Chapter 1

The train moved along the rails, and the low houses outside the window gradually disappeared. Every few sections, the carriages shuttled through the dark tunnel, taking Jiang Mu to the unknown front.

Jiang Mu had never been to such a far place alone. She didnt close her eyes for a moment. The scenery outside the window was completely different from where she lived. The railroad tracks were built between the steep mountains and the mist was vast, as unreal as the second dimension world, which disrupted all her thoughts.

At this moment, her mood was very complicated. The strange place she was about to go to lived with her most familiar relatives. She hadnt seen them for many years. She was no longer the girl who could be willful back then. At that time, her surname was Jin, and her name was Jin Mu.

I still remember that on the day of separation, it rained heavily in Suzhou. Dad carried an old black box, which contained all the luggage he and his brother could take away. At that time, she was 9 years old and didnt know what her parents divorce meant. She only knew that her father was going to take her brother away from home and live far away.

She tried everything to hold her father back, not letting him go, letting her brother stay, and begging her mother not to chase them away, but what she got in return was her parents last fierce argument. She hid in the corner and cried in fear. On that day, Jin Chao just walked to her side silently and used his body to block the quarreling parents, wiping her tears with his sleeves over and over again, without saying a word.

Later, her mother locked her in the room by force, not letting her make a fuss. She lay on the iron window on the second floor and watched her father holding the faded checkered umbrella and taking her brother into the heavy rain. She burst into tears at the second-floor window. They turned around to look at her. Jin Qiangs eyes were filled with mixed feelings of helplessness through the rain curtain. He shouted to her, "Mumu, be good. Well call you when we get there."

Jin Chao was carrying his backpack. He looked young and his figure was lost in the heavy rain. He couldnt be seen clearly. His father cruelly withdrew his sight and pulled Jin Chao away. The moment they turned around, Jin Mu cried heartbreakingly. In her young heart, she had a strong feeling that her father and brother would never come back after leaving.

She cried until she was powerless. In her blurred vision, a figure rushed back. She blinked fiercely and saw Jin Chao rushing into the heavy rain, climbing up the awning on the first floor, and climbing up the security window downstairs to her.

That was the last time she saw Jin Chao. He was very close to her, his whole body was wet, his long eyelashes drooped, and rain dripped from his forehead to his high nose. He held the iron window with one hand and pulled out the black Parker pen from his backpack with the other hand and handed it to her, saying to her: "This is for you. Practice your handwriting well, dont be picky about food, eat carrots too, listen to mom, next time..."

The rain poured into his mouth and nose, he choked, coughed violently, and then said to her: "Next time we meet, I will check how your handwriting is."

While Jin Mu stretched his hand out of the window to take the pen, he held his brother with his small hand and asked him tearfully: "Will you come back?"

The rain hit the back of their clasped hands, and in the distant sky, a flash of lightning briefly lit up the night sky, illuminating Jin Chaos dark and bright eyes, and the light in them carried all her expectations.

"I will." He said to her.

But he never came back, leaving only the pen he cherished to accompany Jin Mu for many years.

After that, Jiang Yinghan changed her last name directly, and no one would call her Jin Mu anymore. She took her mothers name, Jiang Mu.

In the first few years, she could occasionally receive calls from her father, and she could also take the opportunity to chat with her brother. Jin Chao would ask about her studies, what level she had passed the Guzheng exam, and whether she had grown taller. Every time they talked on the phone, Jin Chaos voice seemed to change. It was no longer the childish male voice in her memory. His voice became deeper and deeper during the voice change period, which made Jiang Mu unfamiliar.

Jiang Yinghan didnt seem to like her frequent phone calls with her brother. Once the chat lasted more than ten minutes, Jiang Yinghan would urge her to do her homework.

After the fifth grade of elementary school, she rarely received calls from her father. She heard that he remarried, had a new family, and had a daughter. Jiang Yinghan asked her not to disturb them again.

After knowing that her father had another daughter and Jin Chao had a new sister, Jiang Mu fell into a depressed mood for a long time, as if her family was stolen by others. Her father and brother gave another little life with their eyes full of love, and that happiness would never belong to her again.

After Jiang Mu had concerns, she could not call Jin Chao to complain unscrupulously after failing an exam or having a conflict with her deskmate. She was afraid that after calling, the person who answered the phone would be her fathers new wife. In Jiang Mus heart, her father and brother were always a family with her, but she had to admit that they had gradually disappeared from her life as early as that night of heavy rain.

After the summer vacation of the fifth grade, Jiang Mu moved twice with Jiang Yinghan. She tried to call her father and brother to tell them their new address, but every time she called, a strange woman answered the phone. She didnt know how to talk to the other party, so she could only hang up in a hurry. Not long after, the phone number became an empty number.

She wrote several letters to Jin Chao, telling him the address and contact information of their new home, but she never received a reply or a phone call. After the sixth grade, she completely lost contact with them.

A year after divorcing Jin Qiang, Jiang Yinghan opened a lottery shop. The money she earned every month was enough to cover the expenses of her and her daughter, and their lives were getting better and better. However, when Jin Qiang was mentioned, Jiang Yinghan would show an unhappy look on her face. Over time, Jiang Mu would not often mention her father and brother.

If life had always been like this, perhaps with Jiang Mus grades, she would be admitted to a good university, find a stable job, stay with her mother, and may not have any intersection with her father and brother in the future. However, she accidentally learned something in her senior year of high school, which changed the trajectory of her life.