Chapter 6

In the afternoon, Xu Jiao went with Song Fei to their new home.

As for me, I followed behind my parents and Xu Ze.

Xu Ze was driving, with my parents in the back seat.

The empty passenger seat had always been reserved for Xu Jiao.

I sat in it, listening to them discuss my sins, one word after another.

“She hates me that much, hates this family so much, that she won’t even come back for her own sister’s wedding.”

My mother leaned wearily on my father’s shoulder. “I feel like I’ve failed as a parent.”

My father patted her sympathetically. “An ungrateful wretch you can’t tame. She’s not worth your worry.”

I turned my head and carefully observed their expressions.

Trying to find even a sliver of concern.

But there was none.

My sudden disappearance only made them feel angry and disgusted.

Not a single one of them, for even a second, suspected.

That something might have happened to me.

Even as a soul, I could still shed tears.

I wept, and as I wept, I smiled and asked, “Mother, have you ever, ever loved me?”

“If you hate me so much, why did you give birth to me?”

I had asked the same question once, a long time ago.

I was in my last year of middle school then, a very stressful year of studying.

My father was away on business, Xu Ze was still young, and Xu Jiao had just started college.

My mother got kidney stones, and it was I who ran between school and the hospital every day to take care of her, losing a lot of weight in the process.

My mother seemed to be moved. That month, she gave me more allowance than Xu Ze.

When she ran into neighbors, she would praise me several times, saying I was sensible and filial.

When I was bullied by classmates, she even went to the school to stand up for me.

It seemed like everything was getting better.

Until that afternoon, when we were crossing the street together, and she, for some reason, linked her arm in mine.

Such mother-daughter intimacy was too foreign to me.

Almost instinctively, I shook her hand off, causing her to stagger back a couple of steps.

It was dusk.

The green light turned red.

A car sped past us.

The look in my mother’s eyes slowly changed back.

To a coldness that was all too familiar.

She tensed her face and said flatly, “Just as I thought. An ungrateful wretch you can’t tame.”

That night, I was nearly consumed by regret and bewildered confusion. I used a compass to poke several holes in my arm.

Even the pain couldn’t alleviate the desperate and frantic feelings rampaging inside me.

Finally, I walked into my mother’s room and asked her, “Mother, if you don’t love me, why did you give birth to me?”

My mother lay with her eyes closed, silent.

But I knew she wasn’t asleep.

She didn’t deign to answer when I was alive.

Now that I’m dead, she can’t hear me, and she certainly won’t respond.