Chapter 61

On Sunday evening, we packed up our tents and returned home. Two days of camping had left us exhausted. By the time I reached my apartment and rode the elevator up, I was nearly asleep.

Finally reaching my door, I inserted the key—but then heard a faint sound behind me.

A black shadow flickered against the wall.

Shen Jianqing: in a flash.

The alarm bell of danger jolted me fully awake.

Our floor had two units per stairwell, with an emergency exit as well. Opposite me lived a family of three. The hallway lights were dim, seemingly malfunctioning—I had meant to ask the property management to fix them, but kept forgetting.

“Li Yuze,” a voice whispered softly.

Too familiar. That shadow… far too familiar. I had already seen it countless times in my dreams.

And now… am I dreaming again?

I didn’t turn around. Somehow, I felt that as long as I didn’t look at him, I could protect myself.

I steadied my breathing and quickly inserted the key, twisting it to unlock the door.

I dashed inside, swinging the door shut…

“Slap!” A thin hand stopped the door, preventing it from closing.

My hand trembled from the impact. He pushed the door slightly open again.

We stood, silent, separated only by a door. Until I heard a soft, low sigh.

“Yuze…”

He stood before the door, his long frame filling the threshold. The space between us seemed impossibly small. I calmed the panic rising in my chest and finally looked at him.

That single glance froze me in place.

Behind him, the hallway was dark. The dim light barely illuminated him.

But he was no longer the boy I remembered. His Miao outfit was filthy, the original colors obscured. His arms were scraped, revealing pale skin. His cloth shoes were worn flat, with one toe comically exposed. The jingling ornaments that once adorned him were gone, even the silver hairpiece he often wore.

If not for his relatively clean face, I might have thought a homeless person stood before me.

Was this still the Miao boy from my memory?

While I was stunned, Shen Jianqing finally fully opened the door. The barrier between us was gone.

I instinctively wanted to step back but restrained myself. I told myself: here, he can’t do anything to me. This isn’t his Miao village; he doesn’t get to decide everything. If he tried anything, I could call for help. He couldn’t leave our community.

I no longer needed to fear him, right?

Shen Jianqing didn’t enter, only holding the door, stubbornly preventing me from shutting it.

Feeling a little steadier, I switched on the light.

Immediately, the brightness filled the space around us.

We remained silent for a long time, like two ridiculous statues. Finally, I gave in. “How did you find me?”

In terms of stubbornness, I would never beat him.

Shen Jianqing outside, disheveled and dusty, was answer enough.

He lowered his eyes to me, the same emotions and persistence in them as before. I suddenly remembered the day we parted: him collapsing on the ground, gritting his teeth, speaking harsh words.

I thought he would rush in to take revenge—but he didn’t. I thought he would speak terrible words again—but he didn’t.

“I missed you. Anpu told me you went home and that I shouldn’t bother you, but I couldn’t control myself… I missed you so much that I came myself.”

His face softened as he spoke, his tone careful and tentative, without the manic obsession from before.

He even reminded me of the boy I first met—thin but strong, without the protection of his parents.

Was that façade he had put on to deceive me?

But he no longer needed to deceive me.

I asked, “How did you find me?”

Shen Jianqing said nothing, only raising his hand. From the tattered sleeve of his clothes emerged a bright red figure.

The little red creature clung to the veins visible on his hand, lazily raising its forelimbs toward me. Its eyes, black as beans, shifted from me to Shen Jianqing.

“Xiangbao?” I immediately thought of the sachet that should have been tossed in the trash.

Shen Jianqing’s brow twitched, a fleeting look of surprise crossing his face. Just as I thought I had guessed wrong, he continued, “Yuze, why did you keep the sachet I gave you—even after you knew what it meant?”

The answer seemed obvious.

I turned my head and didn’t answer.

Shen Jianqing didn’t insist. He muttered, “Yuze, my legs have hurt so much on the way here. Can I come in and sit for a while?”

His tattered clothes made it hard to imagine how he had come all this way.

The highway from Dongjiang to Yancheng stretches over three hundred kilometers. Without any identification, he couldn’t take any form of transportation… so he had walked all this way, guided only by the little red creature?

A feeling unlike anything I had ever experienced surged in my chest.

Seeing that I still hadn’t moved, he added, “The world outside is so strange, so hard to navigate. Honghong kept leading me in circles. Luckily, I met good people. After I ran out of the rations I brought, I traded the useless collars and chains I had on for food. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have made it here.”

So he had traded his silver ornaments for food?

He really had met “good people.”

“And the stilted buildings around here are so tall. That thing called a ‘car’ is so fast, faster than the river under the stone arch bridge—I nearly got hit…”

“Stop!” I interrupted him sharply.

Shen Jianqing stood at the door, filthy like a stray little dog. “Can I come in?”

I sighed inwardly and stepped aside.

For the first time, Shen Jianqing smiled, walking in openly and without pretense.

I noticed then that he carried a cylindrical object wrapped in cloth on his shoulder. He carefully placed it down, as if worried it might be damaged.

Despite his tattered state, the cloth covering was intact. Curiosity piqued, I wondered what was inside.

He set it on the table, looking around the room with a childlike wonder. “So this is how your home differs from my stilt house.”

I pointed at the package. “What’s in here?”

Shen Jianqing unwrapped it, revealing a perfectly sealed bamboo tube. He took it out and handed it to me.

“What is this?” I asked cautiously, not taking it.

Shen Jianqing said, “Yuze, does your leg still hurt?”

I froze.

I realized what was inside.

Shen Jianqing opened the bamboo tube, releasing a rich, sweet aroma of liquor.

“You actually…” I stared at him dumbfounded, as if struck by an invisible hammer. A dull pain bloomed in my chest, gradually spreading through my body.

Inside the bamboo tube was the wine infused with herbs he had risked everything to collect before.

Shen Jianqing’s expression was calm and earnest, as if this were nothing more than a trivial task.

My vision blurred, mist rising in my eyes.

A complex, overwhelming feeling surged from my chest.

At that moment, I felt an urge to cry uncontrollably.

I had once thought Shen Jianqing’s feelings for me were nothing more than possessiveness and obsessive desire. The more unattainable something is, the more the heart stirs.

He had confessed to me countless times, yet I never believed it. He was just a child, not fully grown—how could he speak of love?

People are always capricious. Words of affection in youth may fade in a few years.

Moreover, Shen Jianqing’s personality was peculiar and obsessive. I dared not gamble on what kind of love he truly felt.

Better not to believe at all than to gain and lose.

I admitted it: I had always been starved for love. Love had always felt distant to me. I had long since learned to grow up alone, to live alone. I had even convinced myself that I didn’t truly need it.

But now, I could feel it clearly—someone truly loved me. Perhaps obsessively, but undeniably.

To be deeply loved by someone, across miles and hardship, feels like this.

Yet it seemed there were still many barriers between us.

Shen Jianqing suddenly said, “Yuze, actually, on the way here, I wanted to bring you back.”

My heart jolted, waiting for what he would say next.

“But along the way, I saw so many things, thought about so many things,” he continued earnestly. “I used to live only in our small Miao village, and when I left, I only went to another Miao village. I thought the world was just one village after another. But after I really went out, I realized the world you’ve been chasing is like this. The world my father has always longed for is like this.”

As he spoke, he moved closer. I didn’t move away; I just listened silently.

“The world outside is truly amazing, beyond anything I could have seen in my dreams. I’ve met so many people along the way, more than in the Miao village. And suddenly, I understood something. When I was young, Ama would always say it was Dad who wanted to run wild, that he was sick. But now I think, Dad was never sick—his pursuit of freedom and the world he wanted wasn’t an illness. If anything, the sickness was Ama’s.”

If Shen Siyuan could hear these words, perhaps he would feel comforted.

Shen Jianqing seemed very different from before.

“If you can really think like that, your father would be happy too,” I said.

Shen Jianqing asked, “Yuze… do you still hate me?”

Hate him? Of course.

But that hatred had long since lost its simplicity.

Seeing that I didn’t answer, Shen Jianqing said quietly, almost forlornly, “I’ll leave. Don’t worry—I won’t do those things I did before. Don’t be afraid of me.”

His lowered eyes and submissive posture made him look even more like a stray dog abandoned by its owner.

I couldn’t help but soften. “You can stay here for the night,” I said.

He had no money, no ID; if he left, he’d be out on the streets.

Shen Jianqing’s eyelids lifted slightly, the red mole on his right eye flickering in and out of view. A trace of a smile flashed across his face—I wasn’t sure if I had seen it correctly.