Mud beads

Yu Zhu didn't realize her phone was missing until she got into the car with Yuejian Che.

She touched Echizen Toru's suit jacket; it was wet, cold, and pressed against her fingertips. She then touched the side of her skirt—no pockets, nothing at all. Her phone was still in the pocket of the white suit jacket stained with red wine; she'd left the suit in the hotel dressing room, forgetting to take it when she came out.

She had promised Liang Dong she would call him after it was over. He would definitely be worried if he couldn't reach her.

The overhead lights were off in the carriage. The driver, without looking to the side, quickly raised the partition between the seats. The sounds outside were gone; only a blurry remnant of the chaos from the balcony remained, blocked by the privacy-protected windows. Yu Zhu was almost completely soaked, her hair plastered to her face, water dripping down to her knees. Yue Jianche sat beside her, his shirt also wet, his hair, previously held in place by hairspray, now disheveled and hanging loosely over his forehead. On the back of his hand, Mr. Jiang's blood had dried, forming a dark crust at the knuckles.

Upon hearing the car start, Yu Zhu placed her hand on the car door and said, "My phone is still inside."

Toru Koshima looked ahead: "Who do you want to contact?"

"I--"

Yu Zhu opened her mouth, then closed it again and leaned back in her seat.

The madness of Etsuma Toru just now is still vivid in my mind.

She didn't want to provoke him right now.

When Echizen saw that Yu Zhu was no longer speaking, he turned his head to look at her, smiled, closed his eyes, and leaned against the carriage wall.

The car was very cold, and Yu Zhu pulled her coat tighter around her neck. Inside the collar, the cool scent of Yue Jianche mixed with a hint of dampness and the smell of blood made her feel a brief dizziness.

The car drove out of the hotel, merged into the traffic, and climbed onto the elevated road. Yu Zhu initially thought they would head towards Yueyuan, but the car headed east and got onto the highway.

She gradually sat up straight.

After passing the first ETC gate, the buildings along the roadside gradually sloped downwards, and the streetlights became sparser.

Looking at the heavy night outside the highway, Yu Zhu suddenly felt that the darkness in the distance was like a sea.

"Where are we going?" she couldn't help but ask.

Toru Echizen offered no explanation.

His eyes were closed, and his face showed signs of fatigue; he seemed to be asleep.

The car passed through a tunnel, its headlights illuminating the gray-white walls, then whizzed in and quickly emerged. A moment later, a second tunnel appeared, and a cell phone signal sign flashed past the window. Then came the third, the fourth—the tunnels grew longer and longer, the outside grew darker and darker, and the wheels made a monotonous vibration as they rolled over the road seams.

It wasn't until the emergency lights at the tunnel exit illuminated the scene that Yu Zhu realized the darkness closing in on either side of the car window was the towering cliffs of the Qinling Mountains.

Her heart suddenly started racing.

She looked out the window, then at the partition in the middle, and finally her gaze fell on Echizen Toru, who was resting with his eyes closed.

She reached out to him, but only halfway before pulling her hand back.

"Yeoma Toru." Yu Zhu called his name softly, but only after she spoke did she realize that her teeth were chattering slightly.

The car entered another long tunnel. Hazard lights swept past the windows, flashing across Echizen Toru's face, sometimes bright, sometimes dim. He heard her voice, opened his eyes, but didn't respond. He leaned back in a relaxed posture, as if it were just a spur-of-the-moment decision to take her to a restaurant far away.

Yu Zhu seemed to suddenly realize something and reached out to press the car door.

"I want to get off," she said.

The door lock is not responding.

Yu Zhu found that her hands were also beginning to tremble uncontrollably.

The darkness outside the window rushed towards her like a tide, and she was like a drowning person who had lost her support, almost overwhelmed by the rising fear.

"Stop the car!" She pounded on the car door, but when it didn't respond, she pounded on the front partition. "Stop the car! I want to get out!"

"Alright," Toru Echizen finally spoke.

He took her hand, but not forcefully, and simply removed it from the barrier.

"Getting on and off in the tunnel?" He chuckled. "You want to die?"

Yu Zhu stared at Yue Jianche for a while, then suddenly shook him off and continued to pound on the partition in the middle.

"Driver, stop the car, I need to get off!"

The driver didn't respond. The partition was raised, and only her voice echoed between the hard leather seats and the glass in the carriage. Yu Zhu's chest heaved violently; the cold air seeped through her body, and her back began to sweat again. Through the window, she stared at the darkness at the end of the tunnel, knowing that once the car sped out, the outside world would no longer be the city.

The car still veered off course.

The mountain is getting closer.

Night pressed down on the mountain ridge, and large, dark shadows receded past the car window. Occasionally, village lights flickered by by the roadside, yellowish dots lying dormant at the foot of the slope, quickly disappearing again. Yu Zhu looked at those lights, and her body convulsed.

She remembered the nights in the village. As soon as it got dark, all the gates of the houses would close, and dogs would bark at motorcycles chasing each other in the alleys. Who was beating a child? Who was arguing with their spouse? Who was mixing pig feed in their yard? The swill bucket would be lifted, and the sour, rancid smell would waft out on the wind. The sounds and smells were all buried behind low walls, so familiar that nothing new came of them. Men would urinate by the roadside after drinking, and women would stand at their doorways scolding their children.

When she was little, she stood under that same light, being called by her full name and cursed by Liu Guizhen. The name Yu Pandi wasn't just a formality; it was followed by accusations of laziness, gluttony, and that she'd belong to someone else sooner or later.

The year she left with Echizen Toru, she was sitting in the car, worried about whether anyone would feed the chickens and whether she would get the car dirty.

Now she's just afraid the car will stop.

"Are you going to lock me up again?" Yu Zhu finally stopped what she was doing, her forehead pressed against the front seat, her voice hoarse. "Are you going to throw me back into the mountains so I can't contact anyone, is that it?"

Echigo looked at her. The shadows of the mountains outside the car window loomed over his face, his eyes dark and deep.

"Yu Zhu," he stared at her for a while, then said with a cold laugh, "I thought you weren't afraid of anything anymore."

"You're sick."

This sentence brought the carriage back to silence.

The smile on Echizen's face slowly faded. He ignored her and turned his gaze back to the window. The mountain road began to narrow, and the car slowed down. Later, a familiar ditch appeared by the roadside; the sound of the water was faint in the night as they drove down close to the rocks. The headlights illuminated a section of old cement road, the surface cracked with fine fissures filled with weeds.

Yu Zhu recognized her.

This is the road to the village.

The car was parked on the side of a slope above the village entrance. The driver got out, turned off the high beams, leaving only a dim yellow light nearby. Etsuya Toru got out of the car, walked around to her side, and opened the door.

The mountain night wind blew in my face, carrying the smell of cold firewood.

Yu Zhu remained seated.

"Get out of the car," said Toru Echizen.

She looked up at him. Her skirt, though dry, clung to her legs with a slight dampness. Her high heels, with their thin heels, had caused her to slip and sink into the dirt as she got out of the car, her ankle wobbling. Yuejian Tetsu reached out to help her, but she pulled away.

They didn't go into the yard; they just stood by the roadside and looked down.

The Yu family's courtyard was lower than I remembered. The gate had been replaced with a sheet metal one, and styrofoam boxes and several old plastic buckets were piled up in the corner. The light was on in the main room, and the curtain was half-lifted, letting in light that illuminated the newly paved cement floor in the courtyard.

It was too late; no one was around in the village anymore. Lights were on in a few houses, and the doors were all closed. A dusty tricycle was parked by the roadside.

Looking at the small courtyard in her memory, Yu Zhu's fear in the car gradually subsided. When she was little, she thought the courtyard wall was very high and impossible to climb over. Now, the top of the wall only reached a little above her shoulders.

Koshima Toru stood beside her: "Aren't you going down?"

"You want me to get off?"

"Don't you want to ask them if they've thought about you all these years?"

Yu Zhu looked at the metal door at the entrance and smiled slightly: "I know without you even asking."

"You're not afraid anymore so quickly?"

Yu Zhu didn't speak. Her gaze fell on the courtyard.

The light in the main room was on, and the curtain moved occasionally as someone walked by, only to be quickly blocked by the wall.

This was an ordinary family, an ordinary night. She was no longer a part of this place. Her departure and return wouldn't make the light in the house stay on any longer.

"I've figured it out," she suddenly said.

Koshima Toru glanced at her, somewhat surprised: "What have you figured out?"

Yu Zhu didn't want to explain to him.

Many things flashed through her mind.

The first time she asked Echizen Toru for help, she ran away from this very courtyard. That day, the rain had brought heavy mud, she was covered in dirt, her face was swollen, and she clutched tightly the piece of paper with his name on it. At thirteen, she saw this place as hell and Echizen Toru as a god descended from heaven.

That day, she ran to him crying, calling him "brother." But he told her not to come in and to stand there first.

At that time, she didn't understand that some distances can't be bridged by simply taking a few more steps. There was always an invisible chasm between them, an insurmountable barrier that they could never cross in their lifetime.

This village isn't that scary. It once trapped thirteen-year-old Yu Pandi, but it can't trap her now.

Thirteen-year-old Yu Pandi felt scared, but not ashamed.

Yu Zhu lowered her head and chuckled softly.

She looked at the ground beneath her feet, pulled the heel of her shoe out of the soil, and raised her head: "You really think 100,000 yuan can buy my entire life?"

Echizen Toru paused, tilted his head to look at her, and smiled contemptuously, "Is this what you call 'understanding'?"

"Not only that." Yu Zhu lowered her head, took off Yue Jianche's suit jacket, and threw it back into the car. "I also want to understand that some shackles are ones I've been holding onto myself."

Echizen's gaze darkened.

The night was still for a few seconds. Insects chirped in the grass, one after another. Yu Zhu stood before the car headlights, wearing only her black dress. The light shone on her bare back, highlighting its clear and elegant lines.

"Just consider me a selfish, ungrateful wretch, it doesn't matter." She smiled, took a deep breath, and said, "Whether I'm Yu Pandi or Yu Zhu, I'll only move upwards."

She paused, looked at Echizen Toru, and said, slowly and deliberately, "I will keep moving upwards without stopping."

Echizen looked at her, then looked up and chuckled.

"Go up." He repeated.

The sky was turning from black to a bluish-gray hue. In the distant village, someone opened a door, and the clanging of metal objects echoed through the mountain mist.

Echizen Toru raised his hand and pointed to the dark mountain road behind the car.

"Okay, show me."