I stared at the cockroach in my hand for a long time, then suddenly smiled.

All my life I’d been considering others, consistently pursuing fairness from beginning to end. I held fairness as my life’s creed.

But who in this world had ever considered me?

I held the scales of justice in my heart facing the entire world, yet was constantly being shaken and tilted by other people at every moment.

Whenever anyone introduced me, they said I was Chengdu’s famous “female” lawyer. I truly hated that title.

What I wanted was equality, not preferential treatment.

I was a lawyer—whether famous or not, why did they have to emphasize that I was a “female” lawyer? I just wanted to be like any other lawyer. I hoped they would see my work ability, not my gender.

But…

None of these things mattered now.

Right now I just wanted some water to drink, and something sweet and salty to eat.

My gums had been bleeding continuously. They wouldn’t stop.

I was probably going to die…

Tell me… had anyone died in this room before?

Why were there so many scratches on the walls?

Those scratches weren’t carved by me, yet they remained clear. Had someone once lived here?

The next evening, Butcher Ma appeared again.

This time he apparently couldn’t stand the smell on my body, so he specially dragged over a water hose.

After opening the door, without a word he started spraying water at my body, recording the entire process with his phone.

Yes, I was like a pig.

I remembered that’s how butchers used water guns to wash pigs’ bodies.

The current me had no dignity or personhood whatsoever—I was just a pig awaiting slaughter.

Could he just kill me?

He washed me for about ten minutes. Most of the filth and mud on my body was washed away.

Although I was very much like a pig, I had to say I felt much more comfortable than before. At least I was clean now.

Being a person… at minimum I should keep myself clean, right?

I lay on the ground with no ability to resist, waiting for Butcher Ma’s “favor.”

This absurd life was truly ridiculous. My living conditions had no difference from the pigs in his pigsty.

No… to be precise, keeping me alive was cheaper than raising pigs.

I only needed three yuan a day to survive, but pigs didn’t.

Pigs had to be raised plump and fat to sell for money, but I didn’t need that.

As long as I still had a breath left, as long as I was still a living woman, to him I was still useful.

When Butcher Ma was moving up and down on top of me, I used all my strength to say one sentence: “I can agree to anything… can you let me go…?”

“Let you go… that definitely won’t work…” He answered panting heavily. “At least I need to keep you locked up for a few years… wait until those police can’t find you anymore…”

A few years…?

Did I hear wrong?

A year has 365 days, right?

I’d only been here for twenty days and was already about to die.

I had to stay here for several years?

“I’ll die…” I couldn’t even cry tears anymore, only my voice was choking. “If you leave me here… I’ll die… Don’t you want me to be your wife? What will you do if I die…?”

“You’re already my wife now!!” He said forcefully. “It doesn’t matter if you die. Before you die, give me a child. Once you give birth to a boy, I’ll let you die.”

This kind of life.

Exactly the same as what I’d imagined in my childhood.

“I agree… I agree to bear children…” I cried and wailed. “Can you let me go outside…?”

“Stop dreaming. Once you give birth to a child, I’ll take you out!”

Watching him moving his body self-indulgently, I felt utterly desperate.

He really wanted me to die.

I slowly wrapped my arms around his neck, forcefully opened my mouth, and when he was lost in the moment, directly bit down on his artery.

I wanted to kill him.

But I overestimated myself. I had no strength left at all.

I only bit him painfully enough to leave deep teeth marks.

He also howled and stood up, then began punching and kicking me.

I clearly felt his foot was constantly kicking toward my abdomen, but I simply couldn’t block it.

I would definitely be injured. In this situation with no way to defend, my internal organs and bones would be injured.

They would hasten my death.

The next day, I couldn’t even crawl anymore. I could only move with difficulty on the ground.

I kept coughing up blood.

Yesterday, Butcher Ma had sprinkled water all over the floor here, but there was no drain.

Various excrement and filth on the ground mixed with the water, soaking the moldy dried straw, releasing a devastating smell in the July summer.

And me?

I couldn’t stand up. I was swimming in sewage.

All the filth was covering my body. Right now, I was a pig rolling in muddy soup.

I kept groping through the sewage, searching for my water and food for the day.

“Laidi, if you ever go to the city, the first thing you should do is go to the police station and change your name.”

A voice sounded in my ear. That was my guiding light, my teacher. Her name was different from all the other girls in the village. She wasn’t called Laidi, Zhaodi, Pandi, or Erni, Sanni—she was called Ning Wan’er.

That year, she and I were standing by the lake at the village entrance watching the sunrise.

“Why?” I asked.

“Although you’re very outstanding, this name will bring you a lot of trouble.” She sighed and said, “I hope you can live a better life, not be trapped here for your whole life. You can choose your own life.”

At that time I didn’t understand. I was born inferior to others—could I actually choose my own life?

“But what… what name should I use?”

“Whatever you like. A name is meant to bless your own life, not to bless someone else’s life.” The teacher coughed a few times and continued, “I hope you can be like this morning lake—when others give you a bit of warmth, you reflect dazzling sunlight. Even if your depths are dark and cold, you should still respond to this world with ripple-like gentleness.”

At that time I couldn’t understand the teacher’s words at all. I only saw that she was becoming increasingly haggard.

A morning lake?

Thinking about it now, she must have been ill then.

Was she well? Had she recovered?

Had she lived healthily until now?

When I was young, I’d never thought to keep the teacher’s contact information, so after all these years, I still couldn’t find her.

“Laidi, I’ve heard a legend.” The teacher looked at the lake surface and smiled at me serenely. “Everything in this world, after dying, will live on in other forms.”

“What does that mean?”

“If one day I die, I might become a blade of grass, a tree, a flying bird, or a grasshopper.”

I felt what the teacher said was very profound, but it seemed very interesting.

In other words… no one in this world would truly die?

If they died, they would become other things, living forever in the world in another form.

That sounded quite fair.

“I hope Teacher never dies.” I said to her.

“Why?”

“Because no one else in this world treats me so well.” I looked into her eyes at that time, and felt like she wanted to cry. “Teacher, even if you have to become a flying bird, a grasshopper, or a rock, I don’t want you to die.”

“Then Teacher will wait.” She smiled.

Teacher Ning said she would leave in three days, but the next day she disappeared.

She must have had something urgent and returned to the city early.