Chapter 613 - 612: Kidnapping? (Part 2)

The middle-aged woman’s words were like flipping a switch.

The next second, Su Li and her cameraman were swarmed by the crowd.

"Yes, yes, please help us find our children! Our children are missing!"

"Mine too! My little Bao is such a good boy, what are we going to do!"

Su Li wasn’t a fool. She immediately realized the gravity of the situation, quickly raising her hands and shouting.

"Please, don’t push! I can’t hear anything if you all talk at once. Everyone calm down and speak to me one at a time, okay?"

At Su Li’s shout, everyone took a small step back.

Su Li glanced back at the office. The woman who had first approached her spoke up immediately.

"We came here last night. They’ve been helping us search since then, but there’s still no news about the children, so we’re just waiting here."

Su Li nodded. "I understand the situation. Standing out here isn’t a solution. Why don’t you go inside and find a place to sit?"

As she spoke and was about to gesture, she heard a familiar voice from behind her.

"Su Li?"

"Yes?" Su Li looked at Captain Zhang, who was rushing out, and quickly took two steps forward. "What’s going on?"

As Su Li spoke, she looked at the young, bespectacled man next to Captain Zhang. Su Li didn’t know his name, but she recognized him as a radio reporter.

In their circle of journalists—whether from radio, television, or newspapers—you ran into a lot of the same people. Even if you didn’t know them personally, you’d recognize their faces.

"Hello, Su Reporter. You got the news too."

The male reporter, who apparently knew Su Li, greeted her first.

As he said this, two more people hurried up from behind him. They were also fellow reporters.

The two reporters were from newspapers. One was even an acquaintance from Su Li’s internship days.

"Su Li, you’re here too."

They both greeted Su Li when they saw her.

Su Li nodded, not mentioning that she hadn’t heard the news and had just stumbled upon the situation by chance.

The reporters gathered together. The case had no leads, and dozens of parents were frantic. After a brief discussion, Captain Zhang took charge and led everyone into a conference room.

The parents were willing to be interviewed, and now that Su Li and the others had arrived, it was impossible to block them all. The only option was to facilitate things.

Su Li, her cameraman, and the others immediately divided up the work. The other reporters did the same, and the parents calmed down a little.

Five minutes later, they had the whole story.

It was a mass disappearance with no clues or warning signs.

Yesterday, the third-grade class from South City Elementary No. 1 had gone on a spring outing organized by their teacher. As was customary, the homeroom teacher took the students on a rented bus to the countryside for the trip.

According to the plan, they were supposed to return from the outing around the time school let out in the afternoon.

The students were told it was a sketching trip, but in reality, it was just a chance to play and have some snacks.

But they weren’t back by six o’clock. Then seven and eight o’clock came and went, and they still hadn’t returned.

The teacher, all the students in the class, and the bus driver had all vanished without a trace.

The parents, having waited a long time for their children to come home, went to the school, only to find the school staff was also panicking.

Their teacher hadn’t come back either.

Next, they all went to look for the bus driver, but he hadn’t returned home either.

They called the police at ten o’clock last night.

Since all the children were from the same elementary school and lived in the area, the parents either knew each other or at least recognized one another. And since they were all from the South City District, they had all come to Captain Zhang.

A homeroom teacher, a driver, and a class of thirty-nine students, along with the bus they were on, had all disappeared. This was a major incident.

Although the search for them began quickly, a whole night of looking yielded no clues whatsoever.

"...We mobilized everyone we could last night and checked all the likely places, but there are no leads."

"We went to the location the homeroom teacher had planned for the trip, and we even talked to other people who were out there yesterday. But no one remembers seeing them. It’s as if they never went there at all."

"We’ve checked other places too, but we haven’t found anything. It’s like the entire busload of people vanished into thin air."

Besides what they learned from the parents, Su Li and the other reporters now had the information from Captain Zhang’s side as well.

This case was far from simple.

Captain Zhang looked terrible. He hadn’t even had time to shave the blueish stubble on his chin. He quietly said a few words to Su Li.

"Right now, I’m afraid it’s a kidnapping, but at the same time, I’m hoping it is. If it’s a kidnapping, someone should have made contact. They’d state their demands, and we could follow that lead. But I’m also terrified that if it *is* a kidnapping, the hostages will be killed."

A whole night had passed with no clues, and the pressure on Captain Zhang was immense.

Including the homeroom teacher and the driver, forty-one people had disappeared.

Considering all possibilities, Captain Zhang had the parents, accompanied by police officers, return home to check for any letters or phone calls—any ransom demands or other messages.

Unfortunately, after checking every home this morning, there was nothing.

Since they disappeared yesterday, there should have been some news by today. The complete lack of it was making Captain Zhang and the parents frantic.

Many of the parents were beside themselves with worry. Several grandparents had collapsed from the shock and had been taken to the hospital, while others were still holding on.

Some parents couldn’t bear to wait and set out to search on their own, wandering aimlessly in the hopes of finding any trace of them.

Su Li used a police phone to contact the TV station and report the situation. Then, she began to organize and gather more information.

Su Li carefully reviewed the information in her notebook, her eyes finally stopping on the bus’s license plate number.

’It seems so familiar,’ Su Li murmured, staring at the plate number.

"What’s familiar?" her cameraman asked.

"The license plate number. I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere, and not long ago," Su Li said, frowning in thought.

"’Not long ago’... when? Today... no, yesterday..." As Su Li said "yesterday," her eyes shot wide open, and her cameraman realized it too.

"The bus from yesterday!" they said in unison.

The bus that had nearly hit them yesterday afternoon on their way back from an interview!

It was a habit from her past life. Whenever Su Li saw a vehicle, she would instinctively look at the license plate first. In an emergency, the plate number was the first thing she’d remember.

Yesterday, she had also glanced at that bus’s license plate number instantly.

When the bus passed them, Su Li had looked over, and the scene she saw was still clearly etched in her mind.

The bus was indeed filled with children, and there was a driver and a homeroom teacher... ’No, wait...’

Su Li suddenly bolted out and grabbed Captain Zhang.

"Captain Zhang, you just said there were only two adults on that bus, right? A male driver and a female homeroom teacher?"

Though confused, Captain Zhang nodded. "That’s right."

Su Li shook her head forcefully. "No, that’s wrong!"

Captain Zhang: "Huh?"

"There were three adults on that bus, not two!" Su Li said in a low, serious voice.

She never would have thought that the bus she had randomly encountered yesterday would be the one that went missing. More than that, she never imagined that during that brief encounter, they might have already been in the midst of an unknown incident.

Like a kidnapping.