NB Chapter38

Standing in front of the desk, staring at that photograph, I remained dazed for a long time. Even as Zhang Mingsheng’s arms slowly tightened around me, I still didn’t fully come back to myself.

“You knew all along that the boy in the photo was me?” I asked.

“Not all along. It took some effort,” Zhang Mingsheng said. “It was Ah Hai who noticed that the background was the same orphanage he had investigated before.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? We could have… realized the connection sooner.” I said, my voice trembling slightly.

“What does it matter? You’re already here anyway.” Zhang Mingsheng tilted his head with his lips grazing my cheek. He didn’t kiss me; he simply held me tighter. “This is a hug,” he whispered, sounding like a child who hadn’t yet learned to read. “It’s remarkable, Ah Yu. There are so many people in this world, yet you’re the only one I’ve learned this from—a hug.”

“No wonder you won’t kill me.”

I had shared a bond akin to family with his mother for a few years. In a way, I was a distant relative he never knew he had. I could no longer decipher the emotions swirling within me; I had never felt so utterly lost.

“I told you, I don’t kill you because you’re not like the others,” Zhang Mingsheng murmured while burying his face deeper into the crook of my neck as if inhaling my scent. “You’re far more interesting than most.”

It was as if he had found a single stray component and realized it could build something he’d never seen before. Ignoring the component’s faint protests, he had stuffed it into his pocket. Now that the building named “Home” was finished, he stood beside it, switched on the final small lamp, and suddenly decided the house was good. Therefore, every piece had to stay forever; including that very first one.

I was that component. But I hadn’t simply wandered into Zhang Mingsheng’s life by accident: I had been the recipient of his mother’s grace.

Kindness of that magnitude can never be fully repaid because what is given and what is received can never truly be equal.

And yet, the woman who offered me shelter in my childhood had given birth to a child like this.

“How did she die?” My hands were shaking.

“She… spent a sum of money, and the family found out.” Zhang Mingsheng spoke slowly, giving an answer that, on the surface, seemed to have nothing to do with the question at all.

A sum of money.

I stood frozen.

She died on the very day I rescued Zhang Mingsheng from that car; the police had just discovered her body. It was so long ago that I couldn’t remember the final result of the investigation; in those years, most cases in Hong Kong ended in a blur of bureaucracy anyway.

Her life had ended long ago.

I had once dreamed she could be my mother; I had wanted a home. She had been so good to me, appearing like a reward for all the bitterness of my childhood.

Then she vanished, ripping open my old scars and making me feel like a stray dog kicked out of the only house it knew.

I used to think that maybe she had married or started a new life and had simply forgotten me. Even after I grew up and built my own life, when I parted ways with Li Yi, or when I left my mentor’s house and looked back at the warm light in the kitchen window, my heart would still ache with a lonely, piercing bitterness.

But I never imagined she was dead.

Fate had taken the thing I wanted most, twisted it beyond recognition, and then presented it to me as if it were a gift.

Like the genie in an old joke, where the wish is “I want endless money,” and the result is a single coin stuck to the person’s hand; no matter what they do, it can never be spent.

Zhang Mingsheng continued to hold me, forcing me to remain aware of his physical presence. My head throbbed as I let out a long, heavy sigh and nudged him twice with my elbows, hitting his abdomen to signal him to let go.

“I’m tired,” I said. “I’m going back to sleep.”

To my surprise, it took only that small amount of effort for Zhang Mingsheng to release his grip. He didn’t follow me, staying behind in the study instead. I knew he was watching me leave. What was he thinking?

What was the purpose of all this?

He had known all along.

He had known all along.

It turns out there was a reason. Zhang Mingsheng hadn’t snatched me away for no reason at all.

The person I hated most was the child of the person I loved most. And the death of the person I loved…

I thought I had at least understood a part of Zhang Mingsheng. I didn’t realize he was still a bottomless abyss.

I collapsed into bed, my whole-body cold with a thousand voices screaming in my head. When I woke again, I fell into an uncontrollable, blurred stupor. Days slipped past as if a single day were only a second long. I drifted through Christmas and the New Year in a daze, no longer going downstairs, refusing visitors, and barely even seeing the children. It was as if I had fallen into a deep hibernation this winter. Zhang Mingsheng called the doctor again, who prescribed me new medication. He became much quieter, usually just watching me take my medicine before closing the door and leaving me be.

One day, I stood by the window. The wind blowing in was no longer biting. I noticed new flowers and trees had been planted in the garden; the old butler was buried in his work, pruning them with a beige towel wrapped around his neck. I didn’t have his meticulous wisdom and couldn’t name the various plants; I simply watched their thin branches sprout tender green leaves, day after day.

Time suddenly slowed down, and I began to go downstairs for meals again.

Spring has arrived.

Andrea’s concert was scheduled for March, the very heart of spring.

“Do you still have the concert tickets?”

I asked abruptly at the dinner table. As I turned my head, I noticed that Keke’s once chubby little face had thinned out a bit. Zhang Xiaoyuan hadn’t changed; he remained silent with his head bowed as he ate, chewing his rice grain by grain.

“Yes. It’s next Saturday. If you want to go, we’ll go together.” Zhang Mingsheng agreed instantly. Having finished his lunch, he wiped the corners of his mouth and stood up.

“Let’s go and see it. I really like that one song of hers… what was the name again?” I frowned and hummed a few notes, trying to jog my memory.

“Flying Afar.” Zhang Xiaoyuan provided the answer before I could.

Right. The song was called [Flying Afar].

Andrea was twenty-one when she first performed it. Back then, her hair was brown and her skin pale; she stood on stage as a rookie singer, ending the song with a voice that still carried a faint trace of youthful innocence.

I remembered Auntie Yang liked one particular line of the lyrics; she was always humming it. Through her influence, I had committed it to memory as well.

Andrea had written the lyrics herself; they were full of life and vigor.

Whenever she reached that line, she would always close her eyes.

In the blurry footage of the old videotapes, she sang:

“Let those who can swim flow into the tide; let those who can fly soar into the heavens.”

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