“You only have two months left.”
…
Coming out of the hospital, Lu Yinghan clutched her report in her hand, her face pale as she stood in the small hospital garden, mocking herself with a bitter laugh.
Just yesterday, she had happily returned home from her part-time job at a milk tea shop, treating herself to a small cake to celebrate her birthday.
But the moment the cake touched her lips, her internal organs felt as if they were being sliced by a knife. The excruciating pain overwhelmed her, and she collapsed in her shabby 150-yuan-a-month rental room.
She had been familiar with this pain for two months. At first, she had been a little worried, but since her body seemed fine otherwise, she had skipped going to the hospital to save money. This time, however, it had cost her dearly.
On her twentieth birthday, she had been diagnosed with a terminal illness…
This news left even the always resilient and optimistic Lu Yinghan at a loss for how to face it.
In a daze, she took the bus back to her rental room.
She stared at the old, shabby room before finally snapping back to reality.
Setting down the report in her hand, Lu Yinghan silently began to clean the room…
“Thump, thump, thump! Yinghan! Are you home?”
“Coming! Auntie Shen, I’m here!”
Rubbing her slightly sore eyes, Lu Yinghan walked over and opened the wooden door. The landlady, Auntie Shen, stood at the entrance with her friend, both beaming at her.
“Yinghan, I’m here to collect this month’s rent.”
“Oh, of course, Auntie Shen. I’ll transfer it to you right away.”
Lu Yinghan quickly grabbed her phone, found Auntie Shen’s contact, and transferred the rent.
After seeing the transfer come through, Auntie Shen’s smile grew even brighter.
“Great, got it! Yinghan, if you need anything, just let me know, alright?”
“Mm! Don’t worry, Auntie Shen. I have everything I need right now. Thank you!”
Auntie Shen exchanged a few pleasantries with her, then shut the wooden door with a heavy thud.
The friend who had been trailing behind Auntie Shen immediately grabbed her arm and leaned in to ask.
“What’s going on? How can a young girl like her live in a place like this? Isn’t this just that storage shed you threw together back then? How did it become a rental?”
“Hey, hey! I didn’t want to either, but this girl kept begging me at the time, so I finally agreed! That 150 basically covers the water and electricity!”
After saying this, Auntie Shen turned to glance at the wooden door and pulled her friend even closer.
“Let me tell you quietly—don’t you dare spread this around. I heard this girl is the eldest daughter who was kicked out of the Lu family!”
“!!! What? The Lu family? You mean that wealthy Lu family?”
Auntie Shen quickly reached out and clamped her hand over her friend’s mouth.
She knew this woman would never control her volume!
“Keep your voice down! The Lu family lost their daughter before, right? They say the lady of the house went mad with longing for her daughter. The Lu family seemed to blame her for not taking good care of her younger sister, saying she did it on purpose! So they threw her out!”
At that, Auntie Shen nodded toward the wooden door, signaling that the person in question was Lu Yinghan.
As for what happened afterward, everyone knew.
Because the top-tier wealthy family in the capital losing their youngest daughter and driving out their so-called “vicious” eldest daughter had been the talk of the town.
Auntie Shen’s friend furrowed her brows.
“This girl seems really well-behaved. She doesn’t seem like the type to do something like that.”
“Who knows? How could ordinary people like us understand the minds of the rich? To hate their own biological daughter that much—maybe she’s actually a child from outside the marriage!”
Though the two had drawn closer together, they overlooked the fact that the thin walls couldn’t muffle their loud voices at all.
Lu Yinghan had heard every single word from start to finish.
She picked up the hospital report again, and a hazy memory from her childhood surfaced in her mind.
Back then, she had only been in her early teens. Her younger sister had said she wanted to go out and play and demanded that Lu Yinghan come along. Unable to refuse, Lu Yinghan had no choice but to sneak out with her.
It had been her sister’s request.
That was the day her sister disappeared. No matter how hard she searched, she couldn’t find her. She walked every inch of that street, her feet blistering and bleeding, yet she never stopped looking.
She was terrified.
Not only afraid that her sister’s disappearance would put her in danger, but also afraid that the Lu family, who had never treated her well, would come to despise her even more.
In the end, the truth couldn’t be hidden forever. When the Lu family learned their youngest daughter was missing, they exploded.
“Where is Lu Yinghan?! Tell her to get to my study right now!”
That night, Lu Yinghan sat on her bed in her small attic room. The blisters on her feet had already burst and were oozing blood, but even that couldn’t compare to the coldness she felt inside.
Trembling, she bit her fingernails as she fearfully opened the door to Lu Xiong’s study.
Seated inside were the four men of the Lu family.
As the study door slowly closed, Lu Yinghan’s heart slowly sank…
A torrent of scolding and blame rained down on her, leaving the teenage Lu Yinghan no chance to defend or explain herself. She was suffocating.
The hand holding the report clenched tightly, her heart spasming with pain that radiated to her still-aching organs. Lu Yinghan gasped for air, her chest stabbing like a knife with every breath.
She remembered, she would never forget
The disgust in Lu Xiong’s eyes and the coldness on his face when he said those words.
This was her own father, after all.
It made her forget even the searing pain in her feet, and instead she felt a chill.
The next day, the wounds on her feet and the scrapes on her body had already begun to swell and redden, but they still drove her out.
Without a moment’s hesitation.
After leaving the Lu family, she went to an orphanage. No one comforted her; all she faced were mockery and humiliation, and this torment had continued until now…
All because she was the daughter cast out by the Lu family.
If, if only she hadn’t agreed to go out with her sister back then, would she have been like any other ordinary child—going to school happily, working steadily, and then marrying and having children in a plain, peaceful life…
The more she thought, the more her head throbbed with pain.
She quickly forced herself to stop these negative thoughts, adjusting her breathing to ease the ache.
After a long while, tears finally welled up at the corners of her eyes.
She hurriedly covered her eyes with her hands, bit her lips tightly, and sobbed with effort.
The choked whimpers that escaped through her nose were all swallowed down hard, suppressing the cries.
She couldn’t wail aloud.
She could find no reason to let herself vent like that.
Would life start over after crying? Would it change the present? Could she even keep living?
No, it wouldn’t. It would only make her realize even more how pitiful she was.
After crying for a few minutes, Lu Yinghan sat dully on the broken wooden chair, letting tears and snot run freely across her face.
After sitting blankly for a while, she wiped her face hard, drying the tears, and pulled from her faded canvas bag a half-torn piece of white paper and a pen that was nearly out of ink.
She paused for a moment, then tossed both aside, and took out from her bag the white paper and pen she had been reluctant to use before. She lit the wick of the lamp
and wrote something seriously…
A month later, Lu Yinghan received her wages from the milk tea shop. She quit her job and gave up her rent.
Carrying a simple backpack and her savings, she did what she had always wanted to do.
She traveled freely across the country without a care.
For her final month, she wanted to live for herself, to live well…
Two years later, in a mountain village with beautiful scenery, a farmer went up the mountain to gather firewood and found a skeleton. Terrified, he hurriedly reported it to the police.
The incident stirred the local government, and reporters flocked to cover the story.
With the local police’s permission, they viewed the case photos of the body.
In the photos, the body lay on its back, hands placed over the chest, lying piously on the ground.
From her clothing, three pieces of paper were found.
Aside from a terminal illness report from two years prior and a paper densely covered with travel plans,
what made the reporter’s eyes sting was another piece—the half-torn white paper, on which neat, elegant handwriting earnestly read:
“May there be no next life.”