My mentor arranged a new place for us. It was a small house he had bought years ago in a secluded suburban spot, spending all his savings just to find a place where he could grow old and die in solitude. He left the original house to his daughter, Jin Leshan; that place was more spacious, the land was more expensive, and the balcony was filled with plants and flowers—all naturally the work of his wife.
After his old wife passed away, staying in the place where she had lived for decades inevitably caused him grief by reminding him of her, so he decided to move out.
Mentioning Ah Shan made my mentor look somewhat lonely.
My junior and Shimu had a very good relationship; he had thought Ah Shan would want to live there. To his surprise, as soon as the funeral ended, Ah Shan slung on a hiking pack and walked out the door, clutching a plane ticket to who-knows-where, resolutely leaving Hong Kong Island.
I really wanted to ask why, but he did not speak further.
My mentor turned on the bathroom light and went over the layout with me. Looking at his grey-white hair, I couldn’t find any reason to ask more about Ah Shan. I had nothing left to trade for answers; my mentor didn’t ask much about my past either, as though he had no curiosity at all.
He gave many instructions like a father nearing the end of his life with deep nasolabial folds and clouded eyes, sometimes pausing abruptly mid-sentence as if he’d forgotten what he said a second ago.
He was much older than when we last met.
Children grow up slowly, but middle-aged people age very quickly.
After briefly explaining how to turn on the water, electricity, and gas, my mentor prepared to leave after only a short stay, saying he had other matters to attend to and reminding us to make sure we ate. He waved to us from outside the door, then telling us to close it and go back inside. It lasted only a few seconds, vanishing in an instant, yet I still caught sight of his trembling fingers. In an instant, a wave of bitterness swept through my heart. Time pushes everyone forward without mercy; the frontline officer who once hit nine out of ten shots had now reached the age where even his hands could no longer stay steady.
The first time I met my mentor, I was still just a young child. It was my birthday, and although the old director and the staff friends helped me celebrate, I had been at the orphanage for a long time, so the celebration felt more like going through the motions. I felt lonely throughout.
Somehow, I wandered out of the orphanage to a small hill behind the building and found my mentor there smoking. He was so young then, wearing a black leather jacket with his hair slicked back to reveal a smooth forehead. He pulled a photo from his pocket and asked if I had seen that man.
I shook my head and asked, “Is he your brother?”
He replied, “He is a robber and I am a policeman. How could we be brothers?”
Afterward, he took me by the hand and walked back into the orphanage. He warned the old director that a suspect was on the run and told her not to let the children wander off. I strained my neck, looking up to listen to them talk; I heard the director mention me, followed by a sigh.
That sigh made my whole body tremble as if my life were destined to have some worrisome flaw. It was only after I grew up that I realized I did indeed have one, and because of a lack of money, I had missed the optimal window for treatment.
Fortunately, thanks to my mentor, I successfully entered the police academy. We had stayed in constant contact since our first meeting. When he learned of my ambition to become a police officer, he vouched for me, saying that as long as my abilities were up to par, there would be no obstacles. In reality, he had engaged in several rounds of negotiations with his friends by arguing that my physical condition did not entirely violate the standards and asking why they should lose a top student over it. He talked and talked until his lips were nearly worn raw. Finally, through his sheer persistence, and perhaps out of a shared appreciation for talent, that old friend of his finally relented.
It was because of this that I was able to have the life that followed.
After seeing my mentor off, I sat back down on the sofa and waited for Li Yi’s explanation.
The kid’s eyes were darting around, putting on a show of feeling guilty. But I knew him, he wasn’t the type to have regrets.
He made up an excuse and left quickly without even finishing the water I’d poured him.
Before he closed the door, I asked, “You’ve been tailing me, haven’t you?”
My tone was flat, and his response was far from solemn. He smiled and said, “If you were going out for soup dumplings, I definitely wouldn’t follow.”
I didn’t say more. At the end of the day, it was my fault.
Li Yi wanted me to cut off all ties with the past completely; he wanted to drag me straight back to the side of the person I used to be.
But I already harbored secrets I could never tell him.
I lay on the sofa staring at the painted ceiling and began to think about Zhan Weiqing’s words.
Back then, I was physically and mentally exhausted, so desperate that I was almost numb and without the slightest will to live. The doctor never spoke to me about my physical condition; he always communicated with Mr. Zhang. Furthermore, childbirth is an arduous ordeal; I was in a daze throughout my pregnancy, and no matter how I try to recall it now, I can’t remember any details. After Keke was born prematurely, her condition was once extremely critical. I only caught one glimpse of her before she was placed back in the incubator to await surgery and treatment.
The fact that Zhang Mingsheng and I had a child made me shudder.
On one hand, I was shaken by the tenacious vitality of her tiny body; on the other, I was despondent over my own broken body that could never recover and the twisted fate that meant I was bound to be entangled with Zhang Mingsheng forever.
I had never once doubted Keke’s parentage. If she wasn’t my child, then what did all those years of inner turmoil mean? What did my painful attachment to her, the constant cycle of reaching out and then pulling back, amount to in the end? If Keke weren’t my child, then Zhang Mingsheng had lied to me again. He had lied to me completely. He knew that blood ties are the strongest bonds, and he wanted to exploit the fact that I had been alone since childhood and craved a family.
The most critical question is: did I truly ever have a child?
On second thought, Zhan Weiqing’s words could be interpreted differently. For instance, he might have misunderstood and thought I had an affair, or perhaps he knew my true identity but was unaware of my physiological makeup, assuming I had simply adopted.
But the most powerful premonition, the one with the most clues, is the one that forever haunts my mind. If I hadn’t harbored doubts all these years, I wouldn’t have felt as though I’d been struck by a bolt of lightning the moment Zhan Weiqing spoke those words.
How could I not have doubted?
It’s just that Keke might be the very first person in this world to stay by my side, a relative bound to me by blood. Others might not understand, but I have never truly had a family.
Was I, too, tacitly cooperating with Zhang Mingsheng’s lie? A wave of despair washed over me.
Ah Hai said that Ah Shan had disappeared with the two children. I don’t know where they are now or if they’ve fallen into Zhang Yaonian’s clutches.
As I brooded, my consciousness gradually began to blur.
I seemed to have returned to the hospital, running through the clean, snow-white corridors. I passed a ward with an open door and saw a man in a hospital gown sitting at the head of the bed, leaning over to comfort his sick child.
Intuition told me it was Zhang Mingsheng.
Who was sick? Keke or Xiao Yuan?
I suddenly found it hard to breathe while standing at the doorway. The smell of this hospital was very strange; it wasn’t the usual scent of disinfectant, but rather like… as if…
As if something were burning.
My sleepiness vanished in an instant. I shot my eyes open and sprang up from the sofa, crouching low and covering my mouth as I scanned the thick smoke filling the room. A fire, my mentor’s house didn’t even have a smoke alarm installed. Outside the window, the sky had already turned black.
Again. It happened again, identical to the fire that broke out in my home years ago.
If this wasn’t Zhang Mingsheng’s doing, then someone else was relentlessly stalking and trying to murder me by using an incredibly rigid and repetitive method.
Someone wanted to kill me, but I didn’t feel afraid; I only feared that Zhang Mingsheng would appear in the next second. In the short span of my past life, he would always show up at these critical moments, torturing me while simultaneously rescuing me from the flames. Except now he was covered in bandages; he’d likely struggle to save me.
I couldn’t wait for him to descend like some divine soldier. I stripped off my jacket, hastily soaked it with water, and pressed it over my nose and mouth as I scrambled to get out. There seemed to be something in my coat pocket, but there was no time to take it out and see what it was. I frantically tried to open the door, but the lock felt sticky and wouldn’t budge no matter what. Out of options, I had to jump from the window.
Concerned about his own mobility, my mentor had deliberately bought a two-story detached house; even if I jumped out of the window, it wouldn’t be enough to kill me.
Sometimes I really don’t know if Heaven is actually watching over me or not.
Just as I swung one leg out, I saw a black car driving toward me from a distance.
Ah Hai got out of the car clutching several large bags. He looked at the smoking house, then at me, his face a mask of total confusion.
A few seconds later, he dropped everything in his hands and came charging toward me.
He caught me and I landed safely in his arms. He quickly checked me over from head to toe; only after confirming I was unharmed did he let out a long sigh of relief. Then he circled the perimeter, and without hesitation picked up a hammer to smash the glass door of the fire safety cabinet. I had no idea why he was there in the first place, and there was no time for me to stop him either.
With the fire extinguisher in hand, Ah Hai kicked open the front door and marched inside with resolute, almost tragic air.
After he had been busy inside for over ten minutes, the smoke gradually thinned out. He finally stumbled out, coughing a few times, his face streaked with soot. With an expression of complete helplessness, he said, “Madam, you really have to turn off the stove when you’re simmering soup. This is genuinely dangerous…”
Only then did it dawn on me. No one was trying to kill me. Fearing we’d be too lazy to eat, our mentor had specifically prepared ingredients to stew some soup, and he even reminded me to turn off the heat before he left.
But I forgot.
After bending over to gulp down several breaths of fresh air, I looked up at him and slowly shot back, “Ah Hai ah, do you usually close car doors with your feet? Does Zhang Mingsheng know about that?”
Ah Hai shut his mouth instantly.
