Xie Ling said nothing more. Her nails dug into the ground until they turned back, leaving bloodstains on the snow-white ground.
She stood up, no longer as furious as when she arrived, but as if she had buried a sea of hatred in her heart.
She turned and left.
I watched her back and the ice-snow forest around. For a moment, the dream vision I had seen before mysteriously overlapped with this moment.
It seemed as if that scene I had watched in my dream was about to replay.
From a distance by the ice lake, little Xie Zhuo came running.
But Xie Ling walked past him as if she hadn’t seen him, like the wind.
“Mother.” Xie Zhuo followed Xie Ling’s footsteps. “I won’t go there anymore.” Xie Zhuo told Xie Ling, “I won’t go there anymore.”
He knew he had done something wrong. Perhaps he didn’t know why, but he apologized, and when he apologized, he was just like any other child.
The difference was, he couldn’t get forgiveness.
Xie Ling walked with her back to him, walking very fast, without responding.
Xie Zhuo followed all the way, looking up at Xie Ling’s face, asking in the silence: “I just want to know, which character is in my name?”
He wanted to know himself.
He wanted to know why he existed.
“Zhuo? Zhuo? Zhuo? They… won’t tell me…”
Xie Ling’s sleeves fluttered in the air.
Xie Zhuo reached out, as if wanting to touch her sleeve.
“Slap!”
His hand was harshly knocked away.
This sound was much louder than what I heard in my dream.
It seemed to strike Xie Zhuo’s still-developing face.
In Xie Zhuo’s eyes, disgust and hatred were undisguised on Xie Ling’s face.
“Get lost! You are the child of filth! Don’t come near me! You only bring misfortune!”
Xie Zhuo stood frozen until Xie Ling walked away and disappeared.
The light that had been ignited in his eyes when he received that response now dimly extinguished.
Looking at Xie Zhuo like this, I felt heartbroken and afraid.
I feared he would think that with the summer flowers’ petals all fallen, his good fortune had ended too.