This small fire alarmed everyone in the house.

Ruan Mian huddled by the door, completely stunned, watching the tall nanny, who had come from the countryside, rush in and out, splashing bucket after bucket of water onto the fire.

The fierce firelight was reflected in her eyes. Every time she blinked, a flicker of panic was cast out.

The fire was quickly contained. A small flame hissed and went out, leaving behind only residual smoke and a heap of dead ash.

The desk was mostly burnt, and the wall behind it was largely blackened by smoke. With the dripping water and pale smoke, the room was a total mess.

Ying Haodong had been out all day dealing with company issues. He had offered countless compliments and forced smiles, yet there was still no solution. He had come home filled with pent-up rage, tossed and turned until late, and now this further calamity had occurred. With no peace for a moment, he was now absolutely furious, gasping for breath, and raised his hand to slap Ruan Mian.

Ruan Mian stood still, neither dodging nor flinching. In truth, she was completely terrified. The hands behind her back trembled uncontrollably, and tears streamed from her eyes.

She remained silent, knowing she had accidentally caused a disaster, and didn’t even have the right to defend herself.

She kept her head lowered, afraid to look at anyone present.

No one would take her side.

Yet, another stubborn voice arose in her heart:

Hit me, hit me. Let this slap shatter the last bit of father-daughter affection. From now on, I won’t owe you anything.

Nor will I harbor any more extravagant hopes or illusions.

She realized it too late, yet it also felt like the perfect time

A relationship of mutual non-interference was the best ending for them as father and daughter in this lifetime.

However, the pain she anticipated did not arrive. In her blurred vision, the furious man was held back by the little mute, who clung tightly to his legs and pushed him backward…

She opened her eyes in disbelief, and the tears instantly gushed out.

Wang Jiaxin also stepped in, gently trying to persuade him. “Haodong, let it go. Mianmian is still young, besides, she didn’t do it on purpose…”

Ying Haodong grew even angrier at those words, his eyes bulging. “If she did it on purpose, that would be even worse!”

He moved to swing his arm and step forward again.

The little mute seemed to be exerting all his strength. His small face was red, and he actually managed to push his father back a step.

It was unbelievable that such power was contained in his thin, small body.

Wang Jiaxin immediately tried to pull her son away. When she couldn’t, she tried to pry his fingers open. As one finger loosened, the next tightened…

Ying Haodong finally picked up his son. Seeing him crying with a tear-streaked face, his mouth opening as if to speak but unable to make a sound, Ying Haodong was even more frustrated. He cursed and raged for a long time, finally venting most of the foul air that had been stuck in his chest for days. Then, he carried the child downstairs.

Wang Jiaxin gave Ruan Mian a look, a very cold look, tinged with faint disgust and mockery. It was as if her gentle tolerance of the past few days had been wrapped in a disguise, and now that disguise had been burnt away by the fire, revealing her true appearance.

A daughter left behind by a weak ex-wife, unloved by her father, posed no threat at all. If she was obedient, there would be no problem feeding one extra mouth, but if not…

The nanny let out a harsh snicker. Her expression was identical to her mistress’s, but more direct, blatantly revealing contempt.

The night was so deep, and finally, some things could no longer be hidden.

The grandfather clock chimed again, once, twice. Two o’clock in the morning.

Ruan Mian hugged herself, leaning against the door, burying herself into her knees in utter helplessness. The faint, sweet scent of the burnt nanmu wood was diluted by the breeze, slowly drifting out and enveloping her.

The little creature was curled up beside her hand, its head drooped, quiet and well-behaved.

Her first instinct when the fire woke her was to find it, so it was well protected and unharmed, just a little frightened.

The night seemed extraordinarily long. Time felt like every second was stretched out and burned into ash. The clock chimed six more times. The sky was fully bright.

The morning light shone in without restraint through the window, sending out streaks of brightness that illuminated the fine dust floating gently in the room.

Ruan Mian finally moved. Her body was completely numb, and she had no more tears left to cry.

The three books and all the homework she had brought back were burnt, yet she still had to go to school today.

She braced herself against the wall and walked to the bathroom to wash up. Just as she squeezed toothpaste onto her brush and took a mouthful of water, she looked up, staring blankly at the person reflected in the mirror. She could barely recognize who it was.

Who are you?

An orphan no one loves.

A rootless floating plant.

She hadn’t eaten breakfast in a long time, but she was terribly hungry today. Her feet were unsteady as she carried her school bag downstairs. She heard the nanny in the living room shouting at the top of her voice, “You have the wrong number! We don’t have anyone here named Ruan Meiqin!”

With that, she slammed the phone down and muttered, “What an inauspicious call so early in the morning.”

Ruan Mian’s whole body stiffened. She immediately walked over, moving so fast she nearly tripped over the small chair on the floor. She steadied herself against the tea table, picked up the receiver, redialed the original number, and, under the nanny’s confused stare, spoke calmly, “Hello, I am Ruan Meiqin’s daughter.”

The person on the other end paused, then said, “I am a staff member from XX Cemetery. The thing is…”

The school day ended. It wasn’t much different from usual, except that Pan Tingting and Zeng Yushu saw how haggard Ruan Mian looked and pressed her with questions. She wasn’t in the mood and simply shook her head, saying it was nothing.

When she got home after school, Ruan Mian put away her bicycle. Just as she stepped over the threshold, she heard a conversation coming from the living room

“In our village, we call this kind of bird a ‘Ghost Mistress.’ It’s a bird of great ill omen, most likely to bring bloody disaster to the house. Didn’t you just cut your hand on a blade earlier?”

“I did,” Wang Jiaxin said. “Now that you mention it, I feel it too. The company just lost a huge order a while ago…”

The nanny chimed in, “And that fire last night… In any case, that harmful thing absolutely must not be kept.”

Hearing this, Ruan Mian suddenly had a terrible premonition.

Sure enough, when she returned to her room, the small figure was gone. She searched everywhere but couldn’t find it. Cold sweat broke out all over her body, and her heart felt prickly, as if pierced by needles.

Just as she was about to run out and search again, she turned around and saw the little mute standing at the door.

In his hands, he held a small, cold corpse.

The direct impact was too much. The thread Ruan Mian had been clinging to in her heart finally snapped. She lost control, becoming hysterical. She pushed him forward with all her strength. “You’re all too cruel!”

The sentence almost completely drained her strength.

She wanted to use even more malicious language to curse these cruel people, but she couldn’t think of a single word.

Ying Minghui, unbalanced by her push, thumped against the staircase railing behind him. A large bump instantly swelled up on the back of his head.

He quickly got up, enduring the pain, and walked closer cautiously, handing the bird to her.

Ruan Mian’s hands trembled as she snatched the small, cold, stiff body back. Tears dropped, one by one, soaking into the bloody feathers.

The blood dissolved and spread in a vivid red smear.

Her eyes were red, and her voice choked with sobs. “It hadn’t learned to fly yet. It hadn’t flown even once…”

Ying Minghui cried with her.

He desperately wanted to tell her that it had flown. Perhaps it was the only flight of its short life, when it was being chased by the person with the clothes pole.

However, it only flew that one time. Like a persimmon ripe in late autumn, it was knocked down and fell onto the rotten mud mixed with the scent of green grass, never to move again.

He was just a child. He couldn’t stop the slaughter.

He held it, and it twitched twice in his arms. He was thrilled, thinking it had only fainted, but blood began to seep from its beak…

He wanted so badly to tell her, but he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t make a sound.

Ying Minghui trembled all over from crying. The look in his jiejie’s eyes before she ran away, that familiar disgust, was exactly the same as the looks his playmates gave him after he lost his voice.

And no one wanted to play with him again.

When he learned he had a jiejie, it felt like the best gift in the world, but his mother said, She won’t like you.

Why wouldn’t she like him? Was it just because he was mute?

But his heart still held a flicker of hope. She was his jiejie. She would surely be different, wouldn’t she?

Now… she must really hate him.

Ruan Mian ran downstairs, bumping into the nanny who was entering from the front door. She glared fiercely at the middle-aged woman, then ran out.

She finally stopped in the small woods.

“Dust returns to dust, and earth returns to earth. This is the law of nature…” This was the sentence she had written in her essay last night.

The fallen tree had long been removed. A small sapling had been planted in the empty spot, its tender green leaves unfurling in the wind. Ruan Mian knelt down, picked up a branch, and dug a small pit beside it.

She had picked it up in this very spot, and now she was returning it here.

Ruan Mian placed a leaf at the bottom of the pit, laid the little body inside, and added a handful of soil. “You will fly very high from now on.”

“Very, very high.”

She stood up and walked forward without looking back.

The clear blue lake appeared before her again. She walked silently to the edge and washed her hands, scrubbing them clean. Tears fell silently and continuously. Ripples spread across the lake’s surface, gently shattering her reflection in the water.

She finally stopped suppressing herself, buried her face in her knees, and cried out loud, as if to weep away all the resentment and grievances in her heart.

The sunset glow in the sky burned painfully bright.

Ruan Mian cried until she was done, sitting quietly on the grass by the lake, surrounded by a layer of red light.

After a while, a black car slowly stopped three hundred meters from the lake edge.

“You can go back now,” the man in the back seat said faintly.

The assistant looked out, following his gaze. He only saw a girl’s back. Looking closer, he noticed her shoulders still hitched and trembled. He wondered, Was she… crying?

However, he was more curious about why this man had stopped.

The assistant had been by Qi Yan’s side for almost ten years, but he still hadn’t fully grasped his nature. He suppressed his confusion and nodded. “Understood.”

Not far away, Ruan Mian sniffled. Just as she was about to stand up, she caught sight of a long shadow slowly approaching. She looked back in confusion. The man emerged from the faint twilight, his outline gradually becoming clear.

She tilted her head and watched him walk closer, then sit down beside her.

Qi Yan stared at her for a long time, then frowned and asked, “Why are you crying?”

She had just sworn she wouldn’t cry again, but those three simple words instantly made her nose sting. Ruan Mian shook her head.

He stopped looking at her and looked out at the lake instead.

Silence moved between the two of them.

The twilight deepened, and the evening breeze blew gently.

Ruan Mian finally gathered her courage and asked him softly, “What should I do if someone bullies me?”

He turned his head, his tone calm. “Bully them back.”

“But I can’t beat them.”

“Then find someone more formidable to rely on.”

Ruan Mian stared fixedly at his profound profile. Her thoughts churned for a long time before finally settling. She asked softly, “Can you be my backer?”

It didn’t have to be for long. Two years would be enough.

She had just been crying, and her eyes were dewy and soft, yet her voice had a dry, sandpapery texture, as if it scraped across the heart, causing a strange, faint ache.

However, Qi Yan didn’t say anything. He simply stood up.

Ruan Mian tilted her head back, watching him. Behind the man, outside the green mountains, clusters of red sunset slowly faded away.

She heard his deep voice carried on the evening wind. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

He was smiling, and his smile was incredibly beautiful.

His features were refined and handsome, the corners of his eyes subtly upturned, and the shallow smile welling up in the depths of his eyes would dim even the full moon and starlight above his head.

But… Ruan Mian suddenly felt like crying again.

“However,” he added, “I know someone who can help you.”

NOTES

Jiejie: Older sister. Ying Minghui’s term for Ruan Mian.