The fog dissipated
Only three days have passed since the incident, and Xinghua's public relations and legal departments have quickly and decisively reversed the tide. However, Yang Tieshuan's photos are everywhere on the internet, and Lu Chenyang is not immune either. Even though the person in the photo looks old and has a burn scar that spreads from his neck to his left cheek, he can still vaguely make out some resemblance to himself.
This became his anchor. In his dream, he returned to the door that he could never open. The air was no longer thick, but stagnant as ice. The dark brown door still stood in the dim light, but the chilling barking outside had disappeared, replaced by an even more unsettling deathly silence.
He remained motionless, rooted to the spot. But this time, the faint, painful whimpers from behind the door were gone. Instead, a small, urgent voice peeked through the crack in the door, clear as if right next to his ear: "Go... Yangyang, go!" The voice belonged to a little boy, low and filled with urgency and fear, "Go! Don't look back!"
Lu Chenyang lay on the bed covered in cold sweat, groping for the cold pillow beside him with one hand, repeatedly reliving the dream he had just had.
He took out his phone, opened Yu Sheng's WeChat chat, and typed: 'Sheng, that door isn't open, but the voice inside has changed. Remember the little boy I told you about? He told me to hurry.'
Staring at the dense green message boxes on his phone, he swiped his finger up for a long time before finally seeing the last message Yu Sheng had sent him a long time ago: "Buy two boxes of condoms when you come back, we're out." [Image of a cat drooling]
Lu Chenyang stared at those words for a long time, and finally his lips curled into a bitter smile. He silently replied in his heart: Okay.
Then, after thinking for a moment, she typed and sent another message that went unanswered: 'I've almost finished preparing your birthday present; I'm sure you'll like it.'
*
It was eight o'clock in the evening, and the city lights were just coming on. Lu Chenyang had just come out of the advertising studio and was about to go home when he suddenly changed the address for Ajiang, who was driving.
"Go to XX Club in the south of the city."
Just as Ajiang was about to offer some advice, he thought that Lu Chenyang had been living a very stressful life lately, and it wouldn't hurt for him to relax a bit, so he said goodbye and turned the steering wheel to head south of the city.
Despite it being the transition season between June and July, Lu Chenyang felt no warmth whatsoever. He sat in the back row, tapping on the text message that had arrived half an hour earlier to confirm the address. Even though he had read the anonymous message countless times and couldn't possibly have misremembered it.
—'The XX Club in the south of the city—you'll never know how your mother died if you don't come.'
Amidst the decadent revelry and debauchery, the dazzling neon signs shone through the car window onto Lu Chenyang's face, like the tempting jaws of a beast, waiting for him to enter and then swallow him whole, leaving no blood or bones behind.
About eight or nine months ago, Chen Yi had chosen this place as the meeting place in order to terminate his contract with his former company. Now, the same thing is happening again.
Just like last time, he rolled down the car window a crack, lit a cigarette, but didn't smoke it.
The tobacco burned slowly in the silence, as if counting down for him. He could guess who the sender was, and he knew all too well how risky this journey was.
But what can he do?
That dilapidated courtyard, the piercing barking of dogs, the muffled whimpers from inside the door, and that dark brown wooden door that he could never open... these fragments gnawed at him day after day for seven years.
The lost memories weren't like blank spaces, but rather like a thick, ominous fog that constantly shrouded him. Whenever he tried to focus and see clearly, the fog would dissipate, leaving only some blurry outlines.
Now, the mist seemed to have finally coalesced into the concrete building before him. Even if it was a trap set by someone else, he had no way out but to close his eyes and jump down.
A sudden burning pain shot through my fingertips; the cigarette had burned out, and ashes were falling in a flurry.
Accompanying the pain was a sharp chill. Having wandered in the fog for too long, when the truth suddenly came close at hand, he lost the courage to judge good or bad fortune.
He recalled Bai Hua's warning: "Memory loss is your brain's self-protective mechanism. When the mind suffers unbearable and devastating trauma, it will block out the source of stimulation before consciousness does. Forcibly stimulating recovery is like prying open a welded-together safe; no one knows if it contains the answer or an even more terrible disaster."
Hesitating in front of the private room, an indescribable heaviness made it hard for him to breathe. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, the cold sweat seeping from his palms making the phone slippery and sticky, almost causing it to slip from his hand and fall to the ground.
He hastily wiped the sweat from his hands on the hem of his shirt, opened the familiar chat window, and typed a line: "Find a safe anchor for myself, a prayer."
"Ah Sheng, that door... I might really have to push it open."
...
The smoke was pungent. Yang Tieshuan puffed on his cigar, his posture crude, yet he insisted on putting on a self-important air.
"I heard that all you rich people like this stuff?" He stretched his neck to hold the cigar between his fingers, exhaling a cloud of foul smoke. "I'm telling you, kid, now that you've made a lot of money and become so capable, you think you can completely ignore your old man?"
Lu Chenyang remained standing at the entrance, unwilling to take a single step inside.
His guess was correct; the sender was indeed Yang Tieshuan.
This man in his sixties, with his legs crossed, sank casually into an expensive leather sofa. The way he smoked a cigar accentuated the burn scars on his face, making him look like a toad trying to pass himself off as a golden toad—comical and ugly.
Disgust. That was Lu Chenyang's only feeling, an overwhelming nausea. For a moment, he even felt a sense of retreat he had never experienced before.
He probably doesn't want to know the truth about those seven years.
He couldn't imagine that he had ever lived with such a person, or even... called such a person "Dad".
"Lu, Chen, Yang." Yang Tieshuan clicked his tongue at the name, then spat viciously to the side, "What a load of rubbish! And it even takes that short-lived woman's surname! Your name is Yang Tianhu! Did you hear me? It takes my surname!"
A sudden, uncontrollable fear surged within Lu Chenyang, gripping his heart. It wasn't fear of the person, but fear of the truth this person was about to reveal.
His maternal grandmother never mentioned his father. If asked, she would say he was dead, gone, and she didn't know anything about him. She only told him that his mother, Lu Yaqing, died of illness, and that he was abducted from the hospital at birth.
This deliberate avoidance had aroused his suspicions, and now, Yang Tieshuan's words confirmed it: his mother's death was definitely related to the person in front of him.
"How...did my mother die?" Lu Chenyang heard his own voice was frighteningly dry, and a bitter taste was stuck in his throat, unable to be swallowed or spat out.
Yang Tieshuan finally reluctantly removed the cigar from between his yellowed teeth, letting out two cold laughs, the wrinkles on his old face trembling uglyly with each laugh. He suddenly coughed, patting his chest, as if recounting an extremely amusing incident, "I say, you haven't really forgotten, have you? Your mother—she's a hanged ghost! Didn't you see her as soon as you opened the door? Those two legs dangling there, huh? You've forgotten all that?"
With a sudden "buzz," all sound in Lu Chenyang's world vanished, replaced by a sharp ringing in his ears. Cold sweat instantly soaked his back, trickling down his temples and making his cheeks itch maddeningly.
The scene before them began to distort and spin. Yang Tieshuan's hideous face seemed to melt into a black vortex, leaving only his gaping mouth, which became huge and ferocious, as if it wanted to chew him up and devour him.
What is that...swaying...blurry...?
A faded image suddenly flashed into my mind.
In the dim light, a pair of feet wearing old-fashioned cloth shoes dangled slightly in the air... against a backdrop of dark earthen walls and roof beams...
...A creaking...a teeth-grinding sound... ...a crack in the door...a narrow crack...he seemed to be looking at something through it...
...cold...biting cold...and a fear that's stuck in my throat...
...Yangyang, Yangyang, don't look... A warm hand, a slender wrist, blocked...
...Yangyang, come on... It's that same voice again... Listen to me, hurry up...
"...Yang Tianhu! I'm talking to you! Did you hear me!" Yang Tieshuan's loud shout seemed to come from deep water, muffled, as if separated by a thick membrane.
Lu Chenyang didn't react at all. He just stood there stiffly, his face as pale as paper, his pupils unfocused, as if his soul had been ripped out and trapped behind that dark brown wooden door that had never truly been opened.
"Damn it!" Yang Tieshuan spat when he saw his absent-minded look, clearly losing his patience. He grabbed a brown paper envelope from beside him and flung its contents out.
A dozen or so photos were scattered across the carpet like petals falling from the sky.
"Look! Look closely!" Yang Tieshuan pointed at the photos, his voice filled with malicious smugness. "Although these aren't your precious big star, you two are brothers born of the same father! Don't they look like you? Hmm? Guess what people will think if I spread these 'good stuff' around and say that you, the big star Lu, were played with by men when you were a kid? Will your gilded future still be intact?!"
"If you know what's good for you, I'll give you thirty million. If you keep your father happy, maybe I won't let anyone else see it." Yang Tieshuan put the half-smoked cigar back in his mouth, savoring the taste. "The internet is so great these days, isn't it? If this had happened back in the mountains of Y City, how could anyone have seen it so easily? Hey, I have to say, it's all thanks to that Yang Mazi. Oh dear, I went through so much trouble to find this photo, and Yang Mazi buried it under his tree. You tell me..."
The photos were scattered all over the floor, some of them quite disturbing. Lu Chenyang, completely deaf to Yang Tieshuan's incessant chatter, lowered his gaze slowly, finally fixing it on the jarring images. He reached out and picked up the one closest to him.
"Creak...creak...creak..." The door opened...
A round head peeked out, its hair disheveled, but it had a pair of large, dark eyes. It froze for a moment upon seeing him, then grabbed his collar and roared, "Didn't I tell you to leave? Why did you come back? Why did you come back? I told you not to come back, not to come back, not to come back! Get out of here..."
Lu Chenyang couldn't understand how this boy, who looked only eleven or twelve years old, could have such strength.
For some reason, he called out his name, "...Xingxing".
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