The little boy didn’t immediately respond to He Zhilan’s question. Instead, he cautiously looked up at his mother, who towered over him. Seeing his mother subtly shaking her head at him, he lowered his head, biting his lip. After a while, he finally spoke again, "Mom won’t let me talk."
But before He Zhilan could ask anything else, the boy suddenly exclaimed, "But I want to say it! It was the bad guy who hit us! It’s his fault mom and I are ! He hits us every day, doesn’t give us food! Doesn’t let us out! He’s a bad guy!"
"Bad guy?" He Zhilan was startled, then gestured to the boy, "Tell me, who is this bad guy? Do you want me to drive him away?"
Perhaps encouraged by He Zhilan’s words, the boy pushed his mother away, ran over, grabbed He Zhilan’s hand, and led her to the balcony, pointing down, he exclaimed, "He jumped off from here! He’s gone! Sister, can you take me and mom away? If he comes back, he will hit me and mom again! Sister, mom and I are very obedient!"
"Him?" He Zhilan was taken aback, was the bad guy the boy was talking about the truck driver who committed suicide by jumping off the building?
"But isn’t that your dad?" He Zhilan squatted down to the boy’s eye level, "All these injuries you and your mom have, were they all from him?"
"He doesn’t deserve to be a husband, let alone a father." The woman suddenly came forward, pulling the boy back and instructing, "Xiaogan, go back to your room. Mom wants to talk with this lady."
Although the boy didn’t want to leave, he still complied with his mother’s wishes and, looking over his shoulder every few steps, he finally went back to his room.
"Xiaogan is a good boy." He Zhilan turned to the woman and praised, but the woman didn’t respond. Instead, she slowly moved towards the balcony, and looked down at the corpse that the police were attending to and surprising began to laugh.
"He’s dead. Xiaogan and I are finally free. His suicide is the only right thing he has done since I married him." The woman’s laughter contained no trace of regret. Instead, it was filled with a sense of relief from hatred.
Outside, the sun shone brightly. However, as He Zhilan looked into the woman’s eyes, she felt as if she were facing a bitter winter.
Much later, as He Zhilan was leaving the house, Xiaogan was cheerfully eating the food that the police had bought for him. To him, the death of the man he had called a bad guy, his father, didn’t seem to be a big deal at all. He showed no grief over it, and even seemed scared that the bad guy who had jumped from the building would come back tomorrow to beat him and his mother again.
And Xiaogan’s mother was standing silently to the side, a thin, bitter smile playing on her lips.
After leaving the house, He Zhilan went downstairs with Lin Chan and Chen Yun. Chen Yun peered curiously at the house, saying, "This family is really strange. What were you talking about all this time inside?"
Before He Zhilan could answer, Chen Yun continued, "While you were inside, I did some investigating around here. This indeed is a family of three. The truck driver was locally named ’Disaster’ which means, ’fated to lose whenever he gambled and would certainly beat his wife and child anytime he lost.’ Over the years, the neighbors were used to hearing the heartbreaking cries of this mother and son. Sometimes even late at night, after he would come home drunk from losing, he would even wake up the already sleeping pair to beat them. At first, the neighbors would intervene, but later on, when words failed to deter him, everyone felt helpless."