In the twenty-first century, at a military region hospital.
A frail old woman was surrounded by people, grief written across every face.
“I lived to be eighty-nine. Dying peacefully of old age is a blessing, so don’t cry.” Zheng Jiayu gently comforted her descendants.
Through the crowd, she seemed to see a young man standing nearby, dressed in a white shirt and black trousers.
“Gu Yunting, I’ve come to find you.”
As soon as the words left her lips, the electrocardiogram became a flat line, followed by a piercing alarm.
……
March 7, 1974.
“Knock, knock.”
Inside the residential compound of the research institute, a middle aged man arrived with his wife and son and knocked on the door of one of the houses.
A yellow mourning couplet was still pasted on the door and had not yet been removed.
The knocking woke the girl who was lying on the sofa.
The girl stared blankly at the ceiling, her expression dazed.
After waking from a sleep, she felt as though she had forgotten something.
“Jiayu, are you home?”
Hearing the voice outside, Zheng Jiayu had no time to think about it. She sat up from the sofa and, supporting her weak body, went to open the door.
The moment she opened it, she saw one of her parents’ colleagues standing outside with his family.
The man was named Li Zonglin. He was her father’s colleague, though they usually had little to say to each other. Why had he come today?
“Uncle Li, is there something you need?”
Before Li Zonglin could answer, the woman beside him hurried forward and bumped into Zheng Jiayu, causing her to instinctively take several steps back.
“Jiayu, you’re the only one left in your family now. Before they passed away, your parents arranged a marriage between you and my son. Why don’t you two just get married?”
As she spoke, she greedily glanced around Zheng Jiayu’s house.
Zheng Jiayu, who had yet to recover from the funeral, instantly sobered up.
Looking at the greedy woman in front of her, Zheng Jiayu’s thoughts returned to what had happened two days earlier.
Three days ago, her parents had been involved in an accident on their way back to the research institute, resulting in the destruction of their vehicle and their deaths.
For the past two days, the people from the research institute had helped her handle her parents’ funeral arrangements.
This woman had already come once, and the first thing she had asked was what her parents had left behind for her and how much compensation the research institute had given her.
Her parents had only been buried yesterday, yet the Li family had already come knocking today, even using a supposed marriage agreement as an excuse now that her parents were gone.
There was definitely something suspicious about this.
“Aunt Li, my parents just passed away, so I’m not considering anything like that for now.”
Ignoring Zheng Jiayu’s refusal, Aunt Li grabbed her hand tightly.
“Jiayu, I’m only doing this for your own good.”
“Jiayu, I promised your parents that I would take good care of you. From now on, we’ll be your family.”
Faced with the Li couple’s self assured declarations, Zheng Jiayu was just about to speak when a sharp pain suddenly shot through her head.
She gently pressed a hand against her aching head, and when she looked at the three members of the Li family again, she suddenly saw strange scenes surrounding them.
In those visions, after her rejection, Li Zonglin’s son picked the lock of her door one night, threatened her, and eventually forced her to marry him.
On the very first day after she married into the family, Aunt Li seized the house and savings her parents had left her, constantly tormenting her until she was nearly beaten and tortured to death.
As for Li Zonglin, he stepped over the corpses and reputation of their family of three and steadily climbed higher.
Zheng Jiayu rubbed her eyes, and the scenes surrounding the three of them disappeared.
It was as though everything she had just seen had been nothing more than an illusion.
What had that been?
Seeing that Zheng Jiayu remained silent, Li Zonglin assumed she had tacitly agreed and exchanged a glance with Aunt Li.
Aunt Li pulled Zheng Jiayu’s hand again. “Jiayu, I’ll go home and pick an auspicious date right away so you can marry into our family as soon as possible.”
After the visions disappeared, the pain in Zheng Jiayu’s head also faded.
Having recovered, she pulled her hand away from Aunt Li’s grasp and looked at her expressionlessly.
“Aunt Li, I never said I was going to marry your son.”
She then turned to Li Zonglin. “Uncle Li, I have two questions. First, when did you promise my parents that you would take care of me?”
“Second, you said our two families had arranged a marriage. Where is the marriage contract, or the token exchanged between our families?”
Zheng Jiayu’s two questions left Li Zonglin speechless.
Just as Li Zonglin was about to brush the matter aside, two middle aged men came up the stairs.
They were both from the research institute and were also her parents’ closest friends.
When Li Zonglin saw them, a trace of panic flashed across his eyes.
“Captain, what brings you here?”
Captain Xiang glanced at Li Zonglin. “What are you doing here?”
Li Zonglin was just about to answer when Zheng Jiayu stepped forward and said, “Uncle Xiang, Uncle Li brought his family here and wants me to fulfill the marriage agreement between me and his son. He also said that he promised my parents he would take care of me.”
“But there’s one thing I don’t understand. My parents died in an accident, so how exactly did he promise them that he would take care of me?”
At this point, Zheng Jiayu deliberately paused before continuing to question him.
“Or does Uncle Li have the ability to see the future and knew in advance that my parents were going to die?”
Zheng Jiayu’s accusation made Captain Xiang’s expression turn solemn as he looked at Li Zonglin and reprimanded him unhappily.
“Jiayu does have a marriage agreement, but her fiancé’s surname is Gu. What does that have to do with your Li family?”
Only after Captain Xiang reminded her did Zheng Jiayu remember that her grandfather had indeed arranged a marriage for her when she was young.
Her fiancé had been a very handsome older boy, and he was the grandson of one of her grandfather’s close friends.
“Li Zonglin, you’re taking advantage of Jiayu’s parents having just passed away to pull something like this. What exactly are you trying to do?” Captain Xiang scrutinized Li Zonglin from head to toe.
His gaze seemed as though he intended to see straight through him.
“I only feel sorry for Jiayu and wanted to take care of her,” Li Zonglin explained with an awkward laugh.
As he spoke, he glanced at Zheng Jiayu, hoping she would step in and say something on his behalf.
Zheng Jiayu sneered inwardly. The Li family’s eagerness and the greed in Aunt Li’s eyes made their intentions obvious.
They simply wanted to take everything left behind by the Zheng family, yet they had dressed it up in such pleasant words.
“Uncle Li, I’m already eighteen. I don’t need you to take care of me, and I hope your family won’t say things like this again.”
Zheng Jiayu rejected Li Zonglin’s offer in front of Captain Xiang and the others.
Although Li Zonglin was dissatisfied, he could only force a dry smile and nod.
“Th… then we’ll leave first.”
Aunt Li still wanted to say something, but Li Zonglin dragged her away.
Their son, Li Jian, who had remained silent the entire time, gave Zheng Jiayu a gloomy look. That expression immediately reminded her of everything she had just seen in the vision.
Captain Xiang stepped sideways, blocking Li Jian’s gaze, and looked directly into his dark, sullen eyes.
“Is there something else?”
Li Jian lowered his head and followed his parents downstairs.
When they reached the turn in the staircase, he took advantage of the moment when Captain Xiang and the others had turned away and looked back at Zheng Jiayu.
Without making a sound, he mouthed the words:
“You… are mine.”
Li Jian’s behavior sent a chill down Zheng Jiayu’s spine.
Her mind was filled with the image of Li Jian picking the lock of her house and forcing himself on her until she had no choice but to marry him.
Her hands instinctively clenched into fists. She absolutely could not let that happen.
“Uncle Xiang, come inside and talk.”
Captain Xiang and the others followed Zheng Jiayu into the house. After sitting down, they took out an envelope.
“Jiayu, we’re very sorry about what happened to your parents.” Captain Xiang looked at Zheng Jiayu with guilt.
Zheng Jiayu shook her head bitterly. “You didn’t want this to happen either.”
However, Captain Xiang shook his head, his expression becoming unusually solemn.
“Your parents’ deaths were not an accident.”