25 Rebirth (1/2)

An hour before JJ's record label and Bright Summit Entertainment Company's announcement.

Almost two years since Iris Long disappeared from the public eyes, she had remained silent online. Even when a commotion broke out after her social media accounts were wiped clean, and when Fan Luo and Jin Chonglin almost caused a scandal involving her with their Weibo posts, nobody heard a word from her.

This fateful morning, however, all of her empty social media accounts were finally updated.

No greetings, no words.

It was just a single video.

The video started with the back view of a teenage girl wearing a skimpy dress and high heels. Club music echoed in the background, as she walked out to a parking lot and climbed into a sports car.

She drove away and then the scene suddenly blacked out with the sounds of squealing tires and a loud crash.

An ambulance siren blared.

Next was a frantic scene at a hospital with paramedics wheeling the unconscious teenage girl whose face still wasn't shown; her blood splattering on the white floor tiles. The door to the operating room closed behind them.

The next scene showed a hospital room filled with several life support machines. The girl on the bed laid unmoving, her face still not shown.

The camera shifted its focus to a calendar atop a table beside the bed, its pages flipping to the next month again and again, faster and faster, showing how much time passed.

Then the screen gradually turned darker and darker until it completely blacked out. Muffled sounds could be heard, like that when one was underwater.

Sounds of breathing and heartbeat, loud and regular at first, but gradually weakening and slowing down until everything became silent.

A few seconds of total darkness and silence.

A small speck of light appeared in the middle of the screen, gradually becoming bigger and brighter until it swallowed the entire screen.