nashuaworldcup Chapter 728: The Fog of the Past Recalls Father's Traces
Chapter 728: The Fog of the Past Recalls Father's Traces
As Lu Baoyou's hand touched the copper door knocker, someone suddenly patted the back of her neck.
"Xiaoyou?"
He turned his head suddenly and saw a hunched old man standing under the street light, wearing a washed-out blue shirt.
He was holding a half-smoked cigarette in his hand - it was Uncle Zhao who ran a small shop at the east end of the village. His father used to go there often to buy cigarettes.
"Uncle Zhao?"
Lu Baoyou's throat tightened, her hand still on the door knocker, "You...why are you here?"
Uncle Zhao squinted at him, his cigarette butt flickering between his fingers: "I've been waiting for you here for a long time."
"Your father had a funeral the other day, and you didn't come back. Your grandmother has been complaining about you for a long time."
The copper door knocker hit the door panel with a clang.
Lu Baoyou felt a buzzing in his ears, as if someone was hitting metal sheets with a hammer. "My dad? Hasn't my dad...hasn't he been home for several years?"
"Hey, do you think he's just hanging around out there?" Uncle Zhao squatted down and crushed the cigarette butt with the tip of his shoe.
"Your father is a night watchman. He was fighting monsters in the south the other day and hasn't returned yet."
The wind blew dead leaves past my feet.
Lu Baoyou stared at the white hair on Zhao Bo's head, and suddenly remembered when he was ten years old -
That day, he was squatting at the gate of the yard playing marbles, and he saw from afar a man in an old military uniform walking towards the village.
The corners of the suitcase were worn white, and there was a dark red mark on the shoulder, like a bloodstain.
“Baoyou!”
The man called out to him, his voice hoarse as sandpaper, "Dad, come back and get something."
He rushed over and smelled a smell of rust mixed with the bitter smell of herbs on his father's body.
Mother wiped her tears in the room and said, "Qiuzi, can we stop being the night watchman?"
"Baoyou is ten years old and has only seen his father a few times."
Daddy squatted down and straightened his collar, rubbing his fingertips across the tip of his red, frozen nose: "Be good, Daddy has to go."
"I'll bring you some photos when I'm done with this trip. There's a picture of your mother in a red dress in the suitcase. Keep it."
That night he hid behind the door and watched his father dragging the suitcase out.
The moon was so bright that it was frightening, stretching Dad's shadow so long that it looked like a rope about to break.
He chased after him, shouting, "Dad, don't go." His father didn't look back, but just waved.
Later, word spread in the village that Lu Qiu had a lover in the city and no longer wanted his wife and children.
He overheard Aunt Wang gossiping to someone: "Look at his wife's red dress. It's been at the bottom of a box for ten years, and she still treats it like a treasure."
He smashed all the glass marbles in his schoolbag and hid behind the haystack crying.
From that day on, he hated his father—hated that his words of "wait until I finish this trip" had become empty words.
I hated that the suitcase he left behind contained only a yellowed old photo, and I hated that he made my mother lose face in the village.
"Xiaoyou? Xiaoyou?"
Zhao Bo's voice seemed to rise from the water.
Only then did Lu Baoyou realize that he was squatting on the ground, digging his hands into the cracks of the bluestone slabs, with mud all under his nails.
“The funeral was last Friday.”
Uncle Zhao sighed, "Your grandmother didn't allow the notice to be sent out, saying that you are doing well outside and shouldn't get involved in this."
"But Comrade Liu came yesterday and said that your father was thinking about you before he passed away and insisted that we bring you back."
“Comrade Liu?”
"Your father's colleague, deputy captain of Squad 287 stationed in Tanxiang City."
Zhao Bo sniffed.
"On the day of the funeral, many people in black uniforms came, holding urns covered with the Daxia flag."
"Only our villagers know that Lu Qiu is not a bastard who abandoned his family, but a hero of Daxia."
Lu Baoyou suddenly stood up and hit his knee on the door knocker, causing him to gasp in pain.
He turned around and slammed the door, his palm hurting. "Grandma! Grandma!"
The door creaked open.
The moonlight filtered in, illuminating a white-haired old lady clutching an unfinished woolen vest in her hand.
She was stunned at first, and the ball of yarn rolled to Lu Baoyou's feet.
Then she raised her hand tremblingly and touched his face: "Bao...Baoyou?"
"grandmother."
Lu Baoyou's throat choked as she bent down to pick up the ball of yarn. "I'm back late."
The old lady suddenly rushed over and hugged him in her arms.
He smelled the familiar scent of camphor wood - the scent that his grandmother had kept in the quilt for years.
Her tears wet his collar,
She sobbed and said, "It's good that you're back... It's good that you're back... If your father knew... If he knew..."
"Grandma, my dad..."
“Baoyou.”
A male voice came from the inner room, "Come in first."
Lu Baoyou looked up and saw a young man in a black suit standing under the porch with a small white flower on his chest.
His eyes were red, and he was holding a wooden box with a copper edge in his hands, with half of the national flag draped on the lid.
“This is Liu Qi.”
Grandma wiped her face and said, "Your father's colleague."
Liu Qi walked over, reaching out to shake Lu Baoyou's hand, then retracted it. "My condolences. Captain Lu...when he left, he said his biggest regret was not meeting you."
Lu Baoyou stared at the wooden box, his throat feeling like it was stuffed with cotton.
He thought of the fruit knife he had bought on the train, still tucked away at his waist. He had wanted to use it to poke open the door just now.
Now I feel the ball of yarn in my hand is very heavy.
"Grandma, my dad's suitcase..."
His voice was hoarse. "Are you still there?"
Grandma wiped her tears and nodded: "It's on top of the cabinet in the inner room. Your father left it when he passed away. I have kept it ever since."
Liu Qi suddenly said, "Before Captain Lu left, he asked me to hand over the things in the suitcase to you."
“He said… there were words on the back of the photo.”
Lu Baoyou didn't say anything.
The wind lifted the door curtain and blew the white chrysanthemums on the table.
He saw the white flower on Liu Qi's chest was blown crooked by the wind.
Revealing the Night's Watch emblem underneath - a silver shield with a demon-slaying sword engraved in the center.
“Let’s eat first.”
Grandma tugged at his sleeve and said, "I made your favorite corn porridge."
Lu Baoyou followed him in and passed by Liu Qi.
He smelled a faint scent of gunpowder - exactly the same smell his father had when he was ten years old.
The wild dogs on the back mountain started barking again.
The moonlight stretched the shadow of the small western-style building very long, like a snake finally crawling back home.
When the steam from the corn porridge turned into a white mist on the wooden table, Liu Qi put down the bowl.
The small white flower on his chest had somehow shifted to his collarbone, revealing the silver edge of the Night's Watch badge.
Grandma was wiping the edge of Lu Baoyou's bowl with her sleeve, her reading glasses slipped to the tip of her nose, and she kept mumbling, "Fill another bowl."
But Liu Qi tapped his knuckles on the table. "Grandma Lu, should Xiaoyou and I go for a walk in the back hills? There's something I want to tell him alone."
Grandma's hand stopped in mid-air.
She looked at the strands of hair sticking up on top of Lu Baoyou's head - they were picked up when he climbed trees as a child, and they hadn't changed after all these years.
The old man wiped his eyes and put the ball of yarn into his hands. "Go, the wild chrysanthemums in the back hills are blooming. Your father...loves the smell of them."
When the mountain breeze wrapped in the autumn chill blew into his collar, Lu Baoyou realized belatedly that he was not wearing a coat.
Liu Qi walked half a step ahead, the hem of his black suit lifted by the wind.
The leather holster at his waist was exposed - the pattern of the belt was exactly the same as the one that appeared in his father's suitcase when he was ten years old.
"I was transferred to Squadron 287 three years ago."
Liu Qi's voice was crushed by the wind.
"Captain Lu was the captain. He always said I was impulsive and that I was even more harsh than Lao Zhou in the team when I scolded people."
He suddenly laughed.
"But one time when I was on night duty and felt sleepy, he stuffed a piece of candy into my hand. He said it was his grandson's favorite. He hid it in his tactical boots and it melted."
Lu Baoyou paused.
He thought of the suitcase under the bed, with an oil-paper bag at the bottom.
When he opened it, sugar crumbs fell out. He cursed, "broken candy," and threw it into the stove.
"You're back from Night's Watch training camp?"
Liu Qi turned his head to look at him, the moonlight cast a shadow at the corner of his eye.
"Captain Lu was looking through the letter you sent home, and the envelope was all frayed."
"Later, grandma said she didn't want to affect your training, so she didn't let him reply. He folded the letter into a paper airplane and placed it on the windowsill of the team headquarters."
The moss on the stone steps squeaked when stepped on.
Lu Baoyou touched his lower back - the fruit knife distributed by the training camp was still stuck there, and the scabbard was polished to a shine.
He suddenly remembered the old man sitting next to him on the train who asked, "Where are you going?"
He said "go home", and the old man clapped his legs and laughed: "Good, go home, it's time for my kid to go home too."
"You hate him, don't you?"
Liu Qi's voice suddenly became softer, like snow falling on pine needles.
"When I first joined the team, Captain Lu got drunk and said that when Baoyou was ten years old, she chased him for two miles, her short legs bouncing around like a spinning top."
"He said he didn't dare look back, afraid he wouldn't be able to hold on. He threw away his gun and shield and ran home with only your mother's photo in his pocket."
The wild chrysanthemums on the mountain road sway at my feet.
Lu Baoyou recalled the day when Aunt Wang gossiped about him. He hid behind a haystack and smashed marbles. The glass beads rolled into the mud and got him covered in dirt.
Later he searched the entire yard and only found three - now that he thought about it, maybe his father had secretly picked them up before he left?
"Last spring, our team received a mission to clear out a monster's lair."
Liu Qi kicked away the gravel at his feet.
"Captain Lu insisted on taking the lead, saying, 'I have a family, and you haven't even gotten married yet.'"
"As we were retreating, we encountered a landslide and he pushed me out of the tunnel."
He took out a wrinkled marble, which shone dark blue in the moonlight.
"I found this in his tactical backpack. It was stained with blood. I spent half the night wiping it clean."
Lu Baoyou's Adam's apple moved.
He remembered the photo in the suitcase, with a line of pencil writing on the back - "Baoyou, Dad's marbles are in the compartment of his tactical boots."
It turns out that what Liu Qi said, “There are words behind the photo”, was not some sweet talk, but a secret of such a broken marble.
“When he left…”
Liu Qi's voice fell silent.
"I'm clutching the last letter you sent me, which said, 'The food in the training camp is better than in the village.'"
"The nurse said he kept repeating 'As long as Baoyou eats well, that's all' seventeen times."
The wind suddenly got stronger on the top of the mountain.
Lu Baoyou's eyes were burning with pain. He turned his head away, but was bumped into a gray and white scene - under the moonlight,
A stone tablet stood under the old locust tree. The tablet was covered with moss, and the five-pointed star on the top was polished to a shine.
"That's..." His voice caught in his throat.
Liu Qi didn't say anything.
He picked the white flower from his chest and gently placed it among the wild chrysanthemums in front of the stone tablet.
The wind blew up the weeds in front of the monument, revealing a line of blurred inscriptions - the horizontal stroke of the word "大", the stroke of the word "夏", and the dot of the word "烈", which were faintly visible in the moonlight.
Lu Baoyou took half a step forward.
He saw half a photo pressed on the base of the stone tablet, with curled corners. It was the photo of his mother wearing a red dress.
When the wind started to blow again, a corner of the photo was lifted up, revealing half of a faded marble underneath, which was exactly the same blue as the one in Liu Qi's hand.
The wild dogs in the back mountain started barking again.
This time, Lu Baoyou didn’t feel it was noisy.
He reached out to touch the stone tablet, and when his fingertips touched the cold stone surface,
Suddenly I remembered the night when I was ten years old - Dad was walking out with his suitcase,
The shadow was stretched very long by the moon, like a rope about to break.
But now he realized that the rope had never been broken, and one end was tied to his father's tactical boots.
His marble box was tied to one end, and it had been kept taut for all these years.
The moonlight spread over the top of the stone tablet, illuminating the last vertical stroke of the character "士".