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

Niannian made the decision the night before she left.

She didn't tell anyone.

At five in the morning, the sky over Chengjiawan was still not fully bright. A thin mist hung over the rice paddies. She sat up in bed and found an old carving knife that Gu Yandong had left in the woodshed. The tip was a bit dull. She sharpened it a few times with a whetstone, and it was usable enough.

The locust tree stands at the entrance of the village.

It takes seven minutes to walk there.

Niannian put the carving knife into her pocket and went out the door.

The road was familiar. A road I'd walked for twenty years, I could walk it blindfolded. The ground was muddy, dew wetting the tops of my shoes. The rice paddies on either side were dark, with only a lone oil lamp flickering in the distance.

Whose elderly person can't sleep?

We've arrived at the locust tree.

It was a size thicker than I remembered. The bark was cracked and showed signs of insect bites, but the canopy was still so large, blocking out half the sky. Niannian reached out and touched the trunk.

Rough. Cool. Solid.

She found a spot at a suitable height, about 1.2 meters off the ground, which was exactly at her eye level. She used her carving knife to measure the position.

Then I started carving.

The first character – “顾” – had many strokes and took almost five minutes to write.

The carving knife cuts through the bark, creating a subtle, gritty resistance. Wood chips fall off little by little.

"read".

"read".

After carving her name, her wrists were a little sore. She stopped, shook them a couple of times, and continued.

"Start from here."

Five characters. She carved each one more slowly than she carved her own name.

It's not because I don't have enough strength.

It's because she knew that carving those five words was her promise to the village. Not just empty words. It was a promise carved into the tree, unshakable by the wind or the rain; as long as the tree lived, the words would remain.

"To the whole world".

The sky was beginning to brighten. The eastern sky was a deep blue.

"Come back again."

She carved the last three characters the deepest. The carving knife almost embedded itself into the wood.

Niannian put away her carving knife and took two steps back.

The writing on the tree was crooked and uneven, with strokes of varying thickness, far less neat than writing on paper. But on this locust tree, it looked more stable than anything else.

The sky grew brighter and brighter.

A rooster started crowing.

Chengjiawan woke up.

Niannian stood under the locust tree and put the carving knife back in her pocket. She didn't feel anything special. It wasn't that she wasn't sad, but that she hid her sadness very deeply—so deeply that it transformed into something else, into a force that allowed her to stand firm.

She looked down at the mud on her shoes.

Then they went back.

She walked a few steps, then stopped. She looked back at the tree.

The characters were too small to see clearly from this distance. But she knew what was engraved.

enough.

—At nine o'clock in the morning, Cheng Xiaohe came to find her.

The child had changed back into that floral shirt. He was holding a twig in his hand.

"Sister, I practiced 'reading' thirty times." She held up the branch and wrote two words on the ground.

Much better than yesterday. Horizontal strokes are horizontal, vertical strokes are vertical, and the left-falling and right-falling strokes are all in their proper places.

"good."

Cheng Xiaohe grinned. Her missing front tooth had a large hole in it.

"Sister, are you leaving today?"

Niannian squatted down to meet her gaze. "Tomorrow."

Cheng Xiaohe said "Oh" and looked down at the words on the ground.

"Are you going there and never coming back?"

"I will come back."

"When?"

"I'll come back when you start school."

Cheng Xiaohe thought for a moment and nodded. She accepted this answer.

Niannian pulled a small notebook out of her canvas bag. She had brought it from the provincial capital. The cover was plain white, and she had written three words on it in pen—"Cheng Xiaohe".

"for you."

Cheng Xiaohe took it and opened it. On the first page, Nian Nian had written ten words.

They are all the simplest characters.

Person. Mouth. Hand. Water. Fire. Mountain. Field. Sky. Earth. Grain.

There's a picture under each word. Niannian drew it herself; her drawing skills aren't very good, but you can tell what it is.

"Literacy book. Start with the first character. Your brother won't teach you; you'll have to learn it yourself. Learn one character a day, take it slow."

Cheng Xiaohe hugged the notebook and pressed it against her chest.

"Sister, are you going to a very far place?"

"It's very far."

How far is it?

After thinking for a moment, he pointed to the sky.

"It's ten times farther than where you can see."

Cheng Xiaohe looked up at the sky. She stared for a long time. Then she looked back at Niannian.

"When you come back, you have to tell me what it's like over there."

Niannian looked at her.

"it is good."

She stood up.

Cheng Xiaohe clutched the literacy book, slowly took two steps back, then turned and ran. Her floral shirt fluttered in the wind.

Niannian watched her run away and disappear into the path beside the rice paddy.

She reached into her pocket and touched the small brass gear.

The metal was still cool.

She pinched it once, then let go.

On her way back, she passed the locust tree. She didn't stop.

The words are already engraved. There's no need to look at them again.