Xi Caiqin's voice seemed to be squeezed out from the depths of her throat, choked with the taste of rust:
"He looked at me as if he were a stranger... The friendship we forged from the dead turned out to be so worthless."
She suddenly let out a shrill laugh:
"Ping An's last hope of survival is gone just like that."
Gu Zhenhua clenched his fists tightly, and the rain curtain outside the window blurred the outline of the military compound.
The military medals that once made him proud have now become branding irons that burn his skin. The smiling faces of his relatives when they asked him to do things for them and the envious eyes of his old comrades were all shattered into pieces by Fu Qixun's words "There are no exceptions before the law."
"I can't let the Gu family be completely destroyed."
He pushed the few pages in his hand in front of Xi Caiqin, his voice hoarse and cold:
"My relatives' children have to work, get married and have children, and my family back home still relies on me to establish my authority in the village..."
Xi Caiqin didn't understand what was going on, so she subconsciously picked it up. After just one glance, her expression changed drastically, and her voice became unusually sharp:
"You want to sever your father-daughter relationship with Ping An?"
Xi Caiqin suddenly jumped up, picked up the photo frame on the coffee table and smashed it to the ground.
Amidst the crisp sound of shattering glass, the photo of Gu Ping'an when he first joined the art troupe at the age of sixteen, his innocent smile was cut into countless sharp fragments.
"So you're going to push your daughter out yourself?"
Her voice was filled with uncontrollable anger and trembling:
"Gu Zhenhua, you keep saying you're doing this for the family, but now that something's happened, you want to just sit back and do nothing? Are you even human? She's your daughter! Is your future and reputation that important?"
Gu Zhenhua stood up suddenly, his eyes bloodshot:
"If I don't do this, what do you want me to do? Wait for the organization to investigate my crime of shielding my daughter? Watch my whole family go to hell with her?"
He took the severance statement and slammed it on the table, his pen drawing a ferocious arc on the paper:
"This has to be done this way. Sign this document and sacrifice her, but at least we can save the others!"
"Others?"
Xi Caiqin's nails dug deep into her palms, and blood oozed along the lines.
"You don't even care about your daughter! She's in jail awaiting execution, and you're trying to distance yourself from her?!"
She suddenly rushed over, grabbed the paper, and tore it into pieces under Gu Zhenhua's astonished gaze.
"You're tearing her heart out!"
The wind blew the scraps of paper onto Gu Zhenhua's face. He looked at his wife's desperate and painful expression, moved his lips, but ultimately said nothing.
He didn't want to do this, but the daughter he once held in the palm of his hand became the biggest stain on his career.
Xi Caiqin stayed awake all night, crying all night, and sat there until dawn.
The sycamore tree outside the window rustled in the morning breeze, as if mocking this crumbling family.
The fact that Gu Ping'an was a murderer could no longer be concealed. The neighbors who once envied her family's prosperity now looked at her with stinging eyes.
The way to save her daughter was completely cut off. She had been hiding at home these days and dared not go out. However, the picture of her daughter isolated and helpless in prison was like a steel needle that repeatedly pierced her heart.
I haven't visited her for a long time, I should go today.
Never go again...
Thinking of this, Xi Caiqin clenched the corner of her clothes and dug her nails deep into her palms until blood oozed out.
Gu Zhenhua was silent all night and went out at dawn. Xi Caiqin watched his straight but stiff back disappear at the door. She knew without asking that he had run into trouble again at the homes of his old comrades.
She opened the red lacquered wooden cabinet and ran her fingertips over a stiff navy blue polyester lapel jacket. This was the material Gu Ping'an had picked out with her at the supply and marketing cooperative last year. Ping'an's eyes lit up at the time:
"Mom, if you wear this when visiting the Fu family, I'm sure you'll outshine Aunt Xu!"
The fabric had a faint scent of camphor, but now it rubbed against my palms like sandpaper.
She deliberately changed into a white Dacron shirt that she had asked someone to bring back from Haicheng. The collar was ironed so that a chopstick could stand upright on it - she couldn't let Ping An see any trace of embarrassment, she had to make her feel that there was still hope.
When pinning on the plum blossom brooch, the needle tip suddenly pierced my fingertip.
Blood beads seeped onto the collar of the clothes, like an unopened red plum blossom.
She stared at the bloodstain in a daze, and vaguely saw Ping An as a child standing on tiptoe and pinning the brooch on her collar:
"When I grow up, I want my mother to wear gold and jade every day!"
Her body trembled involuntarily. She usually wore this outfit for formal occasions, but today she was wearing a brooch because she was going to meet her daughter who was handcuffed.
When Gu Zhenhua came back, raindrops from the brim of his military cap dripped onto the letter of severance of relations, and the smudged ink looked very much like the sarcasm on the lips of those people in the Political Department.
He reached out and straightened the crooked epaulettes, and the sound of the metal buckles colliding was particularly harsh - this man who never bowed his head in the midst of bullets and gunfire on the battlefield was now pushing his own daughter off the cliff in the most standard military posture.
Twenty years ago on the battlefield, he never cared whether his uniform was straight or not; but now, every wrinkle could become a handle for others to criticize.
The two looked at each other and said nothing.
He took out a neatly folded prison visit application from his pocket. The words "family of a murderer" on it made Xi Caiqin's eyes burn.
He picked up the briefcase and put it together with the letter of severance.
He rewrote it after Xi Caiqin tore it up, and just added the official seal of the Political Department.
As he walked back from the army, the look his comrades gave him was like a knife, cutting through his tense nerves.
No one asked him what happened, but he knew that everyone else knew.
He took out the letter of severance in front of everyone to let others see that he was organized and disciplined, and that at this time, sacrificing his relatives for the sake of justice could help him restore some dignity and face.
The couple arrived at the detention center in silence without any guards.
The iron door of the prison visiting room slowly opened with a harsh creaking sound.
Xi Caiqin's navy blue khaki jacket fluttered slightly in the wind, revealing crescent-shaped wrinkles at the corners of the jacket caused by fingernails.
The brooch on his clothes made Gu Ping'an squint his eyes.
The sunlight filtered through the iron bars, cutting out alternating light and dark stripes on Gu Ping'an's face, which looked very much like the shackles on her prison uniform.
Through the iron bars, Xi Caiqin saw Gu Ping'an wearing a gray prison uniform. His once long black hair was gone, cut into uneven short hair.
The moment she looked up, Xi Caiqin suddenly remembered the first time she had her pigtails. The sun was shining brightly at that time, and the red ribbon on the pigtails was brighter than the sunset.
Gu Ping'an leaned against the moldy wall, his nails unconsciously scratching the crooked words "Lin Zhao" on the wall.
There was no surprise or excitement at her arrival.
"Safety……"
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