“Bai Linlin?”
Linlin stared at those three characters, frozen for several seconds.
Then her brain finally caught up.
This was it. This was evidence!
She squatted there, staring at the blurry line of writing. Her mind raced as she pieced the fragments together.
Mom’s words, Xiran’s twisted behavior, and this “promise” carved under the slide.
“No way… so that’s how it was?”
She murmured to herself.
“Innocent childhood words. Innocent childhood words!”
Ruan Yuan leaned in, glanced at the writing, then at Linlin’s face that clearly read “I’m completely lost.”
“So Xiran’s obsession with Bai Linlin comes from you promising at age eleven that you’d stay together with her for life, and then breaking that promise?”
She paused.
“But there are still issues here. How did her family die? And why did Bai Linlin leave? This doesn’t seem as simple as it looks.”
“Mm, exactly!”
Linlin nodded.
After hearing Mom’s account of Xiran’s family history and now seeing this promise, a rough outline had formed in her mind.
The young Xiran back then had lived a truly miserable life.
Her mother Qian Ran had failed to give birth to a boy, so she was abused by her husband’s family.
Her own birth family had abandoned the mother and daughter long ago.
It was true isolation with no one to turn to.
When Mom had brought little Linlin to visit Xiran’s mother, little Linlin had naturally started playing with little Xiran.
The two little girls had become each other’s only playmates in that rundown little town.
After all, back when she had been on the bed with Xiran, Linlin had already guessed that little Linlin must have done something unforgettable to Xiran.
What kind of thing would be unforgettable for a lifetime?
Breaking a promise? That wasn’t much.
If it had only been a broken promise, Xiran could have just reminded her when they met and jogged her memory.
The key was what had made Xiran so extreme and so obsessive.
Linlin’s imagination ran wild, and one possibility suddenly hit her.
No way…
Could it be that little Linlin had been a little devil and ordered Xiran to kill her entire family?
Then she had run away and abandoned her?
No, no, no!
That was impossible!
If that were true, Xiran would have killed her the moment they met.
There was no way she would play this “bullying game” or keep saying “Linlin is mine.”
Her thoughts seemed to hit a wall.
She still needed more clues.
“Ruan Yuan-jiejie.” Linlin stood up and brushed the dust off her skirt.
“Let’s go check out Xiran’s old house. We might find something.”
Ruan Yuan nodded.
“Let’s go.”
The two of them left the rundown park and continued deeper into the town.
According to Mom, Xiran’s family had been the poorest household in this town back then.
How poor?
To the point where other families at least had intact houses, while theirs consisted of a few crumbling shacks that were about to collapse.
Linlin and Ruan Yuan walked along the weed-choked street.
Dilapidated houses lined both sides. Some had completely collapsed, leaving only a few crooked walls.
Others still stood somehow, but their windows were empty black holes like the eye sockets of skulls.
After walking for about ten minutes, Ruan Yuan stopped.
“It should be here.”
Linlin followed her gaze.
It was a courtyard-style building.
Though calling it a courtyard was generous—it was just a square yard surrounded by a ring of low, rundown houses.
Everything was falling apart, with walls leaning this way and that.
Some walls had collapsed halfway, revealing dark rooms inside.
The courtyard gate was long gone, leaving only two crooked gateposts.
Linlin took a deep breath and walked inside.
The yard was overgrown with weeds that reached her knees.
Every step made a rustling sound.
She had no idea what might be hiding under the grass, and it made her skin crawl.
There were only two rooms that looked livable.
The other two were the toilet and kitchen, though they were unrecognizable now.
The kitchen roof had caved in over half its area, and wild grass grew thick across the stove.
The toilet was even worse.
The walls had fallen completely, leaving only the faint outline of a squat pit, also filled with grass.
Linlin and Ruan Yuan first entered one of the rooms.
This one looked slightly better.
The walls were still standing and the roof was mostly intact.
They pushed the door open. It was pitch black inside, and a musty smell hit them in the face.
Linlin pinched her nose and shone her flashlight around.
A broken bed, a crooked cabinet, and some junk whose purpose was impossible to guess.
It looked like it had belonged to the in-laws.
Linlin took a quick look but found nothing useful.
“Let’s go to the other room.”
The other room was even more ruined.
The door was gone, leaving only a dark, empty doorframe.
The smell inside was worse.
Mold, rot, and some indefinable stench mixed together.
Linlin nearly gagged.
This must have been where Xiran’s parents had lived.
Xiran hadn’t had her own room—she had slept with her parents.
Most of the furniture had rotted away.
There was a large bed with only decaying wooden boards and a few clumps of unidentifiable black stuff.
A fallen wardrobe stood with its doors open and empty.
Scattered junk lay everywhere, all so decayed that their original shapes were lost.
Visually, there was nothing related to Xiran.
Linlin held back her nausea and started searching.
Nothing on the bed.
Under the bed—only dust and a few mouse droppings.
Inside the cabinet—nothing.
She opened a broken box in the corner. Inside were only a few rotten rags.
She sighed.
After searching for a long time, she still found nothing.
At that moment, Ruan Yuan’s voice came from the far corner of the room.
“Linlin, you’d better come take a look at this.”
Linlin turned her head.
Ruan Yuan was squatting in the farthest corner.
A tattered blanket lay on the floor there. Its original color was impossible to tell anymore.
It was gray and dusty, with frayed, rotting edges.
It looked less like a blanket and more like a dog bed.
Linlin walked over.
Ruan Yuan pointed behind the blanket.
The spot was right against the wall. The blanket had been placed to cover whatever was behind it.
When they lifted the blanket, there was a hole at the base of the wall.
It wasn’t a mouse hole.
It had been dug by hand, about the size of a palm and very deep.
It was pitch black inside, and the bottom was invisible.
“There’s something inside,” Ruan Yuan said.
She reached in carefully.
After feeling around for a moment, her fingers touched something hard.
She gripped it and slowly pulled it out.
It was a box.
Silver-white, palm-sized, perfectly square.
When it came out, it was covered in dust and dirt.
But it was clearly not an ordinary box.
It was the kind used to store important things, like jewelry or letters—an iron box.
The edges were rusted, but the box itself was still intact.
“This is…”
Linlin squatted down and stared at the iron box.
The hiding spot and the way it had been concealed were obviously deliberate.
Who would hide something like this in a hole in the wall like a mouse burrow?
And cover it with a blanket?
It had to contain something they didn’t want anyone else to find.
Ruan Yuan placed the iron box on the ground.
The two of them stared at it for a moment.
The box had no lock, only a latch. But the latch was rusted shut.
Ruan Yuan reached out, hooked her finger around the latch.
With a firm twist—
Click.
The rusted latch snapped open.