Chapter 135

"Slap!" The surveillance screenshot, wrapped in the fishy smell of rain, slammed onto the sandalwood table, and five water marks instantly bloomed on the paper. Raindrops dripped from Qi Fei's soaked bangs, bouncing on the marble floor like broken silver fish. "I remembered, there was another me when I was a child." Every word was like a bullet leaving the chamber, accompanied by the spring thunder that suddenly rang outside the window, crushing Lu Man's exclamation into the rumbling echo.

Qi Dongjun's action of taking off his glasses was like pressing the pause button, and the temples of his glasses pressed two crescent-shaped indentations into the table. When he looked up, his eyes, wrinkled like the cracked plateau, were filled with wind and frost: "Eleven years ago, here..." The old grandfather clock pendulum swayed, as if time had turned back.

"You're the one who got it wrong!" Qi Fei's clenched fists made the desk tremble. Outside the window, the rainstorm was like a waterfall, and the streetlights cast scale-like light spots on his father's face through the water curtain. It was unclear whether it was the light and shadow flowing or his cheeks twitching.

"He still refuses to let you go." Qi Dongjun's sigh was as deep as an old dragon at the bottom of the sea, revealing his rare fatigue. However, this sigh was even more shocking than Qi Fei's questioning.

Like an electric shock, Qi Fei let go of the hand pressing on the photo. The edges of the matte photo paper curled, reminding the father and son to look at the date marked on the surveillance—it was Xi Zi Yun's death anniversary.

"I advised Zi Yun not to go to Nanling..." Qi Dongjun turned his back to Qi Fei and looked up slightly. His shadow on the rain-lashed window was somewhat desolate: "It was your mother who insisted on..."

The shadow cast by Qi Fei's brow bone shrouded his eyes like an iron curtain: "What on earth happened?" The old chandelier in the living room flickered suddenly, and in the alternation of light and darkness, the shadows of the father and son sometimes overlapped and sometimes split.

"You're right. When you were very young, you had a playmate, and he wasn't just your playmate." The half-broken cigar in Qi Dongjun's ashtray accumulated, and the ash fell rustlingly onto the sandalwood table, like the snow that fell on that bloody night eleven years ago. "You don't understand how much I loved your mother. Zi Yun married me when I had nothing. We started from scratch, and the hardships of starting a business were indescribable. I still remember that day, Zi Yun was busy in the factory with her big belly. I didn't know how to express the debt in my heart, so I could only tell her that this first child must take her surname. I wanted to give her everything, give her the child in her belly. At that time, I imagined that our child would carry my beloved surname and continue our bloodline. Everything was so beautiful at the beginning." His fingers, with bulging veins, stroked the concave marks on the corner of the table—on which "Mom" was faintly carved with a paper cutter. Every stroke was carved decisively and clearly, in sharp contrast to the childish handwriting.

"The first child? But my surname is Qi, could it be that..." A secret door in Qi Fei's mind seemed to be slowly pulled open. What came out from the door wasn't light, but gusts of unsettling, gloomy wind.

Qi Dongjun seemed immersed in his own memories. He moved to the bay window on the east side, his lenses floating with the shimmering water of the Luomeng River, and didn't answer Qi Fei's words. The pendulum of the old grandfather clock suddenly stalled, as if blocked by the silt of memories. He took a deep breath and just continued his narration, "He was born by the Luomeng River. When he was born, his cry was so loud that it seemed to spread across the whole river. I don't know why it was such a coincidence. As soon as he cried, a strong wind suddenly blew outside, and a rainstorm poured down in an instant, blowing over the awning boats on the Luomeng River. The old nurse in the hospital said tactlessly that it was the river demon responding, but your mother laughed and said it was a child sent by the Luomeng River." His Adam's apple rolled as he swallowed his choking, and his hand in his pocket was clenched into a fist, "When he was born, I dug up the first pot of gold in my life. It was really like the name of this river, Luomeng—a dream of heaven falling into the human world. I said to Zi Yun, let's name the child He, Xi He. A trickling stream gathers into a river. We thought this child carried our dreams. None of us thought that river water could carry dreams, but it could also soak beautiful dreams into rotting corpses." A cold crow's shrill cry suddenly swept past the window, startling a petal of the newly bloomed magnolia in the courtyard. Qi Dongjun looked at the river in the water mist with dim eyes, "Thinking about it now, starting from the rainstorm when he was born, the Luomeng River was reminding us—all the gifts of fate have already buried their price in the watershed."

"Xi He..." Qi Fei muttered the name. In his ears, he seemed to hear the gentle voice from the end of a distant tunnel calling this name as well. In the tinnitus, yellowed memory fragments emerged: his mother's apron embroidered with wisteria brushed against his cheeks, and in the wind she brought up when she turned around, "Xi He!" his mother's voice came, strict yet doting. The tone crossed the years and overlapped with the raging wind and rain outside the window, making the glass window buzz.

Qi Fei's temples throbbed with the rush of blood.

Yes, she often called this name. He was too young at that time, and these memories were mixed with dreams, never giving him any real-life confirmation, making him never think that these fragments that occasionally surfaced in his mind were all true.

"In other words..." Qi Fei subconsciously covered his right ear, stopping the repeated auditory hallucinations of marbles falling and his mother calling "Xi He." He barely concentrated before squeezing out the second half of the sentence, "I have a... brother named Xi He?" The last two words were drowned in the sound of the rain, so light that only he could hear them.

"You don't remember, I don't blame you. You were only three years old at the time. Who would clearly remember things from before they were three?" Qi Dongjun returned to the desk and touched the two characters "Mom" carved on the table again.

Qi Fei looked at these two characters and suddenly realized something: "Mom said this was carved by me when I was naughty as a child, but I don't have any impression of it at all. Could it be that..."

Qi Dongjun gave a bitter smile after hearing this: "Old people often say that you can see a person's life at three. Only when you have children will you understand the true meaning of this. You were an obedient child since you were young and would never do anything destructive. Let alone using a utility knife to destroy furniture, even when holding colored pens, you would only draw neatly on paper and would never draw on the wall like other children. But Xi He would..." His tone suddenly turned gloomy, "I know you have always resented me and your mother separating. Your resentment is reasonable because I was the one who proposed it. But the reason wasn't because of the relationship between your mother and me. The year you were three was a watershed, the year your mother and I decided to separate."

The separation of his parents was the thing Qi Fei found hardest to let go of, besides his mother's murder. He asked hoarsely: "Why?!"

"Because of Xi He." Qi Dongjun turned around and looked at Qi Fei.