Guilty Before Sunrise

The narrow hallway was packed with people, every face twisted with barely contained rage.

I recognized them. I had seen them many times before at parent meetings for our class. They were the parents of the three students who had died.

"You shameless monster, how do you even have the nerve to still be alive?!"

"You should be in hell! Even the deepest level of hell would be too good for you!"

"Give us back our child’s life!"

...

Voices overlapped, shouting, surging forward as they tried to lunge at me.

"Please, just listen to me!" I kept my voice as steady as I could, trying to make them believe me. "I’m not the killer. If I were, the police would’ve arrested me already. I have an alibi for the time of the crime.

"They’ve already verified everything. You can ask them yourselves."

The anger on their faces didn’t fade in the slightest. If anything, they pressed closer.

"What alibi?! That was obviously something you staged ahead of time!"

"You might be able to fool the police, but you can’t fool us!"

"The evidence at the crime scene is rock solid. There’s no second person in this world identical to you!"

That was the biggest problem. No one knew who the person at the crime scene really was.

Sometimes, even I found myself wondering.

Could I really be the one who appeared there?

"Please, we’ve been classmates for years. I had no grudge against them. Why would I hurt them?"

Smack!

Without warning, a heavy slap struck my face. The sharp sound echoed through the hallway.

"And you still dare to say that?! Wasn’t this all just for the city’s top ranking this year?!"

"So young and already this vicious. People like you will only become a danger to society!"

"A monster like you should’ve been strangled at birth!"

I clutched my face as the metallic taste of blood spread through my mouth.

In that moment, I finally understood that there was no reasoning with them. They didn’t want the truth. They just wanted me to die in place of their children.

I turned and ran, sprinting toward the apartment.

However, what happened next sent a chill straight through my body.

Grandma was standing behind the door. At some point, she had appeared there silently.

With a strange, twisted smile, she slammed the door shut right in front of me. She wanted me dead at the hands of those parents.

I spun around and bolted for the stairwell, racing down as fast as I could. Behind me, they chased like a swarm, relentless.

Using the cover of darkness, I ducked into a cluster of bushes, my heart pounding violently.

A flood of headlines I’d seen before flashed through my mind: "Families of victims, enraged by verdicts, beat suspect to death."

If I couldn’t get away tonight, I might not live to see the sunrise. I refused to die like this.

Suddenly, something from earlier flashed across my mind. I pulled out my phone and dialed the police station.

"I know who the real killer is!"