school so I could restart my life there. But just now, I overheard Mom on the phone talking about how the homeless men who attacked me might have AIDS. Suddenly, I lost all will to live; I felt so dirty and disgusting."

"Daddy, please don't blame Mom; maybe this is just my fate. After I'm gone, please live well with Mom and have another baby. Take care of yourself—don't stay up late or smoke too much. If they find my body, scatter my ashes in the ocean; don't put up a gravestone—just pretend I never existed in this world. I love you, Daddy."

I knelt on the ground with my phone pressed against my chest, crying out in agony as tears streamed down my face. "Emma! My Emma! It's Daddy's fault..."

After curling up in Emma's room all night long, I forced myself to wash up and then called Sophie.

After Emma had been taken to the morgue, Sophie had answered a phone call and disappeared without returning.

The phone rang for quite a while before she finally picked up breathlessly. "What's going on? I'm with Max at his sports event."

A surge of indescribable anger almost snapped the fragile string of control in my mind.

In the mirror before me, veins bulged on my forehead and my eyes were bloodshot.

Seeing that I was silent, Sophie urged impatiently, "If you need something, just say it; the next event is about to start."

I clenched my fists and managed to restrain myself as I replied, "When you're done there, come back—I need to talk to you."

Before she could respond, I hung up abruptly.

If this conversation continued any longer, I feared I might lose control and run out to kill them all.

When Sophie returned in the afternoon, I looked at her slightly tipsy eyes with disgust.

She noticed my gaze and shrank back, nervously saying, "Max won first place, so I had a drink."

I struggled to contain my anger as I approached her. "What did you and Ethan talk about before Emma left? Where did you take that call?"

Sophie hesitated, confused. "In the bathroom of the hospital. Ethan was just concerned about Emma and asked a few questions."

I reached out for her phone. "Give it to me; I want to listen to your call recording."

Sophie instinctively hid her phone behind her back and sharply refused, "Ethan and I are just friends. What do you want to hear the recording for? Can you stop with your baseless suspicions?"

I slowly raised my hand, keeping my face cold and stern.

Fearing I might hit her, Sophie reluctantly handed over her phone.

I quickly pulled up the call log and hit play.