“Your grandparents just hate waste, can’t bear to throw things away,” Li Fanghao said, seeing Qiao Qingyu looking at the red sofa, “Don’t know why they brought this sofa over.”
Qiao Qingyu boldly, tentatively spoke up: “Mom, are we getting rid of everything from sister’s old room?”
“That house is unlucky,” Li Fanghao responded unexpectedly quickly, her breath urgent, “It’s not the first or second time it’s been flooded. The feng shui of that place is bad, otherwise, how could the Qiao family, who were well-off before liberation with many descendants, fall so quickly? Look, in the village besides your grandparents, only that useless Qiao Dayong and his crazy wife live in that pit, who else would want to live there? Your grandparents should have moved out long ago.”
Qiao Qingyu nodded in agreement. It seemed the adults had no intention of keeping anything from Qiao Baiyu’s room.
Li Fanghao’s mention of Qiao Dayong’s crazy wife reminded Qiao Qingyu of another reason she hadn’t wanted to switch with Qiao Baiyu when she was young. Who would want to live across from a mad woman who screamed in the middle of the night?
“Let’s sleep.” Li Fanghao commanded.
The village retired early, but Qiao Qingyu wasn’t sleepy at all. After the lights went out, she lay with her eyes open, listening to Li Fanghao’s breathing become increasingly even and steady. Turning her head, the autumn wind lifted the thin gauze curtains, rustling against the red sofa, making soft, scattered sounds.
This sofa had originally been in Qiao Baiyu’s room, right under the window.
In the quiet night, thinking of Qiao Baiyu’s former room, the crowded desk, the walls covered with celebrity posters, the wardrobe stuffed with carelessly placed clothes and dresses, the light snow-white curtains under the black tiles, Qiao Qingyu couldn’t help but feel sad.
For Qiao Baiyu’s eight years that no one treasured.
She thought of Ming Sheng saying Qiao Baiyu was “too tragic,” and felt guilty that she, as a sister, needed an outsider to remind her of her sister’s circumstances.
Then again, although Ming Sheng appeared arrogant on the surface, he saw things clearly and showed unexpected empathy.
The silence amplified the sound of the gauze curtain rubbing against the sofa. Qiao Qingyu quietly got out of bed.
Approaching the window, she shivered. Pushing aside the gauze curtain, about to close the window, she suddenly noticed a brightly lit window in the distant old house.
Qiao Qingyu steadied herself and looked carefully, confirming that the lit room was indeed the one Qiao Baiyu had lived in.
A figure slowly appeared in the window, the light from the room flickering between bright yellow and vivid red, with strange black smoke billowing from the window.
That wasn’t a light, it was fire.
Qiao Qingyu screamed-
Among all those who rushed toward the old house, Qiao Qingyu was the first to arrive. A woman engulfed in flames was rolling on the ground, and upon seeing someone approach, she desperately rushed over.
Qiao Qingyu kept backing away, when suddenly the woman stopped, something small and burning fell from her arms, and she leaped into the creek.
Qiao Lusheng, Qiao Haisheng, and the others arrived shortly after, frantically carrying water buckets to the second floor to extinguish the fire. The burning object lay right by Qiao Qingyu’s feet; she stomped on it hard several times until the fire went out, and several tattered pieces of paper flew up in the wind.
Qiao Dayong rushed from across the way into the creek to save his burning mad wife, cursing all the while: “What a curse, what a curse, I might as well kill you and be done with it…”
The wind suddenly grew stronger, and several flames leaped up, making the fire more intense.
Before helping the adults extinguish the fire, Qiao Qingyu quickly picked up the tattered papers from the ground—she had noticed writing on them, Qiao Baiyu’s writing. Li Fanghao came over, saw her carrying a water bucket, and shooed her aside. Helplessly, Qiao Qingyu watched as the fire grew fiercer until everyone had to evacuate the courtyard.
It all happened too quickly. Beside her, Li Fanghao, facing the burning old house, was crying uncontrollably.
“It’s all gone,” Li Fanghao cried out hoarsely, “Xiaobai, all your things are gone, gone with you…”
Qiao Qingyu still clutched those few pieces of paper. By the bright firelight, she slowly opened her palm and carefully examined the writing on the paper.
Her gaze was immediately drawn to the most complete sentence in the middle. It was clear these were words Qiao Baiyu had written many years ago, somewhat immature but neat and clean, beautiful like her face.
“Jinrui ge took my first time,” Qiao Baiyu had written, “I love him, but I still cried.”
At first, Qiao Qingyu thought this was a letter Qiao Baiyu had once written to someone, but she quickly realized these pages were actually from a diary. In the scorched upper left corner was a blurry handwritten year: ’98.
Ten years ago, she was six, and Qiao Baiyu was twelve, just graduated from elementary school. That summer night, the most brilliant fireworks bloomed above the old house, celebrating Qiao Jinrui’s admission to Huan Zhou University. That year, the red sofa mysteriously appeared in the tunnel-like room to please Qiao Baiyu. That year, the money in the Shunyun drawer hadn’t yet disappeared, and Qiao Qingyu could still freely enter and leave her parents’ room.
Beside her, Li Fanghao was still wailing, her voice as grief-stricken as a roaring mountain flood. Qiao Qingyu felt the world spinning, all sound suddenly fading away.
So they had all been wrong.