Chapter 1 Morning and Night
The train kept moving along the tracks, and the low houses outside gradually disappeared. Now and then, the carriage passed through dark tunnels, carrying Jiang Mu toward an uncertain future.
Jiang Mu had never traveled so far alone. She hadn’t closed her eyes for a moment, and the scenery outside was so different from what she was quite different from the place she lived in. The railway tracks were laid across the rugged hills of Chuanling, covered in mist, resembling an unreal world, like something out of a two-dimensional space. It completely disrupted her thoughts.
At this moment, her feelings were complicated. She was heading toward a strange place where a family member she used to know lived. It had been years since they had last seen each other. She was no longer the girl who could act recklessly and without restraint. Back then, she was still surnamed Jin, named Jin Mu.
On the day they parted, it rained heavily in Suzhou. Her father carried an old black suitcase, the only luggage he and her older brother could take. She was just nine years old at the time and didn’t understand what divorce meant. All she knew was that her father was taking her brother away from their home, to live somewhere far away.
She tried everything she could to hold onto her father, begging him not to leave, begging her mother not to make them go. But all she got in return was the final, irreconcilable argument between her parents. She hid in the corner, crying in fear. That day, Jin Chao simply walked silently to her side, shielding her from the argument between her parents. Over and over again, he wiped her tears with his sleeve, without a word.
Later, her mother locked her in her room, trying to stop her from causing a scene. She lay on the iron windowsill on the second floor, staring helplessly as her father, holding the faded checkered umbrella, walked into the heavy rain with her brother.
She screamed for her father and brother from the second floor, and they turned back to look at her. Through the curtain of rain, Jin Qiang’s eyes held a mixture of emotions, and with a helpless tone, he shouted, “Mu Mu, be good. We’ll call you when we get there.”
Jin Chao, with his backpack slung over his shoulders, was beginning to show the first signs of adolescence. His figure vanished into the torrential rain, indistinct in the downpour. Her father, with a hard expression, turned away and pulled Jin Chao along. The moment they turned, Jin Mu’s heart broke. She cried out in agony, a strong, overwhelming feeling surging within her, telling her that once her father and brother left, they would never return.
She cried until her body had no strength left, her blurry vision unable to see clearly. Then, a figure rushed back toward her. She blinked fiercely, and through the rain, she saw Jin Chao running back into the downpour, climbing up the rain awning to her window.
That was… the last time she saw Jin Chao. He was so close to her, drenched through, his long lashes dripping with rain, the water from his forehead dripping down his high-bridged nose. He gripped the iron window with one hand, and with the other, he pulled a black Parker pen from his backpack and handed it to her, saying, “This is for you. Practice your writing well. Don’t be picky with your food, eat the carrots too, and listen to Mom. Next time…”
Rainwater flooded into his nose and mouth, and he coughed violently before continuing, “Next time we meet, I want to see how well you’ve written.”
As Jin Mu reached out from the window to take the pen, she also grabbed her brother’s hand, her tear-filled eyes asking, “Will you come back?”
The rain struck the backs of their hands as they held each other. In the far distance, a flash of lightning briefly lit up the night sky, illuminating Jin Chao’s dark yet bright eyes, which carried all her hopes and expectations.
“I will,” he said to her.
But he never came back, leaving only the cherished pen he had given her, which accompanied Jin Mu for many years.
Afterward, Jiang Yinghan directly changed her surname. From then on, no one called her Jin Mu anymore. Her name became Jiang Mu, taking her mother’s surname.
In the first few years, she could still occasionally get calls from her father and sometimes talk with her brother. Jin Chao would ask her about her studies, about what level she had reached in the guzheng exam, and whether she had grown taller. Each time they spoke, Jin Chao’s voice seemed to change. No longer the childish voice from her memories, his voice deepened with puberty, making Jiang Mu feel unfamiliar with him.
But Jiang Yinghan didn’t seem to like her talking to her brother for too long. Every time their conversation went over ten minutes, Jiang Yinghan would urge her to go do her homework.
By the time she was in fifth grade, she rarely received calls from her father. She heard that he had remarried, started a new family, and even had a daughter. Jiang Yinghan told her not to disturb them anymore.
After that, Jin Qiang rarely called. Jiang Mu felt a long period of sadness upon hearing that her father had a new daughter and Jin Chao had a new little sister. It felt as though her family had been taken away by someone else. The love and attention her father and brother had once given her were now directed at another little life. That happiness, she felt, would no longer belong to her.
With this worry, Jiang Mu couldn’t call Jin Chao to complain about an exam failure or an argument with a classmate. She was afraid that the person answering the phone would be her father’s new wife. In her heart, her father and brother had always been her family, but she had to admit that they had gradually faded out of her life ever since that torrential rain-filled night.
After the summer vacation of fifth grade, Jiang Mu moved twice with Jiang Yinghan. She tried to call her father and brother to tell them their new address, but every time, a strange woman would answer the phone. Not knowing how to address her, Jiang Mu would hang up quickly. Soon after, the number became disconnected.
She wrote several letters to Jin Chao, telling him their new address and contact information, but she never received a reply, nor did she get a phone call. By the time she was in sixth grade, she had completely lost contact with them.
A year after Jiang Yinghan divorced Jin Qiang, she opened a lottery shop, and the money she earned every month was enough to support their mother-daughter expenses. Their lives gradually improved, but whenever Jin Qiang was mentioned, an unhappy expression would appear on Jiang Yinghan’s face. As time went by, Jiang Mu also stopped frequently talking about her father and brother.
If life had continued to go smoothly like this, perhaps with Jiang Mu’s grades, she would have been able to attend a good university, find a stable job, and stay by her mother’s side, with no further connection to her father or brother. However, in her senior year of high school, she accidentally learned something that would change the course of her life forever.
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