"Tingjun, let me tell you a story."
Qin Zheng smoked a cigarette and slowly recounted the past, his gaze becoming distant as he recalled the past.
"My father and mother were childhood sweethearts. They grew up together, went to school together, and joined the revolution together. But my mother had a bad fate. When she was about to give birth to me, the Japanese invaders launched a raid. The army had to move overnight. She was so pregnant that she couldn't follow the troops. She had to stay behind and hide. By staying, she saved her life."
"My mother died when I was only three days old. How could my father, a grown man, care for a baby? So I was fostered in a fellow villager's home until I was thirteen."
"When I was thirteen, my father finally retired from the army and was assigned to work in a special district in Pingyuan Province. His secondary job was to be a county magistrate, and his primary job was to suppress bandits. He even married an eighteen-year-old wife to become my stepmother."
"My stepmother is a good person. She treats me better than her own brother. Isn't that right? A thirteen-year-old bastard knows nothing. He's heartless and brainless. All he does every day is play. He's either making trouble or getting into trouble. He's never home except for eating and sleeping."
"The day before my sister was born, my father led his troops out to suppress bandits. Before he died, he specifically told me to stay home with my stepmother for the next few days. He said she could give birth at any time and told me to be smart and send someone to the hospital immediately if anything happened."
"I didn't take it seriously. The next day, my friends in the compound said they'd found a nest of wild ducks in the reeds by the lake and asked me to go pick up the eggs. Without a second thought, I followed them. I spent the whole day out having fun with them and didn't return home until it was almost dark."
"I went to my stepmother's house and there was no one there. I thought it was strange, so I ran out to look for her. The neighbor told me that my stepmother was about to give birth and had been sent to the hospital."
"When I went to the hospital, my stepmother had already given birth to a fair and tender little girl."
"I saw her. She was a tiny little ball, wrapped in a swaddle made of light blue rags. I reached out to touch her face and accidentally touched the corner of her mouth, and she would turn her head and try to lick my finger."
"In the blink of an eye, she disappeared."
Having said this, Qin Zheng paused.
His eyes were somewhat dull, tears welled up in his scarlet eyes. He stared blankly at a certain spot in the void, and did not speak for a long while.
The cigarette on his fingertips burned out, and his fingers were burned by the hot temperature. Only then did Qin Zheng come to his senses.
He threw the cigarette butt down, stepped on it with his toes and crushed it hard before continuing.
"I still don't know how it happened that day. No one was negligent, yet someone just took my little sister away so easily."
"My little sister was very well-behaved. She gave my stepmother almost no pain when she was born. That's why she was still conscious after giving birth."
"She wasn't asleep. She was half-lying in bed talking to the nanny we hired. Her little sister was sleeping in a small bed next to the big bed."
"A nurse said the newborn baby needed vaccinations, so a short-haired nurse called me to the doctor's office to get the vaccination booklet. After getting it, I ran into a friend from the hospital compound in the inpatient department. He asked me if I wanted to go to Nanhu Lake the next day. I said no, and he asked why not. I stopped to talk to him for a few minutes, which delayed my visit for a minute or two. When I got back to the ward, my little sister was gone."
"I asked my stepmother where my little sister was. She said the nurse took her to get vaccinated. She also asked me: Didn't you go out together? Why did I come alone? Why didn't you bring my little sister with you?"
As Qin Zheng spoke, the tears in his eyes could no longer be held back and poured down from the corners of his eyes.
He tugged at his stiff lips and gave a self-deprecating laugh. "I was like a fool back then. My little sister was gone, and I didn't realize anything was wrong. I even told my stepmother I didn't know, that my little sister was still sleeping in her crib when I was out, and I didn't know which nurse had taken her away for the vaccination."
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