Chapter 881 Who is the child? A series of events that happened before had an impact on Xiaoyuer.

She started having trouble sleeping, sometimes waking up suddenly in the dark sobbing, mumbling that her dreams were filled with colorful candy wrappers flying everywhere, or that the aunt's face was veiled in mist and she couldn't see it clearly at all.

During the day, she was quieter than usual, like a frightened little sparrow, clinging tightly to Aunt Liu, and not wanting to stay in the room by herself.

Shen Mo was the first to keenly notice the changes in her daughter, 놅.

As a doctor, she understood that this was an anxiety reaction caused by a constantly tense atmosphere.

On a sunny afternoon, Shen Mo specially changed her shift and took Xiao Yu'er to the park to sketch, hoping that the open natural scenery would soothe the wrinkles in her heart.

Little Fish, holding her small drawing board, sat on the soft lawn, slowly applying colors to the children playing in the distance and the pigeons flying across the clear sky.

However, her paintbrush seemed to follow its own will, unknowingly sliding towards the park bench, the shadows behind the trees, and several blurry figures in different poses in the distance.

She drew a man with his hat brim pulled low and his profile obscured, sitting on a bench reading a newspaper, and also sketched a silhouette of a janitor in uniform holding a strangely shaped long pole.

After returning home, Xiaoyuer pasted the messy drawing on the wall of her room, where it blended in with the other brightly colored paintings and went unnoticed.

A few days later, in the evening, Gu Weimin and Li Xiangdong came to the Lu family for their regular communication.

After the business was finished, as Lu Qingyang saw them off at the door, Gu Weimin's gaze inadvertently swept over the drawings the children had pasted on the corridor wall.

"Dr. Lu, Gu Weimin paused slightly. Have the children been drawing lately?"

Lu Qingyang was slightly surprised and replied, "Xiaoyuer has always liked it, what's wrong?"

"May I take a look?"

Although Shen Mo had some doubts, she carefully took down several of Xiao Yu'er's recent paintings from the wall and laid them on the living room table, including the one of her sketches of the park.

Gu Weimin and Li Xiangdong did not approach; they simply stood a step away, their gazes calmly sweeping across the screen.

Their gazes soon fell on the sketch of the park, almost simultaneously.

Li Xiangdong pointed to the profile of the person reading the newspaper in the painting. The person's posture and the angle of the hat brim seemed a bit deliberate.

When you're truly relaxed reading the newspaper, your shoulders won't be hunched over like this.

He interprets people's attitudes almost as if they were his own.

Gu Weimin gently pointed his fingertip at the back of the cleaner holding the long pole. Large-scale pruning and maintenance of the park usually avoids the peak hours on weekends.

Moreover, the shape and proportions of this pole are not like those of common gardening tools. His voice was steady, yet it made Lu Qingyang and Chen Mo beside him feel a chill.

They then carefully examined Xiaoyuer's other recent paintings: a sketch of an unusual bicycle appearing in the corner of an alleyway, and a doodle depicting a view from a window at home, but with a blurry black dot in the distant sky.

Gu Weimin looked up: "It could be just a child's imagination or an unintentional stroke of the pen, but it could also be that she captured some very subtle anomalies that we have overlooked due to the inertia of our thinking."

When children are paying attention, they tend to focus on inconspicuous places.

“We need to borrow this park painting and return these two.”

"Also, if Xiaoyuer draws something else that feels similar or that makes her feel something is different, could you show it to us? Of course, try not to let her notice anything unusual, so as not to increase her psychological burden."

Shen Mo and Lu Qingyang exchanged a glance and nodded.

...

Taking advantage of the weekend, Fang Xiaojing decided to thoroughly tidy up the old five-drawer chest in her home that was used to store miscellaneous items.

The drawer was crammed with odds and ends: expired receipts, old photos, some stationery that was no longer in use, and old letters tied together with rubber bands.

Fang Xiaojing originally planned to categorize them, keeping what should be kept and discarding what should be discarded.

As she was sorting through a stack of documents in kraft paper envelopes, several remittance slips with different colors and formats slipped out.

At first, she didn't pay attention, because it was proof that Zhou Fang had sent money to her parents in her early years.

But when she casually picked up the top one and saw the recipient's information, her finger froze.

Recipient: Qiu He.

Remittance address: Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Shanghai University.

Remitter: Zhou Fang.

Amount: 5,000 yuan

Date: March 1985.

Her heart skipped a beat.

She then looked at the next few sheets. The remittances were made intermittently from 1985 to the end of 1986, with varying amounts, sometimes every few months, sometimes more frequently.

In addition to the remittance slip, there were two carefully folded pieces of paper tucked inside.

The letter paper had turned slightly yellow, and the edges were frayed.

Fang Xiaojing unfolded the letter. The handwriting was neat and tidy, typical of a girl's handwriting.

The first letter was dated earlier and expressed gratitude to Manager Zhou for his timely help, informing him that his mother's condition had improved and that he would study hard to repay the loan as soon as possible.

The second letter, dated autumn of 1986, had already begun to take on an ambiguous tone.

She took a deep breath and continued rummaging through the envelope.

There was no letter closer, but at the very bottom of the envelope, she touched a hard little corner.

Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a color photograph, which seems to have become popular only in the last year or two.

In the photo, a young woman is holding an infant in her arms, standing in what appears to be a park, smiling gently at the camera. The woman is Qiu He, who looks more mature than she did a few years ago, her eyes radiating the tenderness of motherhood.

On the back of the photo, a line of small print is written in pen: "A memento of Nannan's 100th day. April 1987."

April 1987. Just a few months earlier.

Fang Xiaojing held the photos and the stack of remittance slips, her fingers icy cold, leaving behind a numb blankness.

She sat blankly on the ground beside the pile of clutter. The afternoon sun was blinding, but she felt no warmth at all.

The other party has already had a child, but who is that child?

A terrible thought uncontrollably crept into her mind.

Every time Zhou Fang went to Haishi on a business trip, those days when she was too busy to make a phone call, and those days when she would occasionally feel absent-minded and tired after returning.

All the details seemed to be strung together by an invisible thread, pointing to an answer she didn't want to believe.

That evening, Zhou Fang dragged her tired body home.

He entered the room and habitually called out "Xiaojing," only to find the room unusually quiet, with only one light on.

Fang Xiaojing sat in the shadows of the living room, with remittance slips, old letters, and that glaring color photograph spread out on the small coffee table in front of her.

Zhou Fang's smile froze on her face, and her feet were rooted to the spot.

He saw what was on the table and his face turned deathly pale.

“Xiaojing, listen to my explanation…” His throat was dry, and his voice was hoarse.