Wu Man had a very chaotic dream.
She dreamed that she was still living in Yu Jiaze’s villa. The windows were all sealed shut, every part that let in light was boarded up piece by piece with wooden planks, completely blocking out daylight.
She ran toward the main door in panic, but it was even more exaggerated than the windows—iron alloy had wrapped the door panel in a new layer without any keyhole.
There was no way to escape.
She retreated two steps in confusion, and with a thud, bumped into someone’s chest.
An extremely pungent smell of blood reached her nose. Wu Man’s entire body stiffened, not daring to turn around.
Yu Jiaze’s voice rang out from behind her: “Little bird, where are you going?”
She struggled to suppress her voice trembling with fear: “I want to leave you.”
She had expected his fury, but instead he spoke lightly, leaning down to her ear and saying: “Alright, then go ahead and leave.”
The moment his words fell, the walls on all sides collapsed like paper set pieces in a theater, crashing down one after another.
She finally saw the outside world, yet it remained pitch black. Surrounding her were connected villas, scattered trees forming a dark silhouette. The floor beneath her feet had become soft grass. She sat there in a daze, with Yu Jiaze in his black coat crouching before her.
The bloody smell became even stronger. She couldn’t tell whether it came from him or from herself.
But whether it was because she had adapted to that smell, or because her fear had reached its limit, her trembling body gradually went numb.
She stared at him and asked palely: “Will you really let me go?”
Yu Jiaze simply gave a sound of acknowledgment and said: “Because I have to leave first.”
“Where are you going?”
Not far away, wailing sirens gradually drew closer, but they sounded very distorted. Like a localized thunderstorm—you could sense it, but it wouldn’t reach here.
Yet Yu Jiaze was particularly sensitive to that sound. He raised his hands and covered Wu Man’s ears.
Her world instantly fell into deathly silence, without even a whisper of wind.
The only sensation her body received came from the images her eyes captured: Yu Jiaze’s lips opening and closing, silently saying two sentences.
…But what did he say? Wu Man couldn’t make it out. She only felt the world spinning before her eyes, countless overlapping shadows.
Everything was fragmented.
In the darkness that threatened to swallow people whole, God suddenly tore open a gap with force and threw down blue and red rotating glimmers. With that increasingly urgent siren, everything suddenly became vivid.
The sound of ship horns at the distant harbor, the creaking sound of the door being broken open, the chaotic sound of footsteps.
A group of police officers wearing Luo City Police Department uniforms, holding guns, approached the two people with great momentum. To be precise, they approached Yu Jiaze beside her.
Then, that gun with empty chambers pressed against her temple.
The barrel still radiated the scorching residual heat from just being fired. Yu Jiaze mercilessly pressed it deep into her tender skin, without blinking an eye, and spoke coldly.
“Don’t come closer, or this woman will die by my hands.”
The police, hearing this, didn’t dare advance rashly and could only watch helplessly as Yu Jiaze held her and started to leave.
Wu Man turned her head inch by inch and met Yu Jiaze’s gaze, crashing into his eyes that held no emotion whatsoever.
No joy, no anger, no sorrow, not even any sign of life.
She heard a heart-wrenching shout: “Don’t be afraid, his gun has no bullets left!”
Strange, that voice was particularly similar to hers, as if it had come from herself.
“Bang—”
A violent sound came, and the person beside her instantly let her go.
She mechanically turned her head and found herself back in Yu Jiaze’s villa.
This time, the windows were wide open, and the door was also ajar. Yu Jiaze came through the door holding a bundle of fireworks, with pure white snowflakes still remaining on the hem of his black coat.
The calendar in the living room showed New Year’s Eve, with the clock about to point to twelve.
Yu Jiaze disdainfully tossed the fireworks barrel into her arms and said: “I bought this for you. If you want to set them off, do it quickly.”
“Thank you. Do you want to come watch together?”
Yu Jiaze frowned: “I already told you I don’t like fireworks.”
“Alright then, I’ll go set them off at the door by myself.”
Her enthusiasm undimmed, she cheerfully carried them out the door and walked into the snowy landscape.
“Forget it, I’ll go with you.”
Yu Jiaze muttered and still followed her.
“Bang—”
That sound overlapped with the gunshot.
The clock reached twelve o’clock. Fireworks rose into the air one bundle after another, brilliant beyond this world.
The falling ash drifted onto Yu Jiaze’s head, penetrating his body and bursting out traces of blood.
The fireworks burned out, leaving scattered remains all over the ground.
He lay in a blood pool of golden powder, looking at her, revealing a trace of peaceful contentment.
The surroundings became so quiet, with only the remaining ash hissing in the wind.
So Wu Man heard it—those two sentences he had left behind when he covered her ears.
—”I told you, the last place I go will definitely be by your side.”
—”See, I’m a person who keeps his word. Not like you, liar.”
*
“The bullet hit the kidney, but the wound was struck very cleverly, not fatal. What’s endangering the patient’s life now is excessive blood loss. We’ve already missed the optimal rescue time…”
“We will do our best to treat her, but you also need to be mentally prepared…”
…
At this moment, Wu Man was still deeply trapped in that pure white snowy field.
Those two sentences Yu Jiaze left behind were like a dagger, piercing through from her abdomen to her lower back, drawing out large amounts of fresh blood that dripped onto the snow, blooming into enchanting red spider lilies.
So cold.
She hugged herself tremblingly, trying to get warm, yet still felt life ebbing away, just like the lifeless villa before her.
She had clearly already escaped, so why couldn’t she take even a single step forward?
She felt so unwilling.
What dripped along with the blood were her scalding tears.
Elder sister, elder sister.
Hazily, an extremely ethereal call came from the night sky. That voice was vast and distant, like it was being projected from beyond the ninth heaven.
She desperately raised her head, looking at the pitch-black night sky where no light could be seen.
Elder sister, don’t sleep.
That voice persistently called to her, carrying moist dampness.
So the sky began to drizzle with night rain, irrigating the cracked wound.
That voice began to roar incoherently.
If you leave, I will leave with you! Do you hear me!
…
“The patient’s pulse is beginning to rise…”
“Defibrillator ready…”
…
Wu Man gritted her teeth and shakily stood up from the ground where blood and snow merged.
The rain fell harder and harder. That voice was intermittent, mixed with choking sobs.
Elder sister, I’m serious. Don’t leave me alone.
Don’t leave me.
I waited for you for more than ten years, but only possessed you for less than ten days. Don’t treat me so cruelly…
Wu Man’s nose tingled, and she shook her head frantically.
She endured the severe pain of convulsions throughout her body and walked step by step in the direction away from the villa. When she fell midway and could no longer stand up, she would crawl forward.
Blood meandered all along the path. Time unknowingly passed faster and faster. The sky revealed fish-belly white, dispersing the dark currents and making the voice calling her increasingly clear.
She was finally too exhausted to continue forward, her face against the snowy surface, gasping for breath, yet without the expected cold.
It turned out that the accumulated snow beneath her had melted with the arrival of sunrise, revealing what had been covered below—a single, solitary cherry blossom.
Wu Man looked at that flower and stretched out her arm, wanting to reach it.
Wanting it to lead her to escape this desolate and bloody winter night.
She extended her fingertips—just zero point zero millimeters away, just that tiny bit.
Wu Man used up her last bit of strength.
…
In the hospital room, the pale four walls were like the snowy field in the dream.
Wu Man gently lifted her eyelids, unable to distinguish whether her surroundings were dream or reality.
Until a stubbly, disheveled figure grabbed her hand and called to her with a voice similar to the one in her dream.
“Elder sister!”
Her palm was pressed against his face, still a bit prickly, yet so warm.
Wu Man couldn’t turn her head, only slightly rotate her pupils to look diagonally toward the bedside.
Zhui Ye was pressed messily against the headboard, his entire person looking as destitute as a street vagrant, completely unable to see that he was the spirited young man on the cover of last issue’s *Time Magazine*.
His voice was hoarse, his calm tone leaking a trace of extreme fearful trembling.
“You almost left me behind.”
She slightly pulled at the corners of her mouth, meeting his eyes bloodshot from excessive fatigue and worry, and smiled as faintly as a gossamer thread.
“How could I? I still owe my child… we haven’t seen the cherry blossoms at Meguro River yet.”
Hearing her answer, tears that Zhui Ye had been holding back in his eye sockets suddenly streamed down.
He immediately lowered his head and roughly wiped them away.
The two remained silent for a while. Wu Man slowly opened her mouth, as if struggling internally.
Finally, she still asked: “What about Yu Jiaze…”
Zhui Ye slightly froze, then suppressed countless emotions and said simply.
“He’s dead.”
Wu Man stared blankly at the ceiling, maintaining this posture for a minute, yet her gaze had no focus.
After a long while, she said softly: “In my dream, I seemed to hear the sound of fireworks.”
*
Only a few days after Wu Man’s condition stabilized, she received uninvited guests.
Tang Jiarong and Tang Yingxue.
Zhui Ye didn’t let these two people approach elder sister’s hospital room, blocking them outside. The bodyguards he brought and their bodyguards faced off. Tang Jiarong said in a low voice: “I’m her father. You have no right to stop me.”
“I’m afraid you won’t need this daughter anymore.” The corners of Zhui Ye’s mouth curved into a mocking arc as he glanced at Tang Yingxue. “You don’t know yet, do you? The part where she was shot was her kidney.”
“…?!”
Tang Jiarong’s face instantly lost all color.
Upon hearing this news, Tang Yingxue didn’t have any particular reaction, only stared viciously at Zhui Ye: “Get out of my way! I want to personally ask her what exactly happened!”
Zhui Ye stood motionless blocking her path, his eyes lowered coldly to look at her.
“The person who fired the gun was the police. Go ask them.”
“I insist on asking Wu Man!” Tang Yingxue said word by word, “My fiancé is dead. Don’t I even have the right to question her?!”
“Your fiancé shot at my elder sister! She almost died! Where the hell do you get the face to come aggressively demanding answers from her?! If you want to question someone, go question your fiancé in the underworld.” Zhui Ye was instantly ignited and pointed unceremoniously toward the door, telling her to scram. “She may very likely trigger PTSD, so I will absolutely not let her recall anything about the kidnapping again. Understand? That would be second-degree murder.”
Tang Yingxue was scolded by him in public and lost all face. She instinctively looked toward Tang Jiarong, desperately seeking help: “Dad…”
Tang Jiarong patted her and said to Zhui Ye with furrowed brows: “Come up to the rooftop. Let’s talk alone.”
*
Zhui Ye had Zhao Boyu bring bodyguards to guard Wu Man’s hospital room door, absolutely not allowing Tang Yingxue to enter, before going up to the rooftop with Tang Jiarong.
Zhui Ye got straight to the point: “If you came to show concern for her, you already know she’s out of danger and can leave. If you came to demand some so-called ‘truth’ for Tang Yingxue, then please leave immediately as well. Exit and turn left to the police station.”
Tang Jiarong actually smiled: “You must be the boyfriend Man Man mentioned last time. I know you too—you’ve been very prominent recently, both internationally and domestically. But young man, once you get too full of yourself, you easily become arrogant.”
“Don’t give me that sanctimonious nonsense. I have no patience to listen to this bullshit lately.” Zhui Ye completely didn’t buy into this approach. “If you’re going to lecture me as Wu Man’s father, then please at least first act somewhat like a father, okay?”
Tang Jiarong had been refuted by him repeatedly and his face turned pale with anger, finally unable to maintain his disguise.
“What do you mean? Are you accusing me of not being qualified as a father?”
“Where are you qualified? Do you understand Wu Man’s past all these years? Have you seriously investigated? How much do you know about her childhood?”
Tang Jiarong was at a loss for words. After a long time, he slowly said: “I… she told me everything. She said her childhood was fine.”
“Fine?” Zhui Ye sneered. “If you think preferring to drop out of school rather than stay home to escape her mother, following third-rate touring performance troupes and mixing around in various poor rural areas, being plied with alcohol and groped by illiterate, lecherous old men counts as fine.”
Tang Jiarong was stunned: “Ran away from home? Wasn’t Yu Lan very good to her?”
“Good? Is that what she told you?” Zhui Ye pulled out a cigarette from his chest, urgently needing to expel the suffocating fog from his chest. “As the head of the Tang family who has seen so many people, would you not know what’s true and what’s false? You just chose to believe the pleasant lies you wanted to hear.”
Tang Jiarong, having been seen through by Zhui Ye at a glance, struggled to maintain composure and said: “You’ve only known Man Man for how long? You talk as if you know her so well.”
“When she was nineteen, I already knew her. At that time, she said something to me: not all parents in this world love their own children. I didn’t understand then, but now seeing you, I know.” Zhui Ye exhaled smoke rings into the air, obscuring his expression. “So there really are parents in this world who can be so cruel to their children. One forced her to become a phoenix, not even letting her eat KFC when she was little. The other didn’t hesitate to use her body as spare parts for his own daughter. Forget being a daughter—did he even regard her as a person?”
When he said the three words “a person,” Zhui Ye’s voice couldn’t help but tremble slightly.
He swallowed violently.
“My elder sister never enjoyed a single day of carefree childhood, yet even so she grew up bright and beautiful, wanting to live better. She’s not without fault—relying on Yu Jiaze was the most wrong thing she did. But you can’t blame her entirely, right? I don’t know the specific circumstances, but perhaps at that time, only Yu Jiaze could give her a bit of warmth. If a child has never known what love looks like, she becomes too easily moved by something that seems like love. And the source of all this is because of you.”
Tang Jiarong opened his mouth and found he couldn’t refute a single word.
Zhui Ye waved away the smoke in the air, revealing his weary face beneath.
“Her body can no longer meet the requirements for donation. The agreement is void. There’s nothing left on her that can be drained, so from now on, stop bothering us, okay? None of you feel sorry for her or love her. That’s fine, and it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“In this world, there’s still me. She’s my elder sister, and also my little girl.”