CLG Chapter 40

In early June 2012, Mo Wenli walked out of the tall, iron-sheet walls.

She turned her head, the gate closing tightly behind her.

The empty streets were almost deserted. The sun was quite nice today, shining warmly on her. She carried a cloth tote bag containing her personal belongings, and clutched three letters in her left hand. These were all the things her mother had sent her in the past three years, all the words she wanted to say.

Once again, she couldn’t help but look back. She thought she must have been driven crazy by her imprisonment, as for a moment she felt like fleeing back into the cold cell that had accompanied her for so many days.

In a corner not far away, a woman hid, her expression hesitant, taking half a step forward and then retreating. It wasn’t until she saw a white car drive past on the road that she sighed and watched silently from a distance.

Walk or take the bus? Was the old bus stop still there? She seemed lost at the prison entrance. A white car drove towards her, and her gaze followed it.

“Hey! Long time no see.” Just as Mo Wenli was lost in thought, someone got out of the car, walked towards her, and raised his hand with a smile to greet her.

“Hey, why are you standing there?”

“Get in the car, this sun is unbearable.” Shi Hua wiped his sweat with his sleeve and casually took the tote bag from her hand.

Almost as if in a trance, Mo Wenli got into the car. She hadn’t expected Shi Hua to know that she was being released from prison today. She sat in the passenger seat and couldn’t help but steal a few glances at him.

“Hungry? My treat.”

He spoke very naturally, as if he wasn’t curious about anything.

But his thoughts didn’t matter, and his arguments were not accepted. All he knew was that the police had obtained evidence and, in the end, she was sentenced.

The shadows of the trees swayed on the roadside, and unfamiliar and novel buildings flashed by. Mo Wenli quietly looked out the car window…

On the road, Shi Hua occasionally glanced at the man beside him. In fact, before Mo Wenli went to prison, Shi Hua had come to find her. Relying on clues he had observed before, he knocked on Mo Wenli’s door and successfully found Mo Wenli’s mother. Shi Hua asked her some questions about Mo Wenli’s situation and gave her some money.

As for Mo Wenli’s mother, Shi Hua felt that half of Mo Wenli’s misfortune might have come from her. From the first time he met her, he felt that she basically didn’t care about Mo Wenli. She even said that regarding prison life, she only hoped that Mo Wenli could survive. She hadn’t sent any money, and was too lazy to even ask for news. Because of this, Shi Hua would visit her about every six months during those three years. In addition to giving her some money to send to Mo Wenli, he would also try to persuade her to write letters and care about Mo Wenli. She didn’t care, but as long as he took out money, it was naturally much easier.

The car quickly stopped by the side of a large supermarket.

Maybe it had been too long, and Shi Hua, standing beside her, didn’t know how to recall that past, he could only say that the two of them were still lacking some fate.

June was a little hot this year. The sun was blazing, and Mo Wenli couldn’t help but sweat shortly after getting out of the car.

“Let’s go.” Shi Hua said after a long silence.

“Mm.”

“Knock-knock-knock.” Mo Wenli knocked on the door.

Hearing this, the two turned their heads. A forty or fifty-year-old aunt was standing in the stairwell. She pointed to the door and said, “She moved away a few months ago, it seems like she left with a man.”

The aunt asked them who they were. Mo Wenli said she was the original tenant of this room, and Shi Hua asked the aunt if she lived nearby and if she knew where the original tenant had moved to.

She finally returned to a familiar place, but she couldn’t find what Mo Wenli wanted to see here. Of course, Shi Hua then took Mo Wenli to the community. The staff didn’t know the address either, but they still had her phone number. The community staff made a phone call, and finally managed to get her current address.

Mo Wenli didn’t have a cell phone now. Her cell phone was given to her mother after she went to prison.

Fortunately, the new address was only two kilometers away, and the two of them quickly went to another old residential building. The environment there was slightly better than the previous one, probably because the building was built later, and the walls were not dilapidated.

Mo Wenli looked at the building. She knew this place, but she didn’t expect that the neighborhood had changed its name.

Shi Hua nodded.

“312.” After finding the corresponding house number, Mo Wenli’s heart started to tense up again. After hesitating for half a minute, she finally knocked on the door.

“Coming.” To her surprise, she immediately heard a response from inside. It was a man’s voice. After opening the door, a slightly chubby, bald man with a bare chest opened the door for her.

“Who are you looking for?” The woman said with a puzzled face as soon as she opened the door. She had stubble on her chin.

“I… I’m looking for… looking for Zhang Jie.”

“Mm.”

The man was sitting in the living room watching TV, and even invited the two of them to come in and sit.

After hesitating for a moment, Zhang Jie smiled faintly, took Mo Wenli’s hand, and then pulled Mo Wenli into the room, standing at the doorway.

The unfamiliar scene made Mo Wenli not know what to say. Before she had time to open her mouth, a little boy rushed out of the room next door pushing a toy car, “Puchi, puchi.”

“Don’t bump into your sister.” The woman instructed from the side.

Toys scattered on the floor, a half-empty milk bottle, a small plastic bowl on the table…

“Call her ‘sister’.” Zhang Jie pulled the girl and said to Mo Wenli.

She opened the door, seemingly afraid that the people outside the room would hear.

“Wenli, you’ve seen it too, so I won’t explain.” Zhang Jie sighed, looking a little tired.

“I thought you were so proud, but in the end you just found this kind of man. Where’s my proud self-esteem?” An inexplicable anger burned in Mo Wenli’s heart. She felt like she had been abandoned.

“I was only inside for three years, and you couldn’t bear the loneliness and found a man.”

As soon as Mo Wenli finished speaking, there was a sound in the stairwell, and she received a solid slap to the face.

The hand suspended in the air seemed to realize that its actions were too impulsive. “I… I’m sorry.” She quickly reached out to touch Mo Wenli’s face.

“What are you pretending for?” Mo Wenli slapped her hand away.

“But you were always like this.” Mo Wenli snorted.

Zhang Jie didn’t refute her, only standing in front of her with a not-so-good expression.

“Come inside with me, let’s talk slowly.”

“Don’t be so kind, I can’t come in.”

“Enough! Have you made enough of a scene!”

“Am I the one making a scene!”

Seemingly recalling the events of those years, Zhang Jie lowered her head slightly. “I’m the one who’s sorry to you.”

Perhaps the two of them were too loud, and the door to the room opened. “Zhang Jie, come over for a moment.” The woman pulled Zhang Jie into the door, glanced at Mo Wenli, and then closed the door.

About three minutes later, Zhang Jie finally came out of the room.

“Wenli, let’s not argue.”

“If you’re willing, I’ll try my best to get him to accept you.”

“You just got out, and you’ve killed people, of course people are afraid of you!”

“If you’re willing, I’ll go in, and we’ll talk it over nicely…”

“Choose one, him or me.” Before Zhang Jie could finish speaking, Mo Wenli said in a deep voice.

Seeing the embarrassed expression on Zhang Jie’s face, stammering and unable to say a word, Mo Wenli smiled and turned to leave.

Zhang Jie reached out and grabbed Mo Wenli, stuffing a wad of money into her hand. Mo Wenli scattered it, and the stairwell was filled with red banknotes fluttering to the ground…

Mo Wenli was trembling all over. She couldn’t understand why, why, why it was like this.