NOS Chapter 39
by VolareAccording to Ai Hua’s mother, Ai Xiuhong, Ai Hua only ever truly loved one woman, and that was Jiang Min, who lived in the Linchang Staff Family Compound.
“Auntie Jiang was an actress in an arts troupe when she was young. She sang well and even performed in the capital,” Guan Yao said softly to Yu Chunming the next morning, sitting in Jiang Min’s home.
Yu Chunming listened distractedly, flipping through the notebook Guan Yao had handed him.
“I remember she went to the Songlan Grand Theater for exchange and study for a few years, staying in Songlan for a long time. Auntie Wang said at the time that she had gotten married and would definitely settle down elsewhere. But unexpectedly, she came back just before the 9.24 fire,” Guan Yao continued. “I was young then, and I wasn’t very clear about her affairs. What Ai Hua’s mother said… I’m not sure if it’s true or false, so don’t ask too many questions later.”
Yu Chunming closed the notebook, his gaze drifting towards Jiang Min, who was busily working in the kitchen.
When they arrived early in the morning, Jiang Min was already up, standing on the balcony practicing her voice. She didn’t refuse their request, and even generously led them into the house.
The house was filled with a faint scent of rosewater, and a vase of freshly cut magnolias was placed on the dining table. Everything was cleaned spotlessly, with none of the “neurotic” air one might expect from Jiang Min.
“Sit down,” she said kindly.
Yu Chunming looked around, a somewhat lost expression on his face. Guan Yao gave him a tug, signaling him to sit down quickly.
“Does she… live in this house alone now?” Yu Chunming asked while Jiang Min was in the kitchen pouring water.
Guan Yao nodded, “There’s also Qin Tian, but that kid doesn’t come back often.”
Yu Chunming’s expression relaxed slightly.
Guan Yao lowered his voice and added, “Auntie Jiang’s husband, Wu Qiang, died seven or eight years ago. Since then, she’s been alone.”
This made Yu Chunming raise his eyebrows.
Before long, Jiang Min brought over two cups of fragrant coffee, saying softly, “It’s hand-ground, try it.”
Guan Yao didn’t stand on ceremony and immediately picked up a cup and took a sip, praising, “Hmm, really good.”
Jiang Min raised the corners of her mouth, then turned her gaze to Yu Chunming.
Yu Chunming felt a slight pang in his heart, but he still sat upright, refusing to touch the coffee Jiang Min offered. He said, “I’m allergic to caffeine, I can’t drink it.”
“It’s okay, I’ll drink it for him later,” Guan Yao waved his hand, smiling as he put down his cup. He then flipped through his notebook and took out a photo borrowed from Ai Xiuhong, “Auntie Jiang, I came to ask you if you recognize this person.”
Jiang Min moved a chair and sat opposite them. She solemnly took the photo, looked at it for a long time, and then nodded, “I recognize him. His name is Ai Hua, he’s a beast.”
This startled both Yu Chunming and Guan Yao.
But Jiang Min didn’t intend to explain. She slowly lit a cigarette and casually threw the photo aside, “Men are all beasts.”
The two sitting on the sofa touched their noses and didn’t respond.
Jiang Min exhaled a puff of smoke and continued, “I have a lot of photos with those beasts in my room, do you want to see them?”
“Yes, if you have them, why not?” Guan Yao said with an awkward smile, “If you have any old photos or old newspapers, take them all out. We both like to look at old things.”
Jiang Min bit her cigarette, shuffled into the house in her slippers. After a while, she returned to the living room with several thick photo albums.
“Here, this one is from our family, this one is from No. 2 Timber Factory, and this one… is from the arts troupe,” Jiang Min said in front of the two of them without hesitation. “There are also some letters that those beasts wrote to me back then, you can read them too.”
Guan Yao casually took one and handed it to Yu Chunming.
Yu Chunming didn’t answer, but put down the one Guan Yao handed him and instead picked up the one from the arts troupe.
“Why are you being so picky?” Guan Yao asked.
The one Yu Chunming put down was Jiang Min’s family album. Clipped to the front page was a photo of Jiang Min and her parents. Jiang Min was holding a child in her arms, the child looking less than five years old.
Guan Yao recognized the two elders at a glance. His gaze shifted slightly, and he couldn’t help but open his mouth, “This is…”
“Jiang Xin, my son,” Jiang Min answered before he could finish.
In the black and white photo, the child held in Jiang Min’s arms was thin and small, with dull, lifeless eyes and dry, lackluster cheeks. He didn’t look like his bright and beautiful mother at all. If she hadn’t said so, no one would have thought he was Jiang Min’s son.
Guan Yao stared at the boy’s appearance in a daze. He sighed softly, took out the photo, and placed it in front of Yu Chunming, “Didn’t you ask me before who Jiang Xin was? Look, this is Jiang Xin.”
Yu Chunming sat still, only his gaze shifted slightly.
“Jiang Xin is Auntie Jiang’s eldest son, and also… my brother,” Guan Yao said, his eyes stinging, and suddenly stopped talking.
Twenty or thirty years ago, when the factory hadn’t yet collapsed and the forest farm was still thriving, almost everyone living in this family compound knew each other, especially the Jiang family and the Guan family who lived across the hall from each other.
Jiang Min’s parents were farmers from the reclamation corps, originally living in the Jin A Lin Mountain. By chance, the strikingly beautiful Jiang Min was spotted by the head of the Linchang Arts Troupe, who was there to offer condolences, and sent to the No. 2 Timber Factory’s children’s school to be cultivated. In a few years, this clever, lively, and beautiful girl successfully passed the entrance exam to an art school.
At the age of seventeen, Jiang Min, who had become the most dazzling “pearl” of Jin A Lin Mountain, was selected by the arts troupe and sent to the Songlan Grand Theater for exchange and study. According to the old people of No. 2 Timber Factory and neighbors who knew Jiang Min well, it was at that time that she met her first husband and began her first marriage.
“I heard he was an official,” Auntie Wang, who loved to gossip behind people’s backs when Guan Yao was a child, had once said to Guan Yao’s grandmother with a wink while eating at their house, “Tell me, such a beautiful person, having hooked up with an official in the provincial capital, why would she come back to our small town? Maybe she did something wrong and was dumped, so she came back. Otherwise, would that big official let her come back here with a belly, to be pointed at?”
This left an indelible impression in Guan Yao’s mind. He always tried to figure out if Jiang Min’s eldest son, Jiang Xin, was born to her and her ex-husband.
But unfortunately, Guan Yao didn’t hear all of Auntie Wang’s words. When she realized that the following content was about to be “unsuitable for children,” Guan Yao’s grandmother immediately sent Guan Yao, who was eavesdropping to the side, away. What these two women said afterward, no one knew. So Guan Yao could only assume that Jiang Xin was the son of Jiang Min’s ex-husband.
But whether he was or not, it didn’t matter. After all, the reason Guan Yao wanted to figure out all of this was just to give Jiang Xin an explanation, an explanation that would stop him from being bullied by other children in the compound.
“Back then, he always followed behind me, tugging at the hem of my clothes, calling me ‘Brother’,” Guan Yao said after a long silence.
“That’s because he was a coward, always being bullied,” Jiang Min said coldly, exhaling smoke.
Yu Chunming remained silent, seemingly focused on the beautiful actresses in the art troupe in the photo album.
Guan Yao continued, “He always had injuries on his body. When I asked him how he got them, he wouldn’t say. I could only take him back to my house and have my grandmother put medicine on him.”
Jiang Min exhaled a puff of smoke.
“Later, he lived in the same room with me, ate the dumplings my grandmother made every day, slept on the bed in my room. I even made a promise with him that we would become policemen together in the future, so we wouldn’t be bullied and could protect the people we wanted to protect,” Guan Yao put down the photo, a wry smile on his face, “Unfortunately, later…”
“Later, he fell into the river and died,” Jiang Min said indifferently.
Guan Yao paused and didn’t speak anymore.
Whether Jiang Xin died or not was a matter of debate among the residents of the Linchang Staff Family Compound.
Auntie Wang said he died because everyone knew that Jiang Xin left Za Mu Er one day when he was nine years old, and never returned. A year later, someone fished out the body of a child from the Ning Nie Li Qi River, and countless people spread the rumor that it was Jiang Xin.
Guan Yao’s grandmother said that Jiang Xin didn’t die, saying that he was just sent to Songlan by Jiang Min, probably to be raised by his ex-husband, and would come back when he grew up.
Teenage Guan Yao believed his grandmother’s words, never suspecting that his grandmother was just trying to comfort his overly sad heart. It wasn’t until he grew up that he gradually realized that Jiang Xin might really be dead.
This had become a chronic scar in Guan Yao’s heart. He rarely recalled the past. He placed the only photo of himself and Jiang Xin on the dining table in the living room, but didn’t allow the photo itself to see the light of day, only willing to pick up the inverted frame and take a look when he occasionally reminisced about the past.
Guan Yao had almost never mentioned Jiang Xin to anyone else, but somehow, today, when Yu Chunming sat next to him, he suddenly blurted out everything from back then.
“It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have made an appointment with him to go to the birch forest by the river. If he hadn’t gone that night, maybe he wouldn’t have, wouldn’t have fallen into the river…” Guan Yao lowered his head.
Yu Chunming slowly turned around and looked at him.
“That day, we agreed to go to the bridge to watch the trains first, and then go to the edge of the army’s camp to pick up discarded shell casings. But I was delayed because of school, and when I got to the riverside, he had already gone somewhere,” Guan Yao said.
“Later, he disappeared. I couldn’t find him the next morning, and I couldn’t find him the third day. On the fourth day, the fifth day, people from the family compound all went out to look for him, but they just couldn’t find him. We looked for him for a full two months, and in the end, a heavy snow fell, making it impossible to move outside, so we had to give up…” Guan Yao wiped his face and forced a smile, “My grandmother was afraid I would be sad, so she lied to me and said that Jiang Xin was sent to Songlan by Auntie Jiang, to live with his real father. I really believed it at the time, and I was planning with Guan Na how to find him every day.”
“Did you go look for him then?” Yu Chunming finally spoke, asking, “Did you go look for Jiang Xin later?”
“I did,” Guan Yao paused, “I secretly packed my luggage, resold the stamps I had collected, exchanged them for travel money, and ran to Songlan alone, asking about him at every police station. Unexpectedly, I really found something out.”
Yu Chunming’s eyes flickered slightly.
Guan Yao looked at him, his eyes red, “A kind old policeman heard about the person I was looking for, and according to the information I provided, made a phone call to Za Mu Er, and then… he found Jiang Xin’s death certificate.”
Yu Chunming’s hand on his knee suddenly clenched, “Death certificate?”
“Yes, death certificate,” Guan Yao nodded.
Jiang Min, who was sitting opposite them, was also stunned, and even forgot that the cigarette was about to burn her fingers. She repeated after him, “Death certificate.”
Guan Yao continued, “I didn’t believe it at all at the time, and I didn’t believe it even after I returned to Za Mu Er. It wasn’t until… until I retired from the army and became a policeman, had a little influence, and asked my comrades in Songlan to investigate Jiang Xin, after investigating for half a year with nothing to show, I finally understood that Jiang Xin, he was really dead.”
Yu Chunming lowered his eyes and looked at the back of his pale hand.
Jiang Xin, Jiang Xin…
Who else in this world knows that he is Jiang Xin?
Yu Chunming once told Na Fei that it wasn’t that he was hiding it from Guan Yao, but that Guan Yao hadn’t recognized him.
So, why didn’t Guan Yao recognize him?
Because in Guan Yao’s heart, Jiang Xin was already a dead man. Guan Yao is a gentleman, he would never try to find traces of a dead man on a living person, let alone, who could find the shadow of a thin and shriveled Jiang Xin on Yu Chunming’s beautiful and handsome face?
Yu Chunming looked at Jiang Min – could his own mother do it?
“Forget it, let’s not mention those things,” Guan Yao put the photo back in the album, and then let out a long breath, “It’s all over, it’s all over.”
This was just him comforting himself.
Yu Chunming pinched the space between his eyebrows, feeling a faint soreness in his heart.
But Guan Yao seemed to have really “moved on.” He picked up another photo album and quickly flipped through it, “What were the names you saw in Ai Hua’s diary, besides Qian Guowei?”
“Xu Wen,” Yu Chunming quickly collected his thoughts and replied.
“Xu Wen…” Guan Yao pulled out a photo and waved it in front of Jiang Min, “Is this him?”
Jiang Min snorted lightly, which was considered a tacit agreement.
Guan Yao took out his mobile phone and took a picture of the man with a round face in the photo, “Let’s keep it as evidence first.”
As he spoke, he continued to flip through the album.
But unfortunately, Qian Guowei didn’t seem to like taking pictures. The two of them asked Jiang Min one by one with the photos, asking for a long time, but they couldn’t find Qian Guowei’s figure in the photos of the old employees of No. 2 Timber Factory, or in the various personal photos.
“What does he look like?” Guan Yao asked, “Auntie Jiang, do you still remember?”
“Of course I remember,” Jiang Min lit another cigarette, “Qian Guowei, well, he looked okay. The young girls at No. 2 Timber Factory all liked him, saying he looked like a Russian actor.”
“Russian actor?” Guan Yao laughed when he heard this description, “What does a Russian actor look like?”
Jiang Min described, “High nose bridge, deep eye sockets, big eyes, double eyelids, long eyelashes, white skin. Don’t all Russians look like this when they’re young? They don’t hold up well when they get old.”
Guan Yao nodded thoughtfully, but Yu Chunming’s eyebrows twitched for some reason.
“A lot of little girls chased after him, and he ruined a lot of little girls,” Jiang Min took a deep breath of her cigarette and said, “This person wasn’t a good bird, it’s good he’s dead.”
“Then what… what’s his relationship with Lin Zhimin, Auntie Jiang, do you know?” Guan Yao asked again.
“Who is Lin Zhimin?” Jiang Min didn’t know, “Never heard of this person.”
“He seems to be Qian Guowei’s childhood friend, Liu Bin, who used to be in charge of the keys at the factory, said so,” Guan Yao replied.
“Childhood friend?” Jiang Min thought for a long time, and then said vaguely, “Maybe there was such a person, but Qian Guowei was on good terms with Ai Hua, Xu Wen, and the two of them back then. I haven’t heard of Lin Zhimin or anything.”
Guan Yao failed to ask what he wanted to know, which was a bit of a pity. He casually mentioned a few more sentences, preparing to steer the topic to the fire and Li Ying.
But who knew that at this moment, a photo in the album caught his attention.
“Yu Chunming,” he called out, “Look at this person, doesn’t he look like… our Deputy Chief Yu?”