Chapter 8

Chapter 8

I began bringing Xiaoman home for the weekends.

On the first night, she stood in the living room holding her teddy bear and refused to go into the bedroom. I didn’t force her. I sat with her on the play mat and built blocks with her instead. She piled all the red blocks together and said that was the house where Mommy lived.

I asked, “Then where does Daddy live?”

She thought about it, then placed a gray block very far away.

“Here.”

I smiled, but my throat tightened.

After Xiaoman fell asleep, another message came from Fengli.

Xu Nanzhi: Did she put you very far away today? Don’t be sad. A child’s map changes slowly. You have to walk toward her before she’ll know the road is still there.

I sat on the play mat and, for the first time, I didn’t cry.

I opened the wooden box Nanzhi had left behind and read the letters she had written to Xiaoman, one by one. They weren’t tragic or grand. Some were even about trivial little things.

She taught Xiaoman how to pick sweet tangerines, how to refuse hugs she didn’t want, and how to put her feelings into words when she was sad. She said that if anyone ever told her, “Don’t overthink it,” she could tell them, “I’m not overthinking. I’m sad.”

In the letter meant for when Xiaoman turned ten, she mentioned me.

She wrote: Your dad isn’t a bad person, but sometimes he’s very dense. Dense people need clear instructions. If you want him to stay with you, just say, “Daddy, sit here.” Don’t be like Mommy and assume the people who love you should understand everything on their own.

When I read that, I laughed out loud.

After laughing, I pressed the letter to my forehead.

Even at the very end, Nanzhi had never written me as a bad person.

That hurt more than blame.

The moment I truly broke down came on an ordinary night of overtime.

That day, I happened to scroll past a short video that said phone maps remembered the places you wanted to go most. As if possessed, I opened my annual travel history.

First place: the company.

Second place: the old home in Wutongli.

Third place: Chengnan Cemetery.

I stared at those three locations and suddenly felt as if my life were one wrong route: from the place I had never made it home to in time, to the place where no one could ever wait for me again.

Just then, Fengli sent me a message.

Xu Nanzhi: Liang Yanzhou, I don’t think I can hold on much longer.

All the blood in my body went cold.

That wasn’t a preset gentle reminder.

That sentence sounded too much like the way she had spoken when she was alive. Too much like a certain night I had failed to catch.

I called her.

The number was out of service.

I emailed the address linked to the program’s backend. The message bounced back.

Like a madman, I ran out of the office. The elevator wouldn’t come, so I charged down from the twenty-seventh floor. The sound-activated lights woke to the pounding of my footsteps, lighting up floor by floor, then going dark floor by floor behind me. The stairwell was clearly wide, yet every step felt like I was stepping on the edge of a blade.

In the taxi, I called my mother-in-law.

After she listened, she was silent for a long time. “Yanzhou, today is the second anniversary of Nanzhi’s passing. Did you forget to take your medication again?”

I said, “She just sent me a message.”

My mother-in-law started crying.

“That was the program she left behind. It isn’t her coming back.”

I hung up.

I couldn’t listen.

Once I listened to the end, the home I had built out of messages would collapse.

When the car reached the entrance of Wutongli, the rain suddenly came down harder.

The security guard at the gate was new and didn’t recognize me. He stopped the car and asked who I was looking for. I said I was going home. He told me to register the building and apartment number. I was halfway through writing when I remembered that I had cut off the water and gas to that apartment long ago, leaving only the basic electricity and property management fees.

“You live alone?” the guard asked.

I said, “There are two of us.”

He looked up at me.

I slammed the pen down and rushed into the rain.

Half the streetlights in the old neighborhood were broken. In the puddles, the swaying shadows of plane trees were reflected back at me. I ran past the flower bed and saw that the corner where Nanzhi had fed stray cats back then had already been turned into parcel lockers. The world had moved on long ago. I was the only one still remembering it as it used to be.

The unit door wouldn’t open with a scan.

I searched all my pockets before remembering that my access card was in my old wallet. And inside that old wallet, the Crisis Card might still be there too.

In the end, an upstairs neighbor came down to throw out the trash and opened the door for me.

She recognized me and jumped in fright. “Xiao Liang? How did you get soaked like this?”

I asked her, “Have you seen Nanzhi come back?”

The expression on my neighbor’s face stiffened, little by little.

She didn’t answer. She only gripped the trash bag tighter.

I pushed past her as if I hadn’t heard that silence.