I had completely lost control, my hands frantically pounding against the coffin that confined me, yet it remained unmoving.
My heart burned with urgency and fury, cursing in my mind: "That vile woman! She has taken my daughter hostage, and that's why she dares to bury me alive here with such unbridled cruelty!"
The air inside the coffin grew heavier, suffocating, and I found it increasingly difficult to breathe.
I struggled to calm my panic, desperately digging my nails into the flesh of my palm, trying to steady myself, to think clearly.
One thing was absolutely certain in my mind: I could never reveal the password. Once she had what she wanted, she would surely spare neither me nor my daughter—our fates would be sealed.
I fumbled in the dark, and after much effort, I found the dialing interface on the old phone.
I had no idea what the emergency number was for Myanmar, so I first dialed 110, then 86110, only to hear a mechanical female voice in Burmese, indicating the number could not be connected.
I kept telling myself to remain calm, when suddenly, it occurred to me: the embassy! If I could find the contact number for the Chinese embassy in Myanmar and ask for help, even if it meant facing the consequences later, at least my daughter and I would have a chance to survive.
But this outdated Nokia phone, no matter how I fiddled with it, refused to open any webpages.
I couldn't help but bitterly laugh to myself—of course, that woman was far too meticulous to leave me with a phone that could access the internet.
I pounded the wooden boards in despair, overwhelmed by helplessness.
Just then, the phone suddenly rang.
I thought it was my friend calling. In a flurry of panic, I quickly answered.
The voice on the other end spoke in Burmese, a young man, his words fragmented and halting.
"ခင်ဗျားတို့ရဲ့ ကလေးဟာ အခု ကျွန်တော်တို့လက်ထဲမှာ ရှိနေပါပြီ!"
（Your child is in our custody! ）
"ဒီကတ်ထဲမှာ ဒေါ်လာ ၁၀၀,၀၀၀ ထည့်ဖို့ တစ်နာရီ ရှိပါတယ်။ မလုပ်နိုင်ဘူးဆိုရင် လက်မှတ်ကို ဖျက်တော့မယ်။"
（You have one hour to transfer one hundred thousand dollars into this account. Fail to do so, and we will kill her.）
I couldn't understand a single word. Looking at the caller ID, I saw that it wasn't my friend's number.
In a moment of desperation, I shouted at the phone:
"Help!"
Hoping he might understand English, I quickly added,
"Help! We were kidnapped! Call the police!"
"ခင်ဗျားတို့ရဲ့ ကလေးဟာ အခု ကျွန်တော်တို့လက်ထဲမှာ ရှိနေပါပြီ!"
（Your child is in our custody! ）
But all I received in return was another string of incomprehensible Burmese.
I realized with a sinking heart that the man on the other end probably didn't understand English at all.
He continued speaking in Burmese, and in a flash, I remembered something. I hastily hung up the phone and quickly checked the call log—thinking if I tried each number, there might be someone who understood English, and we might have a chance at rescue!
But just as I hung up, that same number called again.
I hung up again, fumbling for the block number feature, but before I could find it, the call came through once more.
Annoyed, I answered impatiently. It was the same man, still babbling in the same incomprehensible Burmese.
Frustration boiled over, and I blurted out, "F** your mother! What the hell do you want?*"
There was a sudden silence on the other end, and then a perfect, unaccented Mandarin voice replied,
"Are you Chinese?"
I froze, completely stunned.