Entertainment: A song that brought his deceased wife back to life.

Its name is Sunshine, but it's actually incredibly dark.

The welfare home is located at the foot of the mountain and was converted from an abandoned primary school.

The plaster has peeled off, revealing the red bricks underneath, like a rotten wound.

The kids here are not to be trifled with.

Those who were easy to mess with would have been bullied to death or adopted long ago.

The rest were all oddballs or eccentric individuals.

Xu Qing is that freak.

He didn't speak, didn't grab food, and didn't play with anyone.

Every day, I would just huddle in a corner, hugging my knees and staring blankly.

Older children think he's easy to bully and boring, and they love to tease him for fun.

Especially when the power goes out at night.

The nights in the mountains are especially dark, and the wind howls through the cracks in the windows.

Several older children surrounded Xu Qing, lit a candle, and deliberately lowered their voices to tell ghost stories.

"I heard this toilet used to be a mass grave."

"If you go to the toilet in the middle of the night, a red embroidered shoe will stick out and grab your ankle."

"And under the bed lives an old woman who eats children's eyeballs..."

Xu Qing is afraid of the dark.

I'm even more afraid of the unknown.

He tried to cover his ears, but his hands were held down.

He tried to shout, but it felt like his throat was stuffed with cotton, and he couldn't make a sound.

The fear was like countless ants crawling up his ankles and burrowing into the cracks of his bones.

He was trembling all over, and his teeth were chattering.

Just when he thought he was going to be scared to death.

"Bang!"

The boy who was telling ghost stories was kicked to the ground.

The candle rolled on the ground and went out.

In the darkness, a hand reached out and accurately covered Xu Qing's ears.

The hand was small and rough, with calluses on the fingertips.

But it's warm.

"Don't listen to them, they're lying."

It was a girl's voice.

It's crisp, clean, and has a pleasant, cheap soapy smell.

Someone relit the candles.

Xu Qing saw the girl.

She was wearing a faded old cotton-padded jacket with frayed cuffs that revealed the black cotton wadding inside.

His hair was cut very short, making him look like a tomboy, and there was a piece of coal ash smeared on his face.

But his eyes are very bright.

It was so bright it seemed to illuminate all the darkness in the room.

Jiang Yue.

That was the first time Xu Qing remembered this name.

She was four years older than Xu Qing and was the leader of the children in the orphanage. She was the fiercest fighter and the fastest runner.

Jiang Yue shielded Xu Qing behind her like a mother hen protecting her chicks, waving her fists at the group of troublemaking boys.

"If anyone scares him again, I'll pull their pants down and hang them on a tree!"

"Try it if you don't believe me!"

The group of boys, having suffered at her hands before, dispersed, grumbling and cursing.

From that day on, Xu Qing became Jiang Yue's little shadow.

Wherever Jiang Yue goes, he goes.

Jiang Yue washed his clothes, her hands, covered in chilblains, turning bright red from rubbing them in the ice water.

Jiang Yue snatched the steamed bun from him, giving him the biggest and whitest one, while she ate the dark and hard one herself.

Jiang Yue also taught him sign language.

Back then, no one taught them proper sign language; Jiang Yue just figured it out on her own.

Touching your stomach means you're hungry, pointing to your finger means it hurts, and making a heart shape with both hands means you're happy.

Time moves slowly in the orphanage.

So slowly that Xu Qing thought life would continue like this forever.

Their favorite game is hide-and-seek.

Xu Qing always hid in the most secluded corner.

For example, an abandoned boiler room, inside that dark furnace.

Or perhaps it's in the dusty attic, under a pile of old, worn-out desks.

He thought he had hidden himself perfectly.

But Jiang Yue always manages to find him.

Every time she found him, Jiang Yue would take out a piece of fruit candy that was very precious at that time from her pocket.

That was a reward given by the dean to children who behaved well, and Jiang Yue never dared to eat it.

She unwrapped the candy and stuffed the shiny candy into Xu Qing's mouth.

"Little mute, eating candy will make the bitterness go away."

It's orange flavored.

Very sweet.

It was so sweet that Xu Qing wanted to cry.

That was the only sweetness in his childhood, and the only bright spot in his gloomy world.

but.

It seems that fate particularly enjoys playing jokes on Xu Qing.

Or perhaps they feel that someone like him doesn't deserve happiness.

When Xu Qing was fourteen, Jiang Yue fell ill.

At first, it was just a fever, and red, swollen rashes appeared on the scraped area on my calf (the hygiene in the welfare home was poor, and the scraped area was not disinfected).

The doctor at the welfare home examined her and misdiagnosed it as an allergy, prescribing some ointment.

Useless.

The red, swollen rashes slowly spread from my arms to my neck, and then to my face, gradually becoming infected and ulcerated, emitting a foul stench—it was originally a skin infection caused by a bump, which got worse the longer it was left untreated.

The smell was like a rat that died in a ditch in the summer.

The orphanage didn't have the money to send her to a big hospital for treatment, and they were also afraid of infecting other children.

The dean had a storage room in the backyard cleared out and locked Jiang Yue inside.

They only have someone deliver some food to their door each day.

During this time, people from the local health center came to visit and diagnosed it as a severe skin infection. They prescribed cheap antibiotics and iodine for disinfection and dressing changes, but it was ultimately not enough. They said there was no way to cure it completely and suggested a referral, but no one could afford the cost.

No one dared to approach after that.

Nobody wanted to get close.

Except for Xu Qing.

He wanted to see her.

He ran to the backyard like a madman.

The wooden door was locked, secured with a large, rusty iron padlock.

Xu Qing pounded on the door desperately.

His hands slapped until they were red, swollen, and eventually bled.

But all he could make were howls like a wild animal; he couldn't even utter a complete "open the door."

"Don't come in!"

Jiang Yue's voice came from inside the house.

No longer crisp.

Instead, his voice was hoarse, weak, and filled with extreme panic.

"Little mute, please, don't come in..."

"Don't look at me... I look so ugly right now..."

"You'll have nightmares..."

Xu Qing wouldn't listen.

He didn't want to hear any of this.

He just wanted to see her, even if she had become a monster, he still wanted to see her.

He picked up a stone from the ground and started banging on the door lock.

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

Sparks flew everywhere.

My hand was shattered, and blood flowed onto the slippery stone.

He couldn't feel any pain.

He had only one thought: to smash that damn door open.

Just as the door lock was about to be broken open.

A heart-wrenching scream came from inside the house.

"Get out of here!!"

"Xu Qing! I told you to get lost!!"

"If you dare come in, I'll kill myself!!"

"I'm going to smash my head against the wall and die right now!!"

That was the first time Jiang Yue had ever lost her temper with him.

This is also the last time.

It was also the first time she called him by his name.

Xu Qing froze at the doorway.

The stone in my hand fell to the ground with a "clatter," hitting my paronychia and causing excruciating pain.

He was startled by the resolute tone in Jiang Yue's voice.

He knew that Jiang Yue was a woman of her word.

She was a strong-willed girl; even in death, she wanted to retain her last shred of dignity.

She didn't want him to see her rotting.

I don't want his sister, who was like the sun in his childhood, to turn into a stinking monster.

Xu Qing didn't dare go in.

He sat at the door all night.

That night, it snowed heavily.

He huddled on the threshold, listening to the painful groans coming from inside the house.

There are also the sounds of tearing bed sheets and scratching skin because of festering and itchy skin.

Every sound felt like a slow, agonizing torture.

I don't know which morning it was.

Snow stopped.

The caregivers from the welfare home went inside wearing masks and protective suits.

Then came a flurry of footsteps and screams.

Jiang Yue is gone.

He died from severe skin infection and sepsis.

When the aunt came out, she was pale and ran to the corner to vomit for a long time.

She said that when the child died, there wasn't a single good piece of flesh on his body.

His face was so badly rotten that you couldn't even recognize him.

The blanket was stuck to the skin and flesh, and couldn't be peeled off.

Xu Qing did not get to see her one last time.

Because his aunt handed him a note.

It was found under Jiang Yue's pillow.

The note was crumpled and stained with blood and pus.

A few words were written crookedly on it:

Don't let the little mute boy see me.

that moment.

Fourteen-year-old Xu Qing's world has completely collapsed.

That feeling of loneliness, of being abandoned by the whole world, that feeling of helplessness, of watching the most important person rot in the darkness.

It was like a rusty knife, slowly hollowing out his heart.

He didn't cry.

From then on, he started talking.

But his heart, along with that note, rotted inside him.

That's why.

Three years ago, when Sister Hong presented him with that forged death report and told him that Luo Qianyu was dead.

When Sister Hong described Luo Qianyu as dying from a "severe hereditary skin disease" that caused her entire body to ulcerate and her face to become unrecognizable.

He believed it.

He believed it without a doubt.

They didn't even have the slightest thought of verifying it.

He had experienced this nightmare once before.

Fate was like a poor screenwriter, playing the same script twice over in his life.

Even the lines are almost identical.

She doesn't want you to see her.

She wants you to remember her at her most beautiful.

"She died in great pain; her whole body was rotting."