Chapter 10

During my most rebellious and extreme teenage years, I had often thought in anguish.

What if.

What if I just died.

Would they regret it?

Would my mother shed a single tear for me?

Now, I finally knew.

After the police officer finished speaking.

She responded with a faint, “Oh.”

And hung up.

As if nothing had happened, she opened the door, went inside, emptied the seafood, and started to clean the shrimp and crabs.

Perhaps by accident, a shrimp whisker pricked her finger.

She held up her injured finger and went to the living room to get the first-aid kit.

It was at this moment that Xu Ze walked in.

He was flustered and helpless, looking at her with trembling lips. “Mom, Xu Tao… she…”

“Oh, I just got a scam call saying Xu Tao is dead.”

My mother said, while looking down for a band-aid.

“What a joke. Xu Tao is living a better life than anyone. Don’t these scammers do their research before calling?”

“Mom, that wasn’t a scam call… Xu Tao… she’s really dead.”

Xu Ze said in agony, “The police called me and Dad. Dad is driving home right now.”

My mother’s movements froze.

She looked up at Xu Ze.

The daylight streamed in, creeping over the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, landing on the pair of eyes that had always regarded me with indifference.

This emotionless expression remained on her face until they boarded the high-speed train to the police station a thousand miles away.

My mother was not a quiet person, but she was unusually silent throughout the journey.

Xu Jiao held her hand and comforted her softly, “Mom, the dead can’t be brought back. Taotao wouldn’t want to see you like this.”

For the first time, my mother ignored the words of her beloved eldest daughter.

She impassively pulled her hand away.

Xu Jiao stiffened, a look of hurt and indignation in her eyes.

They walked into the police station.

Two police officers received them.

The older one first comforted my mother a little before telling her that my body had been found.

“We have done our best to stitch it back together, but some fragmented parts were taken by the suspect. According to his own confession, they might have been…”

His words trailed off, a hint of pity in his eyes.

My mother looked up at him and spoke her first words of the journey. “Might have been what?”

“Might have been cooked and eaten.”

My mother nodded.

Her expression was probably far calmer than the police had expected.

So much so that on the way there, the younger officer looked back at her twice.

The parts of my body had been sewn together and cleaned.

But because I had been tortured before death, my face and features were blurred, and my limbs were swollen.

The smell of the corpse was certainly not pleasant.

The moment she saw me, Xu Jiao couldn’t help but cover her mouth, turn around, and run out, retching against the wall.

“The suspect, Qi Bei, has been active in Zhoucheng for the past two years, committing three vicious murders and dismemberments.”

“He specifically targeted young, single women living in the city. Before striking, he would observe them for a period to ensure he wouldn’t be discovered.”

“But this time, the victim Xu Tao’s body was not buried deep. It rained in Zhoucheng a few days ago, and the body was washed out.”

“Someone who went into the woods to pick wood ear mushrooms found her.”

I remembered.

Why his face seemed familiar.

About a month ago, I had seen him near my company.

That afternoon, a light drizzle was falling in Zhoucheng.

I walked out of the company building, and my mother called, telling me Xu Jiao’s wedding was in a month.

She ordered me to come home.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’ve been away for half a year, and not a single person from your family has contacted me. What right do you have to make me go back now?”

My mother was furious. “Xu Tao, you’re so ungrateful! This is your home too!”

Is this my home?

Where every time I go back, I can only set up a small cot next to Xu Jiao’s piano.

Where if I deliberately take the last chicken wing on the plate, my father slams his chopsticks down and calls me ill-mannered.

Where when I get my period and stain the sofa cover, my mother glances at it with disgust and tells me to wash it myself when I’m done.

That kind of home?

“Mother, I don’t have a home.”

I said with a smile and hung up.

A few steps away, in the rain.

A man in a black coat stood there, his face somewhat blurry.

The moment our eyes met, he unnaturally looked away.

It was just that my chest was filled with a sour, tight emotion at the time, and I had no energy to pay attention to a stranger’s odd behavior.

So.

He had been targeting me for a while.

And after hearing my argument with my mother, he decided I was a viable target.

The pain of that night seemed to return with a vengeance.

This time, it descended upon my ethereal soul.

I curled into a ball in the air, my whole being feeling as if it were riddled with thousands of holes, wind whistling through them.

It hurt.

It hurt more than that night.

But I couldn’t help but look up, staring directly at my mother’s expression.

Even at this moment, I was still searching.

For whether she would regret it.

Whether she would be sad.

Whether she would feel even one percent of my pain.

Led by the police, my mother went to see the murderer.

His motive was said to be simple and direct: his ex-girlfriend had abandoned him for a rich man.

She had also set him up, causing him to lose all his savings.

From then on, he became extremely and violently insane.

The victims he chose all bore some resemblance to his ex-girlfriend.

Through the glass.

The interrogation room light was cold.

He looked up at my mother and suddenly grinned.

It seemed he knew he wasn’t going to live.

He wanted others to suffer with him.

In front of my mother, he began to recount the details of my death.

“I accidentally let her get her phone and make a call, but luckily, the person on the other end hung up.”

“Was it to you?”

“Your daughter is really beautiful when she cries. She looks even more like that bitch… So, I peeled off her face.”

“She was in so much pain she couldn’t even cry, but she kept calling for her mother.”

The police officer shouted, “Enough! Do not agitate the victim’s family!”

My mother stood in front of the glass.

Her back was still straight, her eyes fixed on the murderer.

She didn’t speak, nor did she shed a tear.

I floated in front of her, face to face.

She couldn’t see me.

She couldn’t hear me.

I said, “Mother, I hate you.”

That night.

The night I was raped and then dismembered alive.

I experienced the most extreme pain a human can endure.

Blood gushed out, dyeing my vision completely red.

A desperate, animalistic roar escaped my throat.

The sound of the wind, the chirping of insects.

Dry leaves rustling down.

Fungi growing on damp wood.

Countless noises formed a symphony of drumbeats in my ears.

Deafening.

I kept calling.

Mother.

Mother.

“Mother, it hurts so much.”

“Save me, Mother, save me…”

In their most desperate and helpless moments, humans subconsciously call out this name.

Hoping for a miracle.

But there was none.

You were in your warm bed at home, having a sweet dream.

Dreaming that your beloved eldest daughter, Xu Jiao, was getting married and living a happy life.

That Xu Ze was making steady progress with the girl he was pursuing, and that he was studying at a good university.

A popular major, a good job waiting for him after graduation.

Your dreams never included me.