Ling Huanwu held her mother-in-law's gradually stiffening body tightly, as if she could snatch her back from the clutches of death.
The blood was still flowing, seeping into her fingernails, into the cracks in the ship's planks, and into the boundless darkness. It felt like a gaping hole had been torn in her heart, one that she could never fill.
The ship continued forward, cutting through the deep blue waves, carrying her shattered heart towards the direction of the hospital.
But she knew that her world, in that very instant, with her mother-in-law's last faint "Huan...", had sunk into this cold sea.
A sudden downpour began in the sky above the sea, the rain mingling with tears, salty and bitter.
Ling Huanwu's cries echoed across the vast sea, only to be shattered by the crashing waves and vanish into the air above the entire sea.
*
The night, like cotton wool soaked in ink, pressed heavily on the small window of the interrogation room.
Zhou Jiuzhen sat on the hard bed, the back of his neck against the cold wall.
The interrogator's voice was still ringing in his ears. He should have been on edge as usual, refuting the repeated questions and the pieced-together "evidence," but his fingertips were trembling inexplicably.
It started in the evening.
The cicadas outside the window suddenly stopped chirping.
A faint, almost imperceptible fragrance drifted through the air, much like the delicate scent of the old locust tree in my old home's courtyard when it was in bloom.
He looked up abruptly, thinking it was his imagination.
In this place where there are walls on all four sides, even the wind smells of rust.
But the feeling became clearer and clearer, like when he was eight years old and had memories of being in Stone Village, when his mother gently patted his back every night when he was afraid and couldn't sleep, one pat after another, with an undeniable comfort.
Zhou Jiuzhen felt a lump in his throat, as if something was blocking it. He wanted to say, "Mother, I'm fine," but he couldn't utter a sound.
It felt like there was a hole in my heart, and cold wind was rushing in.
He should have been angry, anxious, and trying to find evidence to convict Zhao Jingxiang and prove his innocence, but at this moment, all he could think about was the image of his mother sending him off to join the army.
She stood under the old locust tree at the village entrance, her white hair fluttering in the wind, but she kept smiling and waving, saying, "Mom is waiting for you to come back and eat locust flower cakes."
He hasn't seen his mother since he was taken away this time.
He felt guilty, imagining how worried she would be when she found out.
It was late at night, and the lights in the interrogation room shone a stark white.
Zhou Jiuzhen curled up and buried his face in his knees.
For some reason, my eyes welled up with tears.
He always felt that something very important had shattered somewhere he couldn't see.
Just like that year when he was seriously wounded on the battlefield, the last thing he thought of before he fell into a coma was his mother's face.
But this time was different. The panic came both quietly and violently, like a tide overflowing the embankment, silent yet chilling him to the bone.
He faced the wall and murmured "Mother" in a low voice. His voice echoed in the empty room, and even the echo carried an indescribable sense of grievance.
Unbeknownst to him, a small grave had been added to the coastal land of that seemingly endless island.
He had no idea that before his mother left, as she momentarily lost her senses and tumbled down the stairs, she kept murmuring his name.
*
Wantan Island.
The sea breeze carries a salty taste, swirling fragments of paper money into the distance like a flock of white butterflies, heading far away with the ship.
Wang Guihua's grave was chosen on a slope overlooking the dock, with the dark blue sea below.
Ling Huanwu knelt before the newly turned soil, her fingers stroking her mother-in-law's cold cheek, and tidied her forehead with the stray hairs one last time.
She gently slipped the navy blue cheongsam onto her mother-in-law.
That was the style of the cheongsam that her mother-in-law had seen in the city, and Ling Huanwu had it made based on that.
She had planned to give it to her mother-in-law on her birthday a long time ago, as a surprise.
But in the end, she was too late.
She gazed at her bloodless mother-in-law in the ice coffin.
She had only managed to sew on three buttons; she sewed the rest on overnight with thread of the same color. The stitches were a bit crooked, just like her trembling hands.
The fabric was indigo cotton cloth that she had asked someone to bring from Yuncheng. Her mother-in-law always said, "Why wear new clothes when you're old?" But when she was cutting the cloth, she secretly touched the texture of the fabric several times, her eyes shining like stars.
“Mother, look, it fits perfectly.” Ling Huanwu’s voice broke in the wind, tinged with sobs. “You always said that you never wore anything decent when you were young. This time, let’s go looking beautiful, so we can be respectable over there.”
The hem of the cheongsam hung on the straw mat, swaying gently in the sea breeze.
The bottom of the slope was crowded with people, all of whom were villagers from the island.
Aunt Gao wiped away her tears, muttering, "Guihua had endured so much hardship in her life, but she left us so suddenly."
Uncle Zhang, who works as a fisherman, said with red eyes, "I ate the seaweed cakes she gave me the other day."
Even Aunt Liu, who always bickers with her mother-in-law, was squatting on the ground, her shoulders twitching.
Ling Huanwu fastened the last button, her fingertips touching her mother-in-law's cold neck. Suddenly, she couldn't hold back any longer and burst into tears in front of the grave.
She remembered her mother-in-law nagging her about being too thin, how she always stuffed the biggest flatbread from the oven into her hands, and the unspoken "So beautiful" she uttered as she touched the fabric of her cheongsam.
"Mother..." Her cries were torn apart by the sea wind, "Why didn't you wait for me to finish making the cheongsam?"
The cries from below the slope suddenly surged up, the men's sobs mingling with the women's whimpers, intertwined with the sound of waves crashing against the rocks.
Grandma Gao came over and draped an old cotton-padded coat over Ling Huanwu's shoulders, but her own tears fell onto the coat, leaving a small dark stain.
"Let your mother rest in peace," Aunt Gao said in a hoarse voice. "She knows you love her and that you made sure she was dressed very well."
Ling Huanwu raised her head and looked at the surging sea in the distance.
The wind lifted a corner of the cheongsam, making it look like a small flag.
She knew that her mother-in-law, wearing this unfinished and then finished cheongsam, had gone into the deep blue sea, listening to the cries that filled the island.
And in that salty wind, a longing was added, like the thread on a Chinese knot button, tightly binding the living and the departed together...
*
Back to the cooperative.
Listening to the rhythmic clatter of the sewing machine outside while sitting in her office, Ling Huanwu felt as if she were in a dream.
She opened the luggage her mother-in-law had stored in the military dormitory.
The nylon bag contained several sets of clothes that my mother-in-law had worn before she passed away, as well as the flatbreads that she had baked but never shared with everyone, which had gone cold, and a tin box with rusted edges.
Ling Huanwu opened the iron box.
Inside are Zhou Shuyao's award certificates from her childhood and letters Zhou Jiuzhen wrote to her during his years in the army.
At the very top is a faded black and white photograph.
The picture above shows a family of four.
The mother-in-law and father-in-law sat shoulder to shoulder.
The father-in-law held Zhou Shuyao in his arms.
The mother-in-law held Zhou Jiuzhen in her arms.
Because of the passage of time, the faces of the people in the photo are blurred and cannot be seen clearly.
Ling Huanwu picked up the photo and held it up to the sunlight, trying to see if the little boy in the photo looked like Commander Zhao's youngest son...
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