Yan Feifan, Yanyan, and Tian Yu gathered around the uncovered entrance. They peered down the stairs leading to an unknown depth, then exchanged wide-eyed glances.
"Yanyan, you really didn’t know there was a secret room here?"
Yanyan peered down the stairwell again, then shook her head. "Mr. Yan, I had no idea."
"My dad never told me there was a basement here all these years."
"Hey, you don’t think... my dad never knew about it either, do you?"
Tian Yu’s eyes lit up. "Maybe the previous owner left it behind? Could it be a treasure room?"
"You know, the kind with a big safe?"
Yan Feifan shot her a sideways glance and deliberately tried to scare her. "Why couldn’t it be a place where someone was murdered and their body was dumped?"
His words made both Yanyan and Xiaoyu inch closer to him.
Tian Yu tapped Yan Feifan’s shoulder with her little fist and grumbled, "Mr. Yan, would you stop trying to scare us?"
"It’s the middle of summer, and I’m getting goosebumps."
Yan Feifan teased her, "And you, with the heart of a mouse, are dead set on exploring a secret room?"
He turned to Yanyan. "First, give your dad a call and ask him if he knows about this basement."
Yanyan said, "Oh," and ran off to get her phone.
A minute or two later, she ran back.
The little dog, Helen, came running back with her this time.
"Mr. Yan, my dad isn’t picking up!"
Yan Feifan saw the ringing animation for a landline number on her screen and explained, "He’s probably in surgery or busy with something else and can’t pick up."
His gaze shifted back to the dark opening. "How about we wait for your parents to get home from work before we explore it together?"
Tian Yu tugged on Yan Feifan’s sleeve, her face tight with worry. "Mr. Yan, it’s not really a secret room for dumping bodies, is it?"
Yan Feifan crouched down, fanned the air out of the opening with his hand, and took a deep sniff.
"No musty smell. It probably hasn’t been sealed for very long."
Yanyan and Tian Yu crouched down beside him, copying his actions. They fanned the air with their small hands and leaned in for a sniff.
"You’re right, there’s no musty smell..."
Just then, Helen suddenly darted out from Yanyan’s side, hopped onto the stairs, and scurried down into the darkness.
"Hey, Helen! Helen! Get back here!"
But her urgent calls couldn’t stop the dog.
A moment later, Helen’s "WOOF, WOOF..." echoed up from the dark basement.
"Mr. Yan..."
Seeing Yanyan’s worried expression, Yan Feifan said with resignation, "All right, I’ll go down and drag it back up."
Tian Yu volunteered eagerly, "Mr. Yan, let me go instead."
"You’re a famous doctor, and I’m just an ordinary middle school student. If there’s really danger down there, it would be terrible if you got hurt."
Yan Feifan rolled his eyes at her.
"Helen is perfectly fine down there. What danger could there be?"
"You’ve been watching too many horror movies, haven’t you?"
As he spoke, Yan Feifan took the phone from Yanyan’s hand, turned on its flashlight, and started down the stairs.
As he descended the sloping staircase, the low ceiling forced him to crouch. Aided by the phone’s light, he spotted a switch panel on the wall.
He reached out and flipped it.
With a CLICK, the darkness vanished, replaced by a brilliant white light.
The scene in the basement was revealed in its entirety, laid bare before Yan Feifan’s eyes as he stood on the stairs looking down.
An operating table, a surgical microscope, a shadowless lamp, a ventilator, a cardiopulmonary monitor, a multi-function case for surgical instruments...
’Holy shit...’
Yan Feifan was looking at a standard surgical operating room.
It was so well-equipped that you could perform surgery on a patient the moment they arrived.
Yan Feifan scanned the room.
Near the stairs, he saw a single bed, fully made with a quilt and pillow.
On the far side of the basement, an entire wall was taken up by a wine rack, sparsely filled with bottles of red wine.
"Mr. Yan... Mr. Yan..."
Hearing the girls calling him, Yan Feifan quickly descended the rest of the stairs and called back up, "You can come down now."
"Be careful on the stairs!"