Chapter 33
When the call came, Chen Huai was standing outside No. 136 Zhongxin Road, about to open the mailbox and take out the new letter Qin Yao had written to him.
He had been too busy lately and had not come to collect the letters for a month. Just as he was about to lift the lid, he heard Sun Fusheng’s choked voice over the phone. Chen Huai immediately rushed back without stopping.
It was already very late then, eight or nine at night. The road was completely dark. Chen Huai gave the door a gentle push, barely using any force, and it opened.
Hearing the movement, Qin Yao grabbed the blanket, trying to cover her shoulders, but Chen Huai caught her by the wrist.
Her hand was limp and soft, without much strength, and simply fell into his warm palm.
“Don’t look at me.” Her hair covered her face. “I look awful.”
“Who did this?”
Qin Yao heard how calm his voice was. It was precisely because it was too calm that it was frightening.
She had no intention of hiding it. Pain was pain. She was not strong, not forgiving. She was going to say it.
“My dad. He wanted to take back my mom’s money. I wouldn’t give it to him, and he lost his temper.”
Speaking seemed to take a great deal of effort from Qin Yao. “That probably wasn’t the only reason. The main thing is that he hates me.”
As soon as she finished speaking, Qin Yao felt his fingers lightly touch her bruises. The touch was so gentle, like a drop of water passing over skin, like medicine, like numbing ice.
“He also took my ID card and my admission ticket.” Qin Yao smiled, then began coughing, making even the bed frame shake. “Looks like both you and I will have to try again next year. Good. Neither of us will have to wait for the other anymore.”
Chen Huai withdrew his hand and remained silent for a very, very long time.
Qin Yao turned onto her side to look at him, but the night was too dark, and she could not make him out.
“Where is he?” Chen Huai suddenly asked.
“...I don’t know.” After saying it, Qin Yao tensed up and pulled an arm out from beneath the blanket. “What are you doing? We can just call the police and...”
Chen Huai wrapped the blanket around her and told her not to move.
“By the time the police get here, it’ll be too late for the college entrance exam.”
“And that money, if he spends it, how will the old man save his life? How are you going to get into Peking University?”
Qin Yao’s eyes trembled. She grabbed his hand and shook her head.
“You won’t be able to find him.”
The string of old coins hanging from the window frame began to chime, refracting fragments of moonlight that fell across his cheek, the tip of his nose, and the tightly drawn line of his lips.
The shadow of the clematis swayed and swayed.
For the first time, Chen Huai pushed her hand away.
“This is important to you.” He turned around and pulled his collar higher. “When I come back, I’ll take you to the hospital. You have to be in the exam room tomorrow morning.”
When he came back...
How long would she have to wait?
One year, two years, seven years, ten years...
It was as though a huge chasm had suddenly opened inside Qin Yao. She had a bad feeling, as if something like this had happened countless times before, somewhere in a corner of her memory she did not know, countless times before, Chen Huai had let go of her hand.
“Chen... Broken-Tailed Fish.”
As Chen Huai was closing the door, she called out that name.
But he did not hear her.
Qin Yao wanted to put on her shoes. She wanted to go outside and stop him. She did not know why she had suddenly begun to cry, why her heart ached faintly, only that she kept feeling that after this meeting, he would leave and never return.
Sun Fusheng came into the room and grabbed Qin Yao, telling her not to move, guiding her back down onto the bed.
Qin Yao shook her head violently. “No... no. Grandpa, stop him. Help me call him back.”
She was not sure whether Chen Huai would be able to find Qin Guoli’s address. But she herself had written about Qin Guoli in her very first letter to Broken-Tailed Fish. Maybe Chen Huai still remembered. Maybe he really could find the place.
She still had not told Chen Huai that she knew he was Broken-Tailed Fish. She had not told him that she had recognized that handwriting long ago. She had not asked whether he had read the new letters she had sent. She still did not know whether Chen Huai knew how she felt.
Qin Yao had always said that after summer, they would leave this place together.
But what if... there was no summer anymore?
Sun Fusheng seemed to have fallen into confusion again. He could not understand what she was saying and only held her down mechanically, telling her that Xiao Yao must not get hurt again.
“You can’t catch up to him anymore.” Sun Fusheng patted the blanket, coaxing her as though she were a child. “Believe in him. We’ll go to the hospital... he’ll take you to the hospital... no, first you need to sleep properly. Xiao Yao never sleeps properly, always climbing up and down. Little children should go to bed early and get up early.”
His head hurt terribly, and his speech began to slur, coming out in broken fragments. He even started singing Qin Yao a song, drawing out the notes.
The song was exactly the same as the one Sun Hongping used to sing to her.
Qin Yao suddenly went still.
Sun Fusheng said, “All we want is for you to be well, Xiao Yao. If you’re well, then you won’t have let anyone down.”
Qin Yao saw a blue shadow standing behind Sun Fusheng, hidden in the darkness, where even the moonlight could not illuminate her.
The shadow came closer and closer. She was the same height as Qin Yao, her hair the same length. Even the size of her fingers and the rhythm of her breathing remained perfectly in sync with hers.
She thought of Xiao Yao, of that cluster of blue ghost flame in her own story. But before she could say anything, the shadow melted into her body.
Qin Yao’s consciousness suddenly grew hazy, as though, following the thread of some story, she were being forcibly made to fall asleep. Her eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Sun Fusheng was still patting her stomach again and again, singing a song to lull a child to sleep, singing like a mother.
The night grew deeper and deeper. Sun Fusheng’s aged singing did not stop. The string of old coins swayed faster and faster, and a fierce wind rose outside.
The old man began talking to himself, where no one could hear him:
“...Grandpa is going to leave soon.”
“Too much money has been spent on treatment, and you still have to go to school. It’s too hard to earn money, saving it bit by bit. Don’t spend it on me anymore. Xiao Yao always said she hated Grandpa most. So how did it come to this, that she still wants to spend all her money treating Grandpa?”
“It can’t be cured... it can’t be cured anymore. My head hurts all day and all night, it’s unbearable. Staying alive only burdens others, and I suffer too. A useless old man who can’t do anything, yet still has to be dead weight. Everyone is already living such hard lives. And my Guoguo, too...”
His eyes were empty. No one knew what he was looking at in the silent darkness. The old man began murmuring about Guoguo again.
“The person I’ve wronged most is my Guoguo... I never let her live a good life in this lifetime. Such a good child, born into the wrong family, climbing her way out of ours. If she’d been born into a rich family, she surely would have been much happier.”
Sun Fusheng gently patted Qin Yao’s stomach. His shriveled lips moved, and hot tears fell from the layers upon layers of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. His gaze was cloudy. When people grow old, they can no longer see anything clearly. Time will erase every person’s traces.
The old man’s voice came one phrase after another, dragging out each long beat, like grasping at the tail of time, like a sigh:
“You too. You weren’t born into a good family either. I’ve only burdened you.”
“...When Grandpa dies, there’ll be no more sickness, no more pain. Xiao Yao will be lighter too.”
His voice was so weak that even the wind could not hear it:
“After I die, my granddaughter... you must live well.”
Ding...
The string of wind chimes rang. The roly-poly toy swayed back and forth. Qin Yao’s eyes remained tightly shut as the sound of the nursery rhyme by her ear gradually drifted farther and farther away, mingling with the sigh of the broken door.
A hunched figure climbed upstairs.
Her family was nowhere to be seen again.
The wind grew still. The trees grew still. The people grew still.
The world sank into utter darkness.
The road was uneven and full of potholes. A lamp shone at the mouth of the alley. Following what had been mentioned in the letter, Chen Huai found his way to the neighborhood where Qin Yao had once lived and asked several elderly men sitting shirtless outside their doors to cool off about Qin Guoli.
“Don’t know if his name is Qin Guoli... but after that Sun Hongping you mentioned died, a man surnamed Qin moved in. Said his wife used to live there. Creepy as hell, if you ask me. Who deliberately goes looking for a house where someone died?” One of the old men pointed to the house across the way.
Chen Huai went around to the back window and glanced inside. There was no one there. He picked up a stone, his face cold, and smashed the window directly. The flying glass cut into his palm, but Chen Huai paid it no mind. He knocked away the remaining shards and climbed inside.
He rummaged through every cabinet, searching for Qin Yao’s documents and the money. He pulled open drawer after drawer, but found nothing.
So he even tore apart the quilts and bedsheets. He felt around inside the pillowcase and found a kraft-paper envelope, but it was empty. He kept searching, until behind a heap of clothes in the wardrobe, he spotted Qin Yao’s backpack.
The backpack lay crookedly inside, as though it had simply been tossed there the moment it was brought back. Qin Guoli had not cared enough to deliberately destroy it. He had taken all the money and gone out.
Chen Huai put the documents into his pocket. As he stood up, he knocked over a framed photograph on top of the cabinet.
He froze.
It was as though some kind of magic compelled him to pick up the frame. But before his bleeding fingers could touch its edge, he heard the click of the front door.
Qin Guoli stumbled home drunk, carrying a green beer bottle. His face was utterly dejected. He stepped through the door and saw the moonlight inside illuminating a human figure.
Chen Huai frowned and was about to run. He had gotten the things back, after all. The most urgent thing was to get them to Qin Yao before the exam began. But Qin Guoli suddenly charged at him like a madman in a drunken rage, wrapped an arm around his neck, and dragged him down from the windowsill.
Chen Huai’s back landed on the broken glass.
The pain made him let out a muffled groan.
Qin Guoli narrowed his eyes and finally saw his face clearly.
“You’re the one they were talking about... the one who’s been having an early romance with Qin Yao?”
Chen Huai had no idea what he meant. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he began struggling with him. Qin Guoli still had the unfinished bottle in his hand and suddenly smashed it against Chen Huai’s head. The alcohol burned the wound, mixing with blood as it spilled across the floor.
Qin Guoli was dead drunk. Reeking of alcohol, he began babbling nonsense.
“She’s a slut too! Just like that mother of hers. Always fooling around with some worthless punk with no money and no power. They’re all the same!”
“My woman... my daughter, they all hate me to the bone.”
Qin Guoli laughed as he struck him, then shakily got to his feet, laughing loudly.
Chen Huai lunged forward and wrapped his arms around his waist. The two of them grappled on the floor. Qin Guoli’s head slammed into the bed too, leaving him dazed for a long while. Chen Huai, blood streaming down his forehead, tried to make his way toward the door. Qin Guoli shakily got back to his feet, dragging a wooden stool in his hand.
Red and black blurred together before Chen Huai’s eyes. He could barely see. His leg had been pierced by the broken window glass and had gone numb. He could not move it.
Yet all he could think about was getting those things back to Qin Yao.
She had been waiting for this day.
Waiting for a very, very long time.
She said she was going to Beijing. She said she carried eyes upon her shoulders.
The scraping sound of the stool dragged itself into his ears.
Everything in the world seemed about to fall silent. For some reason, the weather had suddenly turned cold. Chen Huai felt every one of his teeth trembling. He looked toward the door.
The cold wind stirred his painful breathing.
Chen Huai felt his eyes grow hot and sore.
Granny Zhou passed by the doorway, leading her cat, her back bent as she shuffled along.
Yuan Sheng dribbled the soccer ball as he ran forward.
He saw himself too, dressed in a pure black down jacket, standing in the heavy snow and tossing a diary down at the doorway.
The pages were blown open by the wind, rustling loudly.
Chen Huai’s legs suddenly gave out beneath him, and he fell hard to the ground. Qin Guoli raised the stool, about to bring it down on his head.
Chen Huai saw the photograph exposed between the windblown pages of the diary.
There was only one face in it, taking up half the photograph. Her lashes were slightly lowered as she glanced sideways at the person beside her, the corner of her lips faintly raised.
It was Qin Yao.
Outside the door lay mountains and rivers, rain and water, endless seasons.
Chen Huai’s fingertips touched the threshold, but he could not pass through it. In that instant, he suddenly understood something.
The stool was about to come down on his head. In that fleeting moment, Chen Huai shielded the things in his pocket and closed his eyes.
One second, two seconds, three seconds.
He felt nothing.
The next moment, Chen Huai sucked in a great breath and opened his eyes.
He saw a silver shadow braced over him with both hands.
His pupils contracted. His breathing stopped. He felt tears falling drop by drop, hot enough to burn through his face.
The edges of the silver shadow were blurred like snowflakes.
And above him, there was someone else.
Someone had caught Qin Guoli by the wrist and was holding him back with all his strength.
Chen Huai’s tears mingled with blood as they ran from the corners of his eyes.
Silently, his lips moved.
“...Ge.”
The silver figure passed into his body. Chen Huai felt his emotions magnified without end, as though everything he had ever lost had returned to his body. He pushed himself up from the ground and grabbed Yuan Sheng by the arm, calling him “Brother” again and again, each cry like blood from the heart. He could not say anything else.
Yuan Sheng’s body became half-transparent. This world was strange. Even Qin Guoli’s stool could no longer come down.
The boy who had remained sixteen years old, never moving forward, smiled gently and sighed.
“Chen Huai, you’re taller than your brother now.”
Then he urged him, “Run. Don’t keep staying here.”
Chen Huai did not move.
Yuan Sheng curved his brows slightly and continued, “Chen Huai, everyone has to learn how to say goodbye. Everyone will have their day.”
“She’s still waiting for you. You have to go back.”
An invisible pair of hands pushed against his shoulders, pushing Chen Huai forward, pushing him out.
Beyond the door, the seasons turned.
All things perished.
All things lived on without end.
Sun Fusheng’s song went on and on. Qin Yao fell into a deep sleep, sinking into darkness as though she could never wake again.
When she opened her eyes again, they were full of tears.
Morning had broken. The shadow of the clematis swayed. Sparrows perched high on the branches. Time moved forward, stripped of any measure of speed.
When Qin Yao climbed down from the bed, she fell. Then she hurriedly crawled toward the door. The moment she opened it, she saw a body fall from upstairs.
She knew that face far too well.
Every crease at the corners of his eyes, every age spot on the backs of his hands, was unbearably familiar to her.
His thin body was like a leaf from a banyan tree, blown this way and that by the wind as it fell. His loose old undershirt could not cover his body.
The wind held up his body, as though stretching open an aged skin.
Even as he fell, the old man was smiling.
Silently, he shaped the words for her:
“Live.”
Her tears burst forth together with his blood.
Qin Yao’s legs gave out, and she collapsed onto the ground outside the door. Her mouth opened wide as she wailed, but her throat was so dry and raw that no sound came out.
Many people are not allowed to cry when they are young.
When they fall, they are told to be strong and climb back up by themselves. When they are sad, they must pretend that nothing matters. They must show the world that they are as hard as steel.
And so they forget how to cry.
They pull back the corners of their mouths, narrow their eyes, bite through the flesh inside their mouths.
Many people forget that when they want to cry, it is the throat and the heart that begin to hurt first.
A pool of blood spread across the ground.
【All my money, all my love, is to be left to my daughter Guoguo and my granddaughter Xiao Yao.
— Sun Fusheng】
With his death, Sun Fusheng taught his granddaughter how to live.
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