Sold into a ghost marriage? Four-year-old and his thuggish father go on a killing spree.

The gray cloth bundle was placed on the stove in the dilapidated house.

When Li Huilan's fingers untied the bundle, the room was extremely quiet; even the sound of the wind through the cracks in the walls could be clearly heard.

Gu Yanqiu squatted beside the stove, his hands gripping his knees, his knuckles white.

Niannian stood beside him, her eyes fixed on the cloth bag.

The cloth bag was opened.

There weren't many things inside—a photograph, a letter, and a small floral cloth bag about the size of a palm.

Li Huilan took out the photo first.

It was black and white, about two inches in size, with the edges curled up and the back stained pale yellow with sweat.

The photo shows two young people.

A man in overalls grinned, his teeth white, and his eyes gleamed with an indescribable brightness.

That bright spirit, unbroken by life, was something only young people of that era possessed.

A woman leaned on his shoulder, turned her head, and smiled.

She is very beautiful.

Curved eyebrows, slender eyes, slightly upturned corners of the mouth, and two shallow dimples when she smiles.

Her hair was braided and hung down in front of her chest.

The lighting in the photo is excellent, as if it were taken by a window, and the sunlight casts a soft outline on the woman's profile.

The moment Niannian saw the photo, she stopped breathing.

That face.

That face she had seen countless times in her dreams.

mom.

Niannian reached out and carefully touched the face of the woman in the photo.

All I could feel was the rough texture of the paper.

It's not my mother's skin.

It wasn't my mother's warmth.

Niannian withdrew her finger.

Gu Yanqiu stood motionless to the side.

He stared at the man in overalls in the photo—it was himself.

Myself in 1959.

Twenty-one years old.

He worked as a porter in a textile factory in the provincial capital.

The salary isn't high, but it's enough to eat.

He could laugh then.

Because she's by my side.

His gaze shifted from the young version of himself in the photo to Song Wanqing beside him.

Wanqing—

In his memory, Song Wanqing looked exactly like this in the photograph: arched eyebrows, long braids, and dimples when she smiled.

But he knew—she didn't die looking like this.

A person who has been sick for several years wouldn't look like this.

Gu Yanqiu's hands were trembling.

He reached out to take the photo, but his hands were shaking so badly that he failed to catch it twice.

Li Huilan placed the photo on his palm.

The photo is very light.

Light as a leaf.

But when it was pressed in his hand, it was so heavy that Gu Yanqiu bent over.

"And this too." Li Huilan's voice changed—she was trying her best to control her emotions, but her throat was still hoarse.

She took out the letter.

A yellowed piece of paper, folded four times, with frayed edges—it had been folded and turned many times.

The recipient's name was not written on the envelope.

In the bottom left corner, only four words were written in tiny print: "Read it to me."

Li Huilan handed the letter to Gu Yanqiu.

"Read it to her."

Gu Yanqiu's hands trembled even more violently.

He opened the paper.

Song Wanqing's courtesy name.

Horizontal and vertical lines are straight and clear.

But the further you go, the crooked the handwriting becomes—some characters have strokes with very long tails, as if the writer didn't have the strength to finish the writing.

Gu Yanqiu opened his mouth.

The first word was stuck in my throat, and I just couldn't get it out.

Niannian reached out and pressed down on his wrist.

"Dad, read it slowly."

Gu Yanqiu gritted his teeth and began to read.

"Nian Nian—"

His voice broke.

"Mom is sorry."

He paused for a moment.

His Adam's apple rolled up and down twice.

"Mom's health isn't good, and she might not live to see you grow up."

There wasn't a sound in the room. It was as if even the wind blowing through the cracks in the walls had stopped.

"Your father is a good man; he just became like that because his family broke his heart. Go find him—"

Gu Yanqiu's voice trailed off.

The words on the letter blurred before his eyes—tears streamed down his face silently, like water bursting from a dam.

He couldn't see the words that followed.

Niannian took the letter from his hand.

She is illiterate.

But she recognized her mother's handwriting.

Those straight, horizontal and vertical strokes are what her mother taught her to write the three characters "Gu Yanqiu" stroke by stroke, and they remain in her memory.

Niannian stared at that piece of paper for a long time.

Then she turned the paper over—there were a few more lines of writing on the back, the handwriting even more illegible, with some words almost unrecognizable.

"Aunt Li, what does it say on the back?"

Li Huilan took the letter and glanced at it.

Her expression changed.

"Wanqing, she..." Li Huilan's voice was very low, as if she was afraid that saying it would cause something to explode, "When she asked me to give these things to you, she also told me something."

Gu Yanqiu raised her head, her face streaked with tears.

"What is it?"

Li Huilan's gaze fell on Niannian's face, and she hesitated for a moment.

Then she said—

"She never received a single one of those letters you wrote back then—the ones you wrote to Wanqing."

The air in the room froze instantly.

Gu Yanqiu's face looked as if someone had splashed a bucket of ice water on it.

"What?"

"They were all intercepted by the Zhao family."

Li Huilan's voice began to tremble.

"Your letters were sent to the Song family's address. Zhao goes to the brigade headquarters to collect the mail every day—more diligently than anyone else. She intercepted every single one of the many letters you wrote. Wanqing hasn't seen a single one."

A buzzing sound went through Gu Yanqiu's mind.

It looked like something had cracked open.

"Wanqing thought you abandoned her after you left. She waited for a year—a whole year—going to the post office every day to ask if there was any mail for her. Everyone at the post office knew her. But she didn't receive a single letter."

Li Huilan wiped the tears from her face with her sleeve and continued speaking.

"Later—Zhao did something else—she had someone impersonate you and write a letter to Wanqing. It said that you had returned to the countryside, had already married, and that she should stop waiting and go her own way."

Gu Yanqiu's body jolted violently, as if he had been electrocuted.

"Wanqing was already seven months pregnant when she received that letter."

Li Huilan's voice grew softer and softer.

"She recognized that it wasn't your handwriting—your handwriting is crooked and ugly—but the letter's handwriting was neat and tidy, clearly written by someone else."

She knew it was a fake letter.

"But she was still—desperate. Because if you really cared, you would come to her yourself, instead of having someone else write it for you."

Niannian stood between the two adults, listening quietly.

She is too young.

She couldn't understand many of the things he said.

But there are some things she doesn't need to understand, because she has already seen them.

She saw her father's face.

The expression on that face—not crying, not anger—was something far more terrifying than either.

It's like someone suddenly realizing they've killed the person they shouldn't have killed.

Then she took out the small floral cloth bag.

The bag is old, with fine stitches, indicating it was hand-sewn.

turn on.

There was a stack of money inside—a few one-yuan bills, a few five-yuan bills, and two ten-yuan bills—I counted them, and there were a total of thirty-seven yuan.

There were also a few coupons—grain coupons, cloth coupons, and oil coupons.

They were all folded neatly and held together with a rubber band.

"This is what Wanqing saved up," Li Huilan said. "Three years. She saved it up penny by penny. She did odd jobs at the town's sewing cooperative, sometimes earning a few cents by writing letters for people—that's how she saved up thirty-seven yuan."

Thirty-seven pieces.

Thirty-seven yuan in 1964 was enough for a family of three to eat coarse grains for more than half a year.

Song Wanqing had saved up for three years.

She was sick, raising her child alone, and doing the hardest and most tiring odd jobs, saving up thirty-seven yuan in three years.

She wanted to leave it to Niannian.

Leave it for her to use when she grows up.

But she didn't live to see that day.

Niannian held the small cloth bag in her hands.

The cloth bag smelled of my mother—a very faint scent, a blend of soap and cotton.

She pressed the cloth bag against her face.

Then—this four-and-a-half-year-old girl who crawled out of a coffin, walked barefoot for over a hundred miles in the snow, and never showed weakness in front of any adult—

She burst into tears.

It wasn't a silent, restrained cry.

It was that kind of heart-wrenching, wailing cry.

It was as if all the tears that had been held back since her mother's death were poured out at this moment.

She bent over, crying, her hands clutching the floral cloth bag tightly, her nails digging into the fabric.

Gu Yanqiu collapsed to the ground, holding the photo and the letter, trembling all over.

Li Huilan squatted in the corner, covering her face with the back of her hand, her shoulders twitching.

That dilapidated house was colder than the bitter winter winds blowing outside.

Niannian cried for a long time.

It went on for so long that my voice became hoarse, for so long that all my tears dried up, and for so long that it turned into dry howls.

Then she slowly stopped.

She wiped her face with her sleeve.

Raise your head.

Looking at Gu Yanqiu.

"dad."

Gu Yanqiu looked at her.

Those bright black eyes were red and swollen from crying, but something inside them—something that didn't belong to a four-year-old—was still there.

What was written on the back of the letter?

Li Huilan rubbed her eyes, picked up the letter, turned it over, and read it aloud word by word.

"Yanqiu—if one day Niannian finds you—please treat her well—she is our child—I only regret my own incompetence in this life—that I couldn't give her a complete family—"

The last line of text was almost illegible—the strokes were broken and crooked, as if the writer had carved it in the dark with their last breath.

"You—owe me—a lifetime—to repay—"

Li Huilan's voice trailed off.

The room fell into a deathly silence once again.

Gu Yanqiu covered her face.

His shoulders were trembling violently—like a dam about to collapse.

Niannian walked to his side and grabbed his sleeve with her little hand wrapped in gauze.

He didn't speak.

They were just holding on.

It was pulled very tight.

It's as if it's saying—I'm here.

But the words on the back of the letter concealed a truth—Zhao intercepted all the letters and forged a fake one.

Gu Yanqiu was unaware of the full extent of this matter.

The words that Song Wanqing wrote on the back of the letter with her last bit of strength were not just for Niannian.

There was another sentence obscured by bloodstains, making it illegible.

Li Huilan held the paper up to the light from the window and squinted to make out its contents for a long time.

Her expression changed little by little.

"Yanqiu... come here."