(This story takes place in a parallel universe, please do not map it to reality!)
(Main plot begins in Chapter 3)
In Beijing, inside a single-occupancy room at the finest hospital in the country, a suffocatingly heavy atmosphere hung in the air. A young man sat with a pale face, tears streaming uncontrollably from his eyes like a breached dam. He gripped the hands of the woman in the hospital bed tightly, terrified they might slip from his grasp.
The woman on the bed had long since lost all color in her face, looking utterly emaciated, her eyes clouded and devoid of any luster.
She forced her eyes open, every breath seeming to demand the entirety of her remaining strength.
"Brother, when Ruoruo is no longer by your side, you must take good care of yourself and eat on time," the woman on the bed said weakly.
"Silly girl, don't talk. You're going to get better," the man choked out, yet his words remained a steady, comforting reassurance as he reached out to gently stroke her hollow cheek.
The woman forced the faintest smile onto her face. Even on the verge of total exhaustion, she still wanted to comfort the man before her, unwilling to let him grieve too deeply.
"Brother, Ruoruo wants to sleep."
"Be a good girl, Ruoruo, go to sleep. Brother will stay right here with you and won't go anywhere."
The woman on the bed still clung to a forced smile. She wanted to raise her hand to touch the man's face just once more, to etch this face deeply into her memory forever.
"Beep, beep, beep, beep..."
Yet fate is rarely kind. In the end, her hand failed to reach the man's cheek once more. It dropped heavily to her side, and she closed her eyes forever.
A week later, inside a villa in Beijing.
The man sat on the bedroom floor, surrounded by memories of the moments he and the woman had shared in this very room. He couldn't even recall the period between the moment she closed her eyes and the present; moving like a walking corpse, he remembered nothing of taking her to be cremated, the funeral, or anything since.
Suddenly, a slender figure seemed to appear right before him. He reached out to grab it, only to find his hand passing straight through the phantom.
"Ruoruo, Ruoruo, don't go," the man muttered in a daze.
At that moment, the door was pushed open by an elderly woman looking to be around sixty years old. She walked slowly up to the man, holding a USB flash drive, and extended it toward him.
"Xiao Lai, this is what Ruoruo asked me to give you. She said there are things in here she wants to say to you."
The man froze, then took the flash drive.
Seeing the man's condition, the old woman felt a mixture of heartache and helplessness. Knowing he had to find his own way out of this darkness, she said nothing more and quietly withdrew.
After a long while, the man finally snapped out of his trance. He stood up, plugged the USB drive into the port by the head of the bed, and the projector screen slowly lowered.
Before any image appeared on the screen, a playful voice rang out:
"Brother."
The man raised his head in a daze and glanced at the screen, noticing there was still no picture.
The surround sound speakers in the room made the voice sound so real that Xu Lai instinctively looked around.
"Brother, where are you looking? Ruoruo is right here."
As if anticipating the man's every reaction, the voice seemed to predict his every move.
Immediately, the figure of a woman appeared on the screen.
Compared to her appearance in the hospital bed, the woman in the video was not quite as emaciated, though the signs of illness were already visible.
However, the woman in the video wore makeup, which somewhat masked her sickly appearance.
In the recording, the woman put on a cheerful, bubbly demeanor.
"Brother, have you been eating well these past few days? Did you disobey Ruoruo's orders?"
"Brother, you have to pull yourself together quickly. You still have to take Ruoruo to the places we promised—we're going to Qinghai-Tibet together, we're going to Tianya Haijiao together, and to so many, many other places."
"Brother, you made me a promise. Did you forget? Or do you not want to take Ruoruo anymore?" The woman in the video wore a feigned look of grievance.
"All right, Brother, hurry up and eat something, then get a good night's sleep. We're setting off tomorrow, heading to Qinghai-Tibet first. Oh yeah!"
Throughout the ten-minute video, the woman switched between acting spoiled and putting on a mock pout, every single word intended to help the man pull himself out of his grief.
Yet the more she did so, the more silently the man wept as he listened. For some reason, a full week had passed since the woman's passing, and he felt as though he had lost his voice entirely—even his crying was completely silent.
After a long time, he followed the instructions the woman left in the video, got up to eat a proper meal, took a thorough shower, and climbed into bed to fall into a deep sleep.
The next day, the man woke up early. Slinging his travel backpack over his shoulder, he went down to the garage, placed the pack on the backseat of his Mercedes-Benz G65, started the engine, and drove out of the garage.
Before leaving, he cast one last deep look back at the villa, his eyes holding the weight of a profound decision. Then he drove away, gradually disappearing into the horizon...
***
On October 15, 2002, as a gentle autumn breeze rustled past, a five-year-old boy looked out eagerly from the second-floor hallway window of Linlang Orphanage.
Wisps of hair fluttered across his forehead against the wind, his youthful face bearing a hint of undisguised handsomeness. Before long, a Xiali car drove down the road and came to a stop at the orphanage gates. Seeing the car arrive, the boy turned and bolted downstairs.
The Xiali stopped, and out stepped a little girl of about the same age as the boy, accompanied by a young couple who were clearly her parents. Smiles filled the faces of the entire family in a harmonious scene. The lively and adorable little girl held her mother's hand; her pretty mother cast an affectionate glance down at her, then looked at her beloved partner, her eyes brimming with sheer happiness that added a touch of warmth to the deepening autumn world.
Linlang Orphanage was named after Jiang Linlang, the son of the orphanage director, Xu Minghui. Director grandma was called Xu Minghui. Although all the children at the orphanage called the director "Granny," Xu Minghui was actually only forty years old. She had once been a middle school Chinese teacher in Jiangcheng, but ten years ago, her only son—then a middle schooler—passed away from an illness. Following this loss, Xu Minghui resigned from teaching and used her accumulated savings to open an orphanage.
Over the past decade, the number of children raised at Linlang Orphanage had long exceeded three digits. The wrinkles on Xu Minghui's face far surpassed those of other women her age, and her hair had turned gray prematurely, prompting the innocent children to affectionately call her Granny Xu.
Yet, as Jiangcheng's community service system continued to improve and various neighborhoods opened their own childcare facilities, Xu Minghui's orphanage had not taken in any new children for several years.
The little boy who had run downstairs to stand beside Xu Minghui and welcome the little girl's family was named Xu Lai. He was an orphan adopted by Xu Minghui in 1997. When she went to the hospital to pick up Xu Lai, Xu Minghui had met a young man in his early twenties who told her that this child also shared the surname Xu.
On the car ride back to the orphanage with Xu Lai, a gentle spring breeze brushed against his face, and Xu Lai laughed out loud for the very first time. Xu Lai was also the last child Xu Minghui ever brought to the orphanage.
"Sufang, you're here," Xu Minghui said with a beaming smile as she greeted the young woman walking toward her.
"Sister Xu, I just happened to have time today, and Ruoruo kept saying she missed you all, so I brought her over for a visit," Liu Sufang replied with a warm smile.
Her husband, Lin Tunan, who followed behind carrying an armful of fruits and snacks, chuckled and chimed in, "Sister Xu, Ruoruo has been pestering us every single day asking to see you."
Lin Ruoruo wore a mischievous expression. Ignoring her parents' chatter, she simply called out to Xu Minghui, "Granny, I'm taking Xu Lai to play!" before dashing straight over to Xu Lai and dragging him toward the playground inside the orphanage grounds.
The three adults exchanged amused smiles.
Lin Tunan was a respiratory physician at Jiangcheng's Yintan Hospital. After graduating from Jiangcheng University, he had gone straight to Yintan Hospital and was currently a highly sought-after young expert in respiratory medicine in Jiangcheng. Having published related professional academic papers in top domestic and international journals, he was the embodiment of a high-quality modern man.
For the past two years, he and his wife Liu Sufang had volunteered at Linlang Orphanage almost every single week—something they had been doing ever since their university days.
Two years ago, with the help of his family elders and his own savings from a few years of work, Lin Tunan had made a down payment on an apartment in Jiangcheng. Although the location was quite remote, they had finally established a home in the city. Moreover, Lin Tunan possessed a steady career and exceptional personal capability, leading the entire family to believe that their future would only grow brighter.
The orphanage run by Xu Minghui was less than two kilometers from Lin Ruoruo's home. In this area, which could practically be called the urban-rural fringe, running the orphanage allowed Xu Minghui to keep expenses much lower. Not long after moving into the neighborhood, the Lin family learned about Linlang Orphanage, and upon discovering the tireless devotion Xu Minghui poured into it, their frequency of volunteering increased significantly.
Xu Lai and Lin Ruoruo's very first meeting had taken place on New Year's Day in 2001. At that time, both of them were under four years old. While many memories from back then might have grown hazy, it did nothing to change the fact that the two had now become the closest of friends. Xu Lai's timid and withdrawn personality had gradually grown cheerful ever since he met Lin Ruoruo.
The smiles that constantly graced Lin Ruoruo's face healed the lonely orphan boy, giving Xu Lai his first true friend. In his heart, Lin Ruoruo was like a beam of light—the person, aside from Granny Minghui, who illuminated his world.
The recreational facilities at Linlang Orphanage were extremely simple: just a trampoline, one large and one small slide, and two seesaws. Lin Ruoruo took Xu Lai onto the trampoline, holding hands face-to-face as they bounced up and down together. Xu Lai worried that bouncing too high would cause Ruoruo to fall, so he only hopped lightly every time, never jumping very high. He always wanted to look out for her in every possible moment.
"Xu Lai, can't you jump higher?" Lin Ruoruo asked, wearing a displeased expression.
"Oh... okay," Xu Lai answered softly.
"Never mind, never mind, let's not play this anymore. You're such a coward."
"Come on, let's go play on the seesaw."
"Let's play on the slide, see who slides down faster!"
"I'll play on the big slide. You're a coward, so you play on the small one."
...
From start to finish, Lin Ruoruo did almost all the talking, while Xu Lai followed her every word with absolute obedience. Xu Lai thoroughly enjoyed the process; he just loved tagging along behind Lin Ruoruo.
In the dead of night, he would even stand by his bedside looking up at the starry sky, praying that he could see Lin Ruoruo every single day.
For Lin Ruoruo, although her family's commercial apartment complex wasn't exactly upscale, it still offered more playground equipment than Linlang Orphanage, and her parents occasionally took her to amusement parks. Yet, none of those times seemed as joyful as playing right here with Xu Lai.
The other children at the orphanage were already of school age, leaving no one else to join in their games, which allowed the two of them to lose themselves completely in play.
It wasn't until 4:30 in the PM that Lin Tunan and Liu Sufang finally took Lin Ruoruo back home. The two children parted with deep reluctance, and once Lin Ruoruo left, Xu Lai was once again plunged back into solitude.
Xu Minghui saw it all, feeling a quiet pang of sympathy. She knew all too well what a sensitive and thoughtful child Xu Lai was.
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