Chapter 88: Forgotten

That day it was rainy, with drizzling rain falling nonstop.

Muyin waited in the reception room with her small backpack, eagerly looking forward to her father coming to pick her up after school.

In the past, her father was always among the first parents to arrive at the kindergarten; as soon as Pei Muyin came out, she could see his figure. But that day, the rain had stopped, the sky had darkened, all the other children in the waiting room had gone home, leaving only her, small and alone.

Her father still did not come.

The teacher, puzzled, went to call the parents' phone; the dial tone rang for a long time before the call was connected. Not knowing what was said on the other end, Xiao Mu Yin looked up and saw the teacher's expression suddenly turn grave, her gaze toward her mixed with reluctance.

That was the first time Pei Muyin finished school without her father coming to pick her up.

The teacher who had hung up the phone picked her up and said, "Muyin, we need to go to the hospital now."

Xiao Mu Yin asked puzzledly why.

The teacher paused for a moment, as if not knowing how to say such cruel words to such a pretty and cute child, and finally could only say: "Your father had a car accident; he's in the hospital."

Pei Muyin had been well protected by her father and did not understand what the three words "car accident" meant; she only felt that the smell of disinfectant lingering in the hospital hallway was unpleasant, and the red light on the ceiling of the operating room made her instinctively feel afraid.

The teacher accompanied her as she sat on the cold stainless steel chair, and time passed very slowly.

The operating room light finally went out, but her father still did not come out. Through the thick glass, only when the teacher lifted her up could she see her father lying on the gurney heading to the intensive care ward, his body full of tubes, unconscious.

However, there was also another piece of bad news at the same time.

In the car that crashed, there was also a dog with off-white fur and gray limbs, which died on the spot.

Since that day was Friday, it was the day Xiao Mu Yin had, from her first day at kindergarten, arranged with Great Fortune that they would come together with her father to pick her up after school.

…

Her father woke up on the twenty-second day of his coma.

Upon opening his eyes and seeing Xiao Mu Yin, his first words were a question: "…You are, whose child?"

Xiao Mu Yin froze.

The doctor said, the car accident caused severe head trauma, producing a hematoma, which led to the patient losing all previous memories; perhaps there would be a day when they returned, perhaps not.

——Loss of memory.

Xiao Mu Yin took quite a while to simply understand that losing memory meant her father had forgotten her, forgotten that she was his daughter.

That is, on the third day after that, she learned that in this world she still had a grandmother and a great-grandfather.

A woman dressed in luxurious, fashionable clothing hurried over, scooped her up into her arms, and said affectionately, "Oh my good granddaughter, you must have been frightened, don't be afraid, Grandma is here."

Pei Muyin's beautiful peach-blossom eyes gazed blankly at this utterly unfamiliar woman, her little brows furrowed, and she nearly choked on the strong perfume emanating from the woman's body.

That was also the first time Pei Muyin came to the main residence of the Pei family in Jing Shi.

Grandma told her that this was actually her home, and then introduced her to the stern-faced old man before her, teaching her word by word to call him great-grandfather.

Xiao Mu Yin was well-behaved and polite, and she timidly called out once.

However, the old man leaning on a jade dragon-headed cane merely gave her an indifferent glance and went upstairs.

This great-grandfather clearly did not like her.

But Grandma said, from now on they would live together.

From then on, Pei Muyin felt as if she had entered a world completely different from before, and she also learned from Grandma about her mother.

Grandma said, her mother had formerly been a little maidservant in the Pei family.

At some point during the telling, the girl's eyes had already begun to well up, and her nose tip turned red.

Shu Shu took a tissue from the bedside table to wipe her daughter's tears, then quickly pulled her into an embrace, gently patting her to comfort her, hearing her daughter's soft, restrained sobs.

Before falling asleep, the girl kept saying hopefully, "When will Dad remember me? That would be nice."

"I miss Dad so much, I miss Great Fortune so much…"

…

Car accident amnesia?

Shu Shu tossed the paper ball into the trash, dimmed the bedside lamp, carefully covered the crying-asleep daughter with a blanket, then lay down beside her.

After staring at the ceiling for a while, she recalled the cold, unfamiliar gaze of the man in the car just a short while ago.

Probably because she heard from her daughter's mouth the word "past."

That night, Shu Shu dreamed again of past events; in the dream, someone was calling her——

"I say, ancestor, little ancestor?"

A young woman in a white coat frowned at Shu Shu and waved her hand in front of her face, saying, "I'm really fed up; every time I try to talk seriously with you, you zone out."

"What."

"What what?" the woman in the white coat, with a vaguely written psychological counseling badge on her lapel, as if wanting to knock on her head, said: "I say to you, can't you get a good night's sleep, can't you eat properly, can't you stop mistreating your own body, huh?"

Shu Shu said, "I have slept, I have eaten."

"Heh, you sleep and come over with two huge panda eyes; you eat and you're as thin as a bamboo plank bed." The white-coated woman rolled her eyes and said, "Having a patient like you has ruined my reputation; if it weren't for the fact that you pay well, I really wouldn't bother to take care of you."

Shu Shu laughed, knowing this person was hardly short of money, just stubborn-tongued but soft-hearted, which was why she wasn't really like what she said.

Seeing Shu Shu's knowing smile, the woman grew angrier, but as if she could do nothing about Shu Shu, she resignedly compromised: "So can you agree to my request? Don't go abroad to participate in whatever extreme car racing, that mountain is so steep it's hardly a road—it's practically playing with your life, you know? If that happens, your little life will perish——"

She was about to say habitually that when the time comes, family members would worry and be sad, but seeing that the girl before her had no family left, her words changed to: "When the time comes, your little life will perish, who will I go to settle the bill?"

"No problem, my professional manager will come to your door to settle the bill."

"Hey, I still can't win against you, right?"

"I'm so bored; unless you find me something else to do, then please stop advising me."

At that time, Shu Shu's despondent mood had reached its peak, like a lonely soul in the human world, not caring about her own life, while seeking a psychiatrist for treatment and meanwhile participating everywhere in various dangerous extreme activities.

"I say to you, at eighteen, in the bloom of youth, how can your heart be like withered wood——"

By her ear, the psychologist continued to advise.

Exactly at that moment, Shu Shu, without thinking, glanced sideways past a window ledge and saw, in the courtyard where fallen flowers were drifting down silently, a silent boy sitting.

Although seated, his tall and slender figure was still not concealed by his simple hoodie and long pants; whether it was the gray of the clothing or not, the skin exposed at his neck had a sickly pallor.

Then the whiteness of the skin made the slightly long forehead bangs stand out, and those eyes' pupils became even blacker.

A flower fell onto his hand, but he seemed utterly unaware, his eyelashes not moving at all, quieter than that tree, and beautiful beyond words.

Who's that?