Chapter 8

The room was silent.

Suddenly, she raised her voice.

"Filming all that was exhausting too!"

"She wouldn't sit still. A meal took forever. I'd only just built up a following. People had finally started asking me to…"

She stopped.

As though she'd realized she'd said too much.

Mom looked up and stared at her.

No scolding.

No loud sobs.

I watched Mom's face.

When I'd smiled in those videos, she'd thought I was truly happy.

Now she could finally see what lay behind them.

After the hearing, my aunt tried to call Dad back.

"Brother, help me."

He paused.

"An'an asked me for help like that too."

He didn't go to her.

At the later sentencing hearing, my aunt received a prison term.

The money she'd taken was ordered recovered under the law.

The judgment was long.

I couldn't remember all the words.

I only understood that she couldn't keep calling what she'd done "not knowing how to look after a child."

As they led her away, she still tried to turn and find Dad.

His head stayed bowed.

Later, the platform permanently banned her account.

The profile picture of "Aunt Yanyan," holding me with a bright smile, turned gray.

The brands she'd worked with removed every picture of her.

No one would call her the best Aunt Dehua anymore.

But I wouldn't grow any older in my pictures either.

That evening, Mom and Dad came home.

Deep holes marked the outside of my bedroom door.

The bolt had long since been removed.

Still, Dad crouched there with a cloth, carefully wiping the frame, bit by bit.

The white paint grew thin.

Bare wood showed through.

The holes remained.

Mom held my pajamas and sat on the edge of my bed.

There was water in the bedside cup.

A new box of medicine too.

She looked at them, then suddenly reached out and put the medicine away in the drawer.

Then she buried her face in my pajamas.

I went to stand in front of her.

"Mommy."

She didn't look up.

I wanted to ask whether I could still go to hospital when I wasn't being good.

Wanted to ask Dad whether I was still his child if I didn't listen to my aunt.

But I'd waited too long for those answers.

Mom's shoulders shook.

At the door, Dad softly called my name.

Still, no one had answered me in time.

Beyond the door, light slowly grew.

Not my aunt's ring light.

It didn't hurt my eyes.

No one was holding up a phone.

I looked back at my bed one last time.

Beside the pillow, Mom had left a little yellow star.

It wasn't lit.

But I didn't feel sorry about it anymore.

"Mom. Dad."

"An'an's going now."

I didn't say it was all right.

Didn't run back to hug them and tell them not to be sad, the way I used to.

I only walked toward the doorway.

This time, I didn't have to wait for someone to bring a key.

And I didn't have to promise first that I'd be a very good girl.

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