She remembered him because of the mole at the corner of his brow;
He remembered her, simply because she was her.
Every fleeting encounter eventually becomes a story in memories,
And you are the conclusion of my story.
————Epigraph.
Spring of 1994.
The sky was overcast, the city filled with green willows and poplars, and the air teemed with fluffy catkins.
On the steps of the Court, a scrawny little girl sat, barely five years old, wearing a yellowed white sweater. The oversized sweater enveloped her thin and delicate body, making her look like a paper figure floating in the wind, as though a slightly stronger gust could carry her away.
The girl's haircut was evidently done at home, a neat, round cut just covering her ears, her hair was very black, but the quality was poor—dry and brittle, and the wind made it a complete mess.
Her bangs had grown out and were pinned to the side with a small red butterfly hair clip, revealing her eyes.
The girl had a pair of beautiful eyes, large with thick ink-like pupils, yet so vacant they seemed vacantly hollow as if the bustling world with all its traffic and noise couldn't fill them. Only the drifting catkins cast faint shadows within her dark irises.
Someone watched her from a distance, as if looking at a picture with dark and desolate hues. The only bright spot was the hair clip on her head—a tiny red dot, like a touch of cinnabar on a black canvas.
"Gui, let's go," said the woman in a black trench coat, taking the hand of the boy beside her, her beautiful eyes red and swollen, still brimming with tears.
The boy, however, shook off the woman's hand and strode towards the girl.
"Gui! Come back!" The woman's voice was tinged with desperation.
A small black suit obstructed the girl's view, with shiny black buttons that looked very pretty.
"Here, eat this."
A chubby hand extended in front of her, holding a large lollipop.
The lollipop was huge, bigger than his two hands combined, flat, with different colors swirling together to form a big round rainbow.
At last, she looked up, and the boy had a pair of large, round eyes just like hers, with a mole hidden in the left eyebrow.
Only then did the boy notice her hurried breathing and flushed face.
He took her hand and placed the lollipop in it. Her hand was so small, hard, and fleshless.
"You eat, it's sweet. My grandma says when you're upset, your heart feels sour, but eating a piece of candy makes it sweet," the boy's voice was crisp, but also filled with a sorrow that belied his age, "You keep it; I have to go."
The girl clutched the lollipop tightly in her hands, bowed her head, her rapid breathing causing her chest to heave violently.
The boy, unable to wait for her reply, turned and ran—in mid-flight, he couldn't help but look back, only to see the girl had toppled over from the steps, lying on the ground, the lollipop fallen beside her.
"...the defendant, Tu Chenggong...murder...life imprisonment..."
These few words from a long, long sentence were all that lingered in the young her's memory.
When she awoke in the hospital, in a daze, these same words echoed in her mind.
She knew she was ill, prone at this season, a time of year when her father would always be very nervous and careful.
Her medical record card listed the name of her condition—asthma, two complicated characters, but having seen them frequently, she had come to recognize them.
Above those characters, it listed Sister Tu in three words, but she only recognized the character Tu, the remaining two she unconsciously converted to XX in her mind. Tu XX was not her name; her family name was Tu, and her name was Tu Hengsha—she knew how to write it.
Tu Hengsha, five years old.
That spring, her father was imprisoned, she had an asthma attack, was taken to a hospital, and when she awoke, the only thing by her pillow was a round rainbow lollipop, already broken, haphazardly wrapped in translucent plastic, barely maintaining its fractured shape.
That same year, in another corner of the city, another child also lost a father...