Chapter 2

But none of the kids answered her.

I crouched down and saw that the ones underneath were already unconscious.

My heart dropped. I yanked Jessica away, who wouldn't stop talking.

I moved each of the remaining kids aside and checked for breath—they were all barely breathing.

I shouted at Linda, who was frozen in shock, "Call an ambulance, now!"

Watching the ambulance drive away, I finally let out a sigh of relief.

Jessica's annoyed voice rang out behind me. She snapped, "Emily, couldn't you have waited until the fire drill was over before jumping in to save everyone?

"I was trying to teach the kids to be independent, but thanks to you butting in, now it's all ruined."

Anger burned in my chest. Did she really think some fire drill was more important than these kids?

I turned to Jessica and demanded, "Do you even know how deadly a stampede can get? People actually die from this."

She frowned and said, "The kids could have handled it. All we had to do was watch from the sidelines.

"Besides, it was just a bunch of kids piling on top of each other. It's not as bad as you're making it out to be."

I was so pissed at Jessica's careless attitude that I almost lost my cool. I snapped, "You better hope those kids come through alright, because if anything happens to them, no amount of apologies will save your skin."

Sadly, the children who reached the hospital still couldn't be saved.

When the hospital called with the tragic news, Jessica just couldn't believe the kids were really gone.

She shouted, her voice shrill, "How heavy could a bunch of kids even be? How could they possibly die just from being crushed for a short time?"

Seeing Jessica still stubbornly refusing to accept reality, I slammed the table so hard that the whole place rattled.

I snapped, "Even grown-ups could die if they got crushed like that—how much worse do you think it is for little kids?

"Do you even get it? Your sheer stupidity ruined entire families."

Jessica shot back, refusing to take any blame, "You knew all along, right? Why didn't you say something sooner? If you'd just spoken up, none of this would've even happened.

"So really, this is all on you. If you'd just told me, that whole mess could've been avoided."

I looked at Jessica, stubborn as always. Honestly, it was almost laughable how she kept dodging responsibility.

No matter the scale of the disaster, her first instinct was to blame someone else.

She was always convinced she was in the right. If things went south, the fault never lay with her—it was always everyone else's.

Back in my previous life, after the stampede, the kids' parents would swarm the kindergarten gate every day, kicking up a storm and demanding that the principal, Peter, hand over the real culprit for their children's deaths.

Jessica was wailing, tears streaming down her face, begging me to take the blame for her.

She cried, "Emily, I'm still so young. My career's only just begun. I can't go to prison, I just can't.

"Please, I'm begging you, just take the blame for me—please."

I refused Jessica flat-out. I said, "You need to face up to your own mistakes and take responsibility—no one else is paying the price for you."

When Jessica realized I wasn't going to take the fall for her, she instantly switched up, her whole attitude changing in a flash.

She shot me a look full of resentment and said, "If you'd just given me a heads-up, Emily, those kids wouldn't have died.

"You're the real reason they're gone."

I let out a cold laugh and shot back, "Did you ever actually listen to me when I tried to warn you?"

But Jessica still refused to admit she was wrong. She even rushed straight to Peter, trying to shift all the blame ahead of time, and claimed it was my fault the kids died because I just stood by and let it happen.

In this life, there was no way I'd ever let Jessica twist the story and throw me under the bus before I could fight back.