Outside the door, Carpenter Zhou and Zhang Caiyun exchanged a few words about Zhou An. After that, they seemed to run out of things to say, so Zhang Caiyun turned and headed into the kitchen.
In the main hall, Carpenter Zhou sat alone, puffing on his pipe. The room had poor ventilation to begin with, and as he chain-smoked one after another, the smoky haze thickened until it irritated the throat, stirring an irresistible urge to cough.
Meng Bai held her breath over and over, not daring to make the slightest sound. She endured it for what felt like an eternity until Carpenter Zhou finally stirred.
She heard him cough once, clear his throat, then rise to his feet and shuffle toward the bedroom.
Meng Bai pressed her ear to the door, listening intently. Carpenter Zhou had indeed gone into the bedroom, and she figured Zhang Caiyun was still in the kitchen, cooking something.
This was the perfect moment to slip away. She locked eyes with Zhou Chuxing, and they came to a silent understanding.
If they were escaping, it had to be now—or they wouldn’t make it out tonight.
With a creak, Carpenter Zhou entered the bedroom. Bang! He slammed the door shut behind him.
Meng Bai eased the door open and stepped out with one foot. Now that she’d crossed the threshold, there was no turning back.
Her footsteps were feather-light, and her slender frame made barely a whisper as she moved.
Zhou Chuxing crept stealthily in her wake, both of them hunched low as they fled toward the exit.
The main hall led to the courtyard, and beyond that was the gate. Every house in town followed the same layout, especially with those old wooden doors. To thwart thieves, a heavy wooden beam was always propped against the inside.
It kept out intruders well enough, but it had one big drawback: opening the door made a racket.
Meng Bai couldn’t afford to care. She shoved the shoulder pole aside and threw open the door.
Whoosh! The wooden door groaned loudly.
Zhou Chuxing trembled in panic. “Go, go, go! Let’s get out of here!”
Meng Bai broke into a run, Zhou Chuxing hot on her heels. As they dashed out, he even remembered to pull the door shut.
The noise had been too much, though. Zhang Caiyun’s voice rang out from the kitchen: “You there, Zhou—what time is it? Where do you think you’re going now!”
She stormed out of the kitchen, and Carpenter Zhou called back from the bedroom: “I, your father, am lying right here in bed.”
Zhang Caiyun was baffled. “But I swear I just heard the door open.”
“Damn it, you’ve got a guilty conscience or something. Must’ve been the wind!”
~~~
Meng Bai and Zhou Chuxing sprinted ahead until they rounded the corner and finally came to a halt.
Zhou Chuxing’s legs buckled beneath him, weak from sheer terror. Gasping for air, he glanced back anxiously toward Zhou An’s home. Only when he was certain Zhang Caiyun hadn’t followed did he let out a shaky breath.
“Thrilling… so damn thrilling,” he stammered, his nerves still frayed.
Meng Bai was far calmer. She shot Zhou Chuxing a look. “Enough with the panting. We’re in the clear.”
He flashed her a thumbs-up. “Meng-jie, for real—your nerves are steel. When you opened that door, every hair on my body was standing straight up!”
Meng Bai let his praise wash over her like background noise. Her mind was replaying Carpenter Zhou and Zhang Caiyun’s words, piecing together a rough timeline in her head. Of course, it was all just speculation on her part.
“Zhou Chuxing, I’ve got a theory.”
He leaned in eagerly. “Lay it on me. I’m listening.”
“That day Zhou An brought me the umbrella, she went home and changed her clothes. Odds are, Carpenter Zhou was already home—or he showed up right after.”
Zhou Chuxing nodded. “Yeah, makes sense. Go on.”
“You heard him yourself. Carpenter Zhou was the one who took her out. So after she changed, he came up with some excuse to get her to leave with him.”
Zhou Chuxing pieced it together. “But midway, Zhou An said she needed the bathroom. Zhou Qiang said that’s when she bolted—during her ‘break’?”
“Exactly. So here’s what I’m wondering—”
“You’re wondering why she used the bathroom as a pretext to run. Did she spot something she shouldn’t have?”
Meng Bai nodded at last, surprised to find Zhou Chuxing’s mind sharper than she’d given him credit for. He could actually think things through. “That’s the gist of it.”
They lapsed into silence after that. The clues they had weren’t enough to draw any solid conclusions.
“So, do we call the cops? There’s Zhou An’s umbrella and clothes up in the attic, right?”
“We didn’t actually grab the stuff…” Meng Bai frowned, her mind turning to Miao Bai for advice. “Give me time to mull it over. We’ll decide tomorrow.”
Zhou Chuxing nodded. “Fair enough. Want me to walk you home?”
“No need—it’s just a few steps.”
He grinned, eyes narrowing with amusement at some private joke. “Got it.”
Their homes lay in opposite directions. Meng Bai hurried on, her strides quick and purposeful.
Zhou Chuxing watched until she slipped safely inside before turning away…
~~~
She reached home a little past ten. By that hour, Meng Bai was usually winding down for bed.
She crept quietly into her room and only exhaled fully once the door was locked tight.
Her head swam, weighed down by a relentless pileup of events that left her utterly drained.
Ever since Zhou An vanished, everything had taken on an eerie edge, delivering shock after shock.
She’d meant to puzzle it out a bit more, but even the effort made her skull throb. In the end, she pushed it all aside.
She approached the bed, a narrow sliver of a single that nonetheless wrapped her in a profound sense of security. Slipping off her outer clothes, she sank into the mattress. The soft give drew a sigh of relief from her lips.
Time for sleep.
Everything else could wait until morning.
Deep into the night, a chill lingered in the air. A bright moon hung in the vault of heaven, its gentle light washing over the land as if yearning to wander through dreams.
At three in the morning, the moonlight glided silently through the window, slipping unnoticed into the room.
Meng Bai slumbered in the midst of a dream, the moon lending her visions a veil of hazy allure.
An utterly bizarre dream. She stood amid a bamboo grove, white mist cloaking everything, erasing all sense of direction or path forward.
From the fog emerged a woman, her familiar silhouette sparking joy in Meng Bai’s heart.
“Miao Bai!”
In the dream, Miao Bai lifted her veil—but dreams being dreams, her face remained a blur.
“Come here.” It was unmistakably Miao Bai’s voice.
Meng Bai approached, hand outstretched, only to sense something amiss in the next instant.
Miao Bai drew her into an embrace.
The sensation hit harder than anything in the waking world.
Miao Bai’s warm body gently pressed against hers, her shoulder embraced by Miao Bai as she leaned on Miao Bai’s shoulder. It was the first time she discovered in a dream that dreams also had scents.
She was captivated by the scent on Miao Bai’s body that made her nose itch.
“Come find me tomorrow,” Miao Bai said in the dream.
“Hmm?” Meng Bai accepted the embrace with complete peace of mind, yet in the very next second as she waited for Miao Bai’s response.
Miao Bai vanished from the dream…
She woke up from the cold in the early morning, and only in the instant she opened her eyes did she feel a bit ashamed.
Meng Bai didn’t know why she had dreamed such a thing. She had always slept very obediently since childhood, yet today she discovered that her quilt had fallen to the floor.
Looking at the twisted little quilt, Meng Bai felt it had something to do with the dream.
It was exactly eight o’clock in the morning then, with the clouds outside the window burning fiery red.
Sunlight streamed through the window and fell on the bedside, casting sharp bamboo shadows.
The sun was out, so today was likely to be a clear day.
Meng Bai threw off the quilt, her glistening white skin illuminated alluringly by the warm light, the air hazy with a natural beauty inherent to a young girl.
She was seventeen this year, at the age when youth was budding—beautiful in any pose.
Outside the door, Lin Li knocked:
“Get up and eat breakfast!”
“Coming.”
Meng Bai reached for the white T-shirt on the bedside. The shirt was quite large, and her head slipped easily through the collar.
She was very slim but liked wearing loose clothes, always feeling that this way she was unrestrained, comfortable, and free.
Outside the room, the table was already laden with steamed buns and clear porridge.
Meng Xingzhong was already eating and shouted for her to come to the table quickly.
The adults’ expressions were all normal; it seemed they were unaware of last night’s events, so Meng Bai breathed a sigh of relief.
During the meal, Meng Xingzhong instructed her, “Be more obedient lately, you hear me?”
Meng Bai looked up, not understanding the emphasis. “Haven’t I always been very obedient?”
“I mean, stop running around outside so much! The town’s been unsettled lately. Come straight home after school this afternoon.” As he spoke, Meng Xingzhong glanced at Lin Li. “Keep an eye on this kid. I probably won’t be back until next week.”
“Alright, alright.” Lin Li grew annoyed at his nagging. “Just go to work without worrying. I’ve got it handled.”
Meng Bai wrinkled her nose. “I’m already seventeen, and you still treat me like a child!”
Lin Li smiled. “Your dad’s just concerned but doesn’t know how to show it.” Then she added soothingly, “Eat up quick; we’re running out of time.”
She glanced at the time—they needed to hurry.
When the family ate together, there was always a subtle, almost imperceptible warmth to it. Of course, Meng Bai was used to this life and didn’t find anything particularly precious about it.
She ate until she was full, grabbed her schoolbag, and prepared to head out.
“Bye.” Pushing her bicycle, she glanced back at the two adults. “Dad, on my birthday, I want to buy a new bicycle. Will you get it for me?”
She said it with a smile.
Meng Xingzhong looked up at her, clearly stunned for a moment before quickly nodding. “Buy it, buy it, buy it! Go on, hurry to school!”
“Deal—Old Meng, no take-backs.” With that, Meng Bai pushed her bicycle out the door.
The biggest difference between the Small Town and the city was the smells and sounds.
The weather was fine, and along the way, Meng Bai could hear birds chirping everywhere—she couldn’t tell which tree they came from. The air was fresh, too, with the wild early chrysanthemums by the road giving off an enchanting fragrance.
The morning light was bright and warm, pleasing yet drowsy.
But Meng Bai stopped smiling the moment she basked in the sunlight.
She suddenly thought of Miao Bai.
Miao Bai didn’t like the sun.
People were strange; likes and dislikes often formed in an instant.
In that instant, Meng Bai suddenly didn’t like the sunlight as much anymore, thinking that overcast days were more comfortable than blazing ones.
She rode on and arrived at school more than ten minutes later.
As she neared the school gate, she spotted from afar a crowd gathered at the entrance.
This was unusual.
The students were chattering noisily, each piping up in a cacophony like sparrows—so many voices, impossible to make out what they were saying.
“Scared me to death—isn’t that Zhou An?”
“It’s really not Zhou An, but I didn’t see her face.”
“I heard it’s Ye Hong?”
“Ye Hong! No way it could be her!”
Meng Bai parked her bicycle and joined them.
“What are you all talking about?”
Li Yue glanced at Meng Bai, hesitating. “Something seems to have happened inside the school. We’re not sure.”
“What happened?”
Someone else chimed in. “By the cafeteria flower bed this morning—they found a girl dead!”
“Dead?” It hit Meng Bai like a bolt from the blue; her first thought was naturally Zhou An.
But Li Yue immediately said, “It’s not Zhou An. It seems to be Ye Hong.”
“Ye Hong?” Meng Bai was just as shocked. “How could it be her?”
Ye Hong was a classmate in the same class. They weren’t extremely close, but they saw each other every day—gone just like that.
“We don’t know either. We just heard she argued with her mom, said she didn’t want to come to school, but her mom forced her to, so after she got to school, she apparently just…”
“Impossible! She wouldn’t do something like that over an argument with her mom!” Meng Bai rejected the idea outright. “You all should know what kind of person Ye Hong is.”
No one present spoke up; they clearly agreed.
So what kind of person was classmate Ye Hong, exactly?
In Meng Bai’s impression, Ye Hong was definitely the understanding type.
Of course, she was pretty too—the quiet, obedient kind. When she smiled, it was just a slight curve of the lips, with a gentle light always in her eyes. That serene demeanor made people feel comfortable.
Most people had a good impression of her.
How could a girl like that choose death over a few words with her mother?
“Actually, I don’t believe it either.” Li Yue glanced toward the school grounds, where a police car and ambulance stretcher sat, a large area cordoned off with red tape. “What do you say—should we go in and check it out?”
