The Disappearing Assistant (Part 1) No one remembers me.
In the Internet age, as long as people live, they will leave traces.
It’s not like I haven’t investigated assistants before during employment background checks, but this is the first time I’ve done so much detail.
I brewed a pot of jasmine snow buds, slowly turned the pages, and read through them, as if I was also participating in my assistant's childhood.
…
Since childhood, the assistant has been what parents call "other people's children".
He is both good in character and academic performance, helpful, and handsome. All the clichés used to praise students in final evaluations can be perfectly applied to him.
His popularity can be traced back to kindergarten, when many children would let him act as their groom when playing house.
He has been the class monitor since he started primary school. In the eyes of both students and teachers, he is undoubtedly the best class monitor. The difficult problem of balancing the relationship between teachers and classmates that many class monitors are troubled by seems to be non-existent in front of him. Even the troublemakers in the class are subdued when they meet him.
He has shown many talents since he was young. He has won trophies in both the International Mathematical Olympiad and the Physics Competition. However, he has no plans to skip grades at this time. His loving parents once mentioned that they wanted him to experience a happy childhood like an ordinary child.
In the elementary school graduation photo, the eleven-year-old assistant smiled at the camera. At this moment, he was like an extremely sharp sword, with a face full of youthful vigor and brilliance.
The first turning point occurred when he was eleven years old.
He skipped a grade.
For the first time, he skipped three grades and went all the way to the fourth grade of junior high school. In the same year, he was admitted to a provincial key high school with extremely excellent grades, entered the rocket class, and accepted military management.
The second time, he skipped two grades and went straight to the third year of high school. At the age of thirteen, with the provincial top score in the college entrance examination, he was admitted to a top university in the country to study for both a bachelor's and a master's degree.
For a while, he became very famous.
Countless reporters came to interview this young genius, countless relatives and neighbors came to ask everything about this genius, and asked his parents for advice on educational methods.
However, at this time of fame, the assistant has become low-key. In the only photo, he smiles appropriately, but one can vaguely see his current shadow, where only the smile is seen, but not the smile.
The youthful drive, expectation and yearning for the future in his eyes disappeared.
Instead, there was a pair of eyes like an ancient well, seemingly clear but bottomless.
The second turning point occurred when he was sixteen years old.
He has been very low-key since he entered university, but no matter how low-key he is, the awards he keeps winning, his reputation as a young genius, and his constant visits to various colleges to take classes all mean that he is destined not to be too low-key.
It can be said that he grew up under the eyes of everyone.
However, at the age of sixteen, he began to slowly fade away.
Disappearance does not mean disappearance in the physical sense, but the disappearance of social relations.
The classmates forgot to invite him to the reunion, the instructor did not inform him when notifying the meeting, and there was one person missing when collecting the group fee but they could not find the person who was missing.
The senior student forgot who she had written the love confession letter to. When she saw the diary filled with love, she slapped her head and remembered the person but couldn't remember his face.
The junior who was looking for him to form a team to participate in the competition forgot his name, but only remembered that a talented senior had not responded yet. He asked people around him, but no one could remember who he was looking for. He had to change teammates, but he did not notice that in the WeChat dialog box that was suppressed by the message, someone replied to him with "OK".
It was as if there was an invisible eraser erasing everything about him.
Because of this, the information collected after that suddenly became less and shorter. Most of it was about what awards he had won and what scientific research projects he had participated in. But more information could no longer be collected.
Because no one remembered him, no one could provide the information that should be learned from others.
The detectives found his home. Even if others might not remember, his family must have remembered.
The assistant's father is a teacher, his mother is a doctor, and he has a younger brother who is four years younger than him. Compared to the healthy assistant, his younger brother is born weak, has a pale complexion, takes medicine all year round, and coughs from time to time.
But this home is very cozy and happy. The overall interior is decorated in warm colors. The sharp places are covered with soft fabrics. There are green plants on the windowsill and a vase with a bouquet of flowers on the table. The petals are so beautiful that you can tell at a glance that they are changed every day.
The detective agency disguised themselves with different identities and approached the family quietly.
I have to say that this family has good character, no wonder they can raise such a brilliant teenage assistant.
The detective, disguised as a new neighbor, soon became close to the assistant's mother, who invited her to her home.
This home is warm and cozy, with photos of the family of three placed in many places.
Only behind the TV did the detective find a photo of a family of four.
The photo was covered in dust and looked out of place in this clean and tidy home.
The detective wiped the photo clean. In the photo, the two children stood in the front and the two parents stood in the back, all smiling brightly.
The assistant's mother came out with some fruit and saw the photo frame in the detective's hand. She smiled and asked, "You brought a photo? Is it a photo of your family?"
The detective realized something was wrong, and she handed the photo frame to the assistant mother, "I'm sorry, I moved your things without your permission. I saw this behind the TV, and I found it was dusty, so I took it out and cleaned it."
The detective carefully observed the assistant's mother's expression, and saw that her face showed an expression between thinking and confusion, which eventually turned into trance.
"Yes, I remember now. This is a photo of my family. I couldn't find it for a long time. I didn't expect it to be behind the TV."
The detective probed carefully, "Is this child your eldest son? I don't think I've seen him before?"
The assistant mother wiped the photo frame unconsciously over and over again, even though the frame had already been wiped clean and spotless.
"Yes, this is my eldest son. He...went to a big city to work."
Afterwards, the detective did not ask anything else from the assistant's mother.
The assistant described by his mother is helpful, has good character and academic performance, and has been outstanding since childhood, but these are more like an official setting rather than a mother's memories of her son.
In the subsequent conversation, the assistant mother was frequently distracted, as if she was thinking or confused.
It was like a stranger claiming to be her son suddenly broke into her life, or like she realized after a long time that an important person was missing in the family she thought was complete.
So, not long after, the assistant mother sent the detective away with apologetic feelings.
The detective waited at home, and after a while, he saw the assistant's mother hurriedly running out of the house with a bank card in her hand.
She went to the bank and stared at the balance in her bank card.
She did not forget that she had a son. She always remembered him, but for some reason, she always ignored him.
When she thought carefully about her past with her son, her memories after she was sixteen were so vague that only shadows remained.
It seemed like they hadn't been in touch for a long time.
One month? Two months? Half a year? Or a year?
She never took the initiative to contact her eldest son who was far away from home.
He was obviously her pride.
She opened the dialog box, but it was empty. Then she remembered that she had changed her mobile phone half a year ago, so there was no chat history left.
No calls, no messages, no text messages.
The money deposited into the bank card every month is enough to cover all the expenses of a family of three, and is also enough to support the expensive treatment of my frail and sick brother.
She and they knew clearly that the money was sent by their eldest son who lived far away in another place. But how come, month after month, year after year, they got used to the money sent every month and forgot who the money came from?
How could I forget?
The assistant's mother's eyes turned red without her realizing it. She frantically searched for her eldest son's phone number, but couldn't find it. She switched back to WeChat and tried to make a call.
But perhaps because he considered that his children should be at work at this time, he stopped making the WeChat call.
She wiped her tears, stood up, and went home, holding her phone tightly in her hand. The phone interface stayed on her assistant's WeChat page, and she walked like this all the way.
The detective followed her, watching all the way.
The ball kicked by the neighbor's little boy rolled to his feet. The child ran over with a clatter. The assistant mother put her phone back into her pocket, bent down and handed the ball to him, smiled at him gently, and continued on her way home.
The phone was never taken out again on the road afterwards.
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