The next day, Xie Tao went to the police station to give a statement, accompanied by her homeroom teacher, Liu Meiyu.
One was unconscious, while the other stood there, staring blankly. The situation was clear to everyone who rushed into the classroom at the time.
No matter how Zhao Yixuan argued, the incident appeared to be a violent event instigated by her.
The classroom’s surveillance was broken, and there was no other evidence, so the police only detained Zhao Yixuan for seven days.
However, when the police conducted a routine inspection in the school’s monitoring room, they discovered that the camera in Class 1-5, which was supposed to be out of order, had clearly recorded Zhao Yixuan beating Xie Tao and forcefully choking her on the ground.
Her motive was very clear.
Xie Tao wasn’t surprised when she heard about this.
She had known all along that the camera in the classroom was fixed by a mysterious boy with special abilities.
The footage of Zhao Yixuan fighting with her and even choking her was inserted into the camera by his unique methods.
Of course, all unnatural phenomena in the footage, including himself, were thoroughly erased.
He seemed to possess some ability to revisit the past.
Xie Tao felt that he knew a lot about her.
With the surveillance video, what was originally a minor juvenile fight escalated into a criminal case of suspected intentional harm.
Zhao Yixuan broke down crying on the spot, and her father fainted from the shock.
Xie Tao had never seen Zhao Yixuan cry like this before.
Often, she didn’t regard Zhao Yixuan as a peer.
“Xie Tao, Xie Tao, I didn’t mean to choke you to death, please tell them, tell them I didn’t mean to harm you…” Zhao Yixuan struggled to approach Xie Tao but was held down in her chair by two policewomen.
At that moment, the swollen eyes that looked at Xie Tao were filled with cautious hope.
“Do you feel wronged?”
Xie Tao looked at her calmly and suddenly said.
A person used to being the aggressor, adept at building her joy on others’ pain, might never understand how much damage her actions could cause others.
Zhao Yixuan broke down screaming, “I didn’t mean to harm you, I didn’t! Xie Tao, please tell them!”
She still hadn’t grasped what exactly happened at the time.
She was also shocked beyond belief when she saw the surveillance footage.
She didn’t remember choking Xie Tao at all.
Xie Tao didn’t want to listen to Zhao Yixuan anymore. Supported by Liu Meiyu, she turned and walked towards the exit of the police station.
“Xie Tao!”
This was the voice of Zhao Yixuan’s father.
He didn’t know when he had woken up.
When Xie Tao turned around, she saw the middle-aged man quickly walking up to her and grabbing one of her hands.
That face, older-looking than his peers with many more wrinkles and weathered by the vicissitudes of life, wore an expression of intense anxiety.
“Uncle is begging you, Xuan Xuan is only seventeen years old. If you leave now, her life will be ruined!”
The man’s voice was choked with emotion.
“Life?”
When Xie Tao heard these words, she looked up to see Zhao Yixuan on the other side, her face full of panic, crying inconsolably.
“She has ruined the lives of others, does she still expect to live a good life without any guilt?”
At that moment, Xie Tao was reminded again of the night before, when Zhou Xinyue looked at her and asked, “Tao Tao, have I lost weight?”
She remembered the ugly and rough scars from burns on Zhou Xinyue’s wrists.
They had tormented a girl who was once so lively and cheerful into becoming the most sensitive and insecure person, even driving her to attempt suicide twice…
Even if there was one time Yan Xiping didn’t discover it in time, perhaps there would no longer be a person named Zhou Xinyue in this world.
Xie Tao would have lost her best friend forever.
Yet, it was they, such people, who had ruined the lives of others, but still fancifully hoped to live a good life themselves?
Why should they?
Xie Tao’s eyes reddened as she slowly pried open the fingers that Zhao Yixuan’s father was tightly clasping around her wrist. She stared at the middle-aged man in front of her and said word by word, “She is not innocent at all.”
Then, she said to Liu Meiyu, “Teacher Liu, let’s go.”
But as she turned to leave with Liu Meiyu’s support, she happened to see two people hurrying into the corridor from outside.
One was Zheng Wenhong, always dressed in a suit, looking refined and scholarly.
The other was a woman in a beige dress and light makeup, looking elegant.
That was Su Linghua.
The moment Xie Tao saw her, she froze in place, unable to move a step further.
She had never imagined that, after more than a year, her reunion with her mother would be under such circumstances.
When Su Linghua saw the hurt on Xie Tao’s face, her eyes showed a trace of heartache. However, when she was looked at by Xie Tao’s almond eyes, she stood there stiffly, like a balloon that had its air drawn out, lips moving but unable to utter a word.
Tears were the first to flow down. It was only after Zheng Wenhong gave a slight tug at her sleeve as a hint that she finally mustered the courage to walk up to Xie Tao.
At that moment, for Su Linghua, it was as if nothing else existed around her; her heart and eyes were filled only with her daughter, Xie Tao.
But as Xie Tao watched her step by step coming closer, her heart felt as if it was being tightly clenched by an invisible hand, and she subconsciously grabbed her own collar.
“Tao Tao…” As soon as Su Linghua began to speak, tears fell again.
Zheng Wenhong has already gone to talk to the police about the incident, and Su Linghua wanted to reach out to touch Xie Tao’s cheek but was avoided by her turning her head.
“Teacher Liu, you should go first,” Xie Tao said to Liu Meiyu.
Liu Meiyu had met Zheng Wenhong and knew he was Xie Tao’s guardian, but there seemed to be some distance between her student and them.
However, this was not her concern; now, she should let them solve it themselves.
So, Liu Meiyu nodded, touched Xie Tao’s head, said a few words to Su Linghua, and then left.
Watching Liu Meiyu’s figure disappear at the door, Xie Tao lowered her eyelids and did not look again at the woman standing in front of her, who felt so familiar yet somewhat strange.
“Tao Tao, I am your mother…” Su Linghua pointed at herself, as if speaking to her and to herself.
Curling her fingers, Xie Tao almost couldn’t hold back her tears. She bit her lips tightly, not saying a word.
“Tao Tao, it’s my fault. Come back home with me, okay?”
Su Linghua had imagined countless times in her heart what she should say when she saw Xie Tao again.
But when the moment truly arrived, all the words she had prepared turned into a jumble.
Su Linghua could never deny that every time she faced her daughter, besides the endless torment of guilt and love in her heart, there was also an embarrassing and helpless fear.
She still loved her daughter dearly, but similarly, she was also inevitably pained by the mistakes she had made towards Xie Tao during her own mental torment.
She loved Xie Tao, but this love had already carried too many heavy shackles, making everything not pure in the end.
“That’s not my home.”
Xie Tao clutched the corner of her clothes, struggling to suppress the sour emotions in her heart, and barely spoke.
Her voice was slightly hoarse, very light.
She found that no matter how much time passed, her mother still did not understand what was really between them.
So, she simply walked past Su Linghua, limping outside.
“Tao Tao!” Su Linghua’s voice came from behind her again, with a sob, “Mom misses you…”
This sudden sentence made Xie Tao stop in her tracks, tears welling up in her eyes, blurring her vision.
She did not turn around, just moved her lips, but ultimately did not make a sound.
Blood ties are truly the most magical bond in the world, turning all the complex emotions accumulated through life’s experiences instantly soft as water.
In this world, can anyone truly completely hate their own mother?
She couldn’t.
To say she hated her, she actually did not hate her, but some things, like dust accumulated over many years, forever stayed in that heart.
When the wind blows, it whips up the dust.
When there’s no wind, it accumulates into mountains.
Between her and her mother, there was no longer any way to have a purely maternal relationship.
Just as she had said before.
She had long lost the way to face Su Linghua, just as Su Linghua couldn’t truly face her either.
Blood ties can never be severed; Su Linghua will always be the mother who labored to bring Xie Tao into this world, and Xie Tao likewise remembers all the kindness she had once shown her.
But these things are not enough to be the antidote that dissolves everything.
There are some things she still can’t convince herself to forgive.
Xie Tao left the police station without looking back, and her silhouette in Su Linghua’s eyes gradually merged once again with the thin figure that disappeared into the night a year ago.
With a pain in her chest as if it was being pricked by needles, Su Linghua hugged her arms tightly, unable to cry out.
Xie Tao took the bus back to the apartment complex she rented.
Lying in bed at night, the wound on her knee was so painful that she couldn’t sleep.
Moreover, having seen Su Linghua today made her feel especially heavy-hearted. She hugged the blanket tight, closed her eyes for a long while, but then opened them again.
She habitually took out her phone, opened WeChat, and when she clicked on that blank avatar, she saw the chat record from last night with him.
“Wei Yun”
When he sent these two characters, Xie Tao repeated the name several times in her heart.
Her grades in Chinese were particularly average, and she couldn’t find any particularly good adjectives, tilting her head and thinking hard, she could only dryly admire:
“Your name sounds really nice!”
Then, she sent another message:
“Thank you, Wei Yun.”
Looking at these chat records, Xie Tao suddenly thought of a very serious question.
She started typing on the screen:
“Wei Yun Wei Yun!”
His replies were always slow:
“What is it”
Xie Tao started typing again:
“Why don’t you ever ask what my name is?”
At that moment, Wei Yun was sitting in the pavilion in the yard, with a lamp beside him, the dim yellow light shining on the golden letter paper in his fingers, flickering with a fine golden light.
But seeing her message, Wei Yun’s eyes remained indifferent, and he wrote back two words:
“Not interested”
“…”
Holding her phone, Xie Tao finally waited for his reply, but seeing these two words, she choked up, deeply feeling that he seemed to be particularly good at killing the conversation.
But Xie Tao knew to persevere.
So she began to type cheerfully:
“Hello Wei Yun, I am Xie Tao!”
When Wei Yun saw the words “Xie Tao” on the letter, the first thing he remembered was the especially clear appearance of her on that piece of paper.
Xie Tao…
Wei Yun lowered his eyelids, and a very faint smile finally appeared in his eyes as deep as amber.
He slightly curved the corners of his lips.
Indeed, the name matches the person, nothing remarkable to report.
“Wei Yun, my knee hurts so much… It hurts so much that I can’t sleep.”
The little girl’s words seemed to carry a bit of a grievance.
Wei Yun listened to her talk about her fighting with someone, something he had not expected at all.
He thought, with her timid nature, she shouldn’t have been able to do such an outrageously bold thing.
Yet, she still surprised him.
Not far away, the sparse shadows of the flowers by the floating bridge swayed, and the night wind gently brushed his thick black hair, casting his sharply outlined face under the dim yellow light, like a timeless painting.
But seeing that line of text on the letter, Wei Yun carelessly picked up the tea cup next to him, his throat moved slightly as he slowly sipped the tea.
Then he raised his hand to write:
“Ought to”
