Yang Yun stayed with Yu Yao for a few days and then prepared to go back. The couple’s young son took the child with them. During the couple’s son and his wife’s absence these days, the nanny had looked after their child. But now, the child had fallen ill, so Yan Yun and her old man were worried. In addition, Yang Yun herself was too excited these days and was not feeling well. The doctor she usually sees was not here, so Yu Yao asked them to go back directly.
Yang Yun held Yu Yao’s hand guiltily. “When the child recovers from illness, we will come to see you again and stay with you for a while longer.”
Yu Yao smiled and said, “It’s unnecessary. You old man should take care of yourself quickly. Don’t be tired of running around. If you miss me, I can just video chat with you. Now this video chat technology is simply immersive. I think this is pretty good.”
Grandma Yang Yun said flatly, “Do you dislike me for being old?”
It’s incredible… She’s a grandma now, but she’s still pouting like the little friend she met back then in kindergarten. Some people say that no matter how old a woman is, she is still a child in front of her lover, but Yu Yao feels that this is the same when applied to good friends. Looking at Yang Yun now, she is still a coquettish girl.
Yu Yao showed an unabashed look of disgust, but still she said, “How can I? I don’t even dislike Lao Jiang. How can I dislike my family, Ah Yun?”
Yang Yun looked at Yu Yao reluctantly before boarding the plane, “If only you could visit my house.”
This is not possible, because Yu Yao has a half-year observation period, and she cannot go abroad in the past six months.
“Ok, when I can go abroad, I will go to your house to see you.” Yu Yao said this, and Yang Yun became a little happier. When she was called away by her old man, she looked back at her reluctantly, as if she would never see her again. Yu Yao watched her good friend go away, thinking that Yang Yun might have thought of the day she disappeared many years ago.
Back then, not long before she went out to buy groceries, she received a call from Yang Yun. The two made an appointment to watch a newly released movie and go shopping. It was the same as many times before, but she disappeared that time. In the past forty years since she disappeared, except for Jiang Zhonglin, Yang Yun has also endured a lot of pain. Even if she doesn’t think about her all the time, as long as she thinks of her, her heart will definitely not be at ease.
Like a thorn stuck in the heart.
“Wait for me to see you!” Yu Yao suddenly shouted. Seeing Grandma Yang Yun jumping up over there and waving hard at her, she seemed very happy.
Yu Yao felt lucky for the first time since she time-traveled. Fortunately, it was only forty years. Fortunately, Jiang Zhonglin and Yang Yun were still there. She still had the opportunity to see them in her life. If she had traveled longer, she would not have dared to think about it. By then, everyone she knew would have become a pile of yellow earth with eternal regret, and she would not even be able to see them for the last time.
“Let’s go somewhere first.” Jiang Zhonglin drove away from the airport.
“Where to go?” Yu Yao looked at him suspiciously. He wouldn’t take her around looking back on her youth like Yang Yun did, would he?
It turned out that Jiang Zhonglin didn’t have that feeling. He first went to the flower shop to buy white chrysanthemums. Yu Yao understood, so she fell silent.
What he went to was not a cemetery but a monument to heroes and martyrs in Hai City. Because it was not a special day, there were not many people near the monument. Yu Yao stood in front of the monument. Jiang Zhonglin handed her the white chrysanthemum and said, “Father-in-law did not have a tombstone, and his ashes were buried behind this.”
Yu Yao looked at the huge monument expressionlessly and did not put down the white chrysanthemum in her hand.
“In the seventh year of your disappearance, he died while hunting down the criminals, and his colleagues brought me the last words he left behind.”
"I have never done a single evil thing in my life, and I have fought for ideals and justice all my life. Everyone says that I am a good police officer, but I am not proud of it. I’m very guilty, because in order to become such a good police officer, I failed to be a good husband and father. So I was separated from my wife and my daughter in this life; it’s a retribution. After I die, I will not be buried with my wife and daughter, and they may not want to see me."
“These are the words he left behind.” Jiang Zhonglin said.
Yu Yao moved her lips. She wanted to say sarcastically, "This man was quite self-aware," but when she looked at the cold stone tablet, she could not speak out.
She still remembers that when she was a child, she had a good relationship with her father. When she was in kindergarten, she often proudly told all her friends that her father was a big hero. Although he was not at home often, he occasionally couldn’t catch up with her parents’ meetings and birthdays, but her mother said that her father was saving people in trouble like Superman, so she forgave her father, who was always very busy.
Later, she grew up slowly and knew that her father was not a powerful superman. Most of what he did outside were trivial things that were not worth boasting about. He would take care of everything when the east family quarreled or when the west family lost something. When he took off the police uniform and returned home, he still could not be eased to be the pillar for their family. If there was anything happening in the neighborhood, he would help enthusiastically and throw his home aside.
Yu Yao’s dissatisfaction with her father began in elementary school. She watched her father help an unrelated neighbor move the gas tank, and at that time, their family also happened to need to change the gas tank. But it was her thin mother who carried the gas tank upstairs little by little, covered with sweat, alone. She thought, at that time, couldn’t her father see that they also needed him?
This was just a small thing, but the small things accumulated more and more and eventually broke out. And the breaking point was the death of her mother.
When Yu Yao first entered junior high school, her mother was pregnant with her second child, and her father was very happy and spent more time at home. Yu Yao lives at school and can only come back once a week. Every time she comes back, she sits next to her mother and looks at her belly. She is looking forward to the birth of her brother in her mother’s belly.
In the days when the due date was approaching, Yu Yao was worried, but his father said that he would take a few days off to stay at home and concentrate on taking care of her mother. But what about the result? As a result, when Yu Yao came home from vacation on the weekend, she opened the door happily, but the first thing she saw was her mother’s dead body.
She’s been dead for a day. Blood soaked half of her body, and long red drag marks ran from the toilet to the living room. Yu Yao could almost imagine how she accidentally fell into the toilet, struggled to crawl out despite the pain, and thought of calling for help in the living room. However, her health was not good. Perhaps she fell too hard and was exhausted, so she failed to make the call for help after trying her best. Later, she died quietly here.
The schoolbag in Yu Yao’s arm fell to the ground with the key. She jumped over and touched her mother’s cold body and her big, motionless belly. She shouted to her like crazy, but she wouldn’t give her any reaction, wouldn’t smile gently, and wouldn’t call her baby daughter. Red-eyed, she finds her mother’s cell phone in the gap in the sofa and calls her father.
No one answered over there. She cried and called three times before the other side was connected and her father’s voice came out.
“Where are you?” Yu Yao gritted her teeth and asked him.
Her father, on the other side of the phone, had a tired voice, and the background sound was noisy. He said, “What happened? You’re home? There is an emergency here, and I need to go to the office. I will go back at night…”
Yu Yao interrupted him and almost tore her throat and shouted, “Didn’t you say you wanted to take care of Mother at home? Didn’t you say you would be home to accompany her?!”
The person on the other side of the phone finally realized something was wrong and asked her, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong with your mother? Did she experience the symptoms of contractions?? You contact your grandma first; I’ll be there right away... right away.....”
Yu Yao hung up the phone. She never wants to hear a word from this man again, this liar! This liar who killed her mother and brother!
Later, she called her grandma, so her grandma and her uncle came to take care of the body. Her mother died of excessive blood loss after a coma, and the baby boy in her belly died of suffocation. When the man came back, he knelt down and cried loudly. She watched him cry so coldly without calling him "Dad".
After so many years, she never called him "Dad" again. She began to deliberately piss him off and refused to listen to him. She would do whatever he didn’t like and wanted him to die.
Well now, he’s really dead.
Yu Yao didn’t want to cry. Her emotions were very complicated, and she couldn’t speak.
Suddenly there was wind, rustling the trees on both sides. Yu Yao finally stepped forward, gently placed the bouquet of white chrysanthemums in front of the monument, and said, “You have been busy being a hero everywhere in your life, and in the end you died for the sake of being a hero. It can be regarded as completing your ideal life. Seek benevolence and gain benevolence. You got what you wanted. I won’t judge you. I hope you don’t regret it in the end.
He is a good man, she knows, but even if he died, she will not reconcile with him, and she will never come here again.
They each stick to their own and have no regrets.
The next destination is the cemetery, a long distance from the monument. There were still many white chrysanthemums in the car. Although Jiang Zhonglin didn’t say anything, Yu Yao almost guessed who he took her to see, so she took the initiative to hold those white chrysanthemums in her arms.
The first thing she saw was the tomb of Jiang Zhonglin’s parents. Yu Yao laid flowers for them, called them "Mom" and "Dad", and worshiped them three times. Jiang Zhonglin’s parents are a pair of open-minded parents with the unique temperament of high-level intellectuals, especially Jiang’s mother, who treats her very well.
There is also the tomb of her grandma. Grandma is Yu Yao’s favorite elder besides her mother. During the period after her mother’s death, she did not want to stay at home, so she went to live with her grandmother for half a year. If it were not for her uncle and aunt’s opinion, she might stay with Grandma for a long time. When she was in high school, her grandmother died of illness.
Next to it are her mother’s tomb and her own tomb.
Jiang Zhonglin watched quietly as she walked past the tombstones of her relatives and finally stopped at her own tombstone.
He said, “Father-in-law moved Mother-in-law and Grandma’s tombs to here when the old cemetery was relocated. Father-in-law also built your tomb in the fifth year after your disappearance...”
That man built a tombstone for her, while her husband still hung the news of her missing person for forty years later.
“I looked at this tombstone and thought it was weird.” Yu Yao wiped her tears and tried to make her voice as relaxed as possible.
“Um, come here today, in addition to letting you see your relatives, we also need to remove this tombstone first.” Jiang Zhonglin said.
Yu Yao said casually, “Just keep it; it will be useful in the future anyway.”
Jiang Zhonglin looked at her as if she were looking at a child who spoke unabashedly. She looked very serious and had a slightly reproachful tone. “Don’t say nonsense.”
Yu Yao: “. . .” She thought about how young Jiang Zhonglin would react; he would definitely frown and whisper, "You can’t say that". Even when he was angry, he was still soft and could laugh at the slightest teasing, without any deterrent power.
Very good, Jiang Zhonglin has indeed become much tougher as he gets older.
*****
What should I do if my lover became an old man after traveling to fourty years later? Chapter List:
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