Bian Cheng attended Jiang Yunrou’s funeral. To be precise, he was the only person at the funeral besides the staff.
Jiang Yunruo had arranged her funeral affairs in advance. The medical expenses had been fully paid, and after the death certificate was issued, staff from the funeral home came to cancel her household registration, retrieve the body, and perform the cremation, all as part of a streamlined service. Even if Bian Cheng had not come, the funeral arrangements would have proceeded in an orderly manner.
“Don’t let Ah Yu come to see me off,” Jiang Yunrou instructed him.
Thus, on that gloomy afternoon, Jiang Yu stayed home alone, organizing his specimen book, while Bian Cheng watched the body being cremated, placed into an urn, and stored in a modest cemetery for temporary keeping.
After the funeral, he brought Jiang Yu back to Beijing and moved into the apartment he had previously rented.
Hearing about his sudden promotion to guardian, Song Yuchi couldn’t contain his curiosity and came to see the excitement. As soon as he entered, he saw at least twenty school brochures spread out on the table. Song Yuchi’s eyes widened to twice their usual size as he mouthed: Where’s the kid?
“In the bedroom, watching cartoons,” Bian Cheng said.
So he came over and sat down, flipping through the brochures on the table. As he read, he frowned. “I thought you had it all planned out and were going to send him to a special school.”
“I’m still considering,” Bian Cheng said, putting the brochures back in order. “I’ve sorted them out, so don’t mess them up.”
“What’s there to hesitate about?” Song Yuchi said. “Isn’t he…” Thinking it sounded unpleasant, he pointed to his head instead.
Bian Cheng flipped through the brochures. “I’ve visited a few special schools, but they just group all the children together for lessons without any real system. If we truly want to develop his intelligence, the best option would be to hire a private tutor. But he likes playing with kids his own age, and keeping him cooped up at home isn’t good either, so I am thinking of other options.”
“This is one of your options?” Song Yuchi pulled out the brochure for Xingcheng Secondary School. “Isn’t this the kind of place full of kids from government officials’ families? When those kids go wild, no one dares to control them. I don’t think it’s suitable.”
“But I’ve taken Jiang Yu to visit many schools, and this is the one he likes the most.”
“Why?” Song Yuchi turned the brochure over repeatedly. “What’s so great about this school?”
“Maybe it’s the clubs,” Bian Cheng said. “I took him on a tour of the club activity rooms, and he probably found things like archery, painting, and pottery interesting.”
“Oh, so you want to raise an artist?”
Bian Cheng shook his head. “Judging by his taste in music, that’s unlikely.”
Though Bian Cheng often felt exasperated and usually kept a respectful distance from the child, Song Yuchi trusted his sense of responsibility. Since he had decided to take on the role of guardian, he would do his best—he just didn’t know if this person’s emotional intelligence and communication skills were up to the task. After glancing at the school brochure again, Song Yuchi took out his phone to look it up and asked, “Aren’t you planning to move?”
“Why?” This apartment was carefully chosen by him. The building was new, the facilities were good, the environment was beautiful, and the surrounding amenities were convenient.
“It’s too far from the school,” Song Yuchi pointed to the address on the brochure. “It’d be such a hassle for you to drive back and forth every day.”
Bian Cheng frowned. A good living environment was important to him; he would rather travel farther than compromise.
“Can’t you live in a teacher’s apartment?” Song Yuchi said. “It’s closer to where Jiang Yu goes to school, closer to T University, and just a few steps away from the cafeteria. It’d be convenient for meals too.”
Bian Cheng’s expression showed clear disdain. He disliked old, poorly maintained buildings. The wiring in those places was problematic, leading to frequent power outages. The hallways were dusty and dingy, and the cramped space was so limited it couldn’t even accommodate a bathroom with separate dry and wet areas.
“You’re a parent now,” Song Yuchi emphasized. “You can’t just do things based on your preferences; you have to consider things from the child’s perspective.”
“You talk like you’ve raised a kid before.”
Leaning back in his chair, Song Yuchi said, “I’ll help you when you move.”
Two days later, Bian Cheng moved into Heqing Garden Apartment 301.
Every move was a physically and mentally exhausting battle. Bian Cheng couldn’t tolerate seeing crooked furniture or stacked boxes in his sight; everything had to be arranged in place on the same day. Jiang Yu tried to help, but he didn’t understand Bian Cheng’s preferences. The positions of the whiteboard and monitor were all wrong, so Bian Cheng sent him back to his room.
By the time the apartment was organized to an acceptable level, it was already past midnight. The floors, glass, and countertops still hadn’t met Bian Cheng’s cleanliness standards, but he had classes the next day and several meetings, so he could only put it aside for now. Lying down in bed with a restless mind, the layer of dust on the sink felt like a weight of a thousand catties pressing down on him.
In the morning, he went to the cafeteria to buy two steamed buns, brought them back, and put them in a thermal container for Jiang Yu to eat after he woke up. Fortunately, it was summer, so they wouldn’t cool down too quickly; otherwise, he would have had to worry about whether Jiang Yu knew how to use the newly purchased smart microwave. At noon, he brought lunch home from school, passed it through the door gap into the child’s hands, and then went back to continue arguing with the department head.
After finishing the meeting and earning two glares from the department head, he hurried home to prepare for a thorough cleaning. The cleaning tools were all ready, and although the house was small, there were plenty of nooks and crannies for dirt to accumulate, so it was a big project. Having just gone through moving and academic debates, Bian Cheng felt physically and mentally drained.
Then, when he opened the door, he froze at the entrance.
The house was as clean as new. The floors gleamed as if they had been waxed, the kitchen countertops sparkled, and the glass was so clear that it seemed to blend into the background. When he opened the bathroom door, the toilet’s ceramic surface was as white and pristine as when it had just left the factory, the sink was so bright that you could see your reflection in it, and all the trash bags had been replaced.
This wasn’t ordinary cleanliness; this was cleanliness up to Bian Cheng’s standard.
Then Jiang Yu poked his head out from the bedroom and called out loudly, “Good evening!”
Bian Cheng looked around in disbelief and asked, “You did this?”
Jiang Yu nodded and said proudly, “I’m really good at cleaning! I clean the floors, desks, and windows in our class!”
Bian Cheng recalled the day he went to Jiang Yunrou’s house and suddenly understood. Jiang Yunruo was seriously ill and did not have the energy to keep the house that clean. There must have been someone else doing the cleaning.
Bian Cheng said, “I see,” then transferred the food he had brought back onto plates and placed them in the microwave to heat up. He took the opportunity to teach Jiang Yu what the buttons were for, but it turned out to be unusually difficult. Jiang Yu was more suited to a simple microwave where you “just put it in and press one button.” In the end, he had to adjust the settings, setting the time and power to values suitable for most situations, simplifying the process to just pressing the ‘start’ button.
Jiang Yu said he got it.
Bian Cheng and him had a silent meal. Bian Cheng didn’t speak, and Jiang Yu couldn’t find anything to say. Bian Cheng thought that Jiang Yunrou probably wouldn’t have been like this. As soon as this thought emerged, he suddenly realized something very important—something he, as a guardian, was obligated to explain.
Where had mom gone?
Jiang Yunruo suddenly disappeared from his life, and Jiang Yu was slow to react; it might take him a day or two, but as time passed, he would inevitably ask. And he would have to provide a reasonable answer.
Obviously he couldn’t simply say, “Mom’s dead.” The bare truth wouldn’t suffice here. What was needed was a more tactful, emotionally nuanced explanation.
This was his Achilles’ heel.
Bian Cheng searched online for numerous cases, finding a dazzling array of methods. For example: ‘Mom has gone to a place called heaven, and it’s wonderful there’, ‘Mom has turned into a star in the sky, always winking at you’, or ‘Mom has gone on a trip to a faraway country and will write to you often’.
Either way, there was no explanation as to why.
Why would someone who loved you so much leave you to go to a distant place?
Bian Cheng was wavering and thinking over and over again, yet still couldn’t come up with a satisfactory answer. This topic seemed even harder than solving the Tate conjecture.
However, days passed, weeks passed, and Jiang Yu still hadn’t asked this question. The numerous preparations Bian Cheng had listed turned out to be completely useless.
Until one autumn day, the two of them sat at the table, enjoying Mexican food from a newly opened restaurant nearby. Bian Cheng was overwhelmed by the doubts in his heart and asked that question: “Aren’t you curious about where your mother went?”
Jiang Yu, carefully preventing the chili flakes from falling out of his taco, said, “She went to death.”
He had said the word himself, and Bian Cheng didn’t know how to react for a moment. After a while, Bian Cheng asked, “Do you know what death means?”
Jiang Yu thought for a long time and said, “It’s a big, dark place.”
That was quite close to the true concept of death.
“So, Mom has already told you about it.”
“En,” Jiang Yu said. “We agreed on it.”
It had always been like this.
Since he was young, he had been afraid of the dark. It felt as though unknown monsters were lurking in the darkness, ready to pounce and swallow him up at any time.
One night, there was a power outage in the neighborhood. He got up in the middle of the night wanting to go to the bathroom, but the hallway was pitch black, and he didn’t dare go. Mom told him, “Wait here for a moment. I’ll go check first.”
His mother walked around inside and then came back out, telling him, “There’s nothing there. It’s not scary at all.”
With that, he felt reassured and went.
After they moved, he and Mom lived in a small house by the river. Not far away was a wooded area, with dense shrubs making it impossible to see what lay inside from the outside. He wanted to go in and take a look but felt a bit scared.
His mother told him to wait outside for a while. She went in and then came back out, telling him it wasn’t scary at all inside. After that, he wasn’t afraid anymore.
In the hospital, he asked his mother why she seemed so listless lately and why she had been lying in bed all the time. His mother said she was going to a place called death.
“Is that place scary?”
“En, it’s very big, very dark, and you can’t see the end at a glance,” Mom said. “Also, it’s a place everyone has to go. Ah Yu will have to go there too someday.”
He felt a bit scared.
“So,” his mother said, “you wait here for a while, and I’ll go take a look for you first.”
He responded with an “oh” and relaxed a little.
“But that place is too big, and it might take a very long time to go around,” his mother said, “so don’t be anxious, wait patiently for me to come back, okay?”
He nodded.
“Mom has made a promise with your gege. During this time, you’ll hold your gege’s hand and wait for me here, okay?”
“I will wait patiently,” Jiang Yu said.
He would wait patiently.
He would hold his brother’s hand and walk through the long journey of life.
Years later, when his mother came back, she would take him from his brother’s hand. He would feel frustrated that she had been gone for so long and would also be curious about what death is really like.
Then his mother would answer, “It’s nothing, not scary at all.”
Then he wouldn’t be afraid anymore.
