NB Chapter47

“This time, there wasn’t nearly as much of an uproar. You aren’t injured, and your complexion looks much better.” Zhang Mingsheng got out of the car, turned, and reached out a hand to help me down. Seeing that I remained motionless, he leaned back inside, drawing close to whisper, “Is dying in Li Yi’s rental apartment more blissful than dying in our home?”

The accident had wasted him; his face was pale, bearing a resemblance to his most despondent days in his early twenties.

“What was I supposed to make of that note? A suicide letter? And going to that concert… what was that supposed to be, some kind of final wish?” His hand supported the back of my neck as his gaze swept back and forth across me, his breath fanning against my cheek. He asked, “When exactly were you planning to tell your teacher and your junior? Tell them that you’re simply too tired, that you’re leaving, and that they should take good care of themselves?”

He knew.

A scene surfaced in my mind: he pried apart Zhang Xiaoyuan’s tightly clenched fingers and took out that small note written by me with Zhang Mingsheng’s pen. It was just a few short lines. I had told Zhang Xiaoyuan to take care of himself, and to take care of his younger sister. The signature was a single character: Yu.

It was a line of instruction written at my moment of deepest despair; in the car, I had quietly tucked it into Zhang Xiaoyuan’s pocket.

Or perhaps, during Ah Shan’s brief period of wandering with the two children, Ah Shan had discovered the note and told Zhang Mingsheng. I didn’t know if Ah Hai had been present then.

I had intended to die. I should have been dead already.

Yet I still felt a sense of reluctance, and I still had questions.

In the gloom of the car, though I sat upright and still, my whole body was freezing. My fingers clawed into the fabric at my knees, and my gaze drifted into a hollow void.

“I can tolerate you running away time and time again, even if you flee to the ends of the earth, even if it takes me ten years, twenty years, or a lifetime to find you.” Zhang Mingsheng said while pinching my earlobe. His eyelids drooped, seemingly suppressing some turbulent emotion. He said in a low, heavy voice:

“Living is exhausting, isn’t it, Officer Yu? I understand how you feel. I used to find it so hard too, I was so baffled by life that I wanted to end it all… But there was someone who saved me. He was magnificent, wasn’t he?”

“I am truly grateful to him; without him, I wouldn’t have the life I have now. And yet here he is, bent on seeking death.” Zhang Mingsheng gripped my cheeks to force me to look directly into his eyes, which shone with the intensity of a predator in the night. His voice simmered with a restrained ferocity. “Do you think I would let him off that easily?”

“…So, you knew all along.” I said, my voice weak, and muffled under his grip.

“Of course I knew. I’ve always known.” Zhang Mingsheng released my cheeks and began smoothing my hair back, stroking my face over and over in a repetitive, soothing motion. “Before, you wanted to die because you weren’t free, because you were in pain, because you weren’t yourself. But why this time? You found out, didn’t you? You know my mother was caught because of you, don’t you?”

It felt as though my entire being was being crushed in the palm of his hand; instinctively, tears began to spill from my eyes like a broken levee.

I guessed he had investigated it. I guessed he had heard about it long ago.

During that time, strangers were constantly coming and going from the orphanage. I didn’t understand what was happening back then; I had even told Auntie Yang that it would be wonderful if the leaking roof could be fixed, or if our beds could be replaced with new ones.

Auntie Yang would often space out back then, but hearing my mumbling, she would always let out a low laugh and ask, “Ah Chao, things will get better, everything will get better. But after these are fixed, Auntie might have to leave.”

“Where are you going?” My heart hammered with sudden fear, and I clutched at the corner of her clothes as if she might vanish the next second.

“To a very far place” She said while holding me close.

“Can’t you stay?”

“Once these are fixed, I can’t stay anymore.”

“Then don’t fix them. It doesn’t matter if it rains inside the house every day.” I pressed myself into her arms while looking up at her, anxiously waiting for a response.

She leaned down, stroking my forehead, and said, “There are other children in this house. If they get soaked, they’ll get sick, and taking medicine and getting shots is very painful. Ah Chao is a good boy, you’re a big brother, could you bear to see that?”

At the time, I didn’t truly understand what she meant. I only asked, “Will you come back to see me?”

She sighed and pulled me even tighter. She said, “I will. I will always stay by Ah Chao’s side.”

But once that rainy season passed, she never appeared again.

One day, while construction workers were painting the walls of an empty room, all the children were relocated to the other side of the long corridor and forbidden from approaching. A few men entered the orphanage, showing their identification and asking the old director about recent events, when the conversation suddenly turned to the renovations.

The old director said the orphanage was being renovated because a kind-hearted person had sponsored it.

I blurted out her name through the crack in the door, my voice loud and full of a child’s pride. I said it was Auntie Yang who sponsored us; I wanted her to have the credit she deserved.

The old director rushed over, scolded me harshly, and chased me out.

It wasn’t until much later that I realized those men, like my mentor whom I had met before, were all police officers. Twenty years later, they died at Zhang Mingsheng’s hands.

Zhang Mingsheng once told me that they had taken bribes from Zhang Yaonian. Under the guise of investigating a missing person’s case, they used police resources to hunt down his parents who had eloped, ultimately facilitating the couple’s permanent “disappearance” until their bodies were discovered by chance.

Yet, at that point, the Zhang family chose not to pursue the matter further.

It was exactly then that Zhang Mingsheng, who was bent on death, was saved by me.

For years, I could never comprehend Zhang Mingsheng’s extremism, nor why he kept me around. Perhaps at first, it was simply because I’d caught him returning from a robbery; later, it was because he found his own photograph in my wallet. Toying with someone who adored him over a tiny, fleeting kindness must have been endlessly amusing.

It wasn’t until it was revealed that, in the process of his mother’s descent toward death, I had been one link in the chain—that even though I was so young at the time, I had, in a way, both taken the maternal love that should have belonged to him and, in my ignorance, hastened the pursuit of his mother.

My younger self had exposed Auntie Yang’s whereabouts.

I looked at Zhang Mingsheng through a blur of tears, unable to utter a single word.

In truth, what did it matter if I would never forgive him? He was never going to let me go anyway.

“Ah Chao, do you know what I think?” Zhang Mingsheng cupped my face and leaned in until our noses were brushed. He said, “You’re the family Mommy chose for me, my last remaining family. You’re not allowed to run away, and you’re definitely not allowed to die either. Do you understand?”

As if coaxing a child, he continued, “As long as you accept it, if you accept it too, then we can live together properly, and keep living properly from now on.”

He seized my wrist and dragged me out of the car.

When Zhang Mingsheng threw me onto the bed, I was still in a daze. Life has been hard these past few years, but Zhang Mingsheng rarely used violence during intimacy as a form of punishment. He didn’t seem to like using sex as a mere outlet for frustration; rather than just “using” me, he was obsessed with making me come completely undone within desire. He pressed against me, holding me so tightly it felt like he had a starved addiction to the touch of skin. I thought to myself: the old mansion must have been so cold in the winter. He had lived alone in those vast, freezing rooms for over twenty years, never once being embraced, which was likely why he was now so fixated on staying this close to me.

He propped himself up and looked down at my tears. He remained quiet for a while, appearing part curious and part sentimental. He said, “Officer Yu, in all these years, I have never shed a single tear. Why do you have so many?”

“Do you hate me? You hate me, don’t you?” I asked him through my tears.

Zhang Mingsheng didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, he held me fast.

“Officer Yu, I hope this is the last time you ever leave my sight.”

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