Pristine Darkness

Chapter 22

Some questions on Xie Min's motivations are answered in this side story featuring her and Tong Sheng. As a mother myself, I cannot imagine going through the pain and desperation Xie Min experienced upon Tong Sheng's disappearance. I wonder, what would I have done in her place? Would it have been any different?

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Translator: shl

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谢敏番外《白鹿长鸣》

Xie Min's Story - The White Deer's Never-ending Cry 

I remember when she was only 3 years old. Small head, chubby arms, beautiful eyes. Everyone who saw her praised her beauty.

"This little lady is too beautiful! When she grows up, she will be a stunning beauty!"

At that time, I was always happy to hear such words and took pride in them. Tong Sheng had inherited the best genes from me and him. In my eyes, from young, she possessed a beauty that had been stolen from heaven.

What's more, when she was young, she was also clever and cute.

She was always asking me to carry her, always sticking to me and refusing to let go. This caused her father no small amount of jealousy. But, what could we do? She was another little soul who had sprung from my body. She was the apple of my eye.

I taught mathematics in the village school. Her father was an ordinary worker. We didn't earn very much, but we were always very happy. In the summer, her father would take her to the river to swim. In winter, our family would sit around the brazier and I would tell her stories.

We were so happy. Every minute, every second, was heaven's gift. Due to the arrival of our precious Tong Sheng, our ordinary lives became extraordinary.

Thereafter, she grew day by day. Her beauty was as before, but she also started to become rebellious, and there were secrets she was unwilling to share with me.

It's always troublesome when a girl is too beautiful. I noticed the male students who would accompany her at the end of the day when she was in junior high, noticed that she would use the remainder of her breakfast allowance to sneakily buy lipstick for herself. I was continually very angry. At that time, her father would always laughingly advise me, "Leave it be . . . leave it be. It's like this when girls grow up, you can't always be looking over her shoulder." However, I did not listen to him. I scolded her time after time, not allowing her to interact with those boys. I threw away the cheap lipstick she had bought.

At that time, the little girl had a temper, too. She would sob and close her door, and refuse to speak to me for several days.

I was not concerned about it then. With a compassionate father and a strict mother, her upbringing would benefit her in the long run.

However, the gulf between me and Tong Sheng might just have started from that time.

When she was in high school, she became very quiet. I still found letters to her from male students in her school bag. However, before I could ask her anything, she would say, indifferently, "Mum, you don't have to be concerned about them. They are just small boys, too childish for words." I had no idea what to say.

I felt that she definitely had a boyfriend and was involved in some kind of puppy love. However, I never saw this boy and had no proof. Moreover, she never said much when she was at home. Once she'd finished eating, she would put on her ear phones and listen to music, or revise. It was as if she had her own world, where her father and I did not fit in.