Slow to mature after marriage

Mu Siwan's eyelashes trembled slightly, but she didn't speak; she just looked at him quietly.

Bo Yan slowly recounted the Zhou family's situation—a shipping family in Haicheng. Their daughter, Zhou Yu'an, went missing at the Haicheng dock when she was five years old. Her parents searched for her for more than 20 years without ever giving up. There was also an older brother in the family, Zhou Xubai.

Upon hearing this, Mu Siwan felt a tightness in her chest, like something was blocking her throat. It was a feeling of suffocation, like a drowning person struggling to surface only to be pushed back down by wave after wave. She opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but no sound came out.

"Zhou Yu'an... Zhou Yu'an..."

Mu Siwan murmured the name again and again. By the third time, her voice had begun to tremble. She looked up at Bo Yan, her eyes already glistening with tears, but she desperately tried to hold them back.

"Is my name Zhou Yu'an?"

Bo Yan looked at her, his heart clenching as if someone had squeezed it. He reached out and placed his palm on the top of her head, gently stroking it again and again.

"It's not certain yet. We need to meet with Zhou Xubai first and do a paternity test before we can completely clarify what happened back then."

Mu Siwan took a deep breath, trying her best to suppress all the surging emotions. She held back her tears, but couldn't hide the confusion in her eyes.

Bo Yan had never seen that bewildered look on her face, like a lost child not knowing which way to go.

"Can I come along?" Mu Siwan's voice trailed off, carrying an uncertain, tentative timidity.

"Of course." Bo Yan stared at her unusually vulnerable appearance, his heart aching and swelling. His voice unconsciously became even softer. "The Zhou family has put up a picture of Zhou Yu'an when he was a child. Do you want to take a look? See if you can find any memories from the past."

Mu Siwan couldn't speak, she could only cover her mouth and nod repeatedly. Tears welled up in her eyes, she bit her lip and held them back tightly.

Bo Yan took out his phone from the bedside table drawer, found the photo he had kept for a long time, and handed it over.

On the screen, a little girl sits on a carousel, with two braids, a very light mole between her eyebrows, and a bright smile that seems to capture all the sunshine in the world.

Mu Siwan stared at the photo.

Before the sense of déjà vu, a feeling of alienation washed over her, as if from another world. She didn't remember riding a carousel, didn't remember wearing those little braids, and didn't remember laughing so happily.

Tears fell onto the phone screen, one after another. She looked up blankly at Bo Yan, her voice trembling, her lips quivering, "This isn't me, Bo Yan. How could this be me?"

Of all the memories she could recall, she had never laughed so happily. The dark corridors of the orphanage, the cold attic of the Mu family home, the locked door, and herself curled up alone in the darkness—this was her childhood.

She looked at the little girl in the photo, as if looking at the life of another stranger through a thick layer of frosted glass—blurry and indistinct. But she couldn't stop herself from crying. Her whole body was trembling, from her fingertips to her kneecaps, from her chest to her throat, as if something had been forcibly ripped from the depths of her body and laid bloody before her.

Something was tearing inside her head, sharp and stabbing, like a dull knife sawing back and forth on the inside of her skull. She reached up and clutched her head, her knuckles turning white, her teeth grinding together.

"It hurts... Bo Yan, my head hurts so much..."

Bo Yan's heart sank, and he pulled the woman into his arms. He placed his hand on the back of her head, gently rubbing it again and again. "It's okay, don't be afraid. I'm here with you. Don't be afraid, baby, I'll stay with you."

Seeing that she was not in a good condition, Bo Yan picked up his phone to call 120.

Mu Siwan's body was still trembling, convulsing intermittently. Her fingers gripped Bo Yan's collar so tightly that her knuckles turned white, like a drowning person clinging to the last piece of driftwood.

Then they couldn't hold onto that driftwood anymore.

Her hands loosened, her whole body went limp, and she silently slid into his arms.

"Mu Siwan? Mu Siwan!"

-

The man's voice faded into the distance, the deep, urgent "Mu Siwan" scattered by the wind, breaking into pieces that drifted into the darkness.

Instead, another voice emerged.

"An'an."

A woman's voice, gentle, with the soft, melodious tone characteristic of the Jiangnan water towns. It came from a very deep place, like a shipwreck that had been submerged at the bottom of the sea for many years being salvaged, a rusty door being pushed open, and an entire lost world pouring in.

"An'an, slow down, don't fall."

Sunlight.

The sunlight was intense, pouring down from the sky, so bright and dazzling that it was hard to open one's eyes.

She saw her tiny, chubby hands clutching a lollipop, the wrapper rustling in the wind. She squatted in the garden watching ants move their food when someone picked her up from behind, lifted her high above their head, and spun her around several times. The wind billowed through her skirt like a full sail. She laughed, a loud laugh that made her eyes crinkle into crescent moons, revealing a row of teeth that hadn't fully grown in yet.

She never remembered laughing like that.

She is Mu Siwan.

Mu Siwan wouldn't laugh like that.

But the smiling child in front of me is also her.

It's Zhou Yu'an.

The images were intermittent, with snowflakes flashing on and off. She saw herself sitting at a dining table, with a bowl of sweet white fungus soup in front of her, the lotus seeds stewed until soft. Someone handed her a tissue to wipe her mouth; there was a brown mole on their thumb.

I saw myself lying on the sofa, clutching colored crayons and scribbling on a notebook, drawing a crooked little person. I held the paper up and ran over to show it to someone, shouting, "Daddy—Daddy, look—".

Seeing herself wrapped in a large bath towel after taking a shower, being rubbed from head to toe, the moment the towel was removed, there was a young woman's face in front of her, bending over and smiling at her, saying, "My An'an smells so good."

She saw herself riding on a boy's shoulders, her hands gripping his ears, walking across the long pier. The sea breeze blew, salty and sticky, blowing her hair onto her face and filling her mouth. She giggled, bent down, and buried her face in the man's hair.

"Brother, run faster, faster!"

"Then An'an, you'd better hold on tight and don't let go, your brother's about to run—"

The sound was intermittent, and she couldn't hear it clearly.

She didn't know if she was crying or trembling. Her body, which had been unconscious for a long time, suddenly felt so light. Fragments locked in the deepest part of her memory surfaced, one after another, unable to piece together a complete picture, burning her eyes with tears.

It turns out someone once called her that, "Yu'an, Yu'an, Zhou Yu'an—"

Mu Siwan suddenly opened her eyes.

The hospital room had a white ceiling, white lights, and the smell of disinfectant. My eyes were dry, my nose was sore, and I had something in my mouth with a faint taste of blood between my teeth.