Chapter 135: Notes
They hadn’t planned on staying here for long. They had booked a ticket for the next day and were going to make do for one more night and then go back.
“No need to fix it. We can just use a table to block it at night. I heard that the money has been allocated, and it will be demolished after the New Year.”
Xia Qiange patted the dust from the hem of her clothes. Her hair was messy by her ears, and a few strands of hair were on her lips. Her gaze was fixed on the door.
Su Yu was half-squatting in front of a wooden door with old carvings, trying to fix the door bolt that had been accidentally broken in and out these past two days. But this kind of iron door bolt had been there for too long, and it was so rusty that he could barely see the original iron black. The wood that was embedded with the ironware had also rotted, and the yellow wooden core was black and soft. He couldn’t install it anymore.
In the end, he could only give up. He stood up and patted the dust, preparing to go downstairs to buy candles.
Before he left, Xia Qiange stuffed some cash into his hand. “The old man at the small supermarket downstairs doesn’t know how to use a phone. He only accepts cash.”
“Do you need anything else?”
“I want to eat the roasted cold noodles near the school. It’s just a little far.”
She was on her tiptoes and was rubbing against the ground, as if she were a little embarrassed to trouble him.
“Okay, I’ll buy it for you.” Su Yu smiled. He seemed to have completely recovered from the sadness of saying goodbye to the past. He reached out and pinched the girl’s soft cheek meat and tucked the hair from the corner of her lips. “Are you tired? You’ve been in the inner room all this time. What are you packing?”
“Nothing. The valuable things in the house have all been taken away. I’m just seeing what I want to keep. The rest will be left here.”
He nodded and went downstairs with the money.
Xia Qiange stood at the door and listened as the sound of footsteps gradually faded away. The smile on her lips suddenly fell, and she turned and went back to the inner room.
The originally empty inner room was now a mess. The cardboard boxes in the wardrobe had all been moved out at once. The boxes were so heavy that she had to support them with her arms to move them down. Her wrists were still sore and she couldn’t lift them.
Xia Qiange found a rusty iron basin from the kitchen. On it, one could vaguely see a festive mandarin duck pattern. Her mother had loved these things very much. She had put them aside and had not used them to hold anything. She had said that these were the furniture she and her father had bought when they got married. This woman, who had loved her father all her life but had never been looked at properly, was so pitiful that it made one hate her.
The cardboard boxes, which had been soaked in moisture and had become soft, were torn open with a light tear. The old things inside were all shaken out, and a pungent smell of dust was raised.
She stood quietly to the side for a while, as if in no hurry at all. Only after the dust had fully settled did she kick over the iron basin. Then she took out a stack of unburned paper money from a plastic bag and tossed it in. She lit a few with a lighter, and the sparks flared up like a wildfire, burning even more fiercely in her dark, inky eyes.
The contents of the boxes were chaotic. She threw aside the box containing a few thick blankets, choosing instead some lighter ones to tear open. Some were books, some were test papers with notes, and there were many English listening tapes…
Her rotten and spoiled past, her disgraceful and flawed life—all were contained in these old and fragile objects. Just these few tattered and cheap things were enough to summarize her half-life.
Her longing and obsessive desire, the sun that had driven her to despair and fall, the ray of light she had been chasing in a dark and sunless world…
Now that she had gotten her wish, these things had all become useless burdens.
The flame rose higher, and a stack of paper products pushed the fire to a roaring blaze. The white paper turned into black ashes, and it was floating in her memory.
A box of test papers and books was burned to the bottom in the blink of an eye. After she had poured out a basin of ashes, she continued to burn. Her movements looked as numb as a worker on an assembly line. One stack after another, and the books were also thrown in in bulk. It was as if she didn’t care at all whether the flame could swallow them. It was just like her madness and obsession back then…
It was another full basin of black ashes. The cold wind rushed in through the open window and swept through every corner of the house. It took a long time to take away the pungent and unpleasant smell of smoke.
She reached into the bottom of the box and only grabbed two test papers, and also… a notebook with a black cover.
The assembly-line-like movements were as if a machine had broken down and had suddenly stopped. The flame had still flared up for a few seconds, and it had burned the cover of the lower left corner of the notebook. The smell of burning paper, which was different from the smell of burning paper, rushed into her nose.
She was as if she had been electrocuted and had taken the things back. She didn’t care about the heat and used her hand to pat the remaining sparks on the paper. Her delicate and fair hands were burned red, and there was a stinging pain like a needle.
Xia Qiange held the things in her arms. A second ago, she had been determined to burn it. But now, she was as if she were protecting some treasure and was reluctant to let it be flawed in the slightest.
She held the notebook in her hand and carefully flipped through a few pages. A few scattered molds were on the paper. What came into view was a handwriting that she was so familiar with that she couldn’t be more familiar. Every stroke was deeply engraved in her mind and could not be covered.
Her cold fingertips were trembling, and her fingertips were on the rough and damp paper. Her movements were very gentle, as if she were comforting the her of the past, the self who had once been terminally ill and hopeless.
The notebook, which was filled with crimes, had a plain and simple cover, and a corner of the page had been burned… it was like a devout and sinful confession. It should have been burned to ashes by the fire of karma and scattered.
Xia Qiange grabbed the notebook again and approached the fireworks dancing in the cold wind. She, who had always been decisive and ruthless in her actions, was rarely hesitant at this moment. But the stirrings of a springtime heart were a gift that no one could escape.
She had once thought of him, longed for him, and loved him… just like every fresh and young girl who had fallen in love with a handsome and charming young man. So much love that could not be expressed in words could only be hidden in the love words in the depths of those notes.
Now, what was to be buried by her own hands and turned into ashes was her loving heart, a clear and clean like that had not been stained with filth.
Xia Qiange flipped the notebook to the last few pages. The portrait of the boy was still there. At that time, he was still fresh and young, and his eyebrows and eyes had not yet fully relaxed. He had a completely different personality from the present.
She was not so cowardly as to escape the fact that she was the culprit. She stared at this page of the notebook, which was stained with blood. The blood, which had turned black from oxidation… was exuding a fishy and stinking smell of mud.
For a few seconds, she suddenly hardened her heart and was about to throw the notebook in. But before she could let go, the sound of footsteps in the corridor suddenly came in through the open main door and clearly reached her ear.
She bit her lower lip, and her dark eyes were gloomy and dim. She stuffed the book into the box with the bedding at her side and put it back in the wardrobe. She locked the door with a lock and threw the key out of the window. The ground below was covered with withered branches and wild grass that were over her ankles.
When Xia Qiange turned around, the sound of footsteps had already entered the house. A few seconds later, Su Yu appeared in the inner room with his things. He saw the iron basin on the floor, which was piled with a thick layer of black ashes. The flame was still burning, and the smoke was spreading. The air in the room was so pungent that his eyes were sore.
“This… what’s wrong?”
“It’s cold in the house. I thought I’d burn something to warm up.”
She answered with a blank expression.
Su Yu glanced at the already-closed window and frowned. “Then you should have waited for me to come back. It’s too dangerous to be in the house alone.”
“Yeah, yeah. It was my fault…”
Xia Qiange nodded in agreement. She tucked the black hair that was blocking her vision behind her ear and glanced back at the closed wardrobe. She suddenly curled her lips and showed a gentle and well-behaved smile as she looked at him.
The smoke was hazy, and it was covering her cold and dark eyebrows and eyes.
