The morning light danced along the gravel on the hiking trail. Mu Xinrong shook the screen of his mobile phone. The pop-up window of "50% travel expenses reimbursement" on the screen made his eyes shine.
Chao Youye, carrying her backpack, bumped his shoulder from behind. Her sports headband tucked her hair neatly away, revealing her sharp brow bones. "You're so lucky! You have to treat us to ginger tea from the top of the mountain later."
The laughter of the three people mixed with the morning dew and spread along the winding mountain road.
The higher they went, the more the clouds looked like crumpled cotton. When they stopped at a bend in the road, they saw the sea of clouds cascading over the opposite ridge like a waterfall, the milky white waves cascading into the deep valley with the sound of pine waves.
Ye Qingliu's sneakers stepped on the moss-covered rocks, and he was adjusting the angle of his phone with his fingertips when he was suddenly bumped by Mu Xinrong's elbow - Chao Youye was kneeling on one knee at the edge of the trail, picking up a wild azalea growing horizontally with a trekking pole.
The spots of light on the lavender petals shattered into stars in the viewfinder as he shook his wrist.
The incident occurred at the observation deck halfway up the mountain. The thin clouds that had been clinging to the sky suddenly solidified into lead blocks. A crack appeared in the southwest cloud layer, and silver-snake-like lightning flashed out. Mu Xinrong was just wiping his sweat off his face when the wind he touched with his fingertips was already tinged with the fishy scent of rain.
"Fuck!" He cursed at Youye, but before he could finish his words, raindrops as big as beans hit his headband.
As the three of them frantically stuffed their phones into their backpacks, Ye Qingliu suddenly pointed to the left side of the valley and said, "Look over there!"
The gray-black old house lay in the rain like a shed animal skeleton. The plaster on the exterior walls had peeled off, revealing the cracked blue bricks beneath. The window frames were dark, and the brass bells hanging from the eaves had long since lost their clappers, leaving only the iron rings that squeaked in the wind.
When Mu Xinrong stepped on the rotten leaves at the door, the sole of his shoe crushed half a broken tile, making a crisp sound.
The smell of rotten wood in the house was mixed with cobwebs and dust. Chao Youye took out a lighter and lit the emergency candle. The flame jumped twice, illuminating the peeling wallpaper on the wall - yellowed children's picture books could be vaguely seen underneath, and the smiling face of Winnie the Pooh was torn into pieces by insects.
"How can people live in this damn place?" Mu Xinrong used his hiking pole to pick up the spider web coming towards him. The spider silk shone with the luster of mother-of-pearl in the candlelight, sticking to the tip of the pole and swaying back and forth.
Ye Qingliu didn't say anything, his eyes were attracted by the stairs: the dark brown wooden steps were covered with half an inch of dust, but there was a faint drag mark extending from the corner to the second floor.
In the candlelight, Chao Youye's shadow swayed like a giant on the wall. He bent down to pick up half a biscuit box in the corner. The Mickey Mouse ears printed on the iron sheet were chipped, as if they had been bitten by something.
As Ye Qingliu ascended the stairs, the third wooden step groaned under the weight. The flashlight beam cut through the darkness, revealing a half-closed door at the end of the second-floor corridor. A faded sign hung on the doorframe, barely enough to make out the words "Children's Room."
The moment he pushed open the door, a gust of stale dust hit him in the face. He held his breath as a beam of light swept across the tilted wardrobe - the door was half open, and inside was hanging a white dress, the hem of the dress dragging on the ground, and the fabric was covered with brown mold spots.
The desk was close to the windowsill, and there were scratches of varying depths embedded in the wood grain. The most conspicuous one was a cross-shaped mark with dark red spots at the intersection.
When the flashlight swept across the table, Ye Qingliu's pupils suddenly shrank: the handwriting of "I hate him..." was faded, but it was written with deep force. The last period spread out a small ink stain, like a drop of dried blood.
The notebook was stuck in the gap between the legs of the table, and the hard cover was cracked into three pieces, revealing the yellowed pages inside. When Ye Qingliu squatted down, his knee pressed on a piece of broken glass, making a small crackling sound.
As he brushed off the dust, he noticed some crayon marks on the cover. Although the color had faded long ago, he could still make out a crooked little man holding a rabbit with missing ears.
Although they gradually disappeared with the passage of time, only a few traces can be barely seen.
The world of children is always full of childishness, but this diary is different. The cold words make it hard to believe that it came from a child.
[Friday, October 5, xxxxx
I... didn't write this because I wanted to write something. I just wanted to prove my existence and leave a tiny trace in this world. I can't walk, and it seems like it has been like this since I was born.
I realized that I was different from others, not only physically but also mentally. This was something only I discovered. The only person who took care of me was my tutor, whom I often called Teacher A.
I have never seen my father. My mother often stays alone in the study, and I have no idea what she does. She never cares about anything about me, but even so, she will satisfy all my needs and provide me with a high-quality material life, which I don’t want at all...
[Saturday, December 5, xxxxxx
So painful! Please free me from this oxidized world. I seem to have been maintaining the relationship between me and my mother. She said I was a very good child until that man came to my house. I called him C. After that, other strange faces always appeared in the house, one after another, in an endless cycle...
My condition is gradually worsening. My bones seem to be torn apart. The disease is corroding my fragile body. Maybe in the next second, or tomorrow, I will collapse.
I don't like those men, they look at me as if I were a plaything. I have a hunch, maybe I'm not sick, I just feel that I am sick... I may... never be able to escape from this cage...].
He noticed that in the paragraph of October 5, the four words "can't walk" were repeatedly crossed out, and the final period pierced through the back of the paper.
Ye Qingliu's fingers passed over the words "Tutor A Teacher" and suddenly noticed a small pattern in the corner of the page: in a square drawn with a ruler, "Mom" was written crookedly, but was crossed out by a thick black line.
In the text from December 5th, the letter "C" was heavily outlined, with traces of fingernails scratching around it. Next to the phrase "bones seem to be torn apart," there was a dark stain, like the shape of a dried water droplet.
Ye Qingliu turned to the last page of the notebook. The flashlight beam trembled, illuminating the last line: "If only I had never set foot in the human world, it would be fine."
The font suddenly became neat, each word looked like it had been measured with a ruler, and the period at the end was unusually round, like a wide-open eye.
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