Su Wǎntáng’s hand pressed against the window lattice, her knuckles turning white.
She wanted to push the window open. She wanted to ask him why he had come back. She wanted to tell him that the child in her womb was his. She wanted to throw herself into that scorching embrace and cry out everything she had witnessed tonight—
But she couldn’t.
The silver lock pendant hidden by her mother, Su Wǎnróu’s deathly pale face, the birthmark on the wrist of the woman wearing the red headscarf, and those words—
“The one wearing the red string is the biological child…”
There were too many fragments that had yet to be pieced together.
And the man outside the courtyard… His suspicion and probing, his departure and return—were they driven by responsibility, or by the feelings that had quietly grown in that wheat straw pile that night, feelings even he himself had not fully understood?
Lù Zhànyě finished smoking his cigarette and crushed the butt into the dirt. He raised his head and looked toward the side room. His gaze seemed tangible, piercing through the darkness of the night, meeting Su Wǎntáng’s eyes silently through the window.
Although there was only a thin sheet of paper between them, although the night was deep and heavy—
Su Wǎntáng knew.
He had seen her.
After a long while, Lù Zhànyě turned and left.
The sound of his military boots stepping over dry leaves gradually faded away, finally disappearing at the end of the village road.
Su Wǎntáng collapsed back onto the ground, her palms covered in cold sweat.
Dawn was approaching.
And after daybreak, this seemingly peaceful Su Family Village, this household that had hidden a twenty-two-year-old secret of a child swap, and the child in her womb whose fate remained unknown, would all be pushed into an even more unpredictable whirlpool.
Outside the courtyard wall, the final withered leaf spun through the air and fell.
It landed beside the woodpile where Wang Xiuying had hidden the iron box last night, covering half of a blurry footprint in the mud.
It was the mark of a military boot.
The morning mist had yet to disappear. Su Family Village was still wrapped in the chill of early autumn.
Lù Zhànyě’s military boots stepped across the dew-covered grass path. Behind him, the village houses were gradually waking, with cooking smoke rising from their chimneys.
He should have returned to his unit three days ago, but he had requested another seven days of leave under the excuse of “assisting local authorities in investigating illegal medicine.”
The truth was—
He needed to uncover what had happened on that absurd night a month ago.
The trembling figure in the wheat straw pile.
The muffled sobbing.
The faint sweet bitterness of soapberry mixed with medicinal herbs.
And the small red mole on her waist.
These fragments repeatedly pieced themselves together in his mind, and in the end, they all pointed toward the same person:
Su Wǎntáng.
Lù Zhànyě went to the clinic first.
Doctor Li was organizing the medicine cabinet. When he saw him, he sighed.
“Comrade Lù, your wound healed almost like a miracle. That folk remedy from the Su family…”
“Folk remedy?” Lù Zhànyě interrupted, his tone calm. “Doctor Li, after practicing medicine for so many years, do you really believe that a basin of well water mixed with a few handfuls of herbs could make a festering, infected wound form a scab and grow new tissue overnight?”
Doctor Li’s hand paused. He adjusted his glasses.
“This… this is what Comrade Su Wǎnróu told me.”
Lù Zhànyě did not continue questioning him. Instead, he asked whether anyone had passed by the threshing ground that night.
Doctor Li thought for a while.
“That night, Zhao Jianguo seemed to have been drunk and causing trouble nearby. Later… right, before dawn, Su Wǎntáng came here. She said she had fallen and scraped herself at the back hill, so she got some gauze and red medicine.”
“Was there anything unusual about her?”
“Unusual?” Doctor Li thought carefully. “That girl always has the smell of soapberry on her, mixed with a little herbal fragrance. Very refreshing. Oh, and her hair is very long, down to her waist. When she took the medicine, a strand fell onto the counter.”
The scent of soapberry.
Waist-length hair.
Lù Zhànyě remembered the strand of long hair he had grabbed that night while half-conscious in the wheat straw pile. The texture had been soft, and the length was exactly down to the waist.
And the scent that lingered beneath his nose that night—
It was unmistakably the same bitter-sweet fragrance of soapberry mixed with herbs.
Exactly the same as Su Wǎntáng’s.
The second test was at the threshing ground in the west of the village.
Lù Zhànyě stood alone before the wheat straw pile.
A month had passed. Most of the wheat stalks had already been carried away by villagers. Only a few loose piles remained, rustling whenever the wind blew.
He crouched down and searched through the gaps in the straw.
A faded piece of coarse cloth was caught deep inside.
The edges were uneven, as if it had been torn off in panic.
Lù Zhànyě picked it up.
The fabric was rough, the kind of coarse cotton cloth commonly used by village women.
He rubbed it between his fingers, and the clothes he had touched that night surfaced in his memory—
The same rough fabric.
The same thin texture.
“Lù… Comrade Lù?”
A timid voice came from behind him.
Lù Zhànyě turned around and saw Su Wǎntáng standing on the field ridge, carrying a bamboo basket filled with freshly dug wild vegetables.
She clearly had not expected to meet him here.
Her face instantly turned pale, and her hand subconsciously covered her lower abdomen—
A tiny movement, but one he noticed immediately.
“What are you doing here?” Lù Zhànyě asked, putting away the cloth fragment.
“Picking… picking wild vegetables…” Su Wǎntáng’s voice trembled. She stepped backward. “I…I’ll go back first…”
“Wait.”
Lù Zhànyě stopped her.
Su Wǎntáng froze under his gaze, her fingers gripping the handle of the basket tightly.
“Your sister said that the person who took care of me that night at the threshing ground was her.”
Lù Zhànyě slowly spoke, his eyes fixed on hers.
“But I don’t believe it.”
Su Wǎntáng’s breathing stopped.
“Because I remember that person had the smell of soapberry and herbs.”
He took a step forward.
Su Wǎntáng panicked and stepped backward, nearly losing her footing on the ridge.
“She had long hair, down to her waist. I grabbed her hair. I also touched her waist—there was a small red mole there, hidden beneath her clothes.”
Su Wǎntáng felt as if she had been struck by lightning.
Her entire body trembled.
She did have a red mole on her waist.
Aside from herself, even her mother Wang Xiuying did not know about it.
That night in the wheat straw pile, Lù Zhànyě’s rough fingers had repeatedly brushed against that spot…
“You…” Her voice trembled uncontrollably. “You remembered wrong…”
“Did I?”
Lù Zhànyě stepped closer. The distance between them was only half an arm’s length.
“Then why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost every time you see me? Why do you instinctively protect your stomach whenever I get close?”
Su Wǎntáng’s mind buzzed.
Suddenly, the system issued a warning:
【Host’s emotions detected as severely unstable. Fetal condition unstable. Heart rate elevated! Please calm down immediately!】
Her vision darkened.
A faint cramping sensation came from her lower abdomen.
“This has nothing to do with you!”
Su Wǎntáng forced herself to shout, pretending to be strong.
Then she hurriedly ran back home.
Three days later, at dusk, Lù Zhànyě stopped Su Wǎntáng beneath the old locust tree at the village entrance.
The setting sun stretched their shadows long.
Lù Zhànyě stood in the shade beneath the tree, his military uniform neat and straight, his gaze sharp like a torch.
Su Wǎntáng tried to walk around him.
He stepped sideways and blocked her path.
“We need to talk.”
“I…I don’t think Comrade Lù and I have anything to talk about…”
Su Wǎntáng lowered her head, her voice as faint as a mosquito’s whisper.