After taking the children away, the group stopped at the leisure and entertainment area of the amusement park to buy some food.
Fortunately, the number of fingers Yu Renwan and Mu Wang collected on the first day was substantial, and combined with the clearance rewards everyone received, they didn’t have to worry about running out of game coins, even though there were no avenues to earn more today. The leftover coins were more than enough.
No one fretted about spending.
After a spell of picking and choosing, little Jiang Yan sat down at the waffle stall.
The freshly baked waffles were soft and fluffy, rich with the fragrance of milk, topped with cream and strawberries. Little Jiang Yan took a bite, then asked Jiang Yan what they had encountered in the haunted house.
Jiang Yan answered succinctly.
Since only Jiang Yan and Yu Renwan had been present at the time, the others were just as curious, gathering around of their own accord as though they were about to be told a story.
Although going through the experience was nerve-racking, worried that time would run out, the recounting went quickly.
It took no more than three or five minutes for Jiang Yan to go through it all. When she finished, she drank a sip of water.
“That’s how it was.”
Little Jiang Yan rested her chin in her hand, thinking for a moment, but found she had nothing to ask. So she just replied, “Oh.”
But Shen Xiaoxiao had a question, and seeing no one else speak up, she quickly raised her hand. “Sister Jiang Yan, I have a question!”
Jiang Yan lifted her gaze. “Go ahead.”
Shen Xiaoxiao immediately asked, “I wanted to ask about that pacemaker—why did you crank it to the max back then? Couldn’t you have just turned it off?”
“Making it explode by overloading it, was that meant to imply something about Liu Yitian’s life?”
Shen Xiaoxiao analyzed, “Always craving his mother’s love, crazed by the need for affection—when he died, it wasn’t because he stopped loving, but because he loved too much. He died at the moment he loved most!”
“—Was that the point?”
Jiang Yan shot her a glance.
Shen Xiaoxiao gazed at her earnestly. “Is it? Is it?”
After a moment, Jiang Yan replied placidly, “Perhaps.”
“The metaphor is pretty much as you said, but honestly, there was no need to think that much at the time.” Jiang Yan took the fries that little Jiang Yan had only eaten a bite of before handing over in disdain, and continued, “From the clues we’ve collected so far, it’s impossible to analyze the real personality and actual thoughts of Liu Yitian. Most are just our speculations, so making arbitrary judgments about how to operate the pacemaker isn’t reliable.”
“I pushed it all the way because there was a prompt.”
Jiang Yan explained, “There was a line of small characters engraved on the pacemaker, explaining how it worked: once pushed to the maximum, it would overload and explode after a short time.”
“That was clearly a hint, and the explosion fit Liu Yitian’s mental state, so I let it explode.”
Shen Xiaoxiao suddenly understood.
Night fell quickly. Although only a few hours had passed since they got up in the morning, under the cloak of night, everyone accepted the pace of time quite naturally.
After dinner, the group headed toward the hotel.
From the outside, the hotel was still as magnificent as a palace, still three stories tall, with each balcony crowded with dancing dolls—their faces beaming, voices sweet, and their cheerful greeting unchanged.
“The joys of childhood are my marrow… the pains of childhood are my nourishment…”
Amid laughter and music, they sang and danced.
Jiang Yan listened closely to the lyrics; the lines that once sounded like accounts of dismemberment began again—
“My skull is hidden beneath the filthy carpet, my ribs forgotten in the sewer, my skin and fur dance with the rats, I gaze at the burning clouds on the horizon, I gaze at the burning clouds on the horizon!!”
Amid the dolls’ waving arms, Jiang Yan entered the hotel, and the others followed, returning to their respective rooms.
As soon as she entered the hotel room, Shen Xiaoxiao collapsed onto the bed in exhaustion.
Perhaps she had overheard last night’s conversation, so little Xiaoxiao had seemed listless all day. She quietly put the wheelchair away, slowly walked to the bathroom to wash her face, then lay down beside Shen Xiaoxiao.
Jiang Yan, on the other hand, didn’t feel tired. After sitting for a while, she got up to search for clues.
The haunted house had already been cleared, and the full story couldn’t be hidden anymore. Jiang Yan thought for a moment, walked to the bathroom, and began examining the mirror above the sink.
Liu Yitian’s room had been hidden behind the bathroom mirror, so perhaps his storyline was concealed there as well.
But after a good while of searching, Jiang Yan found nothing like a hidden mechanism.
At that moment, little Jiang Yan came in.
She tipped her chin up to look at the mirror, understood what Jiang Yan was doing, and turned to help search. Three minutes later, the little girl glanced at Jiang Yan, then lazily pried out a white tile directly opposite the mirror.
“That wasn’t so hard.”
She fanned herself with the tile in her hand.
Jiang Yan chuckled, walked over, and looked down to see what was behind the tile.
Behind it was a thin piece of paper, covered in writing—the story was written in the first person, and the final line trailed off with a comma. In other words, the sheet’s content was incomplete; the rest was probably in the other two rooms.
Jiang Yan left the bathroom and picked up the phone on the desk.
By then, someone had already posted a photo in the group chat—it was Yu Renwan, and the photo showed the next segment of the story.
Jiang Yan immediately took a picture of what she’d found and sent it to the group as well.
Three minutes later, Mu Wang posted another photo in the chat. Zhao Kepu apologized, “It was hidden in the air conditioning unit. Took us ages to find—hope we’re not too late?”
“No, you’re in time.”
After Jiang Yan replied, she saved the two photos to her album, then compared them with her own copy as she began reading.
Liu Yitian’s story was neither too long nor too short.
Told entirely from Liu Yitian’s perspective, all of it unfolded through his eyes. He had no idea if he had ever been loved in his life, for no one had ever told him outright.
Shen Xiaoxiao, on the other side, also saw the updates in the group, and began reading instinctively.
“My name is Liu Yitian,” Shen Xiaoxiao read, “I’m a strange person—a boy whose name always makes people think I’m a girl.”
“I’m a boy. I was born into a strange family.”
Shen Xiaoxiao continued, “For as long as I can remember, I slept in a cramped room. As soon as Dad locked that thick door, no matter how much I cried or yelled, it was useless.”
“Their world was always so quiet; only my room had peeling walls.”
“But I wasn’t entirely pitiful. During the day, I could go out; I would roam around the house. Only on occasion would I run into my mother. She was the strangest person in the house—she actually treated a cat as her child and called her Tiantian.”
“I knew who Tiantian was—she was my sister who died young, the one I never got to meet. That’s what Dad told me.”
Shen Xiaoxiao carefully deciphered the crooked handwriting on the page, reading on, “But the cat wasn’t my sister. She’d been picked up by Mom from beside a trash can long before I was born.”
“She had a blessed life but never knew it—mischievous, possessive over food, never affectionate to humans, baring her teeth at everyone. She often left my mother’s hands bleeding, her arms covered with scratches. Dad said that was Mom’s own fault.”
“But Mom never said a word. She just cradled Tiantian like an infant, lowering her head to kiss its furry little head.”
“You’ve never experienced it—that sight made me so sad. I wanted to talk to Mom, to treat her wounds, I wanted to sleep by her side like I saw on TV, patting her back to help her fall asleep. But the moment I stepped forward, Mom turned and went back to her bedroom.”
“Mom never spoke to me. Not a single word.”
“I got used to it a long time ago, but for some reason, that time I stood outside her room and cried for ages. I cried until Mom came out, until I smiled in hope, until she passed by me, expressionless.”
“That year I was six. I still didn’t understand what hate was, but it had already begun.”
Shen Xiaoxiao paused at this point, looking at the second sheet, but she didn’t immediately continue. She waited a moment.
Finally, she resumed.
“I hated Tiantian, and I hated Mom a little too.”
Liu Yitian wrote on the page: “Not long after that day, Dad made me watch some strange videos. In them, cats screamed in agony, covered in blood, their innards spilling onto the floor. I was terrified, but Dad insisted I watch. He said if I were smarter, Tiantian would disappear and the love for Tiantian would go to me.”
“I desperately wanted that, so that night I snuck into Mom’s room. I lured the kitten into the living room and lifted it high. It struggled in my arms, clawed my hands, screeched piercingly. It hurt so much, but I couldn’t go through with it.”
“I guess I really wasn’t smart enough, so I couldn’t let go.”
“The stars that night were so bright. I put Tiantian back down on the floor and even petted her fur. She had a vengeful streak—immediately scratched my face as she turned to leave.”
“That should have been the end, a secret I’d keep—but in the middle of the night, Mom woke and found Tiantian gone. She stormed out, hair disheveled, and snatched the cat from by my feet. Then she started hitting me.”
“She took off her slippers and slapped my face over and over.”
“Again and again.”
“I nearly lost consciousness. My eyes were bloodshot, blood ran from both nostrils, clumps of my hair were yanked out, my scalp matted with blood—but no one cared.”
“Dad came out and blamed me, said I was cruel beyond my years. Mom tried to gouge out my eyes—she straddled me, and I could feel then how much she hated me. She must have hated me terribly, or why, even then, did she not utter a single word to me?”
“She was furious, and silent.”
“In the end, Dad stepped in to stop her. He picked me up and stuffed me back in my room—the tiny space where just a couple of steps took you to the end, so cramped that even turning around was hard.”
“Dad said he built that room to protect me, and now that was what he was doing. But I said nothing.”
“I felt as if I’d discovered a secret—a big secret.”
At this passage, Shen Xiaoxiao’s voice unconsciously grew soft, reading Liu Yitian’s words as though through a gulf of time, feeling the sorrow so keenly.
“My dad doesn’t love me either.”
She read, word for word: “I’m a child that no one loves.”
The story on the page unfolded rapidly—each brief sentence marked another day, a few more lines a whole year, a few pages spanned a lifetime.
But Liu Yitian’s life passed slowly—there were only three or four turning points.
Turning point one: when he realized his mother didn’t love him.
Turning point two: when he realized his father didn’t love him.
Turning point three: when his mother’s cousin came to visit.
Yang Shumei’s illness didn’t seem as severe as it looked. Barring that one night protecting the kitten, she was never violent or deranged. Most of the time, she could carry on a conversation, even seeming especially gentle.
She came from privilege; even though her parents had a terrible relationship and rarely cherished her, she worked hard, got into a top university, studied a good major.
She once had an excellent job and rose to a position fitting her talents. She should have made her parents proud, yet because she wasn’t interested in dating, her parents forced her into marriage. She hurriedly wed someone she didn’t love, tried to cultivate feelings after, came to like Liu Zhengxing over time, got pregnant, and thought her life was nearly perfect. But fate played a cruel prank.
She lost her first child, was locked in a room and raped, and bore a second.
Liu Yitian didn’t think his mother was ill—she saw him perfectly well, but chose to ignore him, to consciously overlook him.
Yang Shumei’s cousin had once been her closest friend, knew all about her life and her choices. When she visited this time, she saw Liu Yitian with a bruised, battered face and couldn’t help but try to persuade Yang Shumei.
Yang Shumei slammed the door and left, singing lullabies to Tiantian in the bedroom as if soothing the dearest baby.
The cousin could do nothing but call for Liu Yitian.
“You may be young, but you understand a little now. You can resent your mother,” she crouched down to speak to the young boy, “but don’t hate her too much, alright?”
“If she hadn’t suffered so much, she would have been a wonderful mother. If she’d had time to recover, if you had come later, if you had arrived in a different way, you might have had double the love.”
“It’s partly Sister Xiao Mei’s fault that you’re not the happiest child in the world—but not only her fault.”
“She’s not as much to blame as it seems.”
Liu Yitian half-understood. The cousin stayed to watch a movie with him that day, talking for hours, but Liu Yitian stayed silent, just watching the scenes flicker past.
On the screen, the mother wept pitifully after being attacked, tears streaming down her face. His own mother only grieved in silence.
Night fell, and the cousin had to leave. When Liu Yitian remained mute, she felt perhaps everything she had said had been in vain.
What child that young could grasp such messy feelings?
So, she said goodbye to the little boy. “I’ll come see you again.”
But then the boy lifted his head, and with solemn seriousness declared, “I understand.”
The woman looked surprised, but Liu Yitian’s tone was unwavering:
“I understand.”
“Mom’s suffering didn’t come from me, but it’s connected to me.”
His young voice carried unexpected weight.
“I kidnapped my mom.”
After that, the story grew gentler. Though Yang Shumei’s attitude toward the boy stayed the same, his attitude changed.
He began trailing after his mother, feeling the love she lavished on Tiantian, and casting himself in that role.
He remembered a sweet tale he heard once: every child chooses their mother carefully before being born. So surely he must have been touched by his mother’s love for Tiantian, and that’s why he came into the world.
If so, he wasn’t here to receive love.
He was here to witness it.
There was no place for him in this love; he was only a bystander to Xiao Mei and Tiantian’s bond. That love was so sad—sometimes, just watching it, he would want to cry.
In this way, Liu Yitian grew two years older.
Sometimes he felt something was wrong with himself, but he didn’t mind. Lying on his bed, he was often overcome by nameless sorrow, until his limbs grew stiff and he couldn’t move at all. Once, while he was trapped in this state, Liu Zhengxing noticed.
Liu Zhengxing thought there was something wrong with his body, so he took him to the hospital. The final diagnosis: mental illness.
The body paralysis brought on by overwhelming sadness.
Liu Zhengxing thought he was a disgrace, yanked him by the collar out of the hospital, flung him into the car like throwing away trash.
As he sat in the backseat, Liu Yitian asked why he’d been brought into the world.
Liu Zhengxing told him to straighten his attitude; as a child, he had no right to hate his parents.
“As long as half your blood is mine,” he said, “you owe me filial piety your entire life. Yang Shumei will never love you either.”
Liu Zhengxing kept staring at him in the rearview mirror; Liu Yitian rolled over, burying his face in the seat cushion.
Liu Zhengxing thought it meant obedience, but in fact, it was rebellion.
That night, Liu Yitian tried to kill himself.
The stars that night shone as brightly as they had two years ago, but this time there was no clawing cat—only his own injuries, and his mother’s silent rage.
He went to the kitchen and chose the prettiest knife—a little paring knife for fruit. He plunged it into his chest, blood pouring out in streams.
The first to find him was the kitten.
Then Yang Shumei, searching for her cat.
Yang Shumei looked at Liu Yitian, then, expressionless, bent down and picked up her cat. The boy before her eyes was crying, but she still turned and walked away.
In a haze, Liu Yitian felt his mother had something she wanted to say to him, so he reached for his chest, wanting to pull out the knife—as if, by pulling it, the blood could flow back into his body.
But he couldn’t move it; any attempt brought pain.
Minutes later, Liu Yitian lost consciousness completely. The woman who had been sitting in the living room returned to the kitchen.
Yang Shumei looked at the blood streaming across the floor, squatted slowly down, her face impossible to read, perhaps lacking any expression at all.
She stroked the little boy’s head:
“Tiantian.”