Chapter 8

I don’t remember if I died from the pain or from blood loss.

I only remember the wind in the open country that night.

Howling as it blew across my exposed, bloody face.

Perhaps people remember beautiful things just before they die.

In a daze, I thought back to before I was five.

To give birth to Xu Ze, my mother sent me to the countryside.

Only my elderly grandmother lived there.

She was the best person to me in the whole world.

She gave me all the warmth in my life.

She would pinch off the tenderest toon sprouts from the tree, blanch them, and fry them with eggs for me.

When my mother called, saying Xu Jiao wanted to eat toon sprouts but they couldn’t be found at the market.

My grandmother would say, “Oh, there’s been too little rain this year, the toon sprouts didn’t grow.”

After hanging up, the mischievous old lady would wink at me and smile.

I always remember the taste that lingered on my tongue that night.

But when I was five, my grandmother passed away from illness.

Xu Ze was only one and a half, so my mother was forced to take me back home.

Because of this, she found me very disagreeable.

She secretly told my father, “Is there really something wrong with this child? How could she have jinxed her own grandmother to death?”

I looked at her numbly.

A five-year-old child doesn’t really understand life and death.

I only knew that there was no one left in the world who would, among several people, firmly choose me.

From then on, I was the child who was never favored.

The moment my breathing stopped, my soul was pulled by the wind, floating out of my body.

I saw that man take an axe from the trunk of his car and sever the bones connecting my limbs.

I saw, under the starry sky, a train speeding a thousand miles, crossing quiet fields.

I saw, in one of the tall buildings, a little girl suddenly wake from a nightmare. With just a single cry, she was enveloped in the arms of her parents who rushed into the room, patting her back comfortingly.

And at the very, very end.

I saw Xu Jiao yawn and wake up from her bed. Urged by my mother, she washed up and changed into her wedding gown.

I had come back.

After death, I still returned to this home.

And attended Xu Jiao’s wedding.