Uncle Liu dragged a faint smile back onto his wrinkled face. “Back then, you were the one who bought this tree for Wanyun from the garden market. Your parents helped her plant it. Do you think I’ve gotten dementia in my old age? I still remember everything.”
“That’s right,” someone else chimed in. “Xiao-Xie, we’ve lived together for almost twenty years, how could we not know what sort of person you are, and what sort of people your parents were? No matter what they’re saying out there, you and Xiao-Xue still have all us neighbors. Don’t worry, okay? Go inside and get some rest. Wash up, you look exhausted.”
“Yeah, hurry and wash up. Your face is so gloomy. Aah, if your parents were alive to see it, they’d be dying of heartbreak…”
Xie Xue raised her head from within Xie Qingcheng’s arms and looked tearfully at everyone around them. Then, unable to bear it any longer, she buried her face in her brother’s chest again and started sobbing loudly.
After thanking everyone and apologizing profusely, Xie Qingcheng brought Xie Xue back inside their house. Chen Man and Auntie Li followed them in.
From the inside, the paint on the windows looked even more like streaks of blood left behind by a sinister set of claws. Xie Qingcheng had no words.
“Xie-ge, don’t worry too much,” Chen Man said. “These people are like a swarm of locusts; they’ll be gone before you know it. They’re just looking for trouble, and I’ve asked my colleagues to settle things with them one by one. The police will stay here at Moyu Alley for the next few days, so there won’t be any more problems…”
Xie Qingcheng coughed softly. His whole body was aching and burning with fever, and he was barely hanging on through sheer force of will. The dim lighting inside the room was the only reason no one could tell he was clearly ill.
He tapped out a cigarette and was about to light it when he caught sight of Auntie Li. He put the lighter back down again without saying anything.
“Ge, what are we supposed to do now…”
“Xiao-Xie, was there some sort of misunderstanding about the matter with Professor Qin back then? You…you mentioned him a few times before and always spoke highly of him. When you said those things, you must have… You must have had a reason.” Auntie Li wiped her tears. “Can you think of a way to explain this to everyone? Hmm? Then those people will stop chasing after you and giving you a hard time…”
Xie Qingcheng remained silent.
After a beat, Auntie Li urged, “Xiao-Xie, say something.”
Outside, the darkness of the long night was oppressively heavy.
Inside, the people closest to him were right by his side.
Xie Qingcheng’s trembling fingers fiddled unconsciously with his steel lighter, igniting it, then putting it out, then igniting it, and then putting it out again…
Finally, he tossed the lighter to the side again and closed his eyes. Although his voice was hoarse from exhaustion, it was resolute and unyielding. “There wasn’t any reason.”
It was Auntie Li’s turn to be dumbfounded.
“No one has accused me falsely. I said it and I meant it. I truly couldn’t accept the ridiculous things that Qin Ciyan did. My attitude had changed by then, and my relationship with him wasn’t very good either. I said those words on a moment’s impulse when I was lacking in judgment.”
“But Ge—” Xie Xue spoke up.
“I’m not perfect, Xie Xue. Your brother is an ordinary person—there are times when I get scared and worried. You were still so young back then, and I saw him get murdered right in front of my eyes. There was no way I could keep on working in the healthcare system… I got scared, so I quit. That’s what happened.”
A lengthy silence followed.
When Xie Xue spoke again, her voice sounded like a kitten’s helpless mewl. “Ge, can’t you be honest, even with us?”
Xie Qingcheng spent a long time lost in thought, with specters from the past seeming to flash across his field of vision. Eventually, he closed his eyes, lowered his head, and gathered his hands together, pressing them between his brows. He said softly, “What I said is the truth. I’m sorry… I’ve disappointed you all.”
And so that conversation ultimately concluded with a drawn-out silence. Everyone in the room listening to him knew very well that Xie Qingcheng was stubborn to a fault.
“There’s thirty thousand yuan on this card,” Xie Qingcheng said at last. “Auntie Li, please take it. We still need to compensate the neighbors for their damaged property, even if they said that there’s no need. If not for me, they wouldn’t have been drawn into this mess. I’ll think of ways to take care of anything that’s left. Please stay at home and don’t worry about it.”
“Xiao-Xie…”
Xie Qingcheng had the exact same peach-blossom eyes as his mother, Zhou Muying—and there was an identical flintiness in them as well.
Auntie Li’s heart twinged again.
An orphan abandoned at a temple, Li Miaoqing had worked as an escort in a Huzhou nightclub in her youth. As she waited upon those clients and attended to their needs, everyone called her a whore who stank between the legs. Once, when Zhou Muying was on assignment during a crackdown on the sex trade, she brought her in for questioning.
Back then, Li Miaoqing didn’t listen to anyone. She sat in the interrogation room with a cigarette she’d obtained from another police officer between her lips, unwilling to answer a single question.
Still, she said to Zhou Muying, “They said I’m just a whore who stinks between the legs. So what. You might’ve caught me, but I’m just going to turn around and keep selling myself—as if you can stop me!”